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Comment by rsj_hn | Hacker News Reader

LOL, no. If you want to work in finance, the best city is NY. If you want to work in film/media, the best city is LA. If you want to work in tech, the best city is SF/Silicon Valley. It may not be the best city to live in, but it's where you go if you want to be at the center of the action.

SV is where you'll find the headquarters of Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, Netflix, Oracle, HP, Cisco, Brocade, NVIDIA, Salesforce, Adobe, Seagate, Slack, Uber, Twitter, Quicken, Paypal, Gilead, Applied Materials, VMWare, Symantec, Juniper, Electronic Arts, Brocade, Xilinx and many, many others.

Of the 10 largest tech companies by revenue, 7 are headquartered in Silicon Valley (the others are IBM, MSFT, Amazon) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/21/ten-largest-us-tech-firms-20...

What major tech company has their HQ in NYC? Fog creek software? Reddit?

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Why does it matter where the HQ is? I dont need to work in the city with 1000 tech employers, i only need one, the company i work for.

Have you lived in Silicon Valley? The amount that people from other companies talk to each other is incredible. You're using a technology? Oh just hop in the car and talk to the developers about your use case and help guide the development.

You _can_ do that remotely, but having it happen in person is way more reliable

That doesn’t mean that people in NYC don’t talk to each other as much.

Sure it might be easier to hop in the car and talk to developers in the valley. But I don’t just want to talk to developers (and even if I do, not necessarily developers of a tech company). Technology is primarily an enabler for the rest of the world, not just something significant in and of itself.

I can still talk to developers in NYC. But developers are not the only ingredient of a project, company or ecosystem. I can also talk to the best domain experts in finance (different types, not just VC), media, law, health, government, advertising, academia, architecture, etc. all at one place with more ease than in SF. This gives me, a developer, more perspective than I can glean elsewhere.

I agree with the GP that you’ll find a lot of pure tech in the valley. But the applications of that tech all have significant presence in New York in comparison to the valley.

Think about what that means -- in the entire history of New York, not a single start up began in NYC and grew to be successful and market dominant there. Not a single one. Seattle has been much more successful -- it created MSFT and Amazon. What did NYC create? Best example would probably be fog bugz. Given that NYC has been so successful at creating other kinds of companies and has a lot of talented people, this is a conspicuous gap, no? Austin, TX, has been far more successful at creating tech companies than NYC. Both are tiny specs of dust compared SV.

So clearly there is some kind of difference between these places, no? Some reason why one place offers more opportunity than another in tech?

SV has an incredibly high density of headquarters of the biggest tech firms. This is where the leadership is, where the most experienced engineers are, and where the institutional knowledge resides.

Because attention is scarce and communication is costly, firms tend to keep the most strategic efforts closest and push less critical efforts farther out. As Dan Kaminsky used to say, "If you're not at HQ, you're not part of the conversation".

Individual contributors can be remote and support/sales/backoffice staff can be in satellite offices all over, but the key roles will be concentrated around HQ.

Now go back to finance. There are lots of bank teller jobs in Phoenix. Wells Fargo has a lot of staff there, so does Bank of America. But if you want to have a career in finance, you are going to have more opportunities in NYC where the HQ of so many FIRE firms is concentrated, and not in Phoenix, even though there are lots of bank tellers and back office managers that work in Phoenix.

The types of jobs you can have are just different. The opportunities, institutional knowledge, mentoring opportunities, social networks, level of responsibility -- it's different. It may seem unfair, but that's how it goes.

NYC is basically Phoenix when it comes to tech -- a lot of backoffice and sales positions, and a bunch of engineering satellite positions, but not a single major tech company is headquartered there.

In the entire history of New York, not a single start up began in NYC and grew to be successful and market dominant there.

Outside of SV, "startup" is a pejorative term for a business that doesn't know how to make money. So you're right, New York doesn't have any startups that grew to be successful. They do, however, have thousands of success businesses, including some extremely large businesses that were once as market dominant as the tech companies are today.

Not tech business. Not a single one. Banks, sure. Publishing houses -- absolutely. But zero for tech. Perhaps your cultural animus might be reflective of why that is.

And I would do some soul searching and look even outside tech to see what the last market leading or top 3 corporation of any industry that was founded in NY? The publishing houses and financial firms are often more than 100 years old at this point. What new company has NYC produced that grew to dominate its market in the last 30 years? SV has about 100 of them. Los Angeles has more than NYC -- across all industries.

Think about why NYC is more suited for established corporations to hire staff rather than entrepreneurs starting new corporations that can take over a market or create a market.

Etsy? Blue Apron?

SV is the giant sucking sound of the tech industry. More often than not a startup will be founded in a place like New York, Chicago or Boston and then move to SV to try to get VC funding. I think it has very little to do with the ‘culture of innovation’ and more to do with rich white guys willing to splash around money in seemingly longshot businesses. I guess maybe that is what innovation is all about.

