My take on it: If you want to work for ten different companies in three years (with at least eight going out of business while you're there) and never know whe

My take on it: If you want to work for ten different companies in three years (with at least eight going out of business while you're there) and never know whether you'll have a paycheck next quarter, then the Bay is the place. If you want a steady job that you'll get to keep for a while, you can do a lot worse than KC. There's a lot of tech stuff going on in the area (Garmin's one company headquartered here; Sprint's a stone's throw away in Overland Park, Linux Pro magazine has its North American offices in Lawrence, etc.) and a lot of geeks, but not so much youth (as in "I graduated college last month" youth). Most of the techies you'll meet are in their late 20s or early/mid-30s, and have been in the industry for a while; quite a few of them have written unglamorous but indispensable tech books. Most have settled here to raise families. There's a lot less emphasis on doing things that make great blog posts or conference talks, and a lot more emphasis on doing things that solve problems in useful ways. That's not to say there's no innovation, of course; Django came from Lawrence (close enough that a lot of people live there and commute to KC), there are some interesting startups doing stuff like e-gov and transparency, one of the best GIS groups anywhere (with a yearly conference at the University of Kansas), a lot of new-media consulting... but nearly all of it happens without fanfare and chest-thumping. Anyway. The important thing is not to have an attitude of "oh crap, it's Kansas", because you'll never meet most of the interesting people that way.