The savings of outsourcing sometimes are more related to infrastructure cost and tax than salary.
If only US workers would like to relocate to a cheaper place it would be a killer. Perhaps a Silicon Valley branch on a beach paradise in Mexico or Central America? Some place where half a US salary gives a significantly better life. Just a thought.
Except that the value of all those "expensive" developers in Silicon Valley is precisely that they are not on a beach somewhere, but right "here" where they can be hired immediately. That is worth something to the people doing the hiring, which is why they are willing to pay the added costs of locating a business there. If outsourced development was always a win, areas like the bay area would disintegrate on their own.
This is why no one worries about top-shelf product development jobs being "outsourced" for the most part. If developer talent was fungible in this way, we'd have seen rampant "outsourcing" to St. Louis and Pittsburgh long before it became popular in Bangalore or Beijing. The jobs at risk of being moved offshore are those doing lower-level "IT" jobs. These are the people who were complaining a decade ago about being replaced by contractors -- it's the same principle.
I don't think cost of living in either of those is going to match the US's any time soon.
Assuming that it contains enough of the right people & supporting services to build the right complexes, why not? How many of the bay area's mojo comes from people moving to the bay area for its mojo? They could go somewhere else.
Keeping it should be easier then building it.
But overall, the tech complex shouldn't be a whole lot more difficult to move then any other complex. I'd say moving the manufacturing complexes out of China would be harder.
A tech company can be anywhere really, as long as they have the people. the complex can scale down to one & still be useful. It's more useful as a complex, but still quite useful without it.
pg has some stuff on how to build a silicon valley (Take one cup of nerd, stir in a generous sprinkling of rich people & nerds, nice weather etc. etc..
I wonder how much of it is easier then he reckons. Surely there is some bias. The Auto manufacturing centres of US or Germany probably thought that they were impossible to move.
Why not start a startup on a SE Asian island? Could live comfortably on 15k per year (including home visits). Assuming you bring your people with you & they are willing to be paid in lifestyle. It might be appealing to certain people. Nice beaches.
If only US workers would like to relocate to a cheaper place it would be a killer. Perhaps a Silicon Valley branch on a beach paradise in Mexico or Central America? Some place where half a US salary gives a significantly better life. Just a thought.