LOL it is the other way around, cities become most expensive because developers flock there and spend cash.
This happens now in Limassol, Cyprus: crowds of developers, most having their own startups, started to flock there since 3 years ago from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - it was always a country to keep offshore companies/accounts, so every rich developer in ex-USSR already been there and knew the place, but since 2014 it started to make sense to move physically as well - in Russia people escape propaganda and mass chauvinist hysteria, in Belarus economic crisis prompted government to jail IT business people to milk them on their money (then frequently releasing with no right to leave the country - in order to make them earn more, then milk again), in Ukraine they are simply leaving the unrest and crumbling infrastructure.
Since about last year it became a virtuous cycle because developers started to move in simply because it's a place with many developers already so it's easy to exchange ideas, and then investment funds joined. We are witnessing a small Silicon Valley in the making (of course, with probable limits of about a few percent of the real Valley). It already made Limassol a much more expensive place, rents on cheap apartments almost doubled in 3 years.
Developers want to be where developers are, and VCs want to be where there are many developers, and then more developers come where VCs are... and you get another 'most expensive city'.
But startups has to be a tiny tiny fraction of software devs. Even in an area of new offices popping up I can't imagine startups being a large fraction of the companies.
Correct. 'real' startups (those you would read on techcrunch or hacker news about) are a small fraction. Most of them are 'internet moneymakers' in the wide sense, most don't need the investments, or operating in the grey area (like: arbitrage of porn traffic, various bots, etc), they basically just want interesting IT people to exchange ideas with. They still attract VCs wishing to prey on them whenever possible.
OH yeah it is so easy to take for granted how disinterested, uncomfortable and angry people will get at listening to your tech project, in most places.
My town, Sydney is not expensive because there is a handful of Googlers like me live around here. Google here because Sydney is the kind of place that people pay lots of money to stay in. And so I have to pay too much rent.
I love Sydney, it is (spiritually) my home town. But I wish the company would move to Wagga Wagga. I mean the place even looks like Mountain View.
Ex-Aussie here. I wish that Australia would adopt a more de-centralise strategy on tech hubs. I live in Germany now and have seen multinational companies setup their European HQ is small cities or towns. This is equivalent to having Atlassian setting up their HQ in Bathurst.
I don't think it has much to do with strategy or tech hubs. The Australian population is just very centralised -- it makes sense given our geography and demographics.
In Europe "far" away from any big town can mean as little as 50km. Especially in Germany, you are never very far from some mid-size city which once dominated a independent principality.
Rhode & Schwarz, B/H/S and Siemens all have HQs within about 10 minute bike ride of where I used to live in Munich. Other companies in small towns were a somewhat more arduous bike ride away.
The companies I dealt with that were more than 100km from any big city were more into heavy industry. They are the Aussie equivalent of Newcastle or Gladstone, only with many more companies to go around.
You're absolutely right. Far away travel in Australia is measured in days, where as it is measured is hours in Germany. The extremely Australian population density does not help at all.
Precisely. Short, one-hour flight, and pretty much the same time zone (barring differences related to when daylight savings takes effect) makes it easy to keep teams in Cyprus and Israel in sync.
Considering the massive shortage of developers in Israel, it really wouldn't surprise me to see deepening ties in the development community.
I agree with your comment, as there is a factor that increases the cost in the cities where developers live in.
Bringing up Limassol though, is not a valid argument. Limassol on its own has had a lot of rich people from Russia moving there permanently and in the past few years a lot of development went on there. The Marina or the pier etc makes it feel like you are in Miami of some sorts, so that definitely bumps the prices up and it has nothing to do with developers going there. Most rich people there didn't make money from tech but from illegal sources.
These people have been there since decades ago, early 1990s, and not much new ones arrived recently apart from developers. Large scale corruptioners you mentioned definitely don't increase prices on cheap rental apartments.
The development of the area in general is though. Limassol 5 years ago is no where near to what Limassol Now has become. And that has nothing to do with Tech/Dev's moving to the area.
Well, 5 years ago it was in the middle of crisis, but 10 years ago it was way richer and better place than it is now, i don't know what development do you mean. Then, Brits left, real estate prices collapsed, and it became much worse.
It's easy to see that Cyprus GDP is now lower (both nominal and real terms) than 10 years ago.
Now i am totally confused about how upvoting works here! 103 upvotes - i definitely never had nearly as much before. I don't really see what i wrote here was so valuable or interesting.
This site being mostly visited by Americans, we are interested to hear of this phenomenon playing out in other locales, especially one as small/niche as Cyprus.
This happens now in Limassol, Cyprus: crowds of developers, most having their own startups, started to flock there since 3 years ago from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - it was always a country to keep offshore companies/accounts, so every rich developer in ex-USSR already been there and knew the place, but since 2014 it started to make sense to move physically as well - in Russia people escape propaganda and mass chauvinist hysteria, in Belarus economic crisis prompted government to jail IT business people to milk them on their money (then frequently releasing with no right to leave the country - in order to make them earn more, then milk again), in Ukraine they are simply leaving the unrest and crumbling infrastructure.
Since about last year it became a virtuous cycle because developers started to move in simply because it's a place with many developers already so it's easy to exchange ideas, and then investment funds joined. We are witnessing a small Silicon Valley in the making (of course, with probable limits of about a few percent of the real Valley). It already made Limassol a much more expensive place, rents on cheap apartments almost doubled in 3 years.
Developers want to be where developers are, and VCs want to be where there are many developers, and then more developers come where VCs are... and you get another 'most expensive city'.