9 ms·
90% of software developers in the US work outside Silicon Valley
- beamatronic 10y agoHow many 10x developers work inside Silicon Valley vs outside Silicon Valley?
- adrenalinelol 10y agoHow does one determine a 10x vs a non 10x (outside of anecdotes)?
- rubyfan 10y agoAnecdotes.
- mwfunk 10y agoYou don't. Just wait a minute, and they'll tell you (hopefully before a hiring decision is made). :)
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoWow! You really know what you're talking about. How many zeroes do I put on the end of the check again?
- Joof 10y ago10x the zeroes. 000000000.00
- mark-r 10y agoIf you're lucky, you get to work closely with one. My boss is one such, he spends 50% of his time on managerial duties and still manages to outcode me, and I'm no slouch myself.
- WWLink 10y agoAsk one of those people on here that brags about rejecting 95% of their applicants while using questions ripped straight out of "Cracking the Coding Interview" or something lol.
- flukus 10y agoZero in and zero out.
- sidlls 10y agoControversial statement: the number of actual, honest-to-god "10x developers" that exist in specific, narrow domains or contexts is so small that using them as a standard of comparison in any context (including their domains) is complete nonsense, and the number relative to the entire population of developers is so small that one can do just spectacularly well acting as if such a creature doesn't even exist.
- rhapsodic 10y agoThis should not be news to anyone in the industry.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- erikpukinskis 10y agoWhat does a judgement like this add to the discussion? Are you trying to shame people who know less than you?
- rhapsodic 10y agoNo. Are you trying to shame me?
- st3v3r 10y agoAnd yet, 90% of the money is still inside SV.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- erikpukinskis 10y agoThat might be because a larger share of the moon shots are in SV.
- robin_reala 10y agoThe title confused me until I clicked through and realised it was just talking about US software developers (and someone’s since edited it - thanks!).
- NikolaeVarius 10y agoAlso a majority of the worlds population lives outside the US. News at 11
- gizmodo59 10y agoPerhaps the take away is that 10% of all the Software Developers in US are in a very small area which is indeed high.
- developer2 10y agoHaha, thanks for the chuckle. The ability for the US to focus entirely within their own borders is both depressing and amusing to observe at times. I get that people will naturally gravitate to caring about their own nation, but Americans' ability to don blinders that completely disregard the other 95.7% of the world's population is astounding.
- oldmanjay 10y agoWhat about this article dons blinders in astounding fashion?
- developer2 10y agoAside from the article's title? "90% of software developers work outside Silicon Valley". Uh, no. 99.99xx% of software developers work outside Silicon Valley. HN had to adjust its title to include the context of "US". It's part of SV culture to present themselves as being at the centre of the universe when it comes to software, when the rest of us know it's the furthest thing from the truth. SV gets all the attention as the self-proclaimed hub of all things development, but if you apply a proper global context, SV is hardly a blip on the radar. The pride and pure ego involved in having one of the "top 5" on one's resume is funny to many of us outside the self-flagellating ecosystem.
- steveeq1 10y agoAnother way to interpret this statistic is "10% of software developers in the US work in Silicon Valley"
- mwfunk 10y agoThis was actually a much more surprising statistic to me. I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley for almost 10 years now, and I assumed that number was more like <= 1%. It's astonishing to me that 10% of the programmers in the US are here. Talk about burying the lede...
- the_watcher 10y agoWhile only 2% of the US population lives in the Bay Area.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- smb06 10y agoThe 10% programmers number is for Silicon valley, not Bay Area. So, to compare apples to apples, we should take the % of US population for Silicon Valley, not Bay Area. Which is about 1% of US population (3M people according to google).
- mikekij 10y agoJust came here to make the exact same comment.
- padiyar83 10y agoThat was my first thought too !
- mklim 10y agoAnd the Bay Area is roughly 6,900 square miles vs the 3,806,000 square miles of the US as a whole. Put another way, Silicon Valley is where you can find 10% of the total number of US developers despite it being only ~0.002% of the country's landmass. I get the general point the author is trying to make, but 10% in such a small region is still an extraordinarily high number.
- guelo 10y agoLandmass is not a useful metric since 75% of the population lives on 3 percent of the land (according to a quick google search).
- lmkg 10y agoA quick Wikipedia search says the whole Bay Area accounts for about 2% of the population of the US, and Silicon Valley itself a little over 1% (7.65MM & 3.5-4MM total, out of 324MM).
- pessimizer 10y agoSo to complete the thought, the Bay Area has about 5x the average density of programmers.
- smb06 10y agoBay Area is probably not a good metric because that would include Napa, Sonoma, etc. where you are more likely to find a farmer or a sommelier than a programmer. Silicon Valley as a measure - 1% of the country's population but 10% of its programmers. So, 10x the national average of programmers.
- yandrypozo 10y agodid you note that circle in the interception of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah ? redneck startups ?
