One thing that makes counting tough is that in NYC there isn't a hard divide between tech and non-tech, and many firms support niche verticals. Rather than general purpose Big Data companies, we have Big Data for Media, or Big Data for Finance.<p>The industries supported also wind up looking very technical. Is an exchange a place where stocks are traded, or a technology where stocks are traded? It's looking more like the latter. Are digital media companies part of media, or part of technology?<p>For those into applied technology, this is the beauty of the NYC tech scene. Perhaps it's a little less glamorous for researchers.
It doesn't seem like "positions that require 'advanced tech sklls'" is the right measure for the size of the NYC tech sector. Surely Foursquare's office manager is a part of NYC's tech sector, but their job likely doesn't require "advanced tech skills".
As someone on both coasts often, NYC seems to have many fewer tech events. I might get a hackathon or two a month in NYC, but in SF/SV sometimes there are 7 in a single weekend and it is rare to have a weekend without one. The prizes are much better too. A 5k purse is normal, but they often go up to 40k or even 850k investment for the top two with the upcoming LAUNCH hackathon. The conference situation is the same. You get much bigger, much more frequent, with many more companies in SF/SV. If you are looking to do business development or just find a job, your chances are much better. I'm not saying NYC is bad, it has something. The something it has is just much less than the tech center of the country.
The big confusion is whether we're trying to measure the "tech sector" or the "startup sector." The former is likely a superset of the latter, and the latter possibly includes companies which aren't necessarily in the former.<p>Should I be counted as part of the NYC tech sector? I'm working in a technical role at a media startup. Is that more or less techy than an office manager at a tech startup?<p>Purely anecdotally, the tech scene in NYC still feels extremely intimate. It's easy to know/recognize a lot of people at any tech event.
Instead of asking how big is the sector? I believe the real question should be, How joined/fragmented is it? I won't call it a problem, but the difference between CA and other places is that other places are much fragmented and disjointed. NYC tech sector might be large, but it doesn't have that CA appeal because everyone is everywhere. If they were all brought together into the same region it would bubble up like Silicon Valley.
NYC's financial industry pays well for tech jobs, I'd guess more people get a nice 9-5 job with a good salary vs a startup job with a lot of pressure.
Speaking from my own experience, the NYC startup community is large and very active. I'm hoping this growth continues after we get a new mayor in.
I live in NYC, and I've seen the tech community grow pretty quickly over the past few years.<p>I run a meetup group - NYC Python: <a href="http://www.nycpython.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nycpython.com/</a> - and the number of events, attendees, companies, and conferences dedicated to just Python has grown substantially since I started getting involved a few years back.
I lived there for 7 years.<p>New York is a great place in general, but I wouldn't recommend its tech scene. The Meetups are of high quality (in general) because there are so many people, but most of the people at <Cool Technology X> meetups don't get to use X in their day jobs.<p>The VC-funded startups are thick on quantity but dogshit (on average) for quality. Most of the talented people move to finance (or leave NYC) after 30 because the startup scene is so awful: most of the founders are well-connected wankbaskets, not real technologists.