How Big Is The NYC Tech Sector? | Hacker News Reader

How Big Is The NYC Tech Sector?

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45 pointscwan46 comments

One thing that makes counting tough is that in NYC there isn't a hard divide between tech and non-tech, and many firms support niche verticals. Rather than general purpose Big Data companies, we have Big Data for Media, or Big Data for Finance.

The industries supported also wind up looking very technical. Is an exchange a place where stocks are traded, or a technology where stocks are traded? It's looking more like the latter. Are digital media companies part of media, or part of technology?

For those into applied technology, this is the beauty of the NYC tech scene. Perhaps it's a little less glamorous for researchers.

It doesn't seem like "positions that require 'advanced tech sklls'" is the right measure for the size of the NYC tech sector. Surely Foursquare's office manager is a part of NYC's tech sector, but their job likely doesn't require "advanced tech skills".

As someone on both coasts often, NYC seems to have many fewer tech events. I might get a hackathon or two a month in NYC, but in SF/SV sometimes there are 7 in a single weekend and it is rare to have a weekend without one. The prizes are much better too. A 5k purse is normal, but they often go up to 40k or even 850k investment for the top two with the upcoming LAUNCH hackathon. The conference situation is the same. You get much bigger, much more frequent, with many more companies in SF/SV. If you are looking to do business development or just find a job, your chances are much better. I'm not saying NYC is bad, it has something. The something it has is just much less than the tech center of the country.

I get the same impression. I have worked at startups in SF/SV and recently relocated to NYC. Even if you look at job posts in both cities/areas. The SF tech scene is much more vibrant, the startups cover a broader range of sectors and interesting problems, and VC money is easier to find, i think, in SF than in NYC. NYC is definitely 2nd, but it's still quite a ways away from the SF/SV area. I also observe that there are riskier startups in SF/SV than NYC and as a CS researcher, I think the SF/SV area has much more interesting positions and opportunities. For example, Nanosatisfi is launching mini satellites into orbit. I don't think you'd find something like that in NYC.

As someone based in NYC (since 1996) but debating a move to SF, I'd agree. I was here through the .com boom and used to attend NYNMA events (remember those?), but NYC has never really been tech startup-oriented in the way SF is. They've tried, what with billing it as 'Silicon Alley' and all, but it never really seemed to take hold. And the big tech events where they'd have Bloomberg as a keynote and then do a handful of tech demos... the demos would be things that we'd seen before coming out of SF and seemed like copycat products.

A big part of it is the culture here. If you tell someone in NYC that you're bootstrapping a startup out of your living room, the response is 'oh, so you're unemployed'. Do the same in a conversation in SF and people start talking about who might be a good fit for you to meet. So, I wouldn't recommend starting a tech company here.

Don't get me wrong, NYC is a great place for tech. But I'm talking about tech in service to financial services institutions. So, web development, financial software, etc. And mostly around Microsoft tech (ASP.NET, SQL nowadays). I've worked at corporate banks, I've built ecommerce systems, I've built events management systems. They've paid the bills. But the dream change-the-world startup idea? It's just not part of the culture here. Fashion? Absolutely. Food? Sure. Music? Maybe. But tech that's not gonna be a financial services play? I'd suggest looking elsewhere.

Where's a good place to find (and list) tech events that happen in NYC?

meetup.com has been my best bet, just looking at groups that people are members of has led me to lots of good stuff.

There's a pretty young subreddit for this http://www.reddit.com/r/nyctech.

There's a ton. There's even some new ones sprouting up. Have you checked out the NYC Innovative Tech meetup? http://www.meetup.com/innovative-tech

The big confusion is whether we're trying to measure the "tech sector" or the "startup sector." The former is likely a superset of the latter, and the latter possibly includes companies which aren't necessarily in the former.

Should I be counted as part of the NYC tech sector? I'm working in a technical role at a media startup. Is that more or less techy than an office manager at a tech startup?

Purely anecdotally, the tech scene in NYC still feels extremely intimate. It's easy to know/recognize a lot of people at any tech event.

