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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

Landmass is not a useful metric since 75% of the population lives on 3 percent of the land (according to a quick google search).

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A quick Wikipedia search says the whole Bay Area accounts for about 2% of the population of the US, and Silicon Valley itself a little over 1% (7.65MM & 3.5-4MM total, out of 324MM).

So to complete the thought, the Bay Area has about 5x the average density of programmers.

Bay Area is probably not a good metric because that would include Napa, Sonoma, etc. where you are more likely to find a farmer or a sommelier than a programmer.

Silicon Valley as a measure - 1% of the country's population but 10% of its programmers. So, 10x the national average of programmers.

Hey, a new definition of a "10x programmer”.

More are urban than non-urban, so the national average isn't a particularly useful number either.

Here's a relevant page by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you scroll down a bit past the state-level charts, they start showing metropolitan areas. "San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara" has a fairly good compromise between volume and density, but it's not at the top of either chart.

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151131.htm#st

Hehe, silicon valley people usually forget about the east/north bay and pretty much anything north of the bay bridge or hayward bridge.

I live in San Francisco and trust me, the feeling is mutual.

But then you're overestimating, as many many programmers of Silicone Valley don't live in the valley itself.

For another metric, I'm getting that the Bay Area GDP is $800 billion [1] vs the overall US's $18 trillion [2], which would mean the Bay has 4.4% of the economic activity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States

Not all of which stems from programming.

Crazy to think that Google accounts for ~10% of that [1].

[1] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busine...

Google also has physical plant properties (think data centers) and offices around the world that are producing a meaningful portion of their revenue.

Btw, Apple had 3x Google's revenue in 2015.

In any case, Revenue != GDP due to double counting.

Very true. Both are global companies, even though their headquarters are there. I wonder what fraction of their income can be attributed to the SV area, and how that translates to their contributions to the GDP.

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