Comment by galdosdi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by galdosdi | Hacker News Reader

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I think NYC is already there. It's so easy to find a tech job in NYC. Maybe it's even easier in SV, but I've never missed not being in SV. There's such a variety here. Plenty of startups, all the tech giants, and plenty of tech/IT jobs at "regular" companies, consulting opportunities, etc... And it's not _just_ tech -- plenty of other industries are headquartered in NYC. By contrast I can't think of any other industries that SV is the flagship metro-area of besides tech... If software is going to eat the world, it helps to have some of those industries you're going to disrupt nearby already.

I'd love to see NYC co-opt SV as the world capital of the tech industry, and I think it could totally happen. The only thing SV has going is historical inertia, and it's eroding. This housing problem in SV is going to make it erode faster.

Honestly I don't understand SV at all. They say NYC has a housing cost problem, and it sure does, but it's nothing compared to SV -- in SV you have people paying Manhattan prices so they can live in SF... yet somehow still commuting an hour to the suburbs where the offices are! At least here you can either pay Manhattan prices and get a 10 minute commute for it -- or take an hour-long commute and at least get a much cheaper and/or larger place in exchange. And your commute won't require you to drive, unless you want that.

NB: I've never lived in the SV area so maybe I have some misconceptions that need correcting? :-)

so I've lived in both.

The size of the campuses in Silicon Valley literally cannot fit in NYC. No comparison.

Its fantastic that Google bought a block of Manhattan for 1 billion dollars, but Google's Mountain View campus is ALL of Mountain View. These are sprawling districts that cannot fit inside of a skyscraper.

The next fundamental difference is the variety of VCs. NYC cannot replicate this, and there is nothing eroding about it. NYC has one or two VCs looking at the same industry trends. Silicon Valley has many VCs interested in completely different things, different portfolio niches.

NYC has variety of industries and conveniences.

Silicon Valley doesn't even know how backwards its infrastructure is, while trying to change a world that functions better than it does already.

San Francisco masquerades as Silicon Valley and an international city but it is neither. New York, London and Hong Kong are international cities, SF struggles to keep up with the tech bubbles that it remains on the periphery of and only recently gained relevance for.

There is more tech focused stuff in SF and Silicon Valley, but New York has enough satellite offices to keep you occupied.

"These are sprawling districts that cannot fit inside of a skyscraper."

Is that a definite? I mean, most of Mountain View and its tech campuses are sprawling suburbia (e.g. vast fields of asphalt and grass with a building sprinkled here and there). It's amazing what can fit in a well-designed commercial district.

That got me curious and I think you might be onto something:

Google employs 19,000 people in Mountain View currently

The Twin Towers in NYC each held 25,000 people on a daily basis.

Two buildings in NYC could accommodate the populations of two tech giants that sprawl across entire south bay towns. So several of NYC's average sized and planned skyscrapers could do a fine job. And there is room every direction away from Midtown Manhattan to replicate new robust building clusters.

To be honest I am always amazed how many homeless folks and dirty the place is. You hear billion dollar raises all the time but the city seems very fragmented. Vancouver on the other hand is insanely expensive but very well put together.

NYC is far far far way from overtaking SV as the capital of tech industry. The combined value of just Google, Apple, and Facebook is $1.3 trillion dollars. To reach that scale will take many many years and some incredible companies. Honestly, places that can put in a serious competition to SV are in Asia - China and India. Chinese tech companies are raising massive rounds, with multiple billion dollar investments in 2016. Also, most successful hubs are often one industry towns. Think Detroit and Houston. That's how clusters are formed and they have a self full-filing effect. But it is also a mistake to think SV is just a "tech" hub. Is Tesla a tech company ? Or is Sunrun a tech company ? Are Impossible Foods or Bolt Threads tech companies ? Technology is now integral to any industry. And increasingly we are seeing R&D shops being set-up in the valley to stay ahead of the game

Thank you, great comment!

> The combined value of just Google, Apple, and Facebook is $1.3 trillion dollars.

Well, to the extent that those three companies have employees in other cities, I'd count their market caps proportionally towards those cities. I'm not sure offhand about Apple or FB but Google has a huge office in NYC. But that still leaves the vast majority in SV.

> Also, most successful hubs are often one industry towns. Think Detroit and Houston.

Ominous and timely comparisons. One-industry towns are also way more vulnerable in the long run. NYC is actually a counterexample -- it is the industry hub for at least three industries (finance, fashion, advertising) and leads or has a strong presence in many others, and it's been that way for a long time.

> But it is also a mistake to think SV is just a "tech" hub.

If being close to other members of the industry you are "disrupting" with tech is useful, then that is a huge advantage for a city like NYC with a wide variety of industry. But maybe that's not that necessary -- maybe Tesla would not get much advantage out of being in Detroit near other automakers. If that's the case then a city like NYC does not have any special advantage there.

Yeah true that Google, Apple, FB have NY offices, but all of these companies are very HQ focused. Especially Apple and Alphabet, with most of Alphabet's based are based in SV (Calico, Verily, YouTube etc.). Apple is also notoriously Cupertino centric.

I believe all three named companies (Google, Apple and Facebook) have significantly large offices in NYC.

Then you'd have to count Wall Street, which for a great part are big software companies as well.

Yea so the problem is you can't think of tech as one industry. Every company that's being created right now has to involve software one way or the other. That's why companies like Tesla (auto), Netlfix (entertainment), Solarcity (energy), Sofi (finance), airbnb (tourism), uber (logistics), tons of biomedical companies that I don't know the names of (medicine) all headquartered in the bay area.

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