Your racist comments notwithstanding, the idea of founders moving to a place where they can access funding networks is one of the reasons why there is a strong productive ecosystem in SV for starting firms. If they could have tapped the same funding networks and skillsets in other places, they would go there, too. I'm not saying it's something in the water, it's the whole ecosystem of investors, employees, infrastructure, social networks, etc.

I wouldn't call Etsy market dominant, but perhaps Blue Apron would qualify -- I think it's the largest in its space. They have what, ~900 million in revenue? There are about 70 SV founded companies that earn that much or more in revenue, starting from AAPL on down to Splunk/Infinera/EFI, which are all hovering around that revenue range.

Have to agree here - SV gets too caught up in its own inflated politics and self-contrived problems that are seemingly not sustainable or profitable.

NYC may have fewer "unicorns" but NYC tech generally solves actual problems with shorter term realities of profitability sans VC slush funding.

I don't know why you think "Blue Apron" and "Trello" solve real problems but that, say, Intel, Cisco, Seagate, Oracle, Adobe, NVIDIA, HP, and Google do not. That sounds, well, crazy. Adobe alone singlehandedly changed the nature of publishing in the U.S. Google revolutionized search. Intel made huge advances in CPUs. Oracle pioneered relational databases. Cisco pioneered routers and firewalls. Seagate made huge advances in storage. HP had enormous impact in research, operating systems, personal computers, printers, services. SUN invented java. Netscape invented the modern web browser (image tag + javascript + cookies). There's a little impact there, no? The list goes on.

Your opinion is really baffling. The impact on real world problems made by SV tech companies vs NY tech companies -- they're not even in the same universe of relevance. Look NYC dominates in publishing, in art, in finance. It's a great city. But it's a pimple on the butt of SV when it comes to tech.

Now you’re being hyperbolic, although I can’t tell if it’s intentional. It’s not zero.

It’s true that none of the FAANG are headquartered in NY (although Google’s second biggest engineering office is here). Replied above with a much longer list.

Kickstarter? Vimeo? DigitalOcean? Shutterstock? Trello?

I think Shutterstock would make it.

Kickstarter is around what, 40-50M in revenue? Vimeo is maybe 100M? DigitalOcean is 200M? Shutterstock is 500M? Trello, I have no idea. I like Trello (and Shutterstock).

I think Shutterstock would crack the top 100 in SV, but none of these would crack the top 80 or so. SV comparables to Shutterstock in revenue would be some obscure companies like Rocket Fuel ($465M), Quantum Sales ($520M), Oclaro ($516M) that are ranked in the high 80s on the SV150 (https://www.siliconvalley.com/2017/05/01/sv150-2017-ranking-...)

I kinda think DoubleClick should count, although I don’t know how dominant they were:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick

Honestly I also think Bloomberg should count.

I also wouldn’t go so far as to call them “major” but Mongo is headquartered in NY.

Interesting list: https://www.builtinnyc.com/2017/11/07/nyc-top-100-tech-compa...

I would count doubleclick. I missed it because when I looked at my various lists, it didn't account for acquisitions. Google bought doubleclick, but yes it was market dominant when Google bought it.

Thanks for your list, which is interesting. No way would I consider 'vice media' or 'buzzfeed' to be tech companies. We are well past the stage where delivering something over the web makes you a tech company -- a tech company uses some advance in technology to gain a key competitive advantage. So you can argue that the Bloomberg terminal was bloomberg's key advantage and thus makes Bloomberg a tech company, assuming they were the ones who invented information terminals or did some technological innovation to radically improve them.

But there is nothing like that in vice media or buzzfeed. These are media companies. That also means the definition of a tech company changes over time. If I start a company selling books online today, that's not a tech company. Even though Amazon was a tech company doing just that in the past.

Take Blue Apron -- what exactly is technical about it, other than they have a website? Take, as a comparison, Amazon. You can say "both Blue Apron and Amazon sell stuff over the web". But selling stuff over the web in 1998 was technically innovative whereas doing the same in 2018 is not. And you can tell that Amazon is a technology driven company by looking at AWS and all of the innovations they have created since then as well. Amazon makes money by inventing new technologies, whereas Blue Apron makes money by selling prepared meals. That's not a slam on Blue Apron, because there are many drivers of a company. Maybe Blue Apron has the best chefs. Maybe they have the best quality food. Maybe they have the best customer support. Maybe the best prices. There are lots of legitimate business approaches other than focusing on technological innovation to gain a market edge.

Similarly, nowadays every taxi company has smartphone based dispatching. But that's not going to convert taxi companies into tech companies, but Uber will remain a tech company and it continues to rollout other tech innovations even as others catch up to them with smartphone dispatch.

Yep, I agree with all of these points. Casper and Capsule also come to mind (both headquartered in New York, probably get lumped into these kind of lists, and probably aren't really tech companies).

But there are other ones that "feel" more like tech companies, just nothing quite nearly as big as DoubleClick. e.g. Songza (acquired by Google), Cockroach Labs, Vimeo (acquired by IAC but still operating independently) have not (yet) been mentioned.

EDIT: I see Vimeo was covered below.

Bloomberg is a multi-billion dollar tech company started and HQed in New York.

