Quote Originally Posted by G.Walker View Post
It's really not that complicated, there is only one thing that keeps Austin booming, professional high-tech paying jobs. After that, comes everything else...
Quote Originally Posted by soonerguru View Post
Wow. Disagree. It's first and foremost the quality of life and the availability of a highly educated work force. People want to live in Austin. High tech, high-paying employers tend to locate where they have access to a high quality talent pool.
Both are actually true, it is a chicken/egg argument at this point because they have the momentum. Right now there there are way more job seekers than jobs in the tech industry because of the changing landscape of tech and the influx of people moving there without a job. Some love it and eventually find something and some move onto some other place. Tech is still a pretty hard industry to get into because of the surplus of talent available. A friend who moved there from OKC in 1988 worked in the semiconductor industry for a lot of years until it closed up shop. They moved back to OKC for awhile and then back to Austin, he just got a job at the Samsung plant after trying to get out of the tech sector for awhile.

When I moved there in 2003 (to get married) it took me two years to find a job (did contract work in the interim) because of the tech bust that happened in the post Y2K era and the drop off in development. One firm I interviewed with had over 100 resumes for a position and I was one of four interviewed. When I did get a job it was because the development started ramping up again.