[ghaff]

As someone who was there at the time, the reasons were complicated. The Route 128 computer industry was in pretty significant decline and nothing had really come in to replace them. And the metro itself saw an outflow of population until the late nineties. When Teradyne moved out of Boston that was probably the last significant tech company in the city proper at the time. And the whole biotech and pharma boom in Kendall Square didn't happen until later. (As well as the establishment of major offices for firms HQd on the west coast.)

[neilv]

At the time of Web boom, I didn't understand some of the foot-dragging by West Coast tech companies, on setting up offices Cambridge/Boston, to get more of the talent fresh out of the universities, and the research university partnerships. But maybe they (correctly) thought that most of new grads would come to them.

In the case of Google, I thought there might also have been a Stanford-vs.-MIT factor. MIT was known as very strong-minded and self-assured. (And Stanford and California have their own stereotypes.) Were I trying to craft a particular culture, starting either around Stanford or MIT, there's no way I'd open a major office on the other coast until the HQ culture had really gelled, and I thought I could get the distant people to meet us more than halfway (rather than them carbon-copying what they already know from MIT or California).

[ghaff]

Arguably, it took young college-educated professionals increasingly wanting to live in cities to make the change. Which in Cambridge/Boston's case led in part to the development of Kendall Square and the Seaport.

Before that, pretty much all the technology-related companies in MA were out in the suburbs and I can imagine new grads thinking if there were going to be out in a suburban office park anyway, why not be in California?

And, yes, historically there have been east coast vs. west coast stereotypes that doubtless have some basis in reality.