They care even less if you don't live in California. I get recruiter emails about once a week (usually from/for some HTML Canvas thing) and all it takes to scare them away is to mention that I don't plan on leaving New Hampshire in the near future.
If its a war for talent, even niche stuff like Canvas, they're not trying all too hard.
True. You'd think that rather than spending all that money on paying ever-increasing salaries to a small pool of people that just keep getting poached from one company to another, they'd take a few million and open a dev center in, say, Alabama. Would likely get a much better ROI, and a longer-term strategic benefit over competition. But alas, it's apparently smarter to go to Tel Aviv to find a CTO and move him to New York than it is to look in Nashville or Houston for someone with CTO skills.
As a person who worked at a company that has expanded to a couple other cities, the problem is bringing the culture of the company to the satellite office and ensuring that such an office has enough of talent pool to make that investment. Having top leaders willing to move from a place like the Bay Area to smaller towns to help the transition is not always that easy.
The thing that works, in my experience, is where employees/founders have pre-existing personal ties to other areas (e.g. I'll recruit personally at MIT for my startup, and probably up in Seattle, and possibly via some connections in Cambridge, Berlin, and Montreal); it's a lot easier to bridge the cultural issues that way. Then, ideally, relocate to where the startup is based (i.e. Mountain View, Ground Zero), but allowing wfh/remote or setting up an office if there happens to be a key person or a group of people there.
Certainly it's not easy, but aren't most of these companies all about "putting in the hard work" and whatever other cliches you can come up with? "We're gonna change the world!" (as long as I don't have to change my ZIP code, or get a different cell phone provider, and as long as you uproot your entire family, move across the country and come work for my fifth startup).
I totally understand it's not an easy thing to do, but many things in life that are worth doing aren't easy.
Especially considering the payroll costs would be much lower in Alabama. Never understood the reasoning behind everybody wanting to be located in the most expensive places in the country. Internet connections are available in the South you know.
Money aside, it is much easier to get someone from the south to move to the coasts than to get someone from the coasts to move to the south. This is especially true if you are not white, male, straight, and protestant. While I'm sure there are some awesome black lesbian atheists in Birmingham, those of us who are from outside the area are quite wary to move there.
My home (Arizona) has a similar reputation now with the SB1070 flap, and make no mistake, it has hurt recruiting.
Hell, I'm white, male, straight (ok, and an atheist), and I wouldn't want to move to the South...
But face it, there are significant "network-like-effects" in places like Silicon Valley. The talent (and money) tends to congregate. Not saying there's no talent, or strictly lesser talent elsewhere, but you can't argue with reality.
I think it's a chicken/egg problem. Everyone goes to these hubs because that's where the jobs are. Jobs stay there because that's where everyone is.
My parents were enticed by a job offer to move out of the SF bay area. The offer was better money, and all moving expenses paid, but they ultimately declined. Their reasoning was that for their type of jobs, the SF bay area was the best place to be unemployed. So they stayed.
Or perhaps you're a lemming who follows the pack? Not saying everyone who moves out there is, but judging someone's character by their ability to change geography in the same country isn't a great idea.
Right, exactly. I moved from NY to the Valley shortly after college, mainly because I was looking for something different, and the west coast interested me. Having a thriving tech scene was just a bonus. Now I live in SF because I love it here. If I really wanted to, I could be just as successful back east. I endure the high cost of living because I like the area, not because I'm driven or ambitious or something (which I am, sometimes... and sometimes not).
Perhaps, but I think there is a level of determination that makes people endure the hardships that come with living in very expensive cities. Often that is to grow their career.
If its a war for talent, even niche stuff like Canvas, they're not trying all too hard.