[codingdave]

It is absolutely not where the most opportunities are. It is the place where the most startups are, which means the top of the opportunity pile eclipses other locations in terms of earning potential and networking. But quantitatively, the most programming jobs per capita are in Washington, Colorado, and Utah.

[mahyarm]

The more interesting companies are in the bay area I find personally. In Seattle you have amazon, which has a horrible reputation, and Microsoft, which has another kind of bad reputation, but is better than amazon. In the SFBA, you have facebook, apple, google, and many many others.

Also I don't find jobs / people in the state the most accurate indicator. To someone living in LA, moving to SF might as well be moving to Utah. The open positions / qualified people is the far more useful metric, and SF will still beat all of them on that.

[maherbeg]

That's actually wrong. Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google all have some of their largest engineering satellites in Seattle.

[dgoldstein0]

True. But sometimes being in a satellite office just isn't the same as being at HQ.

[frame_perfect]

And here on the internet.

[rco8786]

Source for those #s? Curious