Silicon Valley

The geographical area in northern California, where there is a large concentration of high-tech companies and venture capital (VC) firms. Often referred to as "the mecca of materialism," the Valley is south of San Francisco and specifically includes Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park, Milpitas, Los Altos, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Fremont, Santa Clara, and San Jose.

Historical perspective: Frederick Terman is considered the father of Silicon Valley. He was a student at MIT around 1930 until he contracted tuberculosis which caused him to stay at Stanford University, where he ended up teaching. He cajoled two of his students, William Hewlett and David Packard, to form a company near the Palo Alto campus (resulting in Hewlett-Packard) and pioneered the creation of Stanford Research Park.

By March 2018, bit tech's best and brightest began proclaiming "Silicon Valley is over” according to The Week. Fed up with the exorbitant cost of living, the constant congestion, and the left-wing echo chamber, Silicon Valley’s luminaries began looking at other parts of the country and pondering an exodus. Billionaire Facebook board member Peter Thiel decamped to Los Angeles to escape what he called San Francisco’s toxic progressive orthodoxy. Google and Facebook have opened outposts in such cities as Boston and Boulder, and on a recent bus trip through Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, tech venture capitalists got the heartland bug. They gawked at the availability of cheap homes and marveled how even old-line manufacturing cities now offer a convincing simulacrum of coastal life, complete with artisanal soap stores and farm-to-table restaurants. Complaining that they feel scapegoated at home, some openly mused about how it would feel to live where entrepreneurs still are admired and respected.

It is possible that a handful of geniuses could decide to start world-changing companies in Detroit, Akron, and South Bend, but the money and talent, for now, is still in the Bay Area, and will be for the foreseeable future. People have been saying Silicon Valley is too crowded and expensive since the 1970s. And until engineers can match their Valley starting salaries of $200,000—compared with $50,000 elsewhere—it will take a cataclysmic event for talent to move.