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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."
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?
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.
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.
Have you learned nothing from this technology? Centers are obsolete. It'll be a network.
Colorado is an interesting state, a weird amalgamation of red and blue that seems to do alright for itself. You might think its just a case of city and country being two opposites, but there are a lot of small towns there that kicked out Comcast in favor of municipal internet and there are plenty of weed lovers in the state that love their guns just as much.
I would think that Boulder would make a better high tech center, but Denver isn't a bad city either.
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.
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.
For that matter, why stop there? Canada is probably pretty good.
Just be sure to stop before you get to the North Pole. The pack ice won't support office buildings for much longer - global warming, you know...
Have you read my blog lately?
High taxes, business-strangling regulations, insane housing prices driven by land-use laws that strangle supply [battleswarmblog.com], and the future is further imperiled by unsustainable public pension debt [pensiontsunami.com] and rising labor costs due to the minimum wage hike.
Meh... I've been hearing that for years. Most of these criticisms come from the fact that California is a solid blue state with 54 electoral votes go to Hillary. If California was a solid red state with 54 electoral votes going to Trump, everyone in the right-wing echo chamber would be singing a different tune.
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
What kind of infrastructure would you need that makes a "center of high tech industry" sensible?
Employees at other companies to poach?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.