Silicon Hills

AUSTIN'S GROWING TECH INDUSTRY

By Gabe Tao

Overlooking

from the hills of West Austin, nestled in the dense greenbelt, are a shining accumulation of office buildings. They follow the river, extending from the far reaches of downtown all the way to Loop 360. Longtime residents with sharp eyes will notice how a new one seems to appear every month or so. Each one of these office buildings happens to belong to the same business sector: technology.

Since the ‘80s, Austin has seen a rapid growth of technologybased businesses. Some, like Dell, Samsung, or IBM have held offices in Austin since the beginning of the tech boom. Others like Oracle have only moved their headquarters here during the past few years. Many are multi-billion dollar, worldwide companies, extending their powerful tech influence to Austin. And in between, small tech businesses are appearing faster and faster.

Aifleet, a tech-enabled trucking company, moved its offices to downtown Austin in 2020 and developed an AI software that optimizes delivery routes for truck drivers. According to Samantha Brody, Head of Marketing and Driver Recruiting at Aifleet, both the software engineers and the fleet of drivers are able to benefit. Brody said that the city of Austin as a whole is very small businessfriendly, which has helped it become a new tech hub.

“I think a lot of people like working here because there's no income tax, so it incentivizes employees,” Brody said. “There's

A growing cluster of tech related businesses mostly in the hilly area of West Austin has earned Austin the nickname “Silicon Hills” after the well-known Silicon Valley area. As tech-based businesses started moving to town, the Austin government began to encourage further growth. Some intentional decisions were made to spur on new companies to call Austin home, according to Joshua Henke, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) architect at SolarWinds.

“A lot of it was really accelerated in the mid-2000s because of accommodations that Austin, the city, was making for tech companies to attract them here,” Henke said. “And made certain investments and maybe gave tax breaks or we had property around. We just had a synergy of people being interested in this area and someone taking a chance.”

A gathering of companies, all with a similar niche, is bound to form complex relationships within itself. Tough competition between multiple businesses seems like a likely possibility, but these companies also depend on each other for support and buy each other’s products.

“Samsung and Apple is a pretty common one, where they’re both competitors and they’re customers of each other,” said Henke. “Customer and vendor, they have this multifaceted relationship.”

The personality and character of coworkers is another important factor as to what makes Austin special. One reason why Austin is becoming a tech hotspot is because of the vibrant community of tech workers.

The type of worker that Austin attracts is another important factor in its growth as a tech hotspot. The vibrant community of tech workers are attracted by the nature, food, new opportunities, or the oddity of the city. This creates a workforce of people with a strong character and unique personality.

“The people are hardworking and really ambitious, and they want to build cool things and meaningful things, and they're also very nice and friendly and pleasant to work with. And that's actually a core value for us. We talk a lot about mutual respect and bringing more fun and appreciation to the work environment,” said Brody.

Having people that are all interested in technology also creates a sense of closeness and community, explained Akihiko Tomita, a principal software engineer at NI (National Instruments).

“It's easy to meet other people that have similar interests as you,” said Tomita. “There's a lot of crosspollination as well within Austin. We have friends that can talk about similar technologies. It's just a good place to be.” culture; the greenery or food; or the relaxed, laidback vibe. Whether you’re looking for a solid tech base or a quirky, welcoming community, Austin has something to offer for everyone.

Colleges like the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech are all close to Austin and specialize in technology-based degrees. This gathering of tech-oriented students not only attracts workers to Austin, but also entire tech companies who are seeking to hire.

“Here in Austin, we have a number of universities, so there's education,” said Tomita. “There's a lot of arts here. There's a lot of live music. There's a lot of visual arts … it's a wide range of things, and so I think people can take advantage of not being around just tech or engineering people. There's a lot of things that are offered. I think a lot of people kind of crave that diversity of hobbies and diversity of people here.”

“There's already a heavy tech presence in Austin, and there has been for a while. I think a lot of companies are also coming to Austin because they already see that there's a worker base here that exists in Austin that's already tech-heavy, and they don't need to relocate those employees,” said Tomita.

Work in Austin is not the only reason why people are moving here. There are more factors that attract businesses here, whether it’s the music

All of these factors and more have led businesses to identify Austin as the place to move their company to. According to Brody, what makes Austin special is not just its growing technology sector but also that it’s so livable.

“Austin is the perfect combination of good life and good work,” said Brody. “The weather, the people, the environment, the culture makes it a good place to live, and people bring that good attitude to their work.”