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Is Denver The Next High-Tech Center? (newyorker.com)
An anonymous reader write: "The spread of the tech industry outside Silicon Valley has helped make Denver the fastest-growing large city in the U.S.," reports the New Yorker, saying it's now growing faster than Austin and Seattle, becoming one of America's 20 most populous cities. Cost-conscious investors and tech executives now are opening offices in cheaper "secondary cities" outside of Silicon Valley, like Salt Lake City, and the good universities near Denver mean a well-educated workforce, coupled with a low cost of living.
"Though the city isn't the headquarters for any big tech companies -- like Dell in the Austin area or Microsoft and Amazon in Seattle -- several of them, including IBM and Oracle, have offices here. The presence of those offices, and of the universities, has also helped create a vibrant startup scene: people get educated here or come here for jobs, and then they graduate or leave those jobs and become entrepreneurs." Last year venture capitalists invested $800 million in Demver's tech, energy, food, and marijuana companies, and in 2014 Oracle paid over a billion dollars to acquire Denver-based Datalogix.
Anyone else live in a burgeoning "secondary" tech city? Scott McNealy said he co-founded his data-analysis startup in Denver because in California "The prices of everything have skyrocketed. The regulations. The pension deficit. The traffic. It's just not a fun place to go start."
"Though the city isn't the headquarters for any big tech companies -- like Dell in the Austin area or Microsoft and Amazon in Seattle -- several of them, including IBM and Oracle, have offices here. The presence of those offices, and of the universities, has also helped create a vibrant startup scene: people get educated here or come here for jobs, and then they graduate or leave those jobs and become entrepreneurs." Last year venture capitalists invested $800 million in Demver's tech, energy, food, and marijuana companies, and in 2014 Oracle paid over a billion dollars to acquire Denver-based Datalogix.
Anyone else live in a burgeoning "secondary" tech city? Scott McNealy said he co-founded his data-analysis startup in Denver because in California "The prices of everything have skyrocketed. The regulations. The pension deficit. The traffic. It's just not a fun place to go start."
After the steel mills closed down they reinvented the city around banking, healthcare, and high tech. They pulled it off too, it's a nice city with a strong economy now.
In a rare exception to Betteridge's Law of Headlines... Yes.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
North Dakota? They have lots of space, cheap housing now that the oil workers have moved out, and it's cold enough that cooling your data center involves opening windows. For that matter, why stop there? Canada is probably pretty good.
Cleaner air and water.
I spent a lot of time in SLC last year. Yes there is booming high tech corridor all along the Wasatch front. Yes there is lots of outdoor activities to do within a very short distance Yes the weather isn't half bad with sunshine almost all of the year (suck on that Pittsburgh!). Places like Pluralsight have their headquarters there.
The downsides being that they are starting to have large issues with traffic (the tech corridor is literally a 40 mile linear expanse and everyone has to travel along the same one freeway). The political and religious environment can be constrictive compared to a lot of other states EG any alcohol over 3.5% can only be bought in state run shops that have very restrictive hours. The Mormon church has a huge influence on politics behind the scenes. But that is being offset by the influx of outsiders EG as indicated by the consumption of alcohol doubling in the last 10 years, and Salt Lake City itself just (last year) elected an openly gay mayor.
Probably what was the most disturbing for me was that I have never seen more homeless people in my life at one time. This could be because SLC is a "Sanctuary city", but I am not convinced of that.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Aside: When I went to Reykjavik all the most annoying tourists were from Denver.
I went on a meandering road trip last summer. I really liked Denver, but once I started looking at real estate and rent prices it lost the appeal. I talked to a lot of locals who are having to move farther out and take on roommates.
And the thing is, after driving through most of the country, it's all the same. Same stores, same microbreweries, same suburbs. I wanted to find a place to get excited about but it's all the same with different marketing...
Denver is not that cheap, and the price/enjoyment ratio is approaching the point where you are better off in a bigger real city or going really, really cheap in the Midwest.
