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This general topic seems to come back into focus on a regular basis on HN (last time, 1 week ago). People have been leaving SV in numbers for the 30 years I've
by 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
This general topic seems to come back into focus on a regular basis on HN (last time, 1 week ago). People have been leaving SV in numbers for the 30 years I've been here, always citing traffic & cost of housing as the primary reasons. Though this time, you could add decriminalization of petty crime. Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive.
The fundamental design of the Internet was to be robust against various forms of damage to the network. I see Silicon Valley as a similar type of system. It is not difficult to look back 40 years and see how at each inflection point, The Valley's constituent technologies, and the companies they spawned, led the rest of the world and scaled The Valley up.
- In the 1980s, Silicon Valley's Intel lost it's dominance in DRAM production to Japan. The economic impact was dire, and yet
- In the early 1990s, networking and workstations emerged from the likes of SUN and Cisco. They carried through until global competition stole their wind, and it was on to
- The late 90s and the .COM boom. And what a boom it was, Amazon, Google, followed by another death knell for myriad .COM corpses. Promptly engendering
- The 2000s birth of social media. MySpace faltered, then LinkedIn, then Facebook, then Twitter, came up and are still going strong on the foundation of
- 2010s open source platforms. Still mind-blowing: At one point WhatsApp had 40 software engineers and 400,000,000 users. At 3 years old.
I've heard about the exodus from California, usually citing so many thousands or 10s of thousands of people leaving. But looking a the net population changes, Santa Clara County is down 5,000 from 2018-2019. Alameda, San Mateo, San Francisco are all up.
Silicon Valley is a system that regenerates from one generation to the next, and so far, always bigger and more influential than the last.
- fairity 6y agoSince cities thrive based on network effects, my question is: did everyone in past exoduses move to the same location? If not, is that not a good reason to believe this time will be different? Smart, ambitious people tend to congregate, and capital follows. If during past exoduses, people moved to random places, I can see why SV remained the primary magnet. But, this time everyone seems to be moving to Seattle and Austin (based on my anecdotal experience of ~20 SV startups that have moved to Austin in the past 6 months). Other things that make this time different: remote work being generally acceptable & higher state income tax Of course, "every time is different", but eventually SV will fall. The question is just when and what the right conditions are.
- dannyincolor 6y agoI imagine we will just have more innovation centers. Nothing wrong with that and certainly not deserving of the “California is dying” hype
- cameldrv 6y agoCA still has the advantage of no noncompetes. It's fairly standard for Texas companies to require an enforceable noncompete. These companies are sort of like mules -- born from perhaps many fertile companies, but produce no offspring.
- api 6y agoI've heard this and the general borderline unenforceability of "we own all your work, even during off hours" clauses in employment contracts as a major reason that the center of innovation shifted from Boston and the East Coast to Silicon Valley and California. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the education and a much deeper history of innovation. It also could have been down in New Jersey where Bell Labs was. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of where other states stand on this issue. I know Massachusetts implemented some similar reforms a decade or so ago, but that's a little late to the party.
- qppo 6y agoThe first thing that any state should do to make itself a new tech hub is create strong protections for workers so they can freely move to different companies or found their own. Pro-labor is not anti business, quite the opposite here. But it's never understood that way.
- api 6y agoThe fundamental problem is governments making laws to serve existing companies rather than to help create new things that don't exist yet. It's "hold on to what you have" vs creating something new.
- 6y ago
- erichocean 6y ago> Nonetheless, the population growth remains net positive. In 2019, California had negative population growth.
- chrisbolt 6y agoCitation?
- pwinnski 6y agoGP is incorrect. California's growth was a record low, but it was still growth. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/05/california-population-growth-rate-hit-record-low-last-year-237146 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/05/california-populati...
- erichocean 6y agohttps://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-california-still-most-populous-state/2355776/#:~:text=The%20nation's%20most%20populous%20state,39.96%20million%20residents%20in%20July https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-cal...
- erichocean 6y agoI cited it in a reply to my own comment, but here's the link: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-california-still-most-populous-state/2355776/#:~:text=The%20nation's%20most%20populous%20state,39.96%20million%20residents%20in%20July https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-cal...
- dmode 6y agoI think you two are saying two different things. Population in California actually went up. But the growth rate was lower than previous years.
- erichocean 6y ago"Population Shrinks in California, Still Most Populous State" — NBC Los Angeles, May 2, 2020 [0] > California had a population of 39.78 million as of January [2020], the state Department of Finance said, down from its previous report of 39.96 million residents in July [2019]. That's the most recent 6 month period we have reported numbers for, and occurred in the 2nd half of 2019. For the full year in 2019, population was still slightly up overall. [0] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-california-still-most-populous-state/2355776/#:~:text=The%20nation's%20most%20populous%20state,39.96%20million%20residents%20in%20July https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-cal....
