Our company (FoundationDB) is based in the DC Metro area and we have tons of success hiring and retaining top tier engineering talent. The stories we hear about

Our company (FoundationDB) is based in the DC Metro area and we have tons of success hiring and retaining top tier engineering talent. The stories we hear about how hard it is to hire while we're out in SV sound really bad. I can only speak for DC, but there is a huge labor force here of highly skilled engineers that have been working on (mostly top secret) defense / intel projects at huge government contractors. They know their jobs are there for them again if they leave and decide to come back, and often they are happy to jump ship and work in a startup if the team and product are compelling. I imagine DC isn't alone in having a niche industry of highly skilled engineers that would be open to startups. Often they're not involved in the startup culture though so it takes some effort to find them.