[gsaines]

Super valid criticism, but how to incorporate it in a quantitative way? I happen to agree with you about the quality of jobs and the ecosystem as a whole being far superior in the Bay. I had expected CA to soundly defeat all other cities by a wide margin, but either due to remote work or some other weirdness in the data collection, that didn't turn out to be the case.

Maybe glass door reviews? Another commenter suggested # of Unicorns?

[ben7799]

I have this weird view/feeling that the Bay area opportunities have steadily shifted towards all the negative stuff over the past 20 years. It's obviously not the whole picture but it tarnishes the reputation.

It's like everything "bad" about tech has seemed to grow out of SV, as if it's become the place for grifty companies to find tech workers who don't care about what they're working on as long as it makes money.

You maybe could have quantified things like how far away workers typically have to live from the office, how bad traffic is in these cities, etc.. Traffic figures are often available in terms of "hours wasted annually".

It seems most of these cities are "horrible" on things like traffic though.