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swampthinker

Without looking, I'm going to guess (in no particular order):

- Cambridge/Boston

- DC metro area

- Austin

- Bay area

- Seattle

- NYC

- Philadelphia

- LA or San Diego

EDIT:

Hm, got most right. I forgot about the Triangle entirely, but I'm surprised Baltimore outpaced Philly.

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I was surprised Atlanta wasn't listed

I was surprised NYC wasn't listed.

I'm a little surprised Chicago is not on the list. The Chicago tech scene is not huge, but it is growing, and it is definitely much more dynamic than Philly or LA or San Diego. It is the third largest metro in the country with a large hinterland, so cost of living is still fairly affordable. Tales of crime are overblown by the media -- they are mostly outside the city, and normalized to population, is not significantly higher than other large metros.

There are also two elite schools here: Northwestern and U of Chicago, with many other middle tier schools that can supply tech talent like UIC, DePaul, etc. Being the mecca of the midwest, it also draws talent from many excellent midwestern schools like UIUC, Purdue, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Argonne National Lab is also based out here. The major economy is finance for now, but transportation is also huge (Chicago is a major transport hub).

Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. all have presence here, and startups like Uptake and Spothero are based here. Groupon has kind of imploded though.

I don't think these folks are really looking in the right places.

I've always been confused as to why Chicago isn't more of a tech hub. Great city, great people, cheap housing, good transportation (by US standards), good schools, etc.

Are the Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offices engineering offices? I know that the Microsoft one is not.

You know what, I'm not sure. I just a did a quick google, and Amazon is hiring a lot of architects and consultants but no open SDE positions. Google has SDE positions open.

A lot of the tech folks here work for financial companies.

When I looked, Chicago had:

- Cost center IT departments for the healthcare and insurance sectors out in the exurbs (presumably low respect and high risk of outsourcing).

- Quant trading for the commodities market downtown (and really nothing else, unless finance is your cup of tea).

I'd love to work for a SV-style technology company in Chicago.

I don't think there is an SV-style company outside of SV because the SV ecosystem is not really replicable.

That said, Chicago has quite a few non-finance tech companies: - Vividseats - Grubhub - Spothero - Sproutsocial - Uptake - Orbitz - HERE technologies - Trunk Club

There are a myriad of smaller startup companies you've never heard of, as well as traditional corporate types like IBM, etc.

It's actually a positive for Chicago. The economy here is highly, highly diversified. We have a large tech sector but it doesn't dominate the economy...nor would it be a good idea for it to do so

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