But looking at available jobs and so forth, that doesn't seem to be panning out. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Is Portland too small of a city for that, still? It just seems like a no-brainer to me.
The tech scene reminded me of nearly any other similarly sized city in North America. One or two interesting employers (New Relic, Puppet Labs), and the rest is enterprise.
And even if Google, Facebook, Apple, and all the other smaller interesting companies moved there overnight, the cost of living would skyrocket overnight too, blowing away Portland's main advantage.
And if you thought the hipsters' resistance to tech in SF was bad, I feel that Portland's would be worse.
I know of one company that opened an office in Portland because compensation is so low there. That's great for them if they can hire people at local rates, but it's not really appealing for people who have the flexibility to relocate anywhere.
It's hard to attract people from out of town in when they'll have to move out again to switch jobs.