For some reason CBers and my Mother just eat it up. Adobe is expanding in Utah? Wow! Except they are expanding to a much larger extent in Silicon valley. Workday has an office here? Cool! Except they have offices all over the country.

Picking out individual examples of companies expanding isn't really solid evidence. Its confirmation bias. No one includes the time when Facebook didn't build the data center in Utah because Utah wouldn't throw enough money and cheap water at them.

Some additional insight in venture capital funds across the country:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/global-startup-cities-venture-capital/429255/

All of this leads me to my point: What is happening in Utah is great, but its happening everywhere. There are tons of these clickbait slideshow rankings and they all shuffle through mid-sized US cities that have healthy economies.

For some reason CBers and my Mother eat this stuff up. Now I get nagged by my mom constantly about all the cool fancy tech jobs that are in Utah that I should be taking.