Tech Outposts Expand All Over | Phoenix Has A Long Way To Go [Socially Conservative Politics]

Just about a year ago, John WillIiams, the
President of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, was here in The New Urban Downtown Mesa for a site visit arranged by Terry Benelli, Executive Director of LISC Phoenix. Along with 21 community leaders, your Mesa blogger was invited on the bus-coach tour in numerous postings this blogsite. Months later - April 5, 2016, an article later appeared on the LISC website " The (Re)Making of Mesa " with more details.
Here's a link >>   http://www.lisc.org/our-stories/story/remaking-of-mesa if you missed it.
During a conversation between on-location stops, John Williams mentioned that once his staff in high-cost San Francisco found out how low housing costs are here, they might think about moving here. . . I THOUGHT TO MYSELF Nah. To the most conservative city in the whole country? don't know if that ever happened but the issue of high wages and high real estate prices has come up in another context brought up in this follow-up piece by Toronto-based architect and real estate developer Brandon Donnelly in his daily blog for city builders http://brandondonnelly.com/

"The Bay Area has never been especially cheap, and tech companies have a long history of moving their more expensive and labor-intensive functions to second-tier cities where land and labor are less expensive. Intel, the semiconductor giant, was founded in the Silicon Valley in 1968, and by 1979, it had manufacturing facilities outside Portland, Ore., and Phoenix. . . But while Phoenix is recruiting companies, its technology scene lacks some crucial elements. Mr. Salkin, from Allbound, said he still flies to the Bay Area once a month for networking or other events. “We’re doing amazing things here,” he said, “but we’ve got a way to go.”
Mr. Salkin added that for technology companies, which hire people from all kinds of backgrounds,
Arizona’s socially conservative politics can be a form of cultural baggage.

HERE'S THE KICKER FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE
In San Francisco, “you can come from any walk of life and feel pretty much accepted and safe,” Mr. Salkin said. “You struggle to say that here right now. I think that’s changing, but it has not been the case in Arizona, and I think that’s
a big thing.”

The rise of tech outposts
What happens when wages and real estate prices become too high in a city? Companies start growing in lower cost locations. We’ve all seen this before. 
Fred Wilson recently blogged about this “spillover effect”, citing a New York Times article talking about the growth of tech offices in Phoenix. As someone who sits on the board of many technology companies, he was noticing a thematic trend:

“A big theme of board meetings I’ve been in over the past year is the crazy high cost of talent in the big tech centers (SF, NYC, LA, Boston, Seattle) and the need to grow headcount in lower cost locations.”

We talk a lot about housing prices on this blog, and so I think it’s useful to see how this, along with high wages, also impacts companies. The two are interrelated.
Below is a chart from the NY Times article showing the US cities with the highest number of technology jobs and the most growth from 2010 to 2015. 

San Francisco is in a league of its own. But overall, the growth is in tech and many cities are adding lots of technology jobs. Look at Detroit and Boston right beside each other (Detroit obviously has a smaller starting base). And look at how Miami is nowhere to be found.
Of course, one interesting question is whether these new outposts – such as Phoenix – can truly come into their own and carve out a niche:

“We don’t want to be San Francisco’s back office — we need more creators here,” said Scott Salkin, a founder and the chief executive of Allbound, which is based in Phoenix, makes sales software and has offices down the hall from Gainsight’s.

Even with the high cost of living, it’s hard to supplant the coastal hegemony. That’s where people go to chase riches. As comedian Daniel Tosh likes to say, “the middle of the country is for people who gave up on their dreams.. . "