> What will it take Google, GE, or Microsoft to move a big chunk of their respective operations away from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle? It's a chicken an

> What will it take Google, GE, or Microsoft to move a big chunk of their respective operations away from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle? It's a chicken and egg problem: companies don't want to invest in cities where there aren't a lot of qualified workers, and workers don't want to move to cities where there aren't a lot of jobs. Furthermore, the most competitive workers tend to move to the cities you mentioned, so companies located in those cities can stay where they are and enjoy having the best workers come to them. Consider the Sacramento area: it's about 2 hours from Silicon Valley by car, with significantly cheaper housing, and plenty of well-connected people because Sacramento is the state capital. Why doesn't that area have a booming tech economy? Because the most competitive tech workers from Sacramento have already moved to the Bay Area. Bay Area companies don't need to open offices in Sacramento to attract those workers.