There are obvious flaws in the data and methodology (WTF is a "computer job"?), but one part stood out to me:
> Anyone familiar with Silicon Valley already knows that the city of San Francisco is not considered core to “the valley”.
This hasn't been true for well over a decade now. Newer startups are overwhelmingly headquartered in San Francisco. Lots of holdouts like Facebook have finally given in and opened offices in the city. The biggest signal for this though might be all the VC firms shifting north from Menlo Park/Palo Alto all the way to SoMa.
And their justification:
> Even though computer technology seems antithetical to anything “historical”, there is in fact a Silicon Valley Historical Association. They list the cities of the valley, which does not include SF.
Yes, well, no one has gotten a revised term to stick. Instead, the term Silicon Valley has grown to be less precise, especially when you’re outside. I love it when the FAANG group is considered “Silicon Valley”, since one of them definitely ain’t.
My favorite example of a similar phenomenon is “where do Yankees live”? In Mexico, it can be pretty much anywhere north of the Rio Grande. In Missouri it might be New York, in New York it’s probably New Hampshire or Maine.
This is just job count. One might try to make a qualitative analysis. For example one may have pointed out that the top paying jobs are in centers like San francisco / bay area. If an employer is willing to pay more, it must be because there is more value being provided. If more value is being provided then maybe the talent group is higher. If one wants to work with the top in their industry they likely will go where the top talent is. (All on average...)
This is the typical rhetoric for why endure San Francisco.
Pretending that an IT helpdesk job and a systems programmer are the same type of 1 unit of job leads to ridiculous conclusions.