San Francisco’s tech workforce is still growing, outpacing other metro areas
 

Stats from this report:

https://i.imgur.com/qXmblSe.png

Why Austin so low? I thought it would be a top 5 tech hub. Top 10 at least. Besides that nothing really stands out

Austin is 4th as far as Tech as a Percent of the Total GDP.

https://i.imgur.com/xTiz3IJ.png

Didn't expect to see Detroit having added almost as many tech jobs as Boston.

Tech is dumb

Sure thing SFO, you arent getting grey hair.

HArdly anybody notices that bald spot, those growing wrinkles and expanding gut.

You still look great :cheers:

Interesting list. We can definitely see where tech is still growing and in some cases, booming, whereas in other metros, it has stagnated or fallen behind.

Metros with over 100k tech workers that are outpacing the US average for 2010-2018:
Atlanta 25.4%
Austin 40.3%
Boston 22.1%
Charlotte 48.2%
Dallas 23.2%
Denver 28.6%
Detroit 37.2%
Miami 20.4%
Phoenix 22.6%
Portland 28.7%
San Francisco 62.4%
San Jose 38.1%
Seattle 31.5%

Metros with over 100k tech workers that being outpaced compared to the US average for 2010-2018:
Chicago 17.9%
Houston 8.0%
Kansas City 17.3%
Los Angeles 11.8%
Minneapolis 17.0%
New York City 16.9%
Philadelphia 2.6%
San Diego 11.5%
St. Louis 7.8%
Washington DC 3.2%

Trust me, the housing affordability crisis is killing any sense of benefit the Bay Area has had from this current boom. It's ridiculous.

I'd also say the dominance of "tech bros" everywhere and anywhere, whether lined up for ice cream at Bi-Rite or getting drunk on Marina Green or grabbing tables at every eatery in town has also killed any sense of benefit. Many people would love to see it all end a la 2000 - 2003 but it isn't showing any signs of that.

I think the development boom has peaked because building costs have gotten so high, we are at or near Prop. M caps and many of the most desirable sites have been built on, but the tech industry marches on with companies like Saleforce leasing entire buildings not even approved yet (750 Howard).

This appears to be a broader definition of "tech." To some degree, any big city will score highly.

Narrow it (many ways to do that) and the list would be different.

I have seen a lot of articles about a massive tech exodus out the Bay Area.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/08/n...-coast-exodus/

It would make more sense to place to Sacrament and the LA area, overall decentralize the industry. The Bay Area, especially with the rampant NIBYism does not have the resources to support all those new workers unless the areas around the tech campuses are massively rezoned.

An exodus doesn't have to mean a reduction.

Yeah Ive seen those articles and my sense living here and working in the industry is that it's not true.

Now that there is actual data, my suspicions that those articles are exaggerations are true.

Exactly. That's really why I decided to post this. We all read constantly about people and businesses leaving CA for Texas or, recently in the WSJ, New York. But the point of this thread kind of is that even though people and companies are leaving, more are arriving (from other parts of the US and also from places like Europe and Israel) or springing up than are leaving and the tech economy in the Bay Area is still growing.

CA is really a birthing center and incubator of companies and jobs, but once they reach a certain stage some of them do choose to leave for someplace the competition for workers and the cost of doing business or housing those workers is lower. But as that's happening, more businesses are arriving or being founded.

An example of what's happening:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-st...=hp_lead_pos10

"Would love to see it end a la 2000-2003 but it isn't showing any signs of that"

Maybe it is. Watched a "Theranos" expose on HBO and it seems the entire company was a total fraud right from the start--a gazillion lab results from a single drop of blood in a mini lab called "Edison" and they believed it. All the big tech angels bought into it and lost bundles. Many of the new IPOs coming to market (Lyft, Uber etc.) apparently will not show a profit for years, if ever. People are willing to bet on something sexy, but in the end gravity wins. For every Apple or Google, how many Theranos's are there? Not sure. But valuations have reached 2000 levels, and the social media stocks have sure gotten black eyes from recent events. Millions have cancelled their Facebook accounts. So maybe the slowdown a la 2000 is coming.

