“In this day and age, you can’t be stuck in one city. I can’t

whose 724,000.

“In previous tech cycles, (tech companies) basically expected everyone to come to them. But given the competitive situation today and how expansive the tech industry has become, tech employers have to go far and wide to markets that are producing tech talent,” said Colin Yasukochi, director of research and analysis for CBRE, a commercial real estate firm that analyzes hiring trends for tech talent.

This push to decentralize is not uncommon. current population is Large companies almost always have multiple locations in the United States and globally, said Enrico Moretti, a professor of urban economics at the University of California, Berkeley who has written extensively on what he dubs “brain hubs.”

The largest tech hub outside Seattle is the San Francisco Bay area, where 6,000 corporate staffers work. That includes offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto (home to Stanford University), Cupertino (home to Apple) and Sunnyvale.

Next on the list is the Washington, D.C., area, which has 2,500 Amazon corporate staff. And then New York City, which has 1,800 and which Amazon says will ratchet up to 3,800 within five years.

The Boston hub was launched in 2012 when a single employee, Michael Touloumtzis, was sent out to “plant the flag,” in his words.

Amazon was realizing that no matter how much it offered, it simply couldn’t attract everyone it wanted or needed. Tech talent wanted to work for Amazon, but not enough to live 3,000 miles away from grandma.

“It’s about where your family is. How old your kids are. Do you want to pull them out of school?” said Touloumtzis, now head of human resources engineering at Amazon and site leader for its Boston Tech Hub. For example, he has found Europeans like being based in Boston because it’s only a six-hour flight home, compared with more than nine from Seattle.