[tryitnow]

These rankings are pretty meaningless.

All of these metrics except for productivity are "density" measures. That is the size of the state matters (in a way that penalizes states with larger, more diverse economies).

A better ranking would be to use CSAs. Industry clusters are based more on region than states. State borders are relatively arbitrary with respect to technology clusters. CSAs are based on commute times so better reflect industry clustering.

Having said all that, I think MA is great. If I didn't hate the cold weather and East coast cultural conservatism I would consider moving to the Boston area.

[chipgap98]

I'm from Boston and am always confused by the whole "East coast cultural conservatism" thing, care to elaborate?

[rayiner]

I think it's mainly referring to the fact that homeless people on the east coast aren't allowed to shit in the streets.

[potatolicious]

Not to mention the east coast response to "the homeless are sleeping in our parks!" isn't "remove all park benches throughout the city".

Having lived in NYC and SF, I find that California's claim to being a liberal bastion isn't nearly as strong as reputed, and that the overall tenor of its social liberalism is fairly superficial.

[CPLX]

I'd imagine it's sort of like the reciprocal of the new-age flakiness you experience as a northeasterner in California.

[guelo]

If you haven't lived in California then it's hard to notice the stodginess of the society you live in.

[thrownaway2424]

I can't tell if the hilarity of your statement was intended.

[vinay427]

I feel like it wasn't intended. I'm honestly not sure when we arrived at HN users calling societies outside of California "stodgy."

[in_cahoots]

I live in California but grew up on the East Coast, and I go back fairly often. I'm honestly baffled by your comment here. The main difference I see is in the diversity of people you will find in CA -- it seems that few people are really 'from' California, we all migrated here from somewhere else. But otherwise I don't see many cultural differences.

[mc32]

I think one thing, at least among working class, is the blue collar vibe you get from many working class in MA, vs CA, where unionism isn't as strong.

[api]

I've lived in both Boston and California. All of what I'm about to say comes from the small sample size that is personal experience and therefore YMMV, but this is my observation.

The most important difference between Boston (and the East Coast in general) and California is this: On the East Coast and in most other places, business culture has a kind of de-facto caste system in which executives, managers, and owners by definition are separate from and out-rank doers. To do is not to own, and to own is not to do.

In Boston if you roll up your sleeves and actually do the work, this makes you lower class compared to the executives who manage, own, and control. On one occasion I had this actually explained to me explicitly and the explanation included the phrase "CEOs don't do anything" stated as if this were a fact and a law of nature. It was explicitly explained to me that for a CXO-type person to actually get their hands dirty with real work was a dangerous distraction that would negatively impact their ability to lead.

In California, being a maker and a doer is respected equally and in some cases more than being a manager or a hustler. The extreme end of this is the CA startup culture where being a "non-technical founder" is sometimes seen as a liability. A founder might eventually transition to mostly managerial work but having a background and having been the original builder of the product is seen as a good thing and a badge of honor.

At the very least, being a maker and a doer in California does not count against you and mark you as lower class the way it does in Boston. It doesn't by definition mean you can't lead, found, or own.

This is why I left Boston. I couldn't stand it. The message I got from the culture is that I was a sucker for trying to get good at actually doing things. I don't have What It Takes and therefore I can only work for those who do. What It Takes is never quite defined but I gathered it to be a mixture of extroversion, a very dominant personality type, and mild to moderate narcissism. Skills and abilities and experience don't factor into it unless that experience is exclusively within the business realm.

East Coast: "I'll have my people talk to your people." -- the ideal archetype of the East Coast business elite would be Donald Trump or Carl Icahn.

West Coast: "Here let me get on that." -- the ideal archetype here is Elon Musk or Larry Page.

East Coast: "We're looking to hire people from the right schools." (I actually heard this multiple times and even read it in print at least once. Skills were not mentioned.)

West Coast: "We're looking to hire people with the right skills."

