Seattle is booming, too. Amazon alone has around 1900 open positions.
Oh well. Who wants to hire me? I got a fancy-lookin' PhD and I can code quantum mechanical simulation codes in my sleep, so I figure whatever you're doing can't be much harder. I know absolutely nothing about Rails, SQL or Lisp, but how fricking hard can it be? And I'm willing to accept any offer in excess of One Shitload.
People always talk about Apple, Google and (less now) Microsoft. But Amazon is a huge sleeping dragon.
In hardware for example, HP used to have the best possible reputation. But then Fiorina as CEO destroyed the company's reputation among engineers. They are now permanently crippled.
Word gets out.
Maybe everything there has changed and things are better. That's possible. But it doesn't matter. It's like the story of the reformed born again wife beater. Sure, he feels bad about what happened to all his previous spouses and swears he has changed. But does a solid down to earth woman who isn't emotionally damaged really want to be the one to find out if it is true? No.
If the increase in startups is do to economic expansion around new markets, then the overall increase in jobs can be durable in the sense that they are for viable businesses. If it turns out that the creation of startups is due to rampant speculation from capitol chasing better returns in an irrational way, then the jobs will disappear again when the market corrects.
So far, in this 'extremely reminiscent of previous bubble' non-bubble expansion, the source of capital has been, in theory, from investors who are making risk / value assessments in line with information about the business models they are investing in.
However, there is also evidence to suggest that people who have acquired excess capital but did not experience, nor learn the lessons of, that previous bubble, are in the process of redistributing their new found wealth in unsound ways.
As the previous explosion lasted about 6 years ('95 with 'Netscape' to '01 with 'nuclear winter'), and it was sustained in part by the unbridled enthusiasm of untrained investors, investing in IPOs. If this particular trend continues with simply VC/Angel money we should no in a shorter period whether or not the expansion is durable or illusory.
Check back in 2015, you'll know if it was like 99 or not.