Big Technology

Where Tech Workers Are Moving: New LinkedIn Data vs. the Narrative

The Austin surge that wasn’t. Plus booming Seattle, miraculous Madison, and sluggish San Francisco.

Alex Kantrowitz
OneZero
Published in
6 min readDec 17, 2020

--

Seattle, Washington. Photo: Abbie Parr/Stringer

Preamble: This is Big Technology’s final edition of the year. If you’ve found value from this free newsletter, would you be willing to share it? You can forward it to a friend, drop it in Slack, tweet it, or post it on LinkedIn. In the holiday spirit, will you help us grow? Thanks again for reading and being part of this community. Looking forward to keeping it up in 2021.

There’s a narrative that the tech industry’s future lies in Texas and Florida. That tech workers and executives — sick of California’s oppressive policies and sky-high real estate costs — are moving en masse to Miami and Austin this year. That these cities are building dominant talent foundations that will persist for years due to the pandemic. That narrative is wrong.

The story crumbles when placed next to new LinkedIn data showing where tech workers are actually moving in 2020. The key beneficiaries of this year’s tech migration are less buzzy cities like Madison, Wisconsin; Richmond, Virginia; and Sacramento, California. These places don’t get much play in the news, but they’re attracting tech…

--

--

OneZero
OneZero

Published in OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Alex Kantrowitz
Alex Kantrowitz

Written by Alex Kantrowitz

Veteran journalist covering Big Tech and society. Subscribe to my newsletter here: https://bigtechnology.com.

Responses (7)