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From Silicon Valley to the Silicon Slopes
California-based technology companies find new homes in Utah by G A R Y D A U G H T E R S
H In March 2018, Adobe broke ground on a new $90 million facility being built next to its sevenyear-old office in Lehi, Utah. The project is slated for completion in 2020 and will be home to 1,000 new employees creating an estimated $2.3 billion in new wages and over $85 million in state corporate, payroll and sales taxes over the next 20 years. Photo cour tesy of Erickson Photography
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igh-tax California, with its pricey workforce and burdensome regulations, has become a target-rich environment for corporate recruiters in Utah. Start with Utah’s business-friendly climate, add to it a talent-ready workforce, and the Beehive State can offer an irresistible lure to technology companies hatched on the West Coast. Tech-based companies learned long ago that they can attract Silicon Valley-level talent on Utah’s “Silicon Slopes” at a fraction of the cost. As just one recent example, San Francisco-based Castlight Health selected Salt Lake City as the location for a new customer center of excellence. Founded in San Francisco in 2008, Castlight is a shopping app that offers tools that allow patients to see prices of surgeries and other medical services at different providers. Castlight announced its decision in August of 2019, after a site search that lasted six months. The company plans to create more than 200 jobs in Utah by 2022 while investing $3 million.
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“The talented workforce in this environment makes Silicon Slopes a natural fit for Castlight,” said Siobhan Nolan Mangini, president and CFO. “The Salt Lake City area has proven to be one of the most rapidly expanding and vibrant regions in the country for health care and technology companies.” When recruiting new firms, Utah targets growing companies in the information technology, fintech, medtech, software development and other high-tech sectors. It’s called playing to your strengths: more than 8% of Utah’s population is employed in technology, and the numbers are rapidly growing. Utah’s talent pipeline includes highly skilled transplants from other states, who often are drawn to Utah by the state’s unparalleled scenery, its familyfriendly cities and favorable worklife balance. Programmer Jac Madsen says he can watch the sun set from a mountaintop minutes from work, rather than at his desk as it was when he was employed in Silicon Valley. “Utah,” says Madsen, “is much less jealous of my life.”
