MENLO PARK, Calif. — Silicon Valley, it turns out, doesn’t revolve around the stock prices of Facebook and its playful sidekick, Zynga.
By most indications, tech companies in this hub of innovation are humming along even as two of its rising stars endure steep declines in their stock prices that have wiped out more than $60 billion in wealth in the past six months.
Companies catering to mobile devices, business software and data-management products are thriving, while longtime Silicon Valley stalwarts such as Apple Inc. and Google Inc. remain among the most revered brands in the world.
“Nothing has fundamentally changed about the opportunities that are possible,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, an online data-storage company based in Los Altos, Calif.
The optimism in Silicon Valley can be seen in a variety of ways in this area, which covers roughly 40 miles from San Jose to San Francisco:
Entrepreneurs are still pursuing big ideas and raising millions of dollars.
Silicon Valley startups raised $3.2 billion from venture capitalists during the April-June quarter, far more than in any other part of the U.S., as tracked by the National Venture Capital Association. Venture capital flowing into Silicon Valley increased by 4 percent from the same time last year, while it dropped 12 percent nationwide.
Apartment rents in San Francisco have soared beyond the lofty levels of the original Internet boom more than a decade ago. This time, it’s being driven by well-paid software engineers and Web designers who are flocking to Silicon Valley.
San Francisco apartments rented for an average of $2,734 in June, up 13 percent from a year ago. Renting in San Jose – the region’s largest city – was less expensive, but even there, the average lease cost $1,811 a month, a 10 percent increase from last year.
Computer coding programmers still command top dollar for their services because there aren’t enough of them to meet demand.
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of the 8-year-old online reviews service Yelp Inc., said his company is always behind on its hiring goals for software engineers.
“There is no one who is like ’Oh, we have all the engineers we need, and we don’t need more,’” he said. Competition is fierce from all sides – massive companies such as Google and Facebook, tiny startup incubators and everything in between.
“And there is attrition,” Mr. Stoppelman said. “From what I gather from engineers, two, three times a week they get calls from recruiters.”
Software engineers working in the San Francisco area are paid an average of about $115,000, up from $106,000 in 2008, according to Glassdoor.com, which analyzed compensation figures collected from users. The average salary for software engineers in the Bay Area is about 17 percent higher than the national average for the same occupation, according to Glassdoor.
Google pays its engineers an average of $142,000, up from just under $104,000 in 2008, Glassdoor calculated. During that time, Google’s workforce has swelled by 70 percent to about 34,000 employees, including thousands of engineers working at or near its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Even Facebook and Zynga remain on hiring sprees.
Facebook still plans to transform its Menlo Park headquarters into the equivalent of a small town that is supposed eventually to house 6,000 workers. The social networking leader has hired famed architect Frank Gehry to design a 420,000-square-foot warehouse that will feature a garden growing across its roof. Plans also call for a town square featuring restaurants, a bike shop and a health clinic.
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