Atlanta native & (again) resident. Spent years working in Austin in the years around the .com boom.
Couple of thoughts:
- the tech startup scene is hurting for risk capital. Seed & Series A investors (primarily) come from capital generated at prior exits (e.g. Google millionaires seed the next round of startups, etc.). Atlanta has had some big exits, but not the kind that mint 100s of young millionaires. By contrast, Seattle has had two mega tech exits. Austin had Dell and a few .com hits as accelerants (and their money has had decades to spawn more companies). There are some exciting Atlanta startups that may exit to create the seeds for the next generation of companies.
(Honestly, the aspiring early-stage VCs could do a lot worse than backing companies in the Atlanta area now. Less competition to get in on deals, equity likely cheaper, and the pandemic means that later-stage investors are considering doing deals outside of northern California.)
> Most software dev job postings (as of May 2018) have SPECIFIC tech stack requirements.
Likely an artifact of the diversified economy here. The non-tech Fortune 500s HQ'd in the area hire a lot of tech people. That's going to skew how recruiters operate. For the most part, this is not a factor in the tech metros. Also, I would push back on the premise in general. I have not seen very many job postings of the form "backend dev needed, any stack and database experience are okay." That would seem to be the outlier.
> The salaries offered were still very low compared to comparable COL locations like Austin
Austin is notably more expensive than Atlanta.
> No major FAANG presence to put upward pressure on local developer wages
Obviously TFA is about adding new tech presence to the area. But Microsoft building its East Coast HQ in Atlanta is also a big deal. Anecdotally, I have also seen compensation inflation among F500 companies in the area.
Couple of thoughts:
- the tech startup scene is hurting for risk capital. Seed & Series A investors (primarily) come from capital generated at prior exits (e.g. Google millionaires seed the next round of startups, etc.). Atlanta has had some big exits, but not the kind that mint 100s of young millionaires. By contrast, Seattle has had two mega tech exits. Austin had Dell and a few .com hits as accelerants (and their money has had decades to spawn more companies). There are some exciting Atlanta startups that may exit to create the seeds for the next generation of companies.
(Honestly, the aspiring early-stage VCs could do a lot worse than backing companies in the Atlanta area now. Less competition to get in on deals, equity likely cheaper, and the pandemic means that later-stage investors are considering doing deals outside of northern California.)
> Most software dev job postings (as of May 2018) have SPECIFIC tech stack requirements.
Likely an artifact of the diversified economy here. The non-tech Fortune 500s HQ'd in the area hire a lot of tech people. That's going to skew how recruiters operate. For the most part, this is not a factor in the tech metros. Also, I would push back on the premise in general. I have not seen very many job postings of the form "backend dev needed, any stack and database experience are okay." That would seem to be the outlier.
> The salaries offered were still very low compared to comparable COL locations like Austin
Austin is notably more expensive than Atlanta.
> No major FAANG presence to put upward pressure on local developer wages
Obviously TFA is about adding new tech presence to the area. But Microsoft building its East Coast HQ in Atlanta is also a big deal. Anecdotally, I have also seen compensation inflation among F500 companies in the area.
Things are changing.