Instead of asking how big is the sector? I believe the real question should be, How joined/fragmented is it? I won't call it a problem, but the difference between CA and other places is that other places are much fragmented and disjointed. NYC tech sector might be large, but it doesn't have that CA appeal because everyone is everywhere. If they were all brought together into the same region it would bubble up like Silicon Valley.

Pshaw! I don't know how you define "disjointed", but Manhattan is around 22 square miles large, and most of the tech sector is concentrated in the southern half. There are multiple meet-ups and user groups meeting pretty much every night.

Fragmented in what way? Physically? B/C NYC isn't that big, and has outstanding transit. My assumption is that NYC tech is actually less physically fragmented than SV tech.

Er... The Bay Area's tech scene stretches all the way from San Francisco down to San Jose (and a bit beyond, even). That's a 50 mile drive all by itself. I recall when living in SF that the SF tech scene and SV tech scene were eerily separate because of the city/suburb divide. It's far from unified.

Compare with the tech scene in NYC which is almost entirely based in Manhattan - a 5-mile stretch of it no less (from Bowling Green up to 59th St), that you can traverse by train or cab in a matter of 20-25 minutes.

If pure concentration of people/companies is the X-factor, NYC should've trounced California by now :P

NYC's financial industry pays well for tech jobs, I'd guess more people get a nice 9-5 job with a good salary vs a startup job with a lot of pressure.

> I'd guess more people get a nice 9-5 job with a good salary vs a startup job with a lot of pressure.

NYC financial jobs are not 9-5 or without a lot of pressure.

For any job that you're likely to get in your 20s, NYC finance jobs pay worse, have far longer hours, and are much more high-pressure.

Beyond your 20s, it varies greatly by level of seniority, so it gets tougher to compare, but the high-paying jobs still require very long hours.

I've been working 12+ hour days and working more at home after work for the past 3 months and I work at a bank. It's ridiculous. It's not low pressure in the slightest.

> For any job that you're likely to get in your 20s, NYC finance jobs pay worse, have far longer hours, and are much more high-pressure.

If you're working in the front office then your pay is going to be a multiple of a startup job. And it's going to be significantly higher then any established company in the area (Amazon, Facebook, Google). A good rule of thumb is your base will be similar what established companies pay and your bonus is all gravy.

Pressure and hours vary by firm. It's hard to generalize.

I'm not sure how much bonuses software engineers get. I've heard it's great for bankers, traders etc. But do software engineers(who work on building infra/tools, not the kind who write trading algos) get paid good bonuses as well? By good I mean 30%+

The closer to the trade you are the higher bonus is as a percentage of your total comp. I did mention "front office" in my original post.

- Infrastructure is vital to most trades. Bonuses are going to more than 30% if you're on the cutting edge here - prop shops, some technology oriented hedge funds, and some banks.

- If by tools you mean GUIs then no.

- Engineers who write trading algos (or more likely algo components that are used by a trader at a higher level) will have a bonus that is more than 30%.

Thanks for the clarification. Is it feasible to get into a prop shop or hedge fund as a programmer and "graduate" to trader? How common is it?

Common enough. Skills are so specialized thhough that it doesn't always make sense to switch though. Its a different career track, not a promotion. Top end trader will make more but top end developer will make more then the average trader. You should focus on what you are good at.

Speaking from my own experience, the NYC startup community is large and very active. I'm hoping this growth continues after we get a new mayor in.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you worried De Blasio will negatively impact the startup sector?

I'm saying that Mayor Bloomberg has been highly proactive in pushing the tech and startup sector forward. It would be hard to deny that he's partially responsible for fostering the growth that's occurred in NYC. I don't know that the next mayor will be quite as bullish on tech as Bloomberg was. Also, I'm suggesting there may be a reduction in growth, not a decline. I wouldn't necessarily call a reduction in growth a 'negative impact' - just less of a positive impact.

I live in NYC, and I've seen the tech community grow pretty quickly over the past few years.

