The reports of the death of Silicon Valley are highly exaggerated.
I am one of those rare individuals in tech who was born in Silicon Valley and have lived here continuously, except for my college years spent in Illinois and Europe.
During my childhood, Silicon Valley was mostly farmland. It was known for its cherry, apricot, pear and peach orchards and the dozens of fruit packing and canning plants that processed these fruits for major brands to sell around the world.
To get to grammar school, I cut through a cherry orchard to go to my classes each morning. On the way home I would often take a detour through an apricot orchard on the other side of my elementary school.
It wasn't until I got to high school that Silicon Valley began the transformation from an agricultural center to one that has become the technology center of the world it is today.
Being a native of Silicon Valley and a chronicler of tech, I have often been asked about our region's role in developing tech-based companies and the culture that permeates our area's lifestyles. I have also had to respond at various times to stories about the impending death of Silicon Valley.
The most recent stories suggesting Silicon Valley is dying have been tied to multiple reports that people are fleeing Silicon Valley in droves for various reasons.
But it’s easy to forget that during the last 20 years, a significant number of transplants left their roots to come to Silicon Valley. This accelerated during the DotCom boom and reached its peak over the last ten years as tech has expanded to impact all things going digital today.
I understand the viewpoint of those who left their roots to come to the valley, and how for many adapting to the drastically different culture has been a challenge. For those who left their roots, I understand the desire to return to family, friends, and other elements of life, and for many, the COVID-19 pandemic and remote work situation allows for that to happen. But anyone proclaiming the death of Silicon Valley or that the total exodus is inevitable, is missing the bigger picture.
The rapid growth of digital transformation that the COVID-19 pandemic forced on all businesses has now presented a real option for people to leave the Bay Area and go back to their roots while keeping their jobs. I think it is great that those who don’t want to remain in the Bay Area have the option to go elsewhere. While it is true, and I know many who have decided to leave the Bay Area, the exodus is not quite as large as some would make it seem.
Constant evidence, including this from USPS, shows most are leaving the city (San Francisco) for other Bay Area counties. From the wide network I have in the Bay Area, I’ve heard vastly more stories of people moving from the SF area to counties north and south, than I have people leaving California.
Indeed, in my neighborhood, three homes around me were bought recently by SF transplants and they were all tech employees seeking larger homes and the valley's temperate climate that averages between 60-80 degrees all year.
While I am all in favor of other “silicon valleys” showing up in more places, I also recognize how hard that is due to the culture that has developed in the Bay Area, which goes back to WW2, and radar research coming from universities of Stanford, Berkeley, and other local institutions.
If you don’t live or haven’t lived in the Bay Area and worked in tech, it is difficult to grasp the culture here, but it is unlike any other tech/startup/business vibe of any other location I have spent time in, which includes hubs like Seattle, Austin, New York, San Diego, etc.
If you have been to LA or felt the vibe of LA culture, you know how the predominant conversation there is entertainment. Similar in NY how its focus is on finance, or in the D.C area how it's politics. The dominant conversation in the Bay Area is tech. In the same way, another Hollywood has not shown up in the US, or another political hub like D.C., or another finance hub like NY. It’s hard to see how another true Silicon Valley emerges elsewhere.
The only other area that even comes close to replicating the Valley's culture is in Austin, TX which has become another important tech area too, but it does not produce the number of start-ups with VC backing that is prevalent in Silicon Valley.
In all those examples, an ecosystem has become ingrained. Capital, talent, experience, ambition, and more exist in massive quantities centralized to those regions. In all the examples I’ve given, it took decades, and sometimes even longer, to build the ecosystem which is entrenched to the expertise of those regions. And that is why those regions are attractive to people who want to get into the field. If you want to get into entertainment, you go to LA. If you want to get into politics, you head to D.C, and generally, if you want to get into finance, you go to NY. And, if you want to get into tech, you go to the Silicon Valley.
Another indicator that Silicon Valley is still growing is the tech-related building projects in the works, as noted in this MarketWatch piece:
"The footprint of the major tech companies increased despite pandemic-related construction delays. More new commercial space was under construction than ever before (21 million square feet) and another 14 million square feet is in the pipeline.
Just six major tech companies — Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn and Netflix Inc. NFLX— occupy a combined 19% of all available office/research and development space in Santa Clara County, Menlo Park and Fremont, gobbling up 48.5 million square feet. Google occupies the most, with about 22.1 million square feet in 2020.
Major construction projects underway at the end of 2020 included large owner-user developments like Adobe Inc.’s ADBE North Tower in downtown San Jose, Google’s 1.1 million square-foot Office project in Mountain View, Nvidia’s 755,000 square-foot Flex/R&D building in Santa Clara, and Fortinet Inc.’s FTNT headquarters in Sunnyvale.
Despite pandemic-related delays, nearly 5 million square feet of new commercial space was delivered to the Silicon Valley market in 2020 — more than one-third of which were accounted for by tech."
While tech hubs can and will exist in other regions, it’s the culture that will be difficult to replicate. This is why any narrative of the valley being dead appears premature. Until I see the next generation of talent go elsewhere and create a similar entrenched culture of tech, I’ll be hard-pressed to call the valley dead or over.
