[ptero]

I think you are absolutely right that there appears to be some low hanging fruit for tech companies to pick by looking to "second tier metros". But I inertia and (lack of) critical mass play a big role.

In the past decade (i.e., when the money was plentiful) when a startup is young, the TC of its engineers rarely makes or breaks the startup. Being able to get an MVP out and iterate quickly is more important, so it was a rational choice to stay in the Bay Area even if it means 30% inflated TC. And after that moving is expensive in both time and money and risky (e.g., a key engineer might not want to go).

And having a critical mass of tech companies helps attract talent: if a company goes under or has large layoffs it is perceived to be easier to find a new job in the center of the tech hub.

I think covid helped nudge along the process of moving tech development out of SV, but it is a slow process. My 2c.

[closeparen]

Tech is moving rapidly out of Silicon Valley... but strangely, straight to the developing world, skipping second-tier metros.

[sidlls]

Some tech is. Meanwhile large tech companies that are actually innovating (FAANG, near-FAANG, and FAANG-adjacent companies) are not. My comp has never been higher, and we're hiring. In the bay area.

[alasdair_]

I’m honestly unable to name a single innovation from a FAANG that wasn’t just buying another company or cloning a competitor in the last five years.

What has Meta or Google or Microsoft actually innovated on recently?

[hasty_pudding]

They havent innovated on anything of significance in decades. They just sit on their cash crops and buy up startups.

[bombcar]

The M1 is kinda innovative but Apple did “just buy companies”.

[fragmede]

Self-driving cars, from the Google self-driving car project, which was later renamed Waymo, kinda seems like a big deal to me.

[hasty_pudding]

Will be interesting to see if they keep it going or shut it gown.

Google has a way of starting something and then shutting it down.

[charcircuit]

These companies are always innovating. Google doesn't just say "Our ad recommendation system is good enough, lets just go into maintenence mode for a year." No. They constantly are trying to improve their models, switch to a better architecture, and innovate to try and eke out a few more percentage points of conversions.