^^I saw that Theranos show. That's more biotech than tech, of course, but Elizabeth Holmes is quite amazing in the way she took in everybody. I suspect a male might not have been able to do it; who would suspect a beautiful young woman of being a fraud? And she was so convincing it almost seems like she believed her own BS.

I remember when Theranos was still "up and coming" and I remember thinking, "How can they do that?" Guess they couldn't and didn't. But most of what's called "tech" these days is just buisness conducted over the internet and a lot easier to figure out. I just ask myself whether they are selling a service I or anybody I know would really want. Take grocery delivery (and recall the 2000 failure of WebVan): I don't really want someone else picking out my perishables at least (meat, veggies, fruits). So I don't really see these businesses that either deliver such items or even the "meal in a box" outfits surviving long term. On the other hand, I consider the rideshare services as genuinely disruptive and necessary. I think they'll make it in some form though maybe government will force it to change from the way it is today.

Companies come and go all the time and they expand all over the world all the time, but it's a totally false narrative to say that Silicon Valley is in decline, or has lost it's ability to drive innovation, and that "everyone" is moving to New York(or London or Austin etc), the way that many media outlets have been reporting.

Fact of the matter is, nowhere incubates ideas into multi-billion dollar corporations quite like the Bay Area

Just today, Lyft started trading and is currently valued at $25 billion, that's astounding. Uber is expected to climb to $125 billion when it goes public soon, Airbnb, Pinterest, Palantir etc, all local companies going public this year and all expected to be valued in the billions.

And I can think of a dozen other local start ups that look like exceptional prospects for the future.

And that's on top of what the region already has going on.

US tech companies with a market capitalization of $5 Billion+, March 28, 2019

Bay Area:
Apple $889.87 Billion
Alphabet $814.95 Billion
Facebook $472.48 Billion
Intel $238.84 Billion
Cisco $234.89 Billion
Oracle $181.79 Billion
Netflix $154.82 Billion
Adobe $128.59 Billion
PayPal $121.85 Billion
Salesforce $119.64 Billion
Broadcom $118.39 Billion
NVIDIA $107.41 Billion
VMWare $73.11 Billion
Intuit $67.16 Billion
Tesla $48.12 Billion
Applied Materials $36.56 Billion
Ebay $33.65 Billion
Autodesk $33.60 Billion
Xilinx $32.04 Billion
Square $31.17 Billion
Electronic Arts $30.62 Billion
HP $29.14 Billion
AMD $27.10 Billion
Twitter $25.21 Billion
Palo Alto Networks $22.34 Billion
HP Networks $20.91 Billion
KLA-Tencor $19.32 Billion
Splunk $18.28 Billion
Cadence Design $17.62 Billion
Synopsys $16.96 Billion
NetApp $16.64 Billion
Twilio $15.54 Billion
Symantec $14.66 Billion
Maxim $14.42 Billion
Fortinet $14.05 Billion
Western Digital $13.31 Billion
Okta $9.13 Billion
Juniper Networks $9.04 Billion
Dropbox $8.84 Billion
DocuSign $8.8 Billion
Guideware $7.8 Billion
Roku $7.08 Billion
Nutanix $6.66 Billion
Mellanox $6.42 Billion
Integrated Device Tech $6.33 Billion
Monolithic Power Systems $5.76 Billion
New Relic $5.64 Billion
Coupa $5.46 Billion
Cypress $5.46 Billion
Pivotal $5.43 Billion

Austin:
Dell $40.89 Billion
SolarWinds $5.88 Billion
National Instruments $5.87 Billion

Boise:
Micron $43.54 Billion

Boston:
Analog Devices $38.33 Billion
Skyworks Solutions $14.02 Billion
Akamai Technologies $11.6 Billion
PTC $10.72 Billion
Cognex $8.59 Billion
IPG Photonics $7.85 Billion
TripAdvisor $7.08 Billion
Teradyne $6.81 Billion
Hubspot $6.47 Billion

Chicago:
Zebra Technologies $11.23 Billion

Dallas-Ft Worth:
Texas Instruments $98.47 Billion
Match $15.56 Billion
Tyler Technologies $7.83 Billion
Sabre $5.86 Billion
RealPage $5.66 Billion

