Melia Robinson/Business Insider
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff chats with San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell, a venture capitalist on sabbatical, before the grand opening ceremony at Salesforce Tower in San Francisco.
On a foggy day in San Francisco last week, politicians and tech moguls gathered outside Salesforce Tower, the tallest office building west of the Mississippi, to celebrate the skyscraper's grand opening. This was peak San Francisco - a display of power and influence topped off by Marc Benioff holding hands with the mayor of San Francisco as a blessing was said over the cone-shaped, vaguely phallic 61-story tower.
San Francisco is, for better or worse, a tech city. The tech sector creates tens of thousands of jobs annually in the nine-county Bay Area, making it the single biggest engine of the local economy, though that job growth is starting to slow.
As startups blossom, attracting a wave of entrepreneurs and investment dollars, the tech industry has achieved significant clout in local