Hacker News Reader

Comment by bognition | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, theres something wrong here. It put Orem/Provo on the list when all of the tech jobs in Utah are actually further north. Mainly in Lehi and Salt Lake City.

View on HN

Utah County is definitely the center of the Utah tech boom. Between UVU and BYU there are lots of small college-fueled startups in Orem/Provo, and many more mature companies formerly based in SLC are moving farther south, at least to Draper/SoJo if not over the point of the mountain.

This move has been underway at least since the mid-oughts, but it has accelerated lately after Adobe's investment in the Thanksgiving Point area and as Utah County's outskirts (Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs) have started to recover from the mortgage crash.

I'm more concerned about SLC's long-term prospects at this point; no one seems to want to go further north than 7200 S anymore.

I'm guessing the reason so many companies are in Utah County is because of tax incentives, but it's still weird to me. I would think that it's harder to attract talent to an office in Provo, seeing as the stereotypical tech worker is probably going to prefer living in SLC where there's less Mormon influence and more going on socially.

But Mormons are very well represented in the tech labor market, so it probably isn't that hard to attract talent in Utah county, it's just not the same mix of people who are working in SLC.

I would guess it's more real estate. Between South Draper and Lehi there is tons of room for new construction (especially now that the prison is moving). There has been a huge amount of office construction there over the last ten years and continuing today. Office space in SLC proper has to cost a fortune by comparison. Building/renting there gives you good geographic positioning to attract employees from both the SLC valley (about one million people) and the Utah county valley (about 500,000 people).

Lehi is part of Orem / Provo MTA which I'm guessing is how these are split up.

I'll bet Provo / Orem beats SLC on a lot of these metrics just because of Vivint and a few other bigger names.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com