[pw0ncakes]

Two words: real estate.

Silicon Valley became disgustingly expensive after building substantial momentum in technology, gaining enough strength that entrepreneurs would live there in spite of the quality-of-life/cost-of-living problems.

New York needs something short of a miracle to become a startup hub. It's not "golden handcuffs" that keep people in the banks. It's the fact that the cost of rent for what would pass as an average apartment in most of the country is more than the median American's after-tax income.

Also, although finance is contracting, it's not quants who represent the bulk of the layoffs, but floor traders and M&A types. These people are useless to a startup, unless that startup wants to target the financial industry (which has sufficient resources to develop NIH syndrome, so good luck). Quants are generally being kept.

[mtalantikite]

Rents are definitely artificially high here. I think it goes beyond the demand for space, and is largely due to the fact that brokers completely own the marketplace and have an incentive to price as high as possible (they take 8-12% commissions). Renters don't have a good way to understand real market prices.

Back to the topic of lack of engineers, I've always thought it'd be a good idea for multiple companies/hackers to get a large space together and share talent to work on lots of ideas simultaneously. It'd go beyond a co-working/incubator style space, and would be a way for young companies to offset the risk of early stage hiring.

Right now in NYC we need lots of companies with good sized exits for the future health of the eco-system, sharing our talent with each other is probably a good way to get to that point.