Silicon Valley has long stood as the optimal ground for start up ventures and job hunting in the tech industry. The Californian Bay owes its allure to Fredrick Tarmen who managed to squeeze the influx of the tech industry in Silicon Valley.
Not too far in the past, Silicon Valley was perceived as a socially progressive work place where errors like sexism and harassment do not thrive simply because they are the hindrance in the face of tech advancement. The round of accusations at Uber and Google (Facebook and Tesla more recently) has shattered those misconceptions and bought much dirt to light.
In March 2015 the facade of Silicon Valley started to crumble when Ellen Pao went to court against her employer for excluding her from meetings and passing promotion after she accused a superior of sexual harassment. Expert lawyers claim that the situation is “far worse than people know” and Pao might have lost the case but she has brought everyone’s attention to the Silicon Valley’s woman problems.
With the accusations rushing in residents of the Silicon Valley are opting out and looking elsewhere to settle down. According to a study from real estate brokerage firm Redfin, 25 percent of Bay Area residents are now searching for homes elsewhere, mainly in places like Seattle and Portland. While salaries for software developers and the like aren’t as high in these places — in the case of Portland, they’re about $32,000 less — the median home price is generally targeted at least half a million dollars lower than the $1.05 million price tag found in Silicon Valley.
The ever rising expenses of living in the tech hub have yet to cause it to become uninhabitable, but it has made people started looking elsewhere.
So where are they heading?
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Salt Lake City, Utah
An investor would be crazy to ignore Utah today, where the Silicon Slopes — a stretch of cities along the Rocky Mountains, from Ogden in the north to Provo in the south and Salt Lake City in between — has emerged this decade as a hotbed of tech entrepreneurship, plucky start-ups and impressive software companies worth at least $1 billion on paper and with a pool of fresh engineers from the University of Utah it has no shortage of workforce.
Additionally, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently ranked Utah No.1 in innovation and entrepreneurship as well as No. 2 in high-tech performance and No. 3 in economic performance in a study of all 50 states. The state also topped CNBC’s America’s Top States for the Business list this year.
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Tampa Florida
Bill Gates and Jeff Vinik have banded together to transform Tampa. They want to build infrastructures that would be able to host 200 residents every day.
“Top-tier tech graduates flock to Silicon Valley but pay dearly while living the dream,” says Dan Wesley, CEO of Tampa-based Quote.com. “We want to show there is much to be learned and the same salary to be earned, allowing talented employees to learn and grow professionally without them having to live in their cars in our parking lot because of the skyrocketing cost of rent.”
- Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville has maintained a high proportion of people working in the science field since the Space program in the 50’s. since then Bloomberg reports that 17 percent of the workforce has been attached to science, maths, technology and engineering.
The tech growth of Huntsville is not a recent discovery although it has reached a new boiling point recently. CBS News reported an increase of 309 percent growth in the tech jobs.
- Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is the home of American Accelerator, a project by the University of Missouri System, UMSL Accelerate & Capital Innovators which aims to provide better energy technology. Ameren CEO Warner Baxter points out, “The Ameren Accelerator is one of the first of its kind in the country to focus exclusively on energy technologies.”. Warner is also a member of the St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association, an organization dedicated to attracting resources and people to St. Louis in order to help the city compete with the other tech juggernauts of the world.
The project has chosen a colourful array of seven new start ups as its first batch. They promise intensive training, funding, perks, a professional environment and office space.
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Seattle, Washington
While it has been home to tech companies since Microsoft blew up, Seattle is buckling up to become an incubator of space researches. This obviously is paired with job opportunities, living space and a stable economy.
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Phoenix, Arizona
Companies such as Datashield, MST Solutions and General Dynamics call Phoenix home along with 1.5 million other residents. It’s a well-established tech hub that has been spared attention despite being so close to Silicon Valley. It has helped contribute to a one-year job increase of 188 percent in the technology sector.
- Albany, New York
The city has worked hard to transform Albany into a nurturing ground for tech companies. Their efforts have borne fruit in the form of the 161 percent job growth Albany enjoyed this year. The state government has given tax breaks to support it and the tech companies can always draw from the fresh pool of graduates of local universities.
Silicon Valley has long enjoyed the top spot as a tech hub for quite a while, but as we have found out that it was mostly built on flimsy foundations and questionable work place ethics. This will not drain the entire population of Silicon Valley but it has turned the heads of potential employees elsewhere and now other cities are taking advantage of this void.
