Cities on the Tech Frontier (places, bigger, metropolitan, Atlanta)

[whereiend]

https://www.burningglassinstitute.or...-tech-frontier

The methodology certainly has flaws but I like the way they attempted to look at the quality of the tech work as opposed to purely the quantity. There is a big difference between places like DFW or DC that have large volumes of legacy tech vs. the true tech hubs like the Bay Area and Seattle.

I'd be interested to see see the quality/quantity juxtaposition expressed more clearly. All I see for that is an unlabeled chart (though you can largely deduce which cities are which).

This is the ranking by the quality metric, not considering the size of the tech scene at all. Surprisingly low to me is NYC. Surprisingly high is maybe Miami?

Rankings by Share of Tech Workers with a Frontier Skill: Large MSAs (25k+ Tech Workers)
Rank Metropolitan Statistical Area Frontier Skill Holder Share
1 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 79.1%
2 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 78.9%
3 San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA 75.2%
4 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 64.6%
5 Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX 64.5%
6 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA 62.8%
7 New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 60.4%
8 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 60.4%
9 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 59.7%
10 Raleigh-Cary, NC 59.6%
11 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO 58.5%
12 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA 55.9%
13 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI 55.2%
14 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 55.1%
15 Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ 55.0%
16 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 54.8%
17 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 54.3%
18 Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI 53.8%
19 Kansas City, MO-KS 53.7%
20 Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD 53.2%
21 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 52.1%
22 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 51.9%
23 Pittsburgh, PA 51.7%
24 St. Louis, MO-IL 51.3%
25 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 51.3%
26 Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX 50.2%
27 Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA 50.0%

[TheTimidBlueBars]

Thanks for the post, interesting report.

Didn't see a clarification of what specific skills are being counted as "frontier skills". Is programming in general counted as a frontier skill, vs. say data entry or MS Office? Or are we talking about Rust, Golang, and Python over .NET, Java, and PHP?

[mjtinmemphis]

The ranking seems accurate.

California is still solid.

Nice to see both Missouri cities.

Miami and Atlanta ain't playing anymore.

Where is Charlotte?

[whereiend]

Originally Posted by TheTimidBlueBars

Thanks for the post, interesting report.

Didn't see a clarification of what specific skills are being counted as "frontier skills". Is programming in general counted as a frontier skill, vs. say data entry or MS Office? Or are we talking about Rust, Golang, and Python over .NET, Java, and PHP?

It's there towards the bottom of the report. It is more in line with the second thing you said. I definitely find some of the "frontier skills" a bit comical but I agree with what they are trying to measure and to my eye it seems like they found a decent proxy.

[mhays25]

I don't mind any time Seattle tops a list, but this doesn't sound like "quality." It treats the average space-filling employee the same as a star, as long as they're both in a newfangled field.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by mhays25

I don't mind any time Seattle tops a list, but this doesn't sound like "quality." It treats the average space-filling employee the same as a star, as long as they're both in a newfangled field.

yeah, this^

[whereiend]

Originally Posted by mhays25

I don't mind any time Seattle tops a list, but this doesn't sound like "quality." It treats the average space-filling employee the same as a star, as long as they're both in a newfangled field.

As I mentioned, it's just a proxy, but I think that it looks fairly accurate based on my experience working in the industry.

I do think the absolute size needs to be taken into account somewhat, though. I'd still have NYC above Boston, Austin, SD, and (arguably) Seattle, for example.

[mhays25]

In sheer numbers, sure. But what's NYC the leader of? Niches related to its core industries like finance and entertainment? Some lists also include office IT staffs, which NYC would have in the six figures. I'm not aware of any major tech HQs.

[whereiend]

Originally Posted by mhays25

In sheer numbers, sure. But what's NYC the leader of? Niches related to its core industries like finance and entertainment? Some lists also include office IT staffs, which NYC would have in the six figures. I'm not aware of any major tech HQs.

It's the biggest startup scene out of the Bay Area I think (maybe Boston is close), the biggest VC presence outside of the BA for sure, it's the leader in the HFT space and has other Fintech like Bloomberg, and it has a really big FAANG presence.

It's certainly more well-rounded than Seattle (which is heavily weighted to a handful of giant corps) but Amazon and MSFT is a tough 1-2 punch, so that one is close. I think NYC would clearly be a bigger hub than Boston and especially Austin/SD.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by whereiend

It's the biggest startup scene out of the Bay Area I think (maybe Boston is close), the biggest VC presence outside of the BA for sure, it's the leader in the HFT space and has other Fintech like Bloomberg, and it has a really big FAANG presence.

It's certainly more well-rounded than Seattle (which is heavily weighted to a handful of giant corps) but Amazon and MSFT is a tough 1-2 punch, so that one is close. I think NYC would clearly be a bigger hub than Boston and especially Austin/SD.

NYC and Boston are typically similar size when ranking startups. As Boston shifted to biotech, a lot of the investment is big pharma so it doesn’t count. NYC is probably consistently big-her for VC investment. The Bay Area is ridiculously bigger. It’s always at least 10x more venture capital.