>I've heard that the Atlanta tech scene is dominated by business types...
In ATL, can confirm. That's not to say there aren't good engineers here.
In ATL, can confirm. That's not to say there aren't good engineers here.
I moved here from Philadelphia and was surprised that from an engineer's perspective the tech scene was significantly better in ATL. There were more jobs at more interesting companies. Obviously this is anecdotal from one job search 5 years ago. Philly might also be surprisingly poor.
One cool company here is BitPay. Not sure what they are valued at these days but they are a big name in the bitcoin world. I think they have some solid engineering there. I worked with Oracle for a couple years here right after they acquired a company called Vitrue for $300 million. It's not unicorn status but that was one of several acquisitions around that time. Acquisitions like that in Philly were much more rare.
There are a lot of huge corporations here which can continually spin off startups and Georgia Tech is a good source of new engineering talent. I think Atlanta has a healthy tech scene but not one focused in headline grabbing areas.
This seems to select for business that find cash generating opportunities as opposed to chasing "changing the world."
Two things:
1. Atlanta's tech scene is largely b2b. Its driven a lot by people who worked in industry and then had a great idea for a company and left. Or serial entrepreneurs who are capable of building a business but not a product. So a lot of companies simply originate from "business types" because they're founded by them, for them.
2. ATV. ATV strived to make itself the face of the ATL startup scene, and generally succeeded. But the resources ATV provides are all primarily aimed at business types - pitch practices, VC events, demo days, and networking gatherings. And so business types gathered there, since that's a convenient place to be, and the successful companies went elsewhere due to rising rent. So now, ATV is largely the face of startups in Atlanta, and yet is a building filled with "business types" hustling to get their company started or funding secured. The optics on the startup ecosystem are consequently very heavily "business types" because everyone tends to just look at ATV as the thermometer.
Random example companies: http://www.virtuallybetter.com/, http://safeheartus.com/
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2014/03/un...
Uhhh Let me introduce you to a little company called Internet Security Systems. $1.3B+ acquisition by IBM.
Off topic - I always get such bizarre vibes when I interact with anyone from MC or hear of others' interactions with MC employees (ATL here).