[TimPC]

A good measure of where the best engineers are is where the best engineers migrate to. In the smaller communities I’ve been in over time I’ve seen the top engineers in the community migrate away. Engineers that come back from effectively unsuccessful 1-yearish stints at Big X companies often become top engineers in the communities to which they return. I think I’d want a lot of people evidence to agree with the claim that the top engineers that stay behind in communities that have substantial migration to the Valley are as good as the top engineers in the valley (Which hires engineering talent from all over the world). There may be a handful of people who are great and stay for various reasons. But there are very few teams in Champaign, Ill. Where every team member is in the top 5% of engineers globally. There are quite a few teams like this in the valley.

[mhuffman]

> A good measure of where the best engineers are is where the best engineers migrate to.

I would say that is only a good measure of where more money is being spent.

[TimPC]

Unless you think money is being spent in a way that is anti-correlated with engineering quality the places providing the most savings are going to attract more of the best engineers. I think that is still the Bay Area as most analyses of savings I’ve seen exclude RSU’s which is a big factor here. The huge influx of talent seems to agree. To me it seems rather extraordinary to claim that an area with limited amounts of inward talent migration and fairly substantial outward talent migration is going to beat an area that consistently hires from all over the world. This is a statement about distributions and pools of talent: there are small numbers of extremely talented engineers everywhere. It’s a lot harder to find a critical mass of world class people.