What's the best way to compare the tech economy of two cities?

Question

My future is likely to have a change of location coming in the next year. What would be the best way to compare the tech economy of two different but comparably populated cities? I searched for c# on dice.com and got 55 hits for one of the cities and 53 for the other. Can you think of a better way?

Answer 1

Perhaps identify what mid to large scale IT corporations have technical-related offices in that city? Obviously that's not a guaranteed way of finding out but could be one indicator.

Answer 2

I think your method is the best, although you might also check Monster and HotJobs (if they're even still around - it's been awhile for me).

Answer 3

Go to the craiglist listing for each city and look at the listings for computing gigs and computing services. This may give you another insight into a community's "techiness" than just job listings.

Answer 4

If you are debating between two cities which are seemingly equal, another aspect to try is the stackoverflow sandbox query:

select location, sum(reputation) 
from users 
group by location 
order by sum(reputation) desc

and parse the results based on your cities of choice. Where does the respect on SO live?

Answer 5

I like to go to the local Boarder's Book stores. Some have almost no computer section and some have a big chunk of the store. Guess you could do this from you computer by selecting a few deep books and seeing which stores carry them.