- alanh 10y agoYou're being downvoted for the unhelpful 'redneck startups?' comment, but I am actually curious what the cause of that large circle is! There is no city right there. (Although amusingly, not too far away are places named Mountain View and Manila, both of whose namesakes house a lot of developers.) Update: I took a look at the source for this Qwartz story, and their graphic doesn't show that interesting circle. There's nothing at that tri-state intersection. Screen shot: https://d17oy1vhnax1f7.cloudfront.net/items/3A2K1v1v3U2t0E2k0Z42/Screen%20Shot%202016-08-29%20at%204.49.54%20PM.png?v=5b678d75 https://d17oy1vhnax1f7.cloudfront.net/items/3A2K1v1v3U2t0E2k...
- stephenboyd 10y agoColorado's circles for Boulder, Ft. Collins, and Denver are smaller than we'd expect, so maybe they got shoved in the northwest corner. --edit: I just saw alanh's sibling comment. They moved Denver!
- zoom6628 10y agoDenver was a hive of software startup activity back in 90s. I flew in there to look at a company in 1992 o behalf of my employer (Geac at that time, based in Markham, Ontario, I was based at a subsdiary FACT in New Zealand). My lasting impression however was Freddy Fudpuckers. Hilarious name and hilarious food. Anyway I digress .... for those just out of kindergarten you would be excused for thinking startups are a new idea. For those of us with decades of creating new bugs, we have seen the locations for startups move around depending on tax policy, cost of living, and being close to a major innovator (Austin Tx = IBM and NASA as an example). My 2c.
- alanh 10y agoI think you're right. The source for the story, on arcgis.com, seems to have updated maps that don't show the odd circle, and Colorado displays with a bigger circle right on Denver. I think for some reason Denver was rendered at (0,0) within Colorado's boundaries in the screen shot Qwartz used.
- alanh 10y agoThe source for this story reports that 89% of software devs work outside the Valley. 89%. Apparently Qwartz didn't find that number punchy enough. But yeah, 11% of US software devs live in SV? That is remarkable, although not surprising. http://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=b1c59eaadfd945a68a59724a59dbf7b1 http://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=b1c59...
- bcheung 10y agoThis is actually a very surprising statistic to me. I lived in LA and was not happy with the job offerings at all and moved back to the bay area where I'm originally from. I'm also surprised that San Jose has 2x the concentration of software developers than San Francisco. Maybe its just because I have a startup bias and that seems to be the trend for startups. Very few startups in SJ compared to SF.
- warfangle 10y agothe commute to the middle bay area is a lot better from SJ than from SF.
- twblalock 10y agoMost of the established companies are in the San Jose area: Google, Apple, Intel, Nvidia, Cisco, eBay, Netflix, major defense contractors, satellite campuses for Amazon and Microsoft, and lots of other companies. Altogether, they employ more engineers than all of the startups combined.
- sjg007 10y agoStartups migrated towards SF because ironically the rent was cheaper...
- usaar333 10y agoMaybe compared to Palo Alto, but not most of the south bay. Most are going to SF, because it is "cooler", especially for 20 somethings.
- laxatives 10y agoThis article is terrible. It uses 90% as evidence developers are moving out without any other statistics, namely the percentage from another period of time. Its completely baseless. No shit most of the developers don't live in one city or region.
- meddlepal 10y agoNo Shit. News at 11. Is this only surprising to SF folk?
- flukus 10y agoIs this news to anyone not in silicon valley? Also, the majority of software developers are not in the United States.
- Tempest1981 10y agoWhat is the worldwide distribution?
- dba7dba 10y agoAm I reading a tech related article or a political hit piece that spins numbers to fit an agenda?
- fma 10y agoI would be curious to see the percentage change over the years. With the growth of tech everywhere (note on the map there's lots of big circles) and cost of living sky rocketing in the Bay Area, Boston, etc...What's the influx like of people moving to Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, etc...
- irrational 10y agoSeriously, I have a very nice house on nearly a quarter of an acre for about 200k and a nice 6 figure programming job in Portland, OR. I can't imagine ever moving to Silicon Valley and dealing with the taxes, high housing prices, traffic, etc.
- thr0waway1239 10y agoIf you combine this with studies about the tipping point of ideas starting at about 10% of the population [1], it means SV already has enough of the programmer population to create self-sustaining trends in software. I don't know whether to feel glad or be worried :-) [1] http://news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/2902 http://news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/2902
- tn13 10y agoThe real lesson here is how inequality is part and parcel of world in which we live.
- known 10y agoSounds like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
- whybroke 10y agoThe talent shortage they refer to is merely a shortage of engineers willing to work at the salaries and under the conditions offered. In a normal market wages would merely rise to adjust for that. But curiously it seems to be the only area where there is sudden vehement opposition to market forces.
- Tempest1981 10y agoI doubt employers will boost salaries by much... How can we get companies to locate in "suburbs" of Silicon Valley, where rents are cheaper: Livermore, Morgan Hill/Gilroy, Scott's Valley, Pacifica, even Fairfield and Santa Rosa?
- internaut 10y agoIt is not accurate to conceive of Silicon Valley as a geographical place. It is really the intersection between a collection interesting memeplexes. Culture basically.