The Bay Area is full of transplants who moved there out of ambition in the first place, so moving to a city that has largely been populated until now with those

The Bay Area is full of transplants who moved there out of ambition in the first place, so moving to a city that has largely been populated until now with those who either stuck around after growing up there or moving there for less-ambitious reasons is gonna give you that as a baseline. Austin, in particular, was long a "weird" laid-back-creative-vibe place. So even moving from a small town for more opportunities to Austin is a bit "lower ceiling" expectation/ambition-wise than moving to the Bay to work for a tech company. And then "tech transplant" is a broad bucket but one of the most common quoted reasons for going Bay Area -> Texas is cost of living. There's two ways to deal with cost of living: try to out-earn the costs, or move somewhere cheaper. One of those is decidedly less ambitious (even if more realistic, reasonable, and wise for most) and that's gonna be reflected in the resulting populations. Even at a larger scale: relocating your corporate HQ out of CA for cheaper housing and salaries.. that's less an ambitious growth move, more a cost control move.