I grew up in the D.C. area, and as much as I rag on it for being plebe as far as food/culture goes, it definitely has a much stronger tech scene than people give it credit for. DC has a very well-established base of technology talent with a lot of domain-specific knowledge. The talent doesn't take the form of hot-shot 22 year old Stanford grads, but more very smart people that have been working at Raytheon, etc, and have deep knowledge of control systems, AI, image processing, etc. It's a different pool of talent than what VC-funded startups are typically looking at, but I think it's one that has a lot of potential for companies who want to work on "hard" problems that require advances in different problem domains.
The biggest weakness, in my experience working at a D.C.-area startup, is that it's hard to get the hot-shot 22 year olds when you need them. Virginia Tech and U MD are good, but I think the nearest really good CS programs might be CMU in Pittsburgh and maybe GT in Atlanta. Either are quite a hike.
and as much as I rag on it for being plebe as far as food/culture goes
Culture, maybe. Food though? DC's food scene is very surprisingly strong, particularly in new-immigrant ethnic cuisine. For some cuisines (notably Ethiopian) it's the best in the country. And of course, it's long been ground zero for the gourmet hamburger craze.
The biggest weakness, in my experience working at a D.C.-area startup, is that it's hard to get the hot-shot 22 year olds when you need them. Virginia Tech and U MD are good, but I think the nearest really good CS programs might be CMU in Pittsburgh and maybe GT in Atlanta. Either are quite a hike.
That is an astonishingly high bar. CMU is regarded by many to be the best CS program in the world.
Maryland's CS program is extremely strong: it usually hovers in the low teens nationwide. You forgot GMU and UMBC, both quite strong programs (I can personally vouch for GMU).
I can vouch for UMBC. UMBC has a strong talent pool. Sadly, many CS grads end up working in cyber security in VA, MD or DC. Although, I do personally know a few who got jobs at Google and Zynga.
I do agree that startups in DC lack young people. I've tried to go to two hacker/startup meetups in DC. Both times, it sucked. These hackers/startups guys were too old for me. It just didn't click and I left.
If your bar is GT in Atlanta you may as well just toss in MIT.
To be honest, many of the big Defense tech folks just go to local state schools, University of Maryland and GMU have pretty good CS programs and a very high percentage of grads work at the Raytheons and CSC type places.
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I grew up in the D.C. area, and as much as I rag on it for being plebe as far as food/culture goes, it definitely has a much stronger tech scene than people give it credit for. DC has a very well-established base of technology talent with a lot of domain-specific knowledge. The talent doesn't take the form of hot-shot 22 year old Stanford grads, but more very smart people that have been working at Raytheon, etc, and have deep knowledge of control systems, AI, image processing, etc. It's a different pool of talent than what VC-funded startups are typically looking at, but I think it's one that has a lot of potential for companies who want to work on "hard" problems that require advances in different problem domains.
The biggest weakness, in my experience working at a D.C.-area startup, is that it's hard to get the hot-shot 22 year olds when you need them. Virginia Tech and U MD are good, but I think the nearest really good CS programs might be CMU in Pittsburgh and maybe GT in Atlanta. Either are quite a hike.
Culture, maybe. Food though? DC's food scene is very surprisingly strong, particularly in new-immigrant ethnic cuisine. For some cuisines (notably Ethiopian) it's the best in the country. And of course, it's long been ground zero for the gourmet hamburger craze.
That is an astonishingly high bar. CMU is regarded by many to be the best CS program in the world.
Maryland's CS program is extremely strong: it usually hovers in the low teens nationwide. You forgot GMU and UMBC, both quite strong programs (I can personally vouch for GMU).
I can vouch for UMBC. UMBC has a strong talent pool. Sadly, many CS grads end up working in cyber security in VA, MD or DC. Although, I do personally know a few who got jobs at Google and Zynga.
I do agree that startups in DC lack young people. I've tried to go to two hacker/startup meetups in DC. Both times, it sucked. These hackers/startups guys were too old for me. It just didn't click and I left.
If your bar is GT in Atlanta you may as well just toss in MIT.
To be honest, many of the big Defense tech folks just go to local state schools, University of Maryland and GMU have pretty good CS programs and a very high percentage of grads work at the Raytheons and CSC type places.