I don't know that it is high tech jobs, or legal pot, but odd things are definitely happening in Denver. We just refinanced our house after less than two years, and the value shot up by almost $100k. Thankfully we bought when we did, but I don't know how my kids will afford to live here in the future. The townhomes they are building a block away will go from $350-$650k! Denver proper is mostly landlocked so prices will continue to rise.
Traffic is awful and getting worse. Getting up to the mountains to play on the weekend has become a real chore. We leave for skiing at 5:30am to beat the traffic up I70. Driving in or out of the city during rush hour is completely awful.
The bad traffic has brought the return of toll roads on most of the regional highways that weren't already tolled. Even the interstates have or are getting toll/express lanes now. Be prepared to pay up for your commute.
One bright spot - after decades of wrangling, our light rail network is finally being expanded out to serve much more of the metro area. Even the cheaper suburbs will have rail access to downtown in a couple of years. (Not Boulder, they hate you, sorry).
Please bring your hipster programmer selves here so I can continue to have someone local to work for and keep feeding my 401k until retirement. Then I can sell my house for a small fortune and move out of this crazy town.
Yours Truly, Generation X.
Is becoming California 2.0- especially Colorado.
When people start flooding into your state from California, it sounds great, right? They're coming for the jobs, the good life you have, the environment that allows businesses to exist without choking the life out of them. But what happens next?
They start complaining that things aren't like they were in California. And then they start making changes. Like all new arrivals, they don't give a shit about you've been doing things, they're going to be doing it their way from now on. And that means the California way. It's what they were fleeing in the first place, but they plan to re-implement it in your home. These people vote, too. Once they outnumber your city's people, what are you going to do?
This is what happened to my beloved Austin. When I left, I think the population was booming over 500,000 and it was already terrible. Today? Something like 1.2 million. Sad, my city will never be the place it was when I lived there.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
... before the Republicans gutted the University system and added some good ol' fashioned legalized discrimination. Yee haw!!
I don't respond to AC's.
The tech epicenter of the future won't really exist like it did during the .com era. It's has been getting more distributed and virtual. There will be small teams working around the world doing little parts of big projects. China has a place in new way of doing tech if they can somehow keep workers from leaving.
One of the things that transformed Silicon Valley into a high tech center was (hard to believe now) cheap land to put office parks up in. By the time that changed, the absurd cost of office space and housing was offset by economies of scale.
From a planning standpoint Denver feels like a lot like San Jose -- plenty of sprawl. In fact in some ways it's better -- not being hemmed in by mountains, it's got unlimited room for a tech region to grow eastward. It's got the Colorado School of Mines, which is a well-regarded engineering institution. The main long-term limitation I see is water. That's going to severely hamper growth eventually.
But in the short term, why not Denver? A one room apartment in Denver will set you back a little shy of $1200; that seems like a lot in most parts of the country, but anywhere near San Jose you'd pay twice as much. And it has a hub airport -- it's a huge plus to be able to fly direct from just about anywhere, and being in the eastern part of the west means it's not a long flight from anywhere in the US. It's four hours to or from New York, and it's close enough to the Bay Area to fly out and back in a day for a meeting. Flying around the country from Boston I used to envy my colleagues from Chicago who had cheap direct flights to everywhere.
Of course you could make similar arguments for Saint Louis. It's reputation as kind of a racist, third-world enclave doesn't make it attractive for young engineers to relocate, but a one bedroom apartment cost $730. The difference between that and San Jose works out to about $20,000 over the course of a year in your pocket. And of course there's WUSTL, which is very well regarded tech school (you've probably downloaded Linux from one of their mirrors). If you could figure out a way to rebrand Saint Louis as a cool place to live, then it'd have potential.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Have you learned nothing from this technology? Centers are obsolete. It'll be a network.
A recent jump in real estate values might be a reason why the answer it "No".
Why would a company want to locate in a place where they'll have to pay their workers more just to live?
You are welcome on my lawn.
It already is. Has been for a little while now.
I think a lot of companies are realizing they don't really have to be in San Francisco or Silicon Valley anymore. When an area's cost of living gets too high, any company will try to move non-essential operations somewhere else. I live in metro NYC, so this is a really common thing here too. The only industries that are really rooted in New York City anymore are the publishers, fashion, entertainment to some extent and US investment banks. Even those companies have moved their back offices to Iowa, or Atlanta, or even India. Denver's close enough to California for the SV crowd to travel there quickly and still exert some control.
