Cathedrals of Talent

Does tech investment follow tech talent or the other way around? It’s actually some of both.

The question going forward, says Colin Yasukochi, executive director of the Tech Insights Center at CBRE, is the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic could upset longstanding equations and trends as 2021 unfolds into the post-COVID era.

“The pandemic,” says Yasukochi, “could slow the growth of tech talent in some of the major markets if remote work takes hold, if people really do leave town and hiring starts to take place outside of those markets. It’s going to be very, very interesting.”

CBRE’s 2020 Scoring Tech Talent report, based largely on pre-pandemic data, might thus be viewed as a marker, a dividing line, in years ahead. While it affirms the pre-eminence of traditional tech talent hotspots such as the San Francisco Bay Area, it also identifies fresh locations whose talent pools are growing and poised to grow further. The annual ranking of markets in the U.S. and Canada is based on 13 criteria grouped under headings that include Tech Talent Supply, Innovation Infrastructure, Tech Industry Outlook and Real Estate Market Outlook.

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