It’s all about the quality of life
Ask any tech worker why they are here and not in Silicon Valley or Seattle and the answer is pretty consistent “Quality of Life!”
Julie Howard is doing an article on this subject and is looking for responces.
I’m looking for 2-3 tech workers who take advantage of, say, flyfishing or bicycling on their lunch hour and /or find the creative mix of Boise inspiring.
What is it about Boise that draws new tech workers?
As for me, I love being able to head from work at the end of the day be in the foothills in 10 minutes (20 if I ride there). Ride for an hour and still get home in time to spend several hours with my family before the kids bedtime.
In the winter months the same is true for snowboarding. Night passes at Bogus Basin are cheap and it doesn’t take much to head up after work and get several good hours in on the snow.
There’s no better way to unwind after a long day.
On that note if anyone is interested in starting up a weekly Wednesday Tech Ride let me know. We’ll plan the first one for the 9th.
If you’d like to answer Julies question leave a comment here or email her
Julie.Howard[at]commerce.idaho.gov
(from the Dept of the News is Better Than you May Think)
Did you know….
that while we see a correlation between quality of life measures.. the correlation is even stronger the *other* way?
That is, entrepreneurial activity predicts future QOL scores.
This is particularly strong for gazelles - the more gazelles a community has, 5 years later you see higher scores on environmental measures, health, and especially spending & employment in the arts.
So.. more small biz, QOL goes up.
More gazelle growth firms, QOL can go waaay up!
[Of course, we could do a wee bit better on the gazelle front... That's a topic I was hoping we'd discuss at Tac's shindig. Maybe next time?]
What tech? I lived in Boise for 3 years. What tech? Call centers for HP don’t count. Micron is a maybe, but they’re also in San Jose. Western Electronics-small time Contract Manufacturer, could beone. MPC is going going to eventually go out of business and is no better than a system integrator….so what tech?
For 3 years? When? This is HP’s LaserJet devision, while not cutting edge it is one of there most profitable devisions. Microns headquarters are here. One of MySQL’s only offices is here (now Sun) Microsoft acquired ProClarity and has already moved one new devision to Boise and that’s just the big guys. That doesn’t take into account the dozens of smaller tech companies that you wouldn’t know about if you weren’t involved.
I turned down a job with Microsoft to stay here for that exact reason. Where else can you network with such amazing people one week, and then backpack the most pristine wilderness in the US the next?
If you’ve only been here 3 years, my guess is that you’ve never ventured out of the city or have even bothered to look around - there’s tech blowing up everywhere!
I would much rather participate in a new/evolving/booming tech economy verses the saturated tech economies of areas slightly larger than Boise. Opportunity abounds, especially for the entrepreneur.
Great post, keep up the excellent work!
We moved here 2.5 years ago to get the heck out of SoCal. Got tired of police helicopters overhead (and we lived in a great neighborhood); traffic; pollution; quality kids’ education; spending an hour in the car to drive 10 miles to work; and driving three hours to get to decent camping/hiking.
Our primary factors for Boise were QOL — specifically quick access to outdoor activities; a town that has a university; climate; arts; etc. And I can walk between home and the office in 20 minutes.
Lastly, I got laid off in less than a year after moving here. My hi-tech startup employer went under. I turned down offers that included relocating to Portland and LA. We chose to stay and invest in Boise by starting our own thing(s). I’m working to be a part of Boise’s growth and success. It’ll take some time, but we’ll make it happen.
I’ve only fished deep-sea. I’d love to try fly fishing, so if you’re into teaching a newbie, let me know.
Boise will never grow as large as the silicon valley or for that matter any large city, and they are not succesful. People are closed minded and racist and until that changes it will never grow. And San Diego is not Silicon Valley.
Can we define Tech? Tech such as “true OEM’s” or their sales office? Are we talking companies such as EFI, Intel, Hitachi, IBM or Joe Blow’s enterprises (who buys his high-tech products from distributors in the silicon valley). HP is there due to inexpensive land, and it cost to much to employ a worker in San Jose with the added cost of running a plant, which costs millions of dollars in SJ. Not sure why HP is there, something’s up when you’re Director of Sales (Running that sales division) leaves after a year.
