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Comment by nubbie | Hacker News Reader

As a foreigner, I've been lead to believe that Seattle is one of the top tech hubs after the Bay area and NY (don't have any specific source for this). I've noticed the lack of advertised jobs in Seattle while reading the Hiring threads, and this just confirms it.

Is the Seattle scene not as big as I think it is? Or are they just not hiring (through this channel)?

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Seattle is a tech hub in scale, but not diversity. The city is basically held down (on the software front anyhow) by Microsoft and Amazon. The number of actual software companies is low compared to the Bay Area or NYC.

Seattle's tech job market also heavily favors large, entrenched players - the same folks who aren't advertising on HN.

There are a number of startups there too! I've talked with a number of them. Lots of cloud-esque & analytics firms there.

From what I have seen, Seattle companies are big (amazon, Microsoft, f5, etc), consultancies (eg ioactive), in enterprise/vertical markets, and/or tend to retain staff pretty long term vs Bay Area companies, so don't need to hire as often.

Yeah, and I don't think the Microsofts, Googles and Amazons of the world do a whole lot of grassroots-style recruiting via HN, SO, Github, etc. Their hiring process is more traditional. They tend to use university CS programs as feeders.

It's really interesting how some companies are so great at university recruiting (Palantir!), vs. ones which seem to hire more later-career people (Netflix?), and how it is different.

I'd tend to say startups should initially recruit from their own networks; for founders just leaving a school, or with strong ongoing connections to a school, that's great, but getting someone with 2-5+ years of experience means a lot more in a startup than it would at a big company with enough structure. A fresh college graduate with some independent project/startup experience is entirely different from the 50th percentile CS grad from a good-academically-but-not-amazing program, though.

Not entirely true. Amazon has contacted me via SO Careers.

There is a startup scene here, but it's nowhere near as vibrant as the Bay Area. I'm not an expert on this, but one of my coworkers at the Seattle-based startup I previously worked at told me that most local investors were skittish. Supposedly, they tend to balk at any startup that isn't a B2B.

The technical reputation definitely comes from Microsoft and Amazon being headquartered here, along with branches for eBay, Google, and Facebook.

The technical reputation definitely comes from

Does Nintendo count for anything?

Do they develop there?

Apparently

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Software_Technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Technology_Development

Exactly. Not a whole lot in the way of consumer web / social media startups going on here. We have a lot of B2B and consulting companies, many of which feed off either the Microsoft or Amazon or perhaps even Boeing ecosystem.

There is a lot of tech talent in Seattle, and even more demand for it, but there seems to be a lack of VC money looking for startups to invest in. It just isn't really the model here.

In my experience (7 years in Seattle) there are a ton of great companies large and small, hiring locally and also active with local meetups. Seattle is more desirable and affordable (IMHO) than many tech hubs, so people are already doing the legwork to find positions, rather than companies searching far.

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