- refurb 6y agoI don’t disagree, but no doubt Detroit felt the same way at one time.
- ajmurmann 6y agoI wonder if Detroit's economy was more fragile because everything built on a handful of enormous corporations. I don't think there was much of a scene of small, innovative companies that didn't depend on the enormous corporations to be in business. Silicon Valley is full of start ups that can be successful on their own. What's really at the heart of SV is the system that makes startups. That's the universities, VCs and incubators.
- joubert 6y agoSome history from Slate's article, "How Did Detroit Become Motor City?"[0] that speak to the points you make: > everything built on a handful of enormous corporations "Second, automotive executives in early-20th-century Detroit behaved a lot like Silicon Valley executives today: They regularly switched companies and launched spinoffs and startups. This culture of cross-pollination spread innovative manufacturing and design ideas among the Detroit manufacturers. Distant competitors couldn’t keep up with Motown’s research and development operations and eventually failed or sold themselves to Detroit." > I don't think there was much of a scene of small, innovative companies that didn't depend on the enormous corporations to be in business "The people who built the car’s parts eventually learned so much about automotive manufacturing that they went on to launch their own brands. Olds’ subcontractors included the Briscoe brothers, who helped build Buick, and machinist Henry Leland, who created Cadillac and Lincoln. The Dodge brothers also cut their teeth making parts for both Olds and Henry Ford. Ransom Olds, himself, eventually left Olds Motor Works to found the REO car company. A few other executives from Olds founded Chalmers and Hudson. William Durant, the man behind General Motors, was twice forced out of the company, forming Chevrolet and later Durant Motors while he was away. All of these ventures were based in or near Detroit." [0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/why-are-all-the-big-american-car-companies-based-in-michigan.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/why-are-all-the-...
- pembrook 6y ago
- vmchale 6y agoUniversities help I think. Stanford, Berkeley &c. Many great public universities and many great universities!
- pembrook 6y agoThe east coast has entire Ivy League and yet no Silicon Valley. Also, how do you explain Seattle?
- wskinner 6y agoUniversity of Washington is a great university. But it does seem like presence of universities is at most a small factor here.
- deepnotderp 6y agoThat's his point, Seattle is a tech center without many major universities.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brandnewlow 6y agoMany of the brightest on the East Coast get sucked into finance.
- alistairSH 6y agoThis. Even ignoring the number of students that go study banking/finance in college, the banking/finance industry also employs many CS and math graduates.
- umeshunni 6y agoSeattle because Amazon hires and relocates thousands of engineers there who then quit or are PIPed a year or two later, leaving them looking for new opportunities or building new companies.
- microtherion 6y agoI just came across a NYT article from 1997 talking about the emergence of Texas as a high tech haven, and migration of tech companies from California. Prominent local superstars included Dell, Nortel and Enron (As well as numerous companies who fared better, admittedly)... https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/30/business/a-new-breed-of-wildcatter-for-the-90-s.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/30/business/a-new-breed-of-w...
- fossuser 6y agoI’ve seen comments about the “end of Silicon Valley” as early as 1993. Though back then you could get a house in Cupertino for 300k? It’s now $3M. This has some effect and makes living here to start a company higher risk.
- jedberg 6y agoA $300K house in 1993 is only $2M now. :)
- raldi 6y agoThe 1993 post you refer to: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.folklore.computers/bvE0Ka5nCnM/NAIOQnrEyCAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.folklore.comp...
- fossuser 6y agoYep, that was the one. It’s nearly the exact same conversation you see today. It’s a little wild to me that they thought housing prices were high then. It makes me wonder if in 2047 I’ll look back at this thread and think “only $2M - what were they complaining about? Can’t find a place today for less than $18M”
- easde 6y agoBack then a software engineer at a well-known big company would make around $30-50k (not inflation adjusted). Combined with 1993's interest rates (~7%) $300k was quite steep. Today the same engineer at a FAANG would make about $300k. Houses are about $2M and interest rates are about 2%, so relatively speaking things are cheaper. However, unlike in 1993, today's salaries are unlikely to grow by 10x over the next 30 years while the mortgage is paid off!
- thorwasdfasdf 6y agoAll it takes is for some other area to reach some critical mass, to gain a reputation for tech and reach a certain tech size. Once that happens, all that pent up CA move out demand will start prevail.