Dive Brief:
- With Apple’s announcement of a planned $1 billion facility in Austin, Texas the trend of big tech moving away from Silicon Valley is gaining momentum, according to MIT Sloan Experts. Apple will also expand to San Diego and Culver City, California, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Boulder, Colorado and New York within the next three years.
- Silicon Valley hosts tech giants; Google, Facebook, Intel, Cisco Systems and Oracle, and it will continue to be Apple's HQ, MIT said.
- For smaller companies and startups, a Silicon Valley outpost may give clout, but many can only afford to keep small teams in the expensive zip code.
Dive Insight:
With a boom in tech roles, employers hoping to fill jobs in cloud computing, machine learning and other disciplines must overcome the talent shortage. Though Silicon Valley is well-known for its tech talent pool, housing costs are a major concern when companies consider expansion.
To get around the cost of living in the Bay Area and attract talent, organizations turn to satellite offices and remote options.
As costs continue to rise in traditional industry hubs, organizations may continue to push out to locales that give them more hiring options and help keep overhead low. Still, California remains the biggest player in technology, contributing nearly $482 billion to the state's overall economy.
Recent data have indicated that a majority of workers want a choice in where they work, and more than half of American workers have access to some form of remote option in their jobs. Employers also report planning to expand these opportunities in the future.
The U.S. tech workforce represents about 8% of all U.S. employees and companies know to go where the talent is, according to CompTIA.
The Edge, distributed tech models, digital-human models, and ambient computing possibilities are influencing how companies decide where work is done. Talent pros now may want to consider how employee experience will carry over to new locations.
Emerging tech hubs include North Carolina and Florida, where the cost of living is a fraction of that in San Francisco. Florida boasts a 5% year-over-year increase in software and web developers and no state income tax.
Texas' technology sector contributes almost $142 billion to its overall economy, with companies like Apple building a billion dollar campus and Walmart and Microsoft expanding its partnered tech hub there.