Remember we can’t venture too out side of Boise because then, we’re not in Boise. Booming? Define booming? If the real estate market in Boise is any indication of booming, even in a great economy, then my definition of booming is wrong. I loved the QOL in Boise, it doesn’t get much better (depending on your preference), but the blog makes it sound like people use their hour lunch to escape from their stressful lives that is complicated by the “booming tech industry.” If it was booming (BSU would have a better engineering program). Boise will never be booming because people want to keep it the way it is. They especially make it hard on neighboring states. Out-of-state student who want to move there have to pay 7k a semester to go to Boise State. If you try to negotiate, BSU will tell you they try to keep it that way and they make it purposely hard for students to get out of out of state tuition fees. Does that help promote growth, not in population but in industry? Here are some fun facts, “San Jose/Silicon Valley lead the nation with the highest concentration of tech workers, with more than one of every four private sector workers employed in the tech industry……. The 148-page report also notes the high-tech industry employs highly educated workers and pays them well — 87% more than the average private sector worker nationwide. I admit the workforce for high-tech jobs in Boise is GROWING but in no way does it compete with Austin, New York, San Diego or San Jose, cities that help focus there schools, community and citizens around growth for this HUGE industry. How about this statement: There has been a growth of high tech employment since 1993 which began to plateau and is now ranked 17th in the nation in over all high tech employment concentration (In 2006; recently it’s plummeted). The industry will stay stagnant as BSU refuses to change policy on growth or new student entry and true Boise citizens refuse to grow any bigger then there current size: BTW: Those citizens are the people making Boise’s decisions about growth not the people that are proactive about monitoring the growth and wanting to grow. You guys can’t even add a JC. I’ll give you credit in one area, there are alot of people at Wal-Mart.
By the way Tac, it’s DIVISIONS, I guess the quality of education isn’t much better there, now is it Doug?
Wow, right on Chris Sermone. I agree with you completely!
@Chris Sermone: I could find a hardware sales job in Boise in 15 minutes. You must not have been able to?
@ Chris B: Worked for Apple from home.
Chris Blanchard, I would really like to see that done, you know the hardware sales job find in 15 minutes, in Boise of course not Nampa/Eagle or any other little town.
Chris S: First off I appreciate your comments.
Define Tech? Which definitions do you want. I stay away from that.
No one here wants Boise to be anything like San Jose, San Diego, Austin, NY, Seattle, Portland, SLC or any other “large city”. That’s why we’re here, not there.
Do we want growth? Yes of course.
Do we have a long way to go to get to where we want? Yes, absolutely.
BSU has a finite number of seats and, yes, they give preferential treatment to in-state students. That’s also why they’ve approved a local community college to free up resources for Phd programs and R&D.
Chris S, I don’t disagree with most of your arguments. Although you are WAY off on why HP is here (I’ll give you a hint a SVP liked to fly fish and Ski - QOL).
Since we can’t be like these large cities, should we give up? Throw our hands in the air and go be potato farmers? Sorry, I think that there is a huge opportunity for tech here (any way you wish to define it) and we can still keep our quality of life? And while I may not take my lunch hour to go biking (there are plenty of people who do) I do take advantage of it after work and I’m still home before most people in Silicon Valley and Seattle.
Mindy, I’m really sorry that I misspelled a word. Thank you for correcting me. It must be nice to be grammatically perfect all the time. Seriously? That’s what you choose to criticize me for?
That’s exactly why I moved back here after being away for almost 10 years. I moved away for my career, and I didn’t move back when I found a good job here. I worked out a way to bring a good job with me. But it’s the quality of life that drew me here and makes me want to stay.
Tac, I’d totally be up for a weekly bike ride. I currently try to ride the greenbelt 2 or more days a week, usually 15+ miles each time. I don’t do a ton of off-road stuff, but I’d be up for anything.
All great comments!
@ Tac: Thank you Tac for making this conversation interesting. I also beleive there is an oppurtunity for gorwth for the tech industry in the Boise area. It seems like there is an over supply of college grads and under supply of jobs. Boise is one of those rare areas like the Silicon Valley, Seattle, S.D were they have great QOL. (pending on your preference). I see more tech workers wanting to leave there hectic lives to Boise yet Boise politicians won’t allow growth and people are still prejudice against growth ecspcially migrating californians. On a more upbeat note: I hear a lot of comments on bike riding but I’ve heard nothing about the river. Nothing beats leaving early from work to have a swim/drift in the river on a mid-July, August afternoon.
Chris Sermone, Amen(on all accounts).
This is what Richard Florida talks about in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class. People don’t go where the jobs are: the jobs go where the people are, and the people make decisions based on both metropolitan amenities as well as access to outdoor activities. What we need is a critical mass of companies here so that if someone loses their job they don’t feel they have to leave to get a new one.