Could they add Arizona to the list of good places for tech business, please :-)
Life is inexpensive and good in Arizona and occasional flights to Silicon Valley are short and affordable. I spent my life in California until we moved to Arizona 18 years ago. Benefits of Arizona: very friendly people (try chatting with people in California when you are in a grocery store check out line, at the gas pumps, etc. - a culture of unfriendliness), low population density, very affordable housing, clean air and nice climate (at least where I am in the mountains), our state government is not as badly in debt as California, etc.
I have to disagree with your assessment of people in California. Having lived in the MidWest, New England, the South, and out West, I can say that the people in California (at least in Los Angeles where I am) are very friendly. I chat with them in the store and at the pump all the time. I can also say that it is the place where it matters the least what you look like when you talk to people you don't know. Skin color, clothing, etc. don't really seem to change people's attitudes too much here, whereas those other places all had very strict expectations of how people doing certain things should look.
I've also found that people here are far less afraid to try new and different combinations of just about anything - clothing, food, working with people from different disciplines. It's fascinating.
I'd bet that most of our impressions just come down to the luck of who we met when we lived in these different places. But my experiences definitely don't match yours. (My experiences in Arizona have been unmemorable. People seemed "normal" to me - neither rude nor overly friendly. I'll be going back next month, so we'll see if my impressions change one way or the other.)
I would have to strongly disagree that Arizona has "very friendly people". I find it to be the most openly hostile state in the nation, and they seem to pride themselves in that.
Arizona is pleasant in other ways but friendliness is not one of them.
Seconded. I am running the technology department of my (California) company from rural Eastern Arizona. Travel back to CA every couple months and it works out well.
Life is inexpensive and good in Arizona and occasional flights to Silicon Valley are short and affordable. I spent my life in California until we moved to Arizona 18 years ago. Benefits of Arizona: very friendly people (try chatting with people in California when you are in a grocery store check out line, at the gas pumps, etc. - a culture of unfriendliness), low population density, very affordable housing, clean air and nice climate (at least where I am in the mountains), our state government is not as badly in debt as California, etc.