Ah I didn't mean to imply that Strongloop was in Austin -- didn't know that Strongloop was in SV though, but I guess that makes sense.
I would think IBM has excellent golden handcuffs, not to speak of prestige and interesting problems. Like other big companies, it just depends on your distance from the C-levels and which team you get to be on -- do you get to do the interesting work or the boring work.
That would be somewhere else.
Strongloop is in SV, there's no shortage of opportunity for the devs who worked there.
Unless they got some serious golden handcuffs, in which case I'm sure some will stay for the 3-5 years these last.