The Dallas-Irving-Plano area is atop Forbes' list of top cities for jobs.
"Being a livable place from a cost of living standpoint, great economic growth, but also a good lifestyle. It's not like it's a small town. It's very cosmopolitan, actually," said Mitu Ramgopal, who moved to Dallas from the San Francisco Bay Area last year, much to his friends' surprise. "Some of them were like, 'Really? Do you see cowboy hats there and pickup trucks?'"
Last year, San Francisco and San Jose topped the Forbes list.
Common Desk, a shared work space in Dallas' Oak Cliff neighborhood has seen an influx of people from the coasts, including manager Alaethea Hankins.
"I just moved here, me and my husband, about a year ago," Hankins explained. "I feel like Dallas is an underrated city."
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates about 400 people a day moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area last year.
Common Desk might just be a sign of the times. Shared work spaces, common in San Francisco, are becoming more common in North Texas now, too. Common Desk will open a new office in Plano, where the new Toyota headquarters just opened, next month.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
"So as a Texan, I love Texas," said Ryan Leech, who works for Booster, an app-based fuel-on-demand start-up company based in Burlingame, Calif., just south of San Francisco.
The company also has an office in Dallas.
"They don't really think of us as New York, L.A., San Francisco, but I think of us like that," Leech explained. "We're in the same top tier caliber of cities in the world."
Still, Ramgopal cautions about too much of a good thing.
"Make sure you keep the cost of living manageable," he said, pointing out many workers in the Bay Area have been priced out of the market by rising housing costs.
