A good friend of mine is a software engineer in their NYC office.
Some observations:
1) They have really cool concerts in their office regularly, and often have B-list musicians in their office .
2) They fly all new NYC employees to Sweden for a couple weeks for training and culture immersion.
3) Being in NYC allows them (it seems) to pay less than comparable jobs here in San Francisco. Probably because there are far fewer cool startups in NYC to compete for talent with.
4) The name "Spotify" was a total fluke and accident, one co-founder mis-heard another, bought the domain, and the rest is history.
One Twitter or Facebook can hire as many engineers as 1/2 that list. To say nothing of other interesting, top-tier tech companies from which there's nearly a limitless need for more engineers.
I have good friends who are good engineers in NYC, and I live here in SF. They had a ton of choices from digital agencies, finance companies, and myriad other places building line-of-business software. Here? Every experienced engineer I know with a LinkedIn gets several cold-inmails a month for startup & tech company opportunities.
It's about density. The financial district in San Francisco can fit in about 1 block of lower Manhattan. And the startup community in NYC compares similarly to the startup community here -- which stretches 50 miles from San Jose to San Francisco and beyond.
Some observations:
1) They have really cool concerts in their office regularly, and often have B-list musicians in their office .
2) They fly all new NYC employees to Sweden for a couple weeks for training and culture immersion.
3) Being in NYC allows them (it seems) to pay less than comparable jobs here in San Francisco. Probably because there are far fewer cool startups in NYC to compete for talent with.
4) The name "Spotify" was a total fluke and accident, one co-founder mis-heard another, bought the domain, and the rest is history.