It kind of sucks because if you're not an executive of one of these companies, you're sometimes relegated to a secondary city and the primary city's economy is disproportionately wealthy. No one would stick a call center in the middle of Silicon Valley for example, but you need a mix of jobs and incomes to make a healthy economy and not create a reality distortion bubble. I'm not surprised that secondary citiies' popularity is increasing -- no one thinks the California real estate situation is reasonable. Even here in NY, the second most insane real estate market in the US, it looks ridiculous. Who would pay $1 million or more for a tiny house in a town requiring a 2 hour commiute to work?
The other thing I've noticed living in a primary city is that it's always been en vogue for people and businesses complaining about the high taxes to move to a low or no income tax state. in the 90s it was Atlanta, the 2000s it was North Carolina, and the 2010s seem to be Florida and Texas for where most NY "tax expats" move. Most people I've talked to with families who've taken the deal love living in a huge house and paying almost nothing in taxes, but complain bitterly about the lack of quality schools and low levels of government service. It's funny how quality schools and tax rates correlate...in some states you really do get what you paid for.
High taxes, business-strangling regulations, insane housing prices driven by land-use laws that strangle supply, and the future is further imperiled by unsustainable public pension debt and rising labor costs due to the minimum wage hike.
So I'm sure Denver is benefiting from the exodus of high tech jobs, just like Austin, Durham, DFW, etc.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Anyone else live in a burgeoning "secondary" tech city?
San Jose. They're tearing down two-story buildings to put up four-story buildings and provide more space. Especially since Apple is developing 4.15 million square feet over the next 15 years in North San Jose.
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Apple-gets-green-light-for-massive-San-Jose-6786465.php
Because salary is only the company half of the equation. The worker half is "Do I want to live there?"
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I don't partake, but I would imagine legal pot and the liberal attitude that comes along with it might attract the technology crowd.
That would be an interesting study to do in a few years in places like Colorado and Washington...see how much the pot business added to the local economy and contrast it with any negatives. The only negatives I've heard of so far are more impaired driving.
A non-corrupt government may suck for you, but it's pretty awesome if you've got a business and you own the local politicians. Everybody else is actually paying the correct taxes and complying with environmental regulations and labor laws, as you're laughing all the way to the bank.
Before you idealize Tibet because you saw a movie with Brad Pitt, remember that it was a serious and murderous Theocracy. Tibetan officials routinely cut off people's hands for stealing food to survive. And, undisclosed to most, rape was frequently used to attack women. Buddhist in name and law, but definitely not an "enlightened" country even in the brief times that it existed independent from China.
The only negatives I've heard of so far are more impaired driving.
Or finding employees who can pass a pre-employment drug test.
That hurdle partly stems from the growing ubiquity of drug testing, at corporations with big human resources departments, in industries like trucking where testing is mandated by federal law for safety reasons, and increasingly at smaller companies. But data suggest employers' difficulties also reflect an increase in the use of drugs, especially marijuana — employers' main gripe — and also heroin and other opioid drugs much in the news.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/18/business/hiring-hurdle-finding-workers-who-can-pass-a-drug-test.html
Usually we think of places like Detroit or Flint as victims of business growth. But apparently the troubles centering around San Francisco are proof that any kind of business or industrial growth ruins the area in which it occurs. Miami Florida is another great example. The more business Miami attracted the worse it became as a place to live. Business attracts potential employees and cities or regions swell. It never seems to end well.
I think the "low cost of living" is relative to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. The author of this article specifically left San Francisco, which seems to me to be the absolute worst in terms of cost of living.
My cousin lives in Denver. He's been trying to buy a condo. He's been noticing that things go for asking price, or above. He walked away from a condo deal, at asking, because of a totally messed up Home Owner's Association. He'll have to keep looking, but he's feeling a lot of pressure to move quickly due to increasing prices.
