The Boston region was, once upon a time, thought to be competitive with SV. But it fell behind in hype at some point during the 80's and never came back. I would be unsurprised that it is a decent tech market even today!
Yeah, it's great! More than enough tech jobs to go around, "average" software engineer salaries are only ~$10k less than San Francisco, and with all the MIT and Harvard grads around, you get to hang out with an interesting bunch of folks.
There are little hubs of "SF-like" technology centers, like Kendall Square: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square#Businesses_and_... and and the south Boston Innovation District (hate the name, it came from Mayor Menino, but he was very successful at getting it running). But if you walk a few blocks in a straight line, you can easily get out of the tech bubble and go to a hundred year old Irish pub, or hang out with people who don't know how to program, which is why I like it!
There's also the "holdover from the 80's" tech office parks in Burlington, where MITRE is and Sun Microsystems (RIP) used to be. Lots of good newer companies there too, and my husband keeps trying to convince me to consider working in Burlington because real estate is so much cheaper, but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon! The good thing is that all the guys who used to work there are often working in the city now, so you get a LOT of graybeards and people who developed Java, or Linux tools 30 years ago, or are influential in the IETF hanging out. It's just a really great culture. Obviously different from San Francisco, but I love it!
There are little hubs of "SF-like" technology centers, like Kendall Square: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square#Businesses_and_... and and the south Boston Innovation District (hate the name, it came from Mayor Menino, but he was very successful at getting it running). But if you walk a few blocks in a straight line, you can easily get out of the tech bubble and go to a hundred year old Irish pub, or hang out with people who don't know how to program, which is why I like it!
There's also the "holdover from the 80's" tech office parks in Burlington, where MITRE is and Sun Microsystems (RIP) used to be. Lots of good newer companies there too, and my husband keeps trying to convince me to consider working in Burlington because real estate is so much cheaper, but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon! The good thing is that all the guys who used to work there are often working in the city now, so you get a LOT of graybeards and people who developed Java, or Linux tools 30 years ago, or are influential in the IETF hanging out. It's just a really great culture. Obviously different from San Francisco, but I love it!