San Francisco was the place to be for many in tech. Then it wasn't.

Jeanna Barrett had spent the last 20 months in Seattle helping grow a location-based mobile app. In April 2011, Groupon acquired the startup, and it declined to keep her on staff. 

Fine by her.

"I called my parents after I found out I didn’t have a job at Groupon and said, 'I'm moving to San Francisco.' I just knew I wanted to make it work," Barrett said. 

Barrett is one of thousands of hungry tech workers that move to San Francisco each year. The influx of people and money centered around technology has been extreme even for a city with a sports team named for the 1849 gold rush. Software engineers and marketing strategists look to the city by the Bay as the place to live to be a part of innovation. The tech explosion of the last two decades has transformed the area, turning its metro areas into some of the richest in the world.  Read more...