If I were going to start a tech company today, I DEFINITELY would not do it in any of the traditional tech hub cities, like Seattle.

The tech workers here are entitled dicks.

The accepted metrics that HR uses, is that there will be 25% employee turnover every year, and any employee that has spent more than 24 months at a company is not "maximizing their earning potential", because they can move to another company and get a bigger salary than their existing company can support in annual raises.

Which means that our hardware and software engineers don't stay around long enough to even launch the product they are working on, before they go off to another company.

I've got friends in HR at Amazon, Google, Expedia, Disney, and here at my company, and the story is the same. 24 months, and out. (That's also when your Amazon stock vests. People literally wait until a week after their stock vests, and then are gone.)

And none of these people are actually that good, honestly. Generic programmers with little experience or genuine talent. Just code grunts who call libraries and link methods and pass variables like librarians file books. No actual talent or skill needed... just code factory workers.

The point is, that's kinda who you need to make today's modern web/SaaS apps work... basic skills that can link together prewritten libraries, under the guidance of one software architect who put together the plan and designed the final product.

So do that ANYWHERE. And for a reasonable salary. With better living conditions. And less of the big city bullshit.

I saw this shift happen back in the 1990's, too. The same states came up then, that come up in this article: Montana, Oregon, the midwest, progressive southern cities like Huntsville...

I would LOVE to see a decentralization of the tech industry. A coder that worked for Microsoft and Amazon and Google and three no-name startups for 18-24 months each is NOT as asset... they are a liability, because they will be gone from your offices before they make any impact at all, and they don't care one whit for whatever your company is doing. They just want more zeroes on those 40 paychecks you are going to write them.

Screw that shit. I want a TEAM who has some PRIDE in what they are doing, and they build their talent and skills over time, honing a great product they are committed to.

And I don't think you can do that any more in the big tech hubs. So more power to the outlier cities!