I work at a large tech co. in NYC, and we don't really talk about being in competition with SF at all. Besides, many of the really big SF-based cos. have offices here anyway.
SF wasn’t chosen by the tech industry. South Bay was. Most big Tech firms’ HQs are outside the city itself, precisely because of lower real estate costs.
The move to SF has been much more recent and mainly fueled by the desire of younger workers to live/work in more densely populated areas. And then most startups started basing out of SF proper to be closer to these workers (and appear “cool”) so now you have all the big startup successes based in the city proper.
Big tech is actually still
mostly in the suburbs. By big tech we mean Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix, etc... It is only the newer generation of companies that are HQ’d in SF. The older generation employs far more workers and are still a lot bigger.
Facebook’s HQ is Menlo Park (suburb). Google’s is in Mountain View (suburb). Apple’s is in Cupertino (suburb). Netflix’s is in Los Gatos (suburb).
The only big city downtown is actually SF. I would characterize San Jose as a giant suburb. All the other so called cities are really suburbs. Oakland has a small downtown but is across the Bay and has virtually no tech scene.
Particular kinds of tech tend to cluster together typically due to a founding company. South Bay is where hardware companies cluster. Enterprise software tends to cluster around Oracle in the mid Peninsula area. New software companies now cluster mostly around SF. I think the people who found new companies want access to the existing labor pool so they found the companies close to similar existing companies.
If you work for FB in Menlo Park, you probably don’t want to commute down from SF. You would waste a lot of your time doing so. You also probably prefer to live in a nicer place than a fish tank. So if you can find a nicer place than a fish tank and that is still close to work, then you would jump at it. Even if you prefer fish tank style, most of the fish tanks aren’t actually that nice: 600 sq ft and a view of your neighbor’s balcony. 600 sq ft is kind of small once you get married. Also, $3400 sounds better going to a mortgage than an apartment if housing prices appreciate. You can always sell.
Many of the Boston area tech companies are actually outside Boston (Cambridge, Rt 128) while many of the SF area companies are similarly outside San Franscisco (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, Berkeley, etc).
None of the tech jobs are in San Francisco. Unlike most cities, people live in SF/Oakland and commute to the suburbs in Mountain View and Palo Alto to work, and that commute is closer to two hours door to door.
I'd say the epicenter of the tech industry is to the south of San Francisco: Silicon Valley/Santa Clara County/San Mateo County e.g. Google, Apple, Facebook, Sand Hill Road.
Pedantically, Zoom (San Jose) and Google (Mountain View), and most other Silicon Valley companies (Facebook, Apple, HP, Cisco, eBay, Intel, LinkedIn, Nvidia, Paypal, pre-move Oracle, pre-move Tesla) aren't headquartered in San Francisco. The city used to be this adjunct thing, close to the Valley. It's only until recently that it's become the focus.
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