1. proximity to other tech companies (good for employees switching jobs) 2. proximity to venture capital (good for entrepreneurs) 3. general culture of tech work 4. general culture, food, weather?
4 seems to pale in comparison to the cost and quality of life issues I have read about (super expensive, dirty, bad transport).
2 seems plausible. But are in-person meetings so necessary and hard to set up outside the area (also, how many people there just want to be employees somewhere and don’t care about VCs?).
3 is pretty nebulous. And again I wouldn’t expect this to be a big factor for people who mostly just want to work somewhere and not build their own thing.
I’m left with 1. Is that it?
It just seems weird that company location appears optimized for founders (we should go where the action and investment money and talent is!) and not the enormous mass of people who would just be clocking into their jobs and making those companies run. I have no data on this, but it looks like those masses of lower-level employees might prefer to live somewhere more “sensible”.
It looks like such an...inefficiency.