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Comment by segmondy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

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.

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