In Minnesota, I've had companies twice drag me into court trying to enforce a non-compete and the judge laughed at both companies and I was sent on my way.

The key in both cases was the company I had left was trying to keep me from working in the same field for a competitor. My attorney argued that if I'm "gainfully employable" you can't restrict me from earning a living in my chosen field - to do so would invite economic hardship.

The judge asked if they would rather compensate me for two years at my current salary (which was a six figure salary), or let me go work for their competitor. The company quickly chose the latter.

https://fairemploymentalliance.org

CA is larger than most nations on earth. Its economic opportunities are 100 for every 1 anywhere else.

http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...

- Tektronix (now acquired), founded in Portland in 1946 - Intel, opened their largest center outside Santa Clara in 1974 + lots of companies that have been acquired, etc.

It has been called the Silicon Forest at least since 1981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Forest

Not sure if any of this applies to AK. The three states usually have more similarities than differences as it's all similar types of people. Like an extended family, haha.

The difference in the statistics is explained below the chart - "STEM concentration" is based on employment field, regardless of education.

The most important difference between Boston (and the East Coast in general) and California is this: On the East Coast and in most other places, business culture has a kind of de-facto caste system in which executives, managers, and owners by definition are separate from and out-rank doers. To do is not to own, and to own is not to do.

In Boston if you roll up your sleeves and actually do the work, this makes you lower class compared to the executives who manage, own, and control. On one occasion I had this actually explained to me explicitly and the explanation included the phrase "CEOs don't do anything" stated as if this were a fact and a law of nature. It was explicitly explained to me that for a CXO-type person to actually get their hands dirty with real work was a dangerous distraction that would negatively impact their ability to lead.

In California, being a maker and a doer is respected equally and in some cases more than being a manager or a hustler. The extreme end of this is the CA startup culture where being a "non-technical founder" is sometimes seen as a liability. A founder might eventually transition to mostly managerial work but having a background and having been the original builder of the product is seen as a good thing and a badge of honor.

At the very least, being a maker and a doer in California does not count against you and mark you as lower class the way it does in Boston. It doesn't by definition mean you can't lead, found, or own.

This is why I left Boston. I couldn't stand it. The message I got from the culture is that I was a sucker for trying to get good at actually doing things. I don't have What It Takes and therefore I can only work for those who do. What It Takes is never quite defined but I gathered it to be a mixture of extroversion, a very dominant personality type, and mild to moderate narcissism. Skills and abilities and experience don't factor into it unless that experience is exclusively within the business realm.

East Coast: "I'll have my people talk to your people." -- the ideal archetype of the East Coast business elite would be Donald Trump or Carl Icahn.

West Coast: "Here let me get on that." -- the ideal archetype here is Elon Musk or Larry Page.

East Coast: "We're looking to hire people from the right schools." (I actually heard this multiple times and even read it in print at least once. Skills were not mentioned.)

West Coast: "We're looking to hire people with the right skills."

I also felt more classism in general on the East Coast. The fact that I'm originally from Ohio and went to a small Midwestern university meant I wasn't fit to mop the floor. The West Coast certainly has its Stanford cult but the Ivy League cult on the East is orders of magnitude more intense and pervasive. I know and do business with a number of high-ranking Stanford types and never have I gotten the sense that I'm a "plebeian" simply because I don't have an impressive university name behind me. If I'm talking to a Stanford Ph.D and what comes out of my mouth is intelligent, it feels like a conversation between equals and I don't get the sense that my opinions are inherently suspect.

Don't get me wrong. There is absolutely class in California, and if you're not from a top-tier university or an otherwise impressive background you will probably have to work harder to achieve a similar level of cred in most circles. But you can. Class is malleable here and if you demonstrate merit I've found that people respond quickly. By contrast out East it feels fixed by birth and education. After being there for years and working really really hard I did gradually feel like I'd risen a bit but it felt like a really slow process with a constant undertow. I did find that if I stopped referring to my educational background or place of origin people started to assume I'd gone to a place like MIT, so I could sort of sneak in under the radar and only reveal my beginnings once I'd thoroughly demonstrated ability. Out East I was actually tempted to lie about my education (never did), while out West the idea seems preposterous and silly.

There are exceptions in both places of course, but that was the general cultural zeitgeist I ran into. I imagine it might be even worse in a place like Washington DC where it's all about political clout.