

The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston’s Route 128 In The Dust - wave
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-why-silicon-valley-left-bostons-route-128-in-the-dust/

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yardie
How did the author completely leave out the difference in employment laws.
California: you're free to go work for anyone you want. Mass.: you're free to
work for anyone, except our competitors or anyone we think might be a
competitor, read your contract dummy.

If you work in a specific field, would you really want to be in the state that
enforces clauses in work contracts that restricts your mobility. Or the one
that sees work as every man has a right to eat. Most likely, the people
looking to hire you are your employers rival.

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ynniv
Does anyone really care about non-competes? Spend a winter in the Boston area
and you'll find a simpler reason that people prefer the valley. I doubt that
life in New England has ever been described as "easy". Given a choice between
two otherwise equivalent locations, climate has a huge impact. Imagine the
same decision when the easier climate is already seen as the better choice.

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pg
_it wasn’t so long ago that Silicon Valley was considered a poor cousin of
Boston’s tech center_

This was never true. It's true that the Valley has pulled further ahead of
Route 128, but it was always the leader.

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fpgeek
Growing up in MA as a DEC child, I'll admit my perspective is biased... but
when I grew up when DEC was the #2 computer company in the world. And they
were far from the only Route 128 powerhouse. I'm not saying the Valley doesn't
have its own powerful history, but think about this: In its heyday, Route 128
was so big that, decades later, the _rubble_ from what is left is still the #2
tech center in the US and the world.

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wglb
No question, but was it ever really startup-heavy?

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fpgeek
Well, back in the day DEC was an MIT startup, wasn't it? And these days there
are a lot of ex-DEC, ex-Data General, etc. startups. That being said, I guess
my upbringing is coming through - I care more about tech-heavy than startup-
heavy.

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fpgeek
What's different now is that there are plenty of people in MA (like MassTLC)
that are now actively trying to turn things in a better direction (as opposed
to the 80s and 90s complacency). I'm hopeful something good will come out of
that (even if it ends up being as small as catching up to California on non-
competes).

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ynniv
This post shallowly re-iterates "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition
in Silicon Valley and Route 128" (1994
<http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SAXREG.html>), while praising the Valley's
success.

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dws
There's no snow to shovel in Silicon Valley. Does that matter? Hell, yeah.

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BearOfNH
128 benefited mightily from Tip O'Neill when he was speaker of the house. Much
of this coincided with the Reagan defense build-up. O'Neill made sure his
state got more than its share of those dollars.

This also held true, to a lesser extent, for the late Ted Kennedy. But now
that Tip and Ted are both gone the 128 area has had to compete on its own.
Hence Si valley's growing lead.

To some extent it's a matter of following the money.

