Hi everyone, and welcome back to SCALE UP: Global Talent Strategies Deep Dive.
This week’s episode — Timezone Is Geography — marks the finale of Season 2.
This season wasn’t just research.It was storytelling — following real people navigating AI disruption, Gen Z mobility, immigration pressure, and the new physics of work across North America.
Today, we’re pulling everything together —Seven episodes. Seven cities. Seven characters. One continental system.
Let’s revisit what we learned.
What We Learned Across 7 Episodes — With Data, Trends & Stories
Episode 1 — Silicon Valley’s Broken Dreams
Sarah’s story reflected what 230,000+ tech workers demonstrated:the Bay Area is no longer the only place to build a meaningful tech career.
* Median rent: $3,900
* Home prices: $1.4M
* Burnout up 34%
* Gen Z: 58% plan to not build long-term roots in SF
Silicon Valley still leads in frontier R&D and capital —but the monopoly on ambition is gone.
Episode 2 — The West Coast Renaissance
Seattle, Portland, San Diego — three cities building tech ecosystems around meaning, not burnout.
* Seattle cloud ecosystem: +17% YoY
* Portland climate-tech jobs: +28%
* San Diego biotech funding: $4.6B → $7.2B in three years
Gen Z prefers purpose + flexibility:71% rank quality of life above brand-name employers.
The West Coast evolved from a grind to a creative, climate-forward, human-centric hub.
Episode 3 — East Coast Gravity
New York, Boston, Washington D.C. — the places where failure has national consequences.
* NYC moves $6.3T daily
* Boston biotech: +47% in five years
* D.C. cybersecurity: +35% growth since 2020
If Silicon Valley is about speed,the East Coast is about stakes.
Episode 4 — The Optionality Generation
Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Philly — the cities where careers are built around life.
* Atlanta: 42% cheaper than SF
* Austin tech salaries: +21%
* South retention rates: 17% higher than West Coast
Gen Z’s new equation:Freedom > prestige. Design > hustle.
Optionality isn’t a trade-down — it’s strategy.
When Arjun received his Canadian PR, he said:
“It was the first time I stopped holding my breath.”
* Over 150,000 engineers moved to Canada in 2024
* Toronto tech workforce: +23%
* Montreal is now #3 globally in AI papers
* Vancouver startup formation hit record highs
In an age of volatility, Canada offered predictability + policy + permanence.
Stability became a competitive advantage.
Episode 6 — Embedded Teams Win
Character: Diego RamosTrend: Operational intelligence beats theoretical design.
Mexico didn’t rise because it was cheap —it rose because it was closer to the constraints.
* Mexico tech workforce: 250K → 800K
* Guadalajara: 70,000 new tech jobs in 2024
* Mexico City product engineering: 17× growth since 2019
* Monterrey deep tech: +125% workforce expansion
Diego put it best:
“We’re not the backend anymore — we’re part of the build.”
Mexico became the execution engine of North America.
Episode 7 — Time zone Is Geography (Finale)
Character: Isaiah MitchellTrend: Time synchronization is the new competitive moat.
At 7 AM in Puerto Rico:
New York is beginning.São Paulo is mid-day.San Francisco is finishing overnight ops.
No region aligns three markets like the Caribbean.
* Caribbean tech workforce: 12K → 75K (2020–2024)
* Projected 310K by 2027
* Retention: 91% (vs. SF’s 67%)
* Incident response times: -73% for companies using Caribbean teams
The Caribbean didn’t become a cost center —it became the 24/7 operational layer of the hemisphere.
The Big Insight: North America Is Now a System, Not a Map
Across seven journeys — Sarah, Jennifer, Jake, Tasha, Arjun, Diego, and Isaiah — we discovered a new reality:
North America has become a distributed, synchronized, multi-market talent system.
Each region now specializes:
* Silicon Valley → frontier experiments & capital
* West Coast → creativity, climate innovation & lifestyle tech
* East Coast → high-stakes systems & financial scale
* The South → retention, affordability & quality of life
* Canada → stability, immigration pathways & AI depth
* Mexico → operational intelligence & proximity
* Caribbean → 24/7 continuity & timezone advantage
Not competing.Interlocking.
Like a continental engineering team — exactly where each node does what it does best.
Season 3 Preview — Next Stop: EMEA
And as we wrap Season 2, we’re thrilled to share what’s coming next.
Season 3 will take SCALE UP into EMEA —a region on the brink of its own talent reshuffle.
We’re not revealing the new format yet,but we promise it will be bigger, deeper, and more ambitious.
Here’s a glimpse of the ground we’ll explore:
Europe
* London’s fintech + global capital engine
* Berlin’s product renaissance amid AI democratization
* Amsterdam & Dublin’s multinational talent corridors
* Eastern Europe’s rise in AI engineering and cybersecurity
Middle East
* Dubai’s hyper-fast AI policy ecosystem
* Riyadh and NEOM, building the world’s most intentional innovation cities
* Tel Aviv, where frontier tech meets resilience
Africa
* Nairobi, the Silicon Savannah
* Lagos, home to one of the world’s fastest-growing developer populations
* Cape Town & Kigali, emerging as remote-first engineering hubs
EMEA isn’t one story —it’s dozens of emerging gravities pulling talent, capital, and ideas in entirely new directions.
And Season 3 will take you inside those shifts —through people, narrative, and a storytelling approach we’ve never tried before.
The format stays a mystery…for now.
Collaborate With Us
We’re opening sponsorships, research collaborations, and company partnerships for Season 3.
If your organization wants to collaborate or be featured,reach out via Substackor LinkedIn.
Together, let’s keep exploring how work moves —and who moves with it.
