Code.org’s Hadi Partovi writes in TechCrunch on today’s Seattle tech ecosystem, and the dramatic changes in the past 5-10 years:
“The last 10 years have seen a sea-change in Seattle, caused by two forces.
“The first part of the change has been the rise of a new breed of large Seattle-based tech companies – companies that are still smaller than the two local titans, Microsoft and Amazon, yet large enough to fill out the middle tier of the tech ecosystem …
“The second force has been the increasing appearance of Silicon Valley engineering offices in the Seattle metro area. Google was one of the first major Silicon Valley companies to open an engineering office in Seattle … A decade after Google set up shop in this city, Seattle has seen an explosion of Silicon Valley companies setting up their second engineering office …
“Seattle stands out as the first stop for three reasons:
“(1) Seattle has one of the largest populations of software engineers, in part because of the original recruiting power of Microsoft during the 1980s and 1990s …
“(2) The University of Washington houses one of the top 10 computer science programs in the country, with a steady flow of graduates who want to remain in the region. A recent analysis of LinkedIn data by a Boston startup found that of UW graduates in the past two years who list their occupation as “software engineer,” 90% reside in Seattle! . The New York Times extensively profiled UW CSE’s impact on the local tech scene in 2012.
“(3) Seattle is in the same time zone as San Francisco.”
Read more here.