I also felt more classism in general on the East Coast. The fact that I'm originally from Ohio and went to a small Midwestern university meant I wasn't fit to mop the floor. The West Coast certainly has its Stanford cult but the Ivy League cult on the East is orders of magnitude more intense and pervasive. I know and do business with a number of high-ranking Stanford types and never have I gotten the sense that I'm a "plebeian" simply because I don't have an impressive university name behind me. If I'm talking to a Stanford Ph.D and what comes out of my mouth is intelligent, it feels like a conversation between equals and I don't get the sense that my opinions are inherently suspect.

Don't get me wrong. There is absolutely class in California, and if you're not from a top-tier university or an otherwise impressive background you will probably have to work harder to achieve a similar level of cred in most circles. But you can. Class is malleable here and if you demonstrate merit I've found that people respond quickly. By contrast out East it feels fixed by birth and education. After being there for years and working really really hard I did gradually feel like I'd risen a bit but it felt like a really slow process with a constant undertow. I did find that if I stopped referring to my educational background or place of origin people started to assume I'd gone to a place like MIT, so I could sort of sneak in under the radar and only reveal my beginnings once I'd thoroughly demonstrated ability. Out East I was actually tempted to lie about my education (never did), while out West the idea seems preposterous and silly.

There are exceptions in both places of course, but that was the general cultural zeitgeist I ran into. I imagine it might be even worse in a place like Washington DC where it's all about political clout.

[pc86]

I've been in rooms where someone's asked me "What year did you graduate Penn?" not because they were mistaken and thought I went there, but because the environment we were in was sufficiently high-class it didn't occur to them I might not have gone to an Ivy League school. It can get insane sometimes.

[api]

Heh.

I had lots of experiences like yours up there. People noticeably changed their demeanor when they found out I was from Kentucky and Ohio, grew up on food stamps, and went to a medium sized Midwestern school. I once had someone actually ask me with a totally straight face "how do you know this stuff?" He was referring to machine learning and combinatorics. It was not meant as an offense. He was genuinely mystified that someone with my background could possibly know what a state space was.

http://www.theonion.com/article/midwest-discovered-between-e...

Another true story:

I was once sitting in a restaurant in Boston for lunch. There was a basketball game on. I overheard two obviously upper crust fellows at the bar chatting about it: "I see they're playing a bit of street hoops... they must be in Chicago or Detroit."

"Detroit" was pronounced "dee-troit."

I'm a white nerd and right then I felt black as oil. Hilarious.

There's an amazing amount of brains and talent up there but it's all stuck in this morass of cultural anachronism. You could probably fix the place by kidnapping all incoming Harvard freshmen, dosing them with acid, and dropping them off at a hip hop show or Burning Man or something. It's too bad because Boston is a fantastic city and I otherwise liked it up there.

Unfortunately I fear that the insane gentrification in the Bay Area may eventually infect it with this stuff or at the very least drive out its culture of hands-on reality. You should thank the bums and the dirty hippies. They're a vital part of the ecosystem, a constant reminder that there is in fact a universe beyond planet trust fund.

[sliverstorm]

How do you pronounce "Detroit"? I think quite a lot of the country pronounces it the same way Google Translate does.

[pc86]

The two I've heard are di-TROIT and DEE-troit. The emphasis is the most important, but "di" also typically doesn't have the long e sound (although it can).

[sammydavis]

Ha. Even worse, if you go out to eat on the east coast you often have to wear "nice clothes", they won't let you into the better restaurant unless you have a tie and jacket. What rubbish. :-)

I want to drive my Tesla up to the nice restaurant and get out in jeans. Up yours, fancy pants places.

[afarrell]

> or Burning Man or something

There is a pretty strong burner community in Boston.

[kolbe]

Next headline: Bloomberg Tops Business Insider in Making Up Meaningless Ranking.

[shas3]

> That is the size of the state matters (in a way that penalizes states with larger, more diverse economies).

Like 2nd rank California, home to 50 Fortune 500 companies ranging from Apple to Clorox to Allergan? /s

Also, diverse economy doesn't mean more innovative. Some companies like, say CVS in Rhode Island, can prop up a state's economy, but add little to the innovativeness of the state.

[thrownaway2424]

Indeed, Mass. is only about the same size as the Bay Area. You might as well group MA with CT, RI, NH, VT, and ME and making an aggregate ranking.