Tech Talent Recruiting Geography

With the Innovation Economy in decline, the Talent Economy is rising at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Economic geography of talent production.

Subject Article: "Inside LA’s ongoing talent conundrum."

Other Links: 1. "The Brain Gain: The Rise of San Antonio’s Talent Economy."
2. "Inskeep Explores Growing Pains Of An 'Instant City'."
3. "The Great Migration, 1910 to 1970."
4. "Migration Economies and Portland."
5. "America’s great divergence."
6. "The World Is Spiky: Globalization has changed the economic playing field, but hasn’t leveled it."
7. "Michigan Cool Cities Success."
8. "Fleeing Los Angeles for Harrisburg."
9. "Silicon Valley’s New Jersey Problem."
10. "Innovation Economy Is Dying."
11. "Once BlackBerry Focused, a Campus Widens Its View."
12. "Google's growth in city puts Pittsburgh in top tier of regional sites."
13. "End of Creative Class Migration."
14. "Economic Geography Of Talent Production."

Postscript: A link that didn't make the cut that probably should have:

When it comes to recruiting and managing talent, [Steven Woods] is like the general manager of a baseball team, scouting and meeting with potential recruits and discussing possible roles they might play in the company. He speaks about a certain former intern who will be joining the company from the University of British Columbia as though he had just found a new all-star shortstop.

He's not just competing with RIM and Microsoft for talent, but also against other Google locations around the world, some in much warmer climates like Silicon Valley. Still, Google saw the value in setting up operations down the street from RIM.

"Google had this great insight, which of course sounds obvious -- but as Canadians we often know it's not obvious -- that people don't all want to move to California,'' Woods says.

Google, much like other technology giants before it, sees the University of Waterloo and the surrounding region as one of its top three recruitment centres for undergraduates, alongside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Emphasis added. For Google, the top three in no particular order are Kitchener-Waterloo, Boston, and Pittsburgh. It's an impressive talent production triangle that will be the epicenter of the emerging global economy.