I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I bought some apartments while in graduate school, working as an intern. Granted, the bank that gave me a loan was shut down for giving too many irresponsible people loans, but I haven't had any problems. My point is, that in a place like Albuquerque, with a very good university and national labs close by, the cost of living is insanely low compared to basically anyplace except rural America, or post-apocalyptic wastelands like Detroit. People that work relatively low-skilled jobs (waiters, waitresses) can buy houses and start families. The lack of existing infrastructure is a HUGE opportunity for people building companies.
There's 2 things always required to become a 'tech hub', neither of which Denver has. First is money - and the article points out that Denver has no corporate HQ's. Second, is a world class education community that feeds technology and is benefactored by the first requirement (money) . Unless there's a tech school University of Denver that's on the same caliber as CIT or UW, this is just smoke
But Scott's a visionary now?
He put a motherboard inside a pizza box that sits underneath the monitor. That was pretty visionary in the days of beige boxes that sat on the floor.
What kind of infrastructure would you need that makes a "center of high tech industry" sensible?
Employees at other companies to poach?
Fair enough. But the cost of housing is one important factor in, "Do I want to live there?" As someone who's lived in places that have very high cost of living, it's nice for a while, but it starts to weigh you down after a while. Paying half your salary just to have a roof over your head can make it feel like you're getting nowhere. And there are a lot of nice places to live with lower cost of living.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Employees in general. It doesn't have to be poaching, people are more likely to move to a place that has a whole bunch of options for their industry.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
"A recent jump in real estate values might be a reason why the answer it "No"."
But if you want to be a tech entrepreneur you can still trade your modest home in Silicon Valley for a building in Denver without selling your soul on Sand Hills Road. This really helps when you're a startup.
In the Bay Area, the anti-technology left hates geeks. They will smash up your company pool bus and prevent your people from finding housing.
In Denver, these people are legally stoned and will stay out of your way.
And there are a lot of nice places to live with lower cost of living.
The author of the article actually lives in Fort Collins, not Denver, so she'd probably agree.
Have you read my blog lately?
Aw, how cute, creimer seems to think everyone in the tech industry is accepting government contracts that require drug testing.
If you read the article that I've link to, your comment would have been more informed rather than cute and stupid. I had pre-employment drug tests for two PC refresh jobs in the private sector, one at a Fortune 500 company and the other at a local hospital. For my current government IT job, I wasn't even required to take a drug test.
The company I work for has a small office (~35 people) in Denver. The entire office is dedicated to data analytics and does a lot of work with massive structured and unstructured data sets.
The company also has a smaller office in Boulder, but from what I understand that office is focused primarily on the energy market.
The OP's observation is really behind the times.
I moved to the Denver area 28+ years ago. Since I got here, the state's population has gone from 3.3M to 5.5M, almost all in the Front Range urban corridor. Much of that growth has been driven by tech, it's just been quiet. The state is consistently in the top several for VC money spent. There's also a long history of Colorado companies reaching a certain size and then being acquired by the giant coastal firms.
What does the USA have to offer anymore?
A productive and cooperative workforce. I lived and worked in China for several years. They spend way more time on backstabbing and petty office politics. Organizational loyalty is rare. Since the company doesn't trust the workers, information and decisions are compartmentalized, which degrades productivity even more.
If you need someone to turn a wrench on an assembly line, China is great. If you need innovation and teamwork, America is a much better choice. Even Chinese companies like Baidu have their research division in California.
Cleaner air and water.
Go spend a winter in Denver, when the inversion traps the air and brown smog envelops the city. It is not as bad as Beijing, but still one of the worst cities in America for air quality. The summer is nice.
And why'd I want to put myself where the competition is?
Of course it depends what you're after. Generally, though, it mostly depends on what you offer and what you expect. For example, the security branch of the corporation I work for has been put into some godforsaken backwater area of our country, which does make hiring admittedly a bit harder, but then again you get a lot more bang out of your buck out here. I live in a huge 1000 ft apartment for about 600 bucks, my total living expenses are below 1500 a month and, bluntly, I live like a king.
