‘The Bay Area is broken’: Why local startups are hiring outside Silicon Valley

The Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (Dreamstime)

Silicon Valley may be the world's tech paradise, but it's a hiring nightmare for many local startups now forced to venture from Portland to Boise in search of talent. 

Enormous salary expectations – driven by the Bay Area's soaring cost of living and competition from well-paying giants such as Google and Facebook – have made it too expensive for a growing number of local startups to recruit employees here. Others say the workers they do have want to leave, frustrated by their inability to buy a home as the region grapples with a chronic housing shortage.