I was raised in California and I just happened to enjoy building websites as a kid so it was a no brainer to move to Silicon Valley when I became an adult.
I just wish it wasn't so damn expensive to live here. States like Colorado and Arizona have been on my mind a lot lately since you can get a beautiful house out there for what it costs to buy a condo here.
I was also born and raised in California (Redding to be exact). I've since lived in the bay, NYC, Minneapolis (amazing city BTW just freaky cold winters) and AZ. I'm currently in AZ (for the third time) and am staying. The startup scene out here is frowning and there's a lit of resources and meet ups and like minded folk out here. I highly advise folks to check it out. For what would cost you 1.2-1.8 Million for a house in the Silicon Valley you can get the same here in az for 200-300K with a much larger a pool and a bugger back yard.
The startup scene is definitely growing in AZ. There are plenty of interesting people doing interesting things. The low cost of living, increasing number of awesome meetups, and growing co-working community is a pretty good sign of things to come. I've met passionate entrepreneurs at almost every corner of the state. Just off the top of my head--Flagstaff has NACET; Tucson is leading the open data movement; Chandler has Gangplank; Phoenix has CO+HOOT & SeedSpot; Mesa has a wonderful Hackerspace; and Marana was recently elected a top digital city in 2012.
That said, there's room for improvement. There aren't a lot of people with experience investing in hi-tech (lots hi-tech military stuff, but not the hi-tech that HN normally discusses); as a community, we don't have really good marketing muscle; there are few veterans willing to recycle capital; and not a lot of foreign direct investment because people have this impression that folks from AZ are crazy.
I love that place though. You can live in a goddamn mansion for the prices you pay in SF.
I am in Arizona, and voted appropriately. However, I am actively in the process of relocating to Washington state. I have lived half of my life here, but I am just tired of Arizona. The tech sector here is poor. Local education is bad (reference Intel CFO Gregg Barrett). I love Arizona's geography and weather, but I can't take the toxic politics, anti-education, and pro-white-elderly social climate. It's the social atmosphere amongst the other tech people I know here that I'm really running away from. All the people I know from Ebay/Paypal, TGen, GoDaddy, ASU, etc just seem miserable and I don't blame them, but I won't be amongst them any longer.
I'm in AZ as well, as far as software development goes... the pay:cost-of-living ratio is really good, so is the unemployment rate... we had the bubble bust in late 2001 (just after 9-11), and it recovered a little faster here, compared to California... Though a lot of the jobs in IT are on the more boring side, there are a lot of user groups for everything from .Net and Java to Python or NodeJS.
Nice to see some fellow Arizonans. I agree with the great cost of living to salary ratio, but unfortunately I've ended up in an industry where I really don't want to be. And I'm having a tough time finding something new here.
I just wish it wasn't so damn expensive to live here. States like Colorado and Arizona have been on my mind a lot lately since you can get a beautiful house out there for what it costs to buy a condo here.