1500 would downtown not even pay for a crappy 300 ft apartment and surviving on pasta.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
ASU Research is top notch. We have 8 months of beautiful weather (albeit 4 months of blistering hot). Taxes are cheap. 4 hours from Vegas. 5 hours from the beaches in San Diego/Los Angeles. 4 Hours from the beaches in Rocky Point, Mexico. You can still buy a house with a pool for about $100K. Roads are mostly brand new and clean. 4 professional sports teams with a pretty lively fan base (Diamondbacks, Cardinals, Suns, and Coyotes). Sure, we don't have the hipster culture like Austin or San Francisco, but if you're into making money and want to live in a nice place and not live paycheck to paycheck, Phoenix area is awesome.
Yeah well it's all fun and games until they win the civil war and declare themselves the capital. Next thing you know they will be breaking us into districts and making our teenagers fight to the death in tournaments that are just rip-offs of Battle Royale. I see what you are doing over there Denver!
This is a hilarious comment. I've lived in a number of big cities (New York, London, Buenos Aires, etc) and Denver strikes me as being remarkably safe for a city of its size. Sure, in Colorado a lot of people smoke marijuana but, I don't see how that's even vaguely an issue. I'm a business owner and I'd hire a heavy marijuana user without hesitation but I'd gladly show an alcoholic the door. I've never seen a marijuana smoker show up to work still stoned or hungover. I've never seen a marijuana smoker get into fights or otherwise behave in an anti-social manner. Marijuana smokers live perfectly normal, very laid back lives. If anything, the legalization of marijuana in Colorado has reduced crime and helped bolster our schools via the insane influx of tax money.
Our experiment has succeeded. Take your outdated way of thinking and fuck off.
Cleaner air and water.
Go spend a winter in Denver, when the inversion traps the air and brown smog envelops the city. It is not as bad as Beijing, but still one of the worst cities in America for air quality. The summer is nice.
But there's less oxygen, so you car can't rust.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
If you want to live downtown Ft. Collins, then sure, the housing prices are crazy. If you're willing to live in Wellington or take a longer commute and live up in Livermore or Red Feather Lakes then the housing prices are hilariously low. The house that I own in Livermore would be a multi-million dollar "ranch" in most parts of the country. But, it was probably cheaper than your average downtown shitbox condo in the majority of US cities.
As I mentioned in another comment, out of date. 25 years ago the Brown Cloud was a real problem. Today, Denver doesn't even make the 25 worst cities in the country for overall air pollution. Having lived here while it happened, it's just absolutely amazing how much cleaner the air is now.
There is a balance to be reached between individual effort and a fair playing field that doesn't steal from the rich and give to the lazy.
.. how about a system where the rich aren't lazy and just exploiting customers and workers? How about a system where every worker get a fair share of the production?
The air is definitely cleaner. At least what there is of it.
I'm hoping that the next state to legalize pot will be Hawaii, so we can get the Thirty Meter Telescope built.
And laws that protect the right of those employees to change jobs.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Denver and Boulder each have have a Startup Week, mostly free seminars to encourage techies and businessmen to talk to each other. I've learned there are native VCs, incubators, coding academies, etc. plus there are major branches of all the major SV companies. Google is building a new 2000 person campus in Boulder. One of the more interesting theme sections this months Boulder Startup Week was you guessed it, the cannabis industry. With over a thousand licensesd businesses there is a need for tech support services. Especially withnthe labyrinth of state and federal laws. There is even a cannabis startup incubator called Boulder Canopy.
Denver is closed, thanks for inquiring. We'll let you know the next time there is an opening.
I can definitely see some people wanting to move to Colorado for the mountains/outdoors and the legal pot.
I wonder, though, if the legal pot part of it would inhibit established corporations from adding or expanding operations in Colorado. I'm sure a lot of them have the usual corporate employee conduct section that prohibits drug use and some may have the whole company wide drug testing regime.
Would these kinds of companies not want to open/expand offices in Colorado because it creates conflicts in their drug stance or they're worried that it will limit the pool of applicants?
I wonder if any are opportunistic enough or cynical enough to make exceptions in Colorado over this or maybe even smart enough to consider changing their entire corporate policy over it. I would think companies in Silicon Valley would already have dealt with this somewhat considering how easy it is to get a medical marijuana card there.