I run a meetup group - NYC Python: http://www.nycpython.com/ - and the number of events, attendees, companies, and conferences dedicated to just Python has grown substantially since I started getting involved a few years back.

Does anybody have a number on the San Francisco / Silicon Valley / Austin / Seattle tech sectors in comparison?

I lived there for 7 years.

New York is a great place in general, but I wouldn't recommend its tech scene. The Meetups are of high quality (in general) because there are so many people, but most of the people at <Cool Technology X> meetups don't get to use X in their day jobs.

The VC-funded startups are thick on quantity but dogshit (on average) for quality. Most of the talented people move to finance (or leave NYC) after 30 because the startup scene is so awful: most of the founders are well-connected wankbaskets, not real technologists.

> The Meetups are of high quality (in general) because there are so many people, but most of the people at <Cool Technology X> meetups don't get to use X in their day jobs.

Clearly you had the misfortune of going to the wrong meetups. I haven't felt that way about any of the Meetups I attend, except for very obscure or emerging technologies (such as Haskell or Go - which I think is true almost everywhere).

> The VC-funded startups are thick on quantity but dogshit (on average) for quality. Most of the talented people move to finance (or leave NYC) after 30 because the startup scene is so awful: most of the founders are well-connected wankbaskets, not real technologists.

I'm sorry you feel that way. That has not been my experience in the slightest. Perhaps you were in NYC at the wrong time? Things have changed dramatically (for the better) since 2009/2010 or so.

A number of the organizers for the NYC Haskell meetup have businesses whose stacks are full Haskell.

As I typed that, I thought, "I wonder how long it will be before Carter corrects me on the Haskell comment". :)

i've seen you on IRC or IRL before, right? (are you coming to the haskell computer music meetup this wednesday?)

> i've seen you on IRC or IRL before, right?

Yes, at several meetups - Lisp, Haskell.... most recently, you came to my "Go for Statistical Programming" talk to heckle me - though not about generics, as I was expecting. ;)

> (are you coming to the haskell computer music meetup this wednesday?

Damn. That's right up my alley, too. But I can't. :/

Perhaps you were in NYC at the wrong time?

2006-13.

To be fair, my sample size on startup quality is about N = 15, so I'm sure I missed some good ones. And there are a lot of high-quality engineers (and people in general) in NYC. The engineers I met at Google NYC were a great crowd, for one example, and there are a lot of good people in finance.

I think NYC would be a great tech hub if the city could solve the cost-of-living problem, which would expand the pool of possible startups and help real technologists (as opposed to well-connected turds) get more play. Until then, the smart money's on places like Austin for the 2020s.

I think NYC would be a great tech hub if the city could solve the cost-of-living problem

Doesn't Silicon Valley have a similar problem?

Yes, and that's why its first derivative is steeply negative.

However, it's far enough ahead of everywhere else (due to six decades of momentum, developed before that problem existed) to still be #1.

I don't think the cost of living problem as such is solvable. When I point out that there are places in all five boros that are safe, affordable, and in reasonable commuting distance of the commercial parts of Manhattan I'm told that it is unrealistic to expect techies to want to live in such boring places. But it is very trendiness of e.g. Chelsea that makes it so expensive. The same exact criticism is even more potent when deployed for Austin or Chicago as an alternative.

Positional goods are never going to be cheap, if they were they would no longer be desirable.

> When I point out that there are places in all five boros that are safe, affordable, and in reasonable commuting distance of the commercial parts of Manhattan I'm told that it is unrealistic to expect techies to want to live in such boring places.

Pricing is high everywhere in five boroughs in places which are safe and in reasonable commuting distance, regardless if anyone finds any of them "boring". NY is just a very expensive city when it comes to rent and let alone buying anything.

I've been in NYC since 1996 and am looking to move to SF for the same reasons. Tech here has always been about financial services and just doesn't gel with the kind of startups you see in SF. I got tired of seeing demos of stuff that had already been done (and better) on the other coast and tired of VCs that just didn't understand software unless it was financial services-oriented.

