One of the attributes of The Valley that are not easily reproduced is the forced cross pollination of knowledge and experience among the tech work force. This is forced through layoffs as companies, industries and the economy run through their cycles. This cross pollination leads to several outcomes: 1. the workforce is diverse in experience; 2. employees tend to work harder and longer hours in order to keep their job; 3. employees that are released from projects that they still believed in are more likely to take that project elsewhere, or, seek funding themselves.

These cycles work like a bellows, re-shuffling engineering teams en masse and thereby fueling innovation. It's actually pretty painful, but is an important factor and remains unique not in the fact that it happens, but in the scale that it happens in The Valley.