{"id":17216,"date":"2026-10-27T14:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T21:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=17216"},"modified":"2026-08-28T19:29:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T02:29:25","slug":"portlands-silicon-forest-is-sliding-downhill-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=17216","title":{"rendered":"Portland’s ‘silicon forest’ is sliding downhill fast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2026 report<\/a>, Portland now ranks 34th out of 50 top North American tech markets. This ranking represents a steady downward slide for the “Silicon Forest,” which sat at 24th place just a few years prior in 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major layoffs at Intel and Nike as well as dramatically increasing costs of doing business in Portland (taxes) have seriously impacted Portland. While Nike often goes through more regular cycles of layoffs, Intel’s major decline of nearly 40% of it’s staff is not likely to turn around anytime soon as the company continues to hemorrhage billions in losses every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I used to go to Portland coder and technology meetups every night of the week I wanted. Pre-covid there were multiple meetups per night every day of the week to choose from: startup talks, programming language groups, tech talks – you name it. Now, I’m lucky to find one useful one a week; with many nights have NO tech meetups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were tons of startups in downtown buildings. Now Big Pink’s floor of startups is almost completely empty. Small tech companies have long since left Portland’s unfriendly taxes and business climate when remote work became a thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n