>There was a lot of cross-pollination among the Massachusetts minicomputer companies
When would you say was the point that people in Route 128 realized that the Valley had definitively taken over as "the place" for tech, with Route 128 and everywhere else falling behind? Was it the minicomputer bust, or had the center of gravity definitively shifted west before then?
(For young people's benefit, well into the 1980s Silicon Valley was just one of multiple centers of the computer economy in the US. Route 128 around Boston was anchored by minicomputer companies like DEC and DG, supercomputer/AI outfits like Thinking Machines, and software companies like Lotus and Infocom. Texas had TI, Tandy, Compaq, and Dell. Westchester and upstate NY was IBM land. Minneapolis had Control Data, Cray, and Honeywell. Of the four most important PC companies of the mid-1970s, only Apple was founded in the SF Bay area; MITS was in New Mexico (which is why Microsoft was founded there), Commodore was in PA, and Tandy was in Fort Worth.)
I wonder how much of this was labor law in California. For instance, non-compete clauses are essentially forbidden in CA.
There were a ton of small companies in SV, and it was incredibly easy to interview, change jobs, and your commute would get shorter by a couple of blocks. (Though commuting in San Jose / Mountain View was pretty terrible).
When would you say was the point that people in Route 128 realized that the Valley had definitively taken over as "the place" for tech, with Route 128 and everywhere else falling behind? Was it the minicomputer bust, or had the center of gravity definitively shifted west before then?
(For young people's benefit, well into the 1980s Silicon Valley was just one of multiple centers of the computer economy in the US. Route 128 around Boston was anchored by minicomputer companies like DEC and DG, supercomputer/AI outfits like Thinking Machines, and software companies like Lotus and Infocom. Texas had TI, Tandy, Compaq, and Dell. Westchester and upstate NY was IBM land. Minneapolis had Control Data, Cray, and Honeywell. Of the four most important PC companies of the mid-1970s, only Apple was founded in the SF Bay area; MITS was in New Mexico (which is why Microsoft was founded there), Commodore was in PA, and Tandy was in Fort Worth.)