Industry Clusters are often historical, so it always strikes me as strange when I see comments like this one that make a case for how misguided it was for tech companies to cluster in Silicon Valley and tolerate the high cost of living.

That line of thinking misplaces causes and effects so that they’re hilariously backwards.

Silicon Valley is a innovative place because of an extensive history of educational institutions, research facilities, and other market conditions that simply did not physically manifest in any other place.

On top of all that, the software industry has one of the lowest COGS (cost of goods sold) of any major industry. Facebook’s sales per employee is close to $2 million [1]. The fact that their SV employees cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more than employees is quite nearly irrelevant. Someone that’s 10 or 20 percent more productive will make up that labor cost difference by bringing in 10 or 20% more revenue, so it doesn’t really make sense for Facebook to abandon the best talent pools in search of cheaper rent or wages.

Tech giants are building out in Austin for its specific traits, and they don’t seem to mind that it’s rapidly becoming expensive and congested just like California. The question that might be asked is: why is Apple in Austin instead of Houston or Dallas or Nashville or Omaha?

[1] https://csimarket.com/stocks/FB-Revenue-per-Employee.html

Being solely located in one of the most expensive areas in the United States does seem a bit absurd if you can avoid it. Based on Cook's statements about returning to the office, it seems like they value being physically proximate more than the immense savings that moving the workers who could be remote to remote.

Perhaps 'plethora' or 'multitude'.