I would call Bloomberg a financial news company. It's a great company. But I am sympathetic to the view of calling it a tech company because the Bloomberg terminal is an important piece of tech.

Forgetting for a moment whether it is tech or not, is Bloomberg the biggest company founded in New York (in any area) over the last 30 years? My guess would be yes.

With over 75% of their revenue reported to be software revenue (https://talkingbiznews.com/1/report-bloombergs-revenue-hit-1...), I'd call them a tech company. The public perception is focused on the news aspect because that's the most accessible part of their business.

I don't have any other examples at or above their size.

This is a fair point. You've won me over on classifying bloomberg.

I don't know for sure but I was under the impression that digital-ocean originated from NYC.

In short: BATNA.

Your salary is highly dependent on what the next-best thing you could be doing if your employer didn't hire you. If you live in a city where only your employer hires developers, your next best option sucks, so you can be forced to either move out or accept an uncompetitive offer. If you live in the SF Bay Area, you can walk out the door of Facebook on a Friday and into Google on a Monday, which means that both companies must compensate you handsomely in order to keep you around.

When I see the cost of living / quality of life in SV I'm glad I'm back in Europe.

You do you, but for me salary isn't everything: social security, work hours, amount of vacation days, parental leaves, job security, commute time, &c.

This.

The marginal increase in salary that you might get moving to SF is almost guaranteed to be dwarfed by the net increase in cost of living from moving from virtually anywhere in the country to SF. Therefore net income actually goes down.

I understand the numbers seem like they look good ("omg $150k is higher than the $100k i'm making in smaller city X!), but the BATNA isn't really a BATNA, as the market dynamics are different...it's almost like propaganda with no factual basis at this point.

I'd take my fewer work hours (due to easier commute,) nice take-home, a house, etc. over an SF offer any day.*

*Everyone has their price, and sometimes the argument doesn't hold if the offer is _crazy_ high to make the argument above false...but that's the rare exception, not a rule.

Sure the title may be jumping the gun a bit, but you're severely overhyping SF and underestimating NYC with your comment. The fact that Fog Creek and Reddit (moved to SF) were the companies that came to mind shows that you don't know the NYC tech landscape well.

On top of the condensed list below NYC has Columbia, NYU, and Cornell Tech in terms of talent pool, and one of the most extensive transit systems in the world.

1. Bloomberg 2. Oath (AOL + Yahoo) 3. Blue Apron 4. Buzzfeed 5. Tumblr 6. Etsy 7. AppNexus 8. Flatiron Health 9. Oscar Health 10. Shutterstock 11. Squarespace 12. IAC (Tinder, Match.com, OKCupid, etc) 13. Zocdoc 14. Compass 15. Casper 16. MongoDB 17. Warby Parker 18. Vimeo 19. Betterment 20. Classpass 21. DigitalOcean 22. Foursquare 23. Fanduel 24. Stackoverflow 25. SeatGeek 26. Birchbox

etc.

It’s interesting to see how the definition of “tech company” has expanded. Only one or two of these companies create and sell software or technology. These are startups, maybe, and I think we can talk about where the “innovative” companies are. But these are companies that run platforms online, or use the web to sell products in novel ways. They seem very different from most of the companies on the parent comment’s list.

This is partly a side effect of tech becoming so big, it's segmenting into products vs services. For example, Tinder isn't directly selling software to anyone, it's selling a dating service that runs exclusively on software. You could say the same about Facebook, what software is it selling directly to consumers?

None. It's selling a social network service to its users and an ad network service to its clients, built entirely on software.

Sure. Tinder and Facebook are tech firms, and so is Bloomberg.

That mattress company you put on the list isn't. Lines in the sand, yadda yadda, slapping a website on a store doesn't make it "tech".

>Tech landscape

Companies that use tech for their business =/= tech companies.

My overview:

1. Bloomberg [news, finance data tech]

2. AOL [zombie telecom?]. Yahoo HQ is in Sunnyvale.

3. Blue Apron [food]

4. Buzzfeed [news]

5. Tumblr [zombie adult microblogging]

6. Etsy [online marketplace]

7. AppNexus [adtech]

8. Flatiron Health [health]

9. Oscar Health [health]

10. Shutterstock [image hosting]

11. Squarespace [web hosting]

12. IAC (Tinder, Match.com, OKCupid, etc) [online dating]

13. Zocdoc [health]

14. Compass [real estate]

15. Casper [mattresses. Matresses, Carl!]

16. MongoDB [tech]

17. Warby Parker [eyeglasses]

18. Vimeo [video hosting]

19. Betterment [finance]

20. Classpass [um, fitness?]

21. DigitalOcean [cloud tech]

22. Foursquare [search tech]

23. Fanduel [gambling]

24. Stackoverflow [BBS tech]

25. SeatGeek [online ticket booth]

26. Birchbox [makeup]

I mean, if we brand matress, fitness, and make-up companies as "tech", then sure, plenty of tech in NYC.

Otherwise, I'd say it sounds a little... overhyped.

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