eBay will add 200 developers, data scientists and statisticians in New York as it ramps up a new research and development center focused on big data and improving eBay’s recommendations technology. New York or Silicon Valley? Which do you think is a more preferable place to work? Why? Share your thoughts below.  The office at 625 6th Ave. in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood will open this fall and will be headed by Chris Dixon, founder of Hunch, which eBay bought in November. Twenty-five Hunch staff members will move to the new site. Dixon told Mashable:

There is a great trend propelling tech forward in New York, which started when Google opened up a large office there. We will be hiring new people and looking at expanding positions in the future. We are very excited.

eBay opened an R&D center in Seattle in January that focuses on data mining. It also has centers in Austin, Portland, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, and Bangalore. Microsoft last week also announced it will open an R&D lab in Manhattan, bringing with it 14 researchers from Yahoo, after Yahoo's research arm took a massive hit during the recent layoffs. Facebook and Twitter already have set up offices in the Big Apple, which is the city leading the pack in Dice's list of top tech metro areas. And New York University just announced it is creating a school of applied science in Brooklyn as well. All of which has economic development officials in the area giddy, predicting that downtown Brooklyn will support more than 61,000 tech jobs by 2015.