I saw this Tweet the other day and it got me thinking... what would happen if you didn't hire anyone from San Francisco?
The tweet in question
Is this a nothing burger, or is tech extremely geographically constrained?
So I fired up LinkedIn and started looking
The short answer: tech is more or less everywhere
Here's what I found
| MSA ranking | Area | Account Executives | SDRs | AE / SDR ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | 40,000 | 7,600 | 5.3 |
| 2 | LA | 29,000 | 5,700 | 5.1 |
| 3 | Chicago | 21,000 | 6,000 | 3.5 |
| 4 | Dallas | 16,000 | 5,100 | 3.1 |
| 5 | Houston | 9,300 | 3,600 | 2.6 |
| 6 | Atlanta | 15,000 | 5,300 | 2.8 |
| 7 | Washington DC | 14,000 | 3,400 | 4.1 |
| 8 | Philadelphia | 10,000 | 3,400 | 2.9 |
| 9 | Miami | 11,000 | 3,500 | 3.1 |
| 10 | Phoenix | 9,500 | 3,200 | 3.0 |
| 11 | Boston | 16,000 | 6,100 | 2.6 |
| 13 | San Francisco | 15,000 | 4,100 | 3.7 |
| 15 | Seattle | 7,400 | 1,100 | 6.7 |
| 26 | Austin | 9,800 | 3,500 | 2.8 |
| 35 | Nashville | 4,800 | 2,000 | 2.4 |
You can make a copy of the data to play with here
The Assumptions:
- For Account Executives, I have looked at people who have that title in their LinkedIn profile as their current job
- For current Sales Development Reps, I also looked at Account Development Reps and Business Development Reps
- I took the top 10 Metropolitan Statistical Areas and a few "hot" cities. An MSA means that if you search for New York, you also get people across the river in New Jersey and all the close suburbs a short train ride away. It means getting Fort Worth if you search for Dallas and Fort Lauderdale for Miami (and so on).
- I excluded anyone who's industry was Public Relations, Advertising, Retail Apparel, Real Estate, Non Profit Organizations, Books Or Retail Office Operations. This left the people most likely to be in software sales
What I learned:
- The big cities have the most salespeople (as to be expected)
- Boston and San Francisco are both punching above their weight (also to be expected)
- Houston and Phoenix are both fairly small markets, especially compared to other cities of a similar size
- The cheaper cities are more likely to have a lower SDR: AE ratio, which also makes sense
Sam Marelich
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