Or am I missing something? I'd be happy to venture out again and give it a shot.

Check out NYC Innovative Tech Meetup - it's a different vibe. Small, but growing. Mostly doers, not talkers. And from a wider range of industries and tech sectors: http://www.meetup.com/Innovative-Tech/events/132311232/

> Tech here has always been about financial services and just doesn't gel with the kind of startups you see in SF. I got tired of seeing demos of stuff that had already been done (and better) on the other coast

It sounds like you haven't seen the full extent of what the NYC tech community has to offer, because I that view doesn't resonate with what I see at all. I'll admit that discover-ability is a problem in any community in any city, not just tech and not just in NYC (this is one problem that Meetup[0] aims to solve).

If you're still in NYC, drop me a line (my email is easy to guess from my username), and I'd be happy to get together in person and give you a map of the New York tech community the way that I see it.

> VCs that just didn't understand software unless it was financial services-oriented.

Again, I think you've had the misfortune of meeting the wrong VCs. I'm an engineer, but I used to work for a venture firm until very recently, and of the ~40 companies in our portfolio, only one was financial in nature.

And, ironically, that one company is based on the West Coast!

The only statement that I might say about NYC startups versus west coast ones is that NYC startups often seem to interact with the other industries we have in NYC, instead of being "just" tech companies or B2C consumer products[1]. But that's just a general feeling, with no hard data to back it up. Certainly there's no dearth of either kind of startup[2] on either coast.

(There's also definitely some sampling bias there, because those types of companies happened to be the investment focus of the company I worked for).

[0] which, incidentally, is an NYC startup that has nothing to do with finance! [1] ie, [2] Tumblr and Mongodb are examples of successful "tech" and B2C companies in NYC, for example, and there are plenty of industry-targeted companies in SF too.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I'm giving it another shot with another meetup and a couple more groups. And I dropped an email to what I guessed was yours.

Like all things in this town, there's the finance side of the fence, and then there's everyone else's side. My experience in NYC is directly opposite to yours - I rarely meet people in finance, but that's probably because I work at a consumer tech startup and my network is mostly consumer web and media.

There are lots of us out here.

Worked in Manhattan for 5 years, & last week was my 1 year anniversary in the Valley. Difference is night & day. In NYC, yeah we had meetups & cool stuff was demo-ed, but seldom used in day to day work. I do believe that is changing...meetups at Novus demo a lot of Scala that does get pushed to prod. On the whole, SF meetups are much more cutting edge. Like we'll have a meetup on Marathon and we'll probably even push Marathon to prod...scary but that's the plan :) otoh, my friends back in nyc don't even know what Marathon is, much less have any plans to mess with running Storm or Hadoop on Mesos. That said, that's the exact problem with the Valley tech scene - its mostly innovation for innovation sake with no real/profitable use-case. There's really no compelling reason to be running Marathon in prod...but hey, why not ?!...that's the SF attitude. The Valley pays much less, I certainly made more back in nyc...but I did have to wear a suit & dress in formals & polish my shoes & carry a pager & say "Sir! Yes Sir! Ofcourse Sir!"..here I walk to work in sandals & sometimes I don't even shave & people are ok with that. Conversations that enrage & stress people out in NYC almost always revolve around bonus & $$$, here in the Valley people stress out over overloading implicits causing confusion in adhoc polymorphism vs subtype poly...its just very funny & very different :)

You probably just had bad experience or worked in some very formal environment (I guess financial?). Many places in NY don't enforce dress code on engineers. And surely people aren't just discussing bonuses instead of actual technology. Carrying a phone (not a pager of course :) can be a norm anywhere, if you are on call and required to provide support in cases of production emergency. I doubt that's different between NYC and any other place.

And for the record, there is quite an interest in Storm, Hadoop and other distributed computation technologies in the NYC scene.

Where exactly did they make you say "Sir! Yes Sir!"? I have worked in NYC finance and fin tech for years and have never seen anything close to the caricature you're describing. Also, what is Marathon?

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