Second Tier Tech Centers

If you're trying to hire technical folks, and you have a virtual company or don't care where they work, you might want to look at recruiting from somewhere other than the big tech centers such as San Francisco & New York. There are a lot of absolutely fantastic technical people who live in what I call 'second tier technical cities'… places like Boise, ID or Raleigh-Durham, NC.

Here's a list of my favorite second tier tech centers in the US; comments are welcome with either US or international additions.

• Seattle, WA - The home of both Microsoft and Amazon, Seattle is almost a first-tier tech center in it's own right. Craigslist is a good place to post.
• Portland, OR - Seattle's little sister, Portland has a lot of technology and a lot of really smart people. Craigslist again gets the nod.
• Santa Monica, CA / Los Angeles, CA - Although I cringe at the name Silicon Beach, the western part of the Los Angeles basis (Santa Monica, etc.) has a growing number of tech startups and VCs.
• Sacramento, CA & Davis, CA - The neighboring cities of Sacramento and Davis are just north of the Bay Area. UC Davis has an excellent engineering program, and Sacramento is home to a lot of tech companies looking for proximity to San Francisco but a cheaper locale.
• Salt Lake City, UT - Home of BYU, and more smart folks.
• Boise, ID - Micron Technology calls Boise home, and HP has (had?) a large presence there.
• Albequerque, NM
• Boulder, CO - A progressive city just south of Denver, and home to several major tech companies as well as aerospace defense players such as Space Systems Loral.
• San Diego, CA - San Diego is known primarily as a military town, but has some big name tech, such as Qualcomm, as well as a number of smaller startups.

• Austin, TX - Sometimes called the Silicon Valley of Texas, Austin is home to a number of tech companies, including Dell, as well as increasingly popular tech festivals such as South-by-Southwest Interactive.
• Madison, WI - Home to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an engineering player.
• Ann Arbor, MI - Home to the University of Michagan, Ann Arbor, another engineering player.
• Urbana-Champagin, IL - University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign is another great midwest tech school, currently ranked #5 on the US News & World Report of top computer science schools.

• Raleigh Durham, NC - home of Research Triangle Park, which itself is home of IBM, Cisco, and a number of other notables. Like Seattle, RTP could almost be considered a first-tier tech center in its own right.
• Providence, RI - Brown University is located here.
• Pittsburgh, PA - #1 Computer Science school Carnegie Melon is in Pittsburg.