Greensboro:
Qorvo $8.62 Billion

Hartford:
SS&C $15.82

Raleigh:
Red Hat $32.16 Billion

Los Angeles:
Activation Blizzard $34.85 Billion
Snap $14.25 Billion
The Trade Desk $7.14 Billion
Alteryx $5.18 Billion

Miami:
Citrix $13.31 Billion
The Ultimate Software $10.44 Billion

Minneapolis
Ceridian $7.05 Billion

New York:
Booking Holding Inc $77.82 Billion
Take-Two Interactive $10.92 Billion
Ubiquiti $10.39 Billion
FactSet Research $9.32 Billion
Etsy $8.30 Billion
MongDB $7.94 Billion
Xerox $7.31 Billion

Oklahoma City:
Paycom $10.92 Billion

Phoenix:
Microchip Technology $19.32 Billion
ON Semiconductor $8.30 Billion
First Solar $5.46 Billion

Pittsburgh:
ANSYS $15.1 Billion

Raleigh:
Cree $5.83 Billion

San Diego:
Qualcomm $68.44 Billion
Teradata $5.14 Billion

Seattle:
Microsoft $897.11 Billion
Amazon $871.11 Billion
Expedia $17.52 Billion
Tableau $10.7 Billion
F5 Networks $9.14 Billion

I think it's safe to say that the Bay Area is in no danger of losing it's crown as the Evil Empire of technology :shrug:

On the day of Lyft's IPO, although I got a few shares of that one, here's the one I really want and constitutes more evidence of what's happening in Silicon Valley:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.9bfff30a9a4c

It's not just the city tech economy that's doing well either:

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...899&j=87519951

Lyft fell below its IPO price today. Down 11% even as the Dow was up over 300. Another tech bubble popping? Most of these IPOs may never make money in my opinion. They may be "disruptive" but profitable? It might rebound but we'll see. I wouldn't touch Uber IPO with a ten foot pole. Most tech & "Silicon Valley" stocks seem overvalued. Bought some put options on the QQQ today in case we are at or near a top in big Nasdaq/tech stocks. I have some time on them in case the rally extends a bit. Might even retest the Dec. lows in my opinion by May/June after this rally runs out of steam. 1st quarter earnings start coming out in the days ahead. We'll see how much they meet or exceed or miss expectations.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sili...-survey-2019-4

"Forty-one percent of 18- to 34-year-old tech workers surveyed said they planned to leave the Bay Area in the next year."

Cali, get it together guys before you kill your golden goose.

It would make sense to relocate a lot of those jobs to Silicon Beach which has access to affordable areas such as Inglewood and Hawthorne which are in need of gentrification.

Austin, Portland and Denver/Boulder will continue to pick up Bay Area tech companies opening second offices. Though all three have their own affordability issues. Boise, Albuquerque, Omaha, Kansas City and Nashville seem primed to be alternate options. Dallas/Ft Worth and Phoenix of the large metros will pick up some as well.

So apparently Memphis has more tech jobs than much larger Columbus or Sacramento?

Is this a list of the top 40 or just 40 cities chosen? Why Memphis but not some others? Also Providence...?

https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06...valley/530352/

So Columbus has gone from number 19 to not even in the top 40????

Tech Bust 2?
 

Lyft stock has collapsed from its new issue price. Fell to $60 today, almost 20% off new issue price and down $28 from the high price of $88. Maybe it will bounce back. Will Uber new issue fall flat as well? Has the tech stock rally peaked? Many of these new issues are not profitable. They are losing money. Of course Amazon lost money for years, but finally it made money. Facebook dropped right after its new issue came out, but eventually soared. So in the long run, maybe it will work out. Bought some Levi Strauss stock, so I do like that SF new issue. They do earn money. The tech area though appears more of a minefield.

"Earlier in the decade (2010 – 2015), propelled by the tech boom, the Bay Area CSA experienced strong growth, adding 1.2% annually to its population. This is more than 50% above the national population growth rate of 0.7% (Figure 2). The last three years, however (2015 – 2018) the population growth rate fell to 0.6%, half that of the 2010 – 2015 rate, well below the national rate."

http://www.newgeography.com/content/...cisco-bay-area

I think there is a lot of disenchantment with tech, not so much the hardware as the software, and especially the social media. The early promise has turned into anger as nefarious activities and trolling have taken over. Facebook and Twitter especially. When they allow meddling in elections, we have to draw the line. Spending hours per day on Facebook or Twitter seems increasingly like a great waste of time.

