Not All the High-Tech Jobs Are in California

Nebraska is doing a great job at this. The fastest growing private company in the state was (still is?) http://www.hudl.com/

Cities are getting high speed Internet as well. A good majority of Lincoln, Nebraska will be fiber connected in the next year http://allocommunications.com/locations/lincoln/

Omaha (the larger city about 40-50 minutes drive away) has its own new high speed options by the two big competitors in town.

There are other interesting things going on like the Do Space too http://www.dospace.org/space

And of course, various accelerators http://straightshot.co/blog/introducing-class-of-2016/

http://www.nmotion.co/ etc

I think it's largely about the attitude that people have toward their job, and people with similar attitudes congregate in similar regions. People who view their job as a minor annoyance that's necessary in order to support a family, own a house, and travel occasionally are different than people who view their job as an avenue for exploring the topics that fascinate them in life. It's not a bimodal distribution (perhaps more of a spectrum) and I would say that job attitude shifts more towards "support a lifestyle" as people become older.

So yes, San Francisco and West Virginia both have tech jobs, but the reasons for people taking a job in each location are entirely different. Neither reason is wrong, but it explains the fact that certain "kinds" of tech jobs are rare and can only be found in very specific locations.

The fact that an already hugely successful SF market is growing ~37% is astounding. 45% growth for a much smaller footprint is not nearly as impressive as the sustained growth of a large market.

It would be informative to see a breakdown within "tech."

IT support -- although vital, valuable work that large companies absolutely need -- is not the same sort of work as starting up a new idea.