
How New York City Became Silicon Valley's Biggest Rival - Anon84
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/09/13/the-big-app--how-the-city-became-silicon-valley-s-biggest-rival
======
helen___keller
Network effects are a (nonlinear) function of network size. The bay area is
limited by local zoning ordinances and can't scale much larger. There's only
so many locals to displace and new construction happens at a snail's pace. New
York has a much larger scale already, so at this rate it's just a matter of
time until New York overcomes the network effects that the bay area currently
enjoys.

The factors that could keep the bay area dominant are:

(1) Rapid densification and development of the region pushing down prices and
attracting newcomers (not likely)

(2) A tech recession halts the expansion of the sector and potentially begins
a phase of consolidation

(3) A paradigm shift towards remote work

------
malandrew
What I want to know is how much this extends into real engineering jobs, not
just plumbing and web apps. I totally buy that ops and legal jobs in tech
companies for example are growing strongly in NYC, but when it comes to real
engineering problems I'm still only seeing a few teams at a few companies in
NYC.

Don't get me wrong. I want this to be true, because I want Silicon Valley to
lose its monopoly on the best engineering problems, but it's when the most
interesting problems move out of Silicon Valley will I buy the idea that it
has been dethroned.

~~~
mr-ron
What do you mean by real engineering problems? Is datadog for example real
engineering?

------
rongenre
Silicon Valley: Where??

~~~
eznoonze
I believe it is a valley somewhere far far away in the west.