Not only meddling in elections but the censorship of news based on which political party/side they lean on. These tech platforms should remain neutral since they've essentially crossed the path into being a utility.

On the other hand, the censorship has led rise to other companies. Google censoring the news in favor of one party/view has led to the rise of companies like DuckDuckGo. The search results can be pretty different sometimes. For example, right now in Google when you type in "ABC News E" the first results that pop up are ABC News Email, ABC News Economy, and ABC News Episodes. Type the same "ABC News E" into DuckDuckGo and the first result you get is "ABC News Epstein".

Which one do you think is the most important out of the searches at this point in time? Yeah some of these tech companies have way too much power and influence if they can suppress large news stories based on search results alone. Companies like DuckDuckGo won't ever reach the prominence of Google, but get enough competition started via start-ups or former employees forming their own companies, and that would only mean good things for the tech industry as a whole, including the Bay Area.

And moving away from conservatives complaining to the topic of the thread
 

San Francisco Has Second-Highest Tech Jobs Growth

Lisa Brown
GlobeSt.com
November 13, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO—A new CBRE report ranks San Francisco the fastest-growing tech market with overall rent growth of 17.5% between second quarters 2017 and 2019.
...
San Francisco also had the second highest high-tech employment growth rate (behind only Vancouver) with 24.7% during 2017 and 2018, accounting for 84.7% of all new office jobs. Since the current expansion started in 2010, the tech industry in San Francisco has more than quadrupled in size to 100,644 tech jobs as of year-end 2018. This growth has fueled the absorption of 15 million square feet of office space, which reduced the vacancy rate to 3.6% and caused rents to spike by 180% to $86 per square foot annually, the highest in North America.

“Access to the largest and most innovative tech talent labor pool in North America has kept real estate demand high in San Francisco,” said Darin Bosch, senior managing director at CBRE. “Tech companies are thriving here even with the competitive labor and real estate markets driving operational costs higher. They see San Francisco as a natural lab and testing ground for new technologies.”

It's all very related. What you're seeing now with the tech industry is censorship based on views or what sponsors what you to see. Now other sides who feel their voices are being suppressed have started companies, or companies that were already started have grown exponentially when people tried finding alternatives. Competition breeds growth so this will only be good for the tech industry that SF/SV is the center of.

I think this might be the first time this has happened in the tech industry we know today. Before everyone kind of joined and used what was popular. Now people are seeking the alternatives to best fit their needs. I think what this could also mean is a rise in other tech centers across the country (Dallas, etc.).

I don't think we'll see a place become a tech center just because there is an alternative app rooted there. For instance, Snap was supposed to launch Los Angeles into this dominating tech hub, but that hasn't panned out so much.

However, I do think we're seeing tech take hold in regions that have unique industry knowledge. This has kind of happened in L.A. with the move to online streaming. We're also seeing it in Detroit with the auto industry's aggressive move into electric vehicles on one end and "mobility" on the other.

California, SF unemployment rates fall to record lows
Roland Li
sfchronicle.com
Oct.18, 2019

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/06/33/...ery_xlarge.jpg
San Francisco is at the center of California’s economic boom, which has brought the unemployment rate to a record low.Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle 2018

The unemployment rate in both California and San Francisco fell to a record low in September, the state announced Friday.

The state added 21,300 jobs in September and had an unemployment rate of 4%, down from 4.1% in September 2018. California — the fifth-largest economy in the world if it were a country — now is in the midst of its longest record jobs expansion, 115 months, surpassing the economic boom of the 1960s, according to the Employment Development Department.

San Francisco’s unemployment rate fell last month to a minuscule 1.8% from 2.1% from the prior September, the lowest number the city has ever recorded.

Despite fears of a recession amid an ongoing U.S.-China trade war and the stumbles of high-profile tech companies like Uber, there are no major signs that the local economy is cooling, said Christopher Thornberg, founder of Beacon Economics in Los Angeles.

