Study Says Massachusetts Best State For Technology

Anonymous Coward writes "The Milken Institute (site is cnn/msnbc/wapo dotted it seems) has released a study claiming MA is the best state for technology while Texas has dropped to 26th. I'm curious on everyone's thoughts on this. It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space. I just don't see (in my job hunting) very many start-up or expansion in the states they list at the top. Lots more at Google News." Reader footh adds a link to a PDF of the results.

Comments

Bogus Survey

[RadicalBender]

Read it in the paper this morning. "The index is a composite of indicators such as the growth of venture capital funding, number of new start-ups, research and development spending, percentage of workers in high-tech fields, number of technology companies and percentage of people with college degrees."

And as the owner of a venture-capital-less internet small business in Texas with no college degree, I find the survey a poor indicator of technology in a state - especially coming from a company that can't even keep their server online.

How you say? I fart in your general direction.

Austin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've lived in Austin my entire life. I've seen the town grow from peaceful and comfortable to rude and crowded.

You may THINK there is lots of room in Austin... but really, THINK AGAIN! The traffic here is AWFUL!!! I have an hour+ commute each day one-way (and it use to be 20 minutes before the big boom). The city is just not prepared to deal with all you folks from all-over-creation trying to come and live here because its some sort of "fairy-land-great-place-to-live." It USE to be. That's before everyone and their dog moved here.

Over here

[Otter]

The study (after a long download, I just have a PDF of page 50 so I'm going by the news stories) seems to deal with measured industry growth, not recommendations. If that's so, I can believe it. The growth in the Cambridge biotech/pharma companies has been phenomenal and other tech seems to be doing well, also. Elsewhere, I think there's been mostly new, unstable startups that got killed off in the tech collapse, with little to repopulate them.

As for living here -- I'm a New England native and can't stand the Boston area. Crowded, difficult to get around, insane taxes, the Big Dig and so, so expensive. I make 7x what I earned in grad school and still feel poorer now than I did then. I'd love to get a job in, say, north Route 128 that allowed me to live someplace cheaper/nicer without the insane commute, but if you're in a comfortable situation elsewhere, don't go thinking the grass is greener on this side.

And don't get me started on that long-term capital gains worksheet...!

Re:Over here

[randyest]

Hmm, wouldn't that be "Ovah here"? Native indeed. :)

Seriously, 7ish years ago I moved from Florida to New England (Natick, a small town about 15-20min East of Boston, just past 128), and I work for NEC Electronics America 5 minutes away in Framingham. I love it. I like going to Boston to eat and have fun (though increasingly there's more and more to do in Metrowest), and I enjoy the proximity to NYC and pretty good skiing (got a nice ski house in Madison, NH). But, I can imagine living in Boston itself would suck badly.

Given that (1) I have no commute and (2) I just bought a nice house on a half-acre in one of the safest towns in the country for under $400k, I may be biased, but noting that (3) sales tax is only 5% like the state income tax, (4) there's none of either 30 min away in New Hampshire where the nice outlets and ultra-cheap liquor stores are, and (5) I still get 3-5 calls from local recruiters with good, relevant, local job opportunities each week, I'd say the grass is pretty damn green. That may be because I'm an ASIC designer with lots of physical-implentation experience (not an RTL-coder) and that particular field doesn't seem to have suffered much during the dot-bomb, but I am being admittedly anecdotal here, so YMMV.

I've lived and worked in CA (San Jose and Santa Clara) before, and IMHO the quality of life (and work opportunities) there leaves much to be desired in comparison. Crime. Illegal immigration. Taxes! (They only call it Taxachussetts because Taxifornia sounds weird).

Hmm, come to think of it -- nevermind, it sucks -- don't come here, you slacksadaisacal wild-eyed wrong-coasters will only trample the fine grass in our quaint little silicon village :)

San Jose horror stories

[GPLDAN]

I go to San Jose, more often than I care to. I talk to people who work there, and the horror stories they tell. Many of the H1B types I meet are "hot-bunking", 7-9 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment. Sending as much cash as they can back home. Certain valley companies engage in a kind of white collar slave labor, IMO.

For other Americans, who actually want to make a living wage, and go home to a family, you need to think out of the box. If you have a clean record, and are US born, look at the Aerospace industry. Look at Florida. I met an entire group of high level EE/CS types who were relocating to Alaska to work on a missle defense program and one other had a job with the State of Alaska.

Erroneous assumptions...

[Ironica]

It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space.

The low cost of living argument doesn't help anyone in the US anymore. If a company is interested in relocating some of its jobs (like call centers) to somewhere with a low cost of living, they have *no* motivation to choose somewhere inside the US. They can do much, much better by relocating overseas.

On another note, I saw Ross DeVol (cited in the article) speak at a panel on Southern California's Regional Economy at UCLA last fall. He had some interesting stuff to say/show about the differences between Southern California and the rest. The issue of importing well-educated labor came up then, too... and he wasn't the only one who brought it up. California is going to keep falling behind as long as we keep raiding our school systems for money :-/. (Last year, Governor Davis raised UC fees by 30%, and this year Governor Schwarzenegger is raising graduate UC fees by 40%. For the professional [law, med, business] schools, there's almost no difference between UC and private institutions... except that the privates tend to be better at getting you scholarships. The UC system used to do a great job at keeping our best and brightest in the state, as well as attracting those from far and wide... but we're seriously losing that edge.)