Well the author of the article seems to think Philly is a good option, and to be fair, I do know some very smart and ambitious engineers working and living in P

Well the author of the article seems to think Philly is a good option, and to be fair, I do know some very smart and ambitious engineers working and living in Philly these days. Some of it probably depends on the company and the founders, but in general, I would look for signals like good universities, positive inflow of people moving there, and decent cost of living. I like Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte for those things, but I'm from that area am a bit biased because I have a network there and know it's a environment and culture I can operate in. Raising capital is a real issue in those places, but I know tons of talented people around there who feel underutilized working at satellite offices for the big corps (IBM, Cisco, NetApp, etc) and do seek out places with a more startupy culture. Raleigh and Durham are more tech centric (companies founded include RedHat, Ansible, SAS ) while Charlotte is more financially-oriented, but both are growing like crazy and still very affordable. I'd say they're at least worth a visit if you're giving other locations serious consideration.