“Tales of this expansion’s demise are highly exaggerated. We don’t see any end to it,” Thornberg said.

:cheers:

This state is kickin' a--.

Ironically despite being lambasted by the right, California is firing on all cylinders on the one marker Conservatives typically worship the most (economic growth/capitalism!).

“Tales of this expansion’s demise are highly exaggerated."


"We don’t see any end to it,” Thornberg said.


:cheers::cheers::cheers:

We know it's been exaggerated. That's why it's annoying to read the anti-California nonsense.
As reported before, Texas's job growth is barely higher than "struggling" California in the last friggin' 9 years.

Actually, that's the very reason that California is lambasted by the right. It's very predictable. California's success simply does not fit their ideological narrative. How can a progressive, diverse and multicultural place like California be the world capitol of innovation and wealth creation? That's impossible! They can't wrap their minds around it.

And of course the fact that the most culturally backwards, economically depressed and environmentally degraded states are deep red states, only adds insult to injury.

Careful, you might be called "elitist" with those comments. They have no problem calling out California, but whatever.


Yea, conseratives should honestly think about turning their red states around before taking jabs at Calfornia's problems. There are VERY SERIOUS problems in those states, but I won't name them all. Most people know what those things are.

The high job growth rates are a huge reason why more housing should be available. I'm not sure why under this level of prosperity a good amount of people should be either homeless or cramped in a overpriced apartment. The success is great, but the current response to it is meh.

It's precisely because of their epic hypocrisy that we need not let them have it both ways going forward. Either a booming economy is to be acknowledged by all as an objectively good thing, indicative of the "goodness" of a state's economic conditions and policies, or it is not.

And if a booming economy is not to be acknowledged by all as an objectively good thing, indicative of the "goodness" of a state's economic conditions and policies, then why should we care what anti-California trolls think about our economic conditions and policies when a slowdown eventually comes, since it's all subjective and cherry-picked to only make the state look bad? No, those who constantly move the goalposts in order to relentlessly paint California in a negative light are operating in bad faith, and trolls operating in bad faith should be treated accordingly.

I'm taking that with a grain of salt, as I do all predictions, because our economy has always been cyclical and is likely to slow down regularly between booms. That said, I intentionally included that quote because--all rational skepticism aside--this guy is an expert on the topic of San Francisco's economy in a way none of this forum's right-wing kulturkampf trolls will ever be.

California's economy is doing great if you measure things in terms of GDP and growth rates but people are leaving in droves. Must be the combination of high levels of immigration with NIMBYism.

^^^ To be honest, I’m not sure what you stated was a new point. It’s already apparent that the economy is booming. I think the problem lies in channeling the new wealth with additional folks without having to see increased income disparity and homelessness.

Snap did help launch LA into a tech hub. The tech industry is now booming in LA thanks to Snap, with every FAANG company presence there, thus all the complaints about Playa Vista gentrification. It didn’t launch LA into an IPO hub, though. The litmus test is which cities are paying tech bros 120K at minimum. That wasn’t common in LA before SNAP.

I don’t see how San Francisco gets credit for the increase of tech jobs on the Peninsula, which seems like natural overflow from Silicon Valley. The tech scene is contiguous from Menlo Park, north and south. It stops north of Burlingame until you get to South SF, and then you start seeing a lot of biotech again. From that point, I’d say that’s where SF tech starts. The rest of the Peninsula is more a part of the South Bay ecosystem, just by feel and sensibility.


Also, the talk of the "exodus" of tech companies doesn’t allude to the loss of dominance to me. It alludes to an increasing dominance of Silicon Valley. When you have 2nd, 3rd, 10th expansions, that’s influence reaching further out and growing, not leaving.

Red states think their Republicanness make their cities work until it becomes overpopulated. Then it’s the same problems and NIMBY solutions developed in California. NIMBYism knows no party.

I read someone taking the opinion that the bay area is no longer a place people move to and put down roots, but is establishing itself as the world’s biggest training base or university-like city where people come for a certain number of years and gain experience and reputation and eventually graduate making way for a new incoming class of workers. And that will become the nature of the bay area.

To me it seems like Snap just coincided with the natural overflow of tech into other parts of the country (and world).