When Adam Lilling , a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and investor, was getting his startup BiggerBoat going in 2006, he tried to recruit talent from Silicon Valley but found it impossible.

LA V. SF, Who Has It Better? | Click to expand Infographic by Hired

“I interviewed amazing engineers from the Bay Area, but no matter how much we offered, how great the opportunity, how perfect the circumstance, all of them ended up staying for fear of career suicide and losing the valuable relationships they made,” said Lilling, who went on to co-found the startup accelerator Launchpad LA.

Today, L.A. is no longer considered a risky proposition for talented techies living elsewhere. Indeed, the Valley is actually now starting to lose tech talent to L.A. Most notably, Snapchat, the disappearing message startup with a $10 billion valuation, has been on a poaching spree, nabbing a slew of top executives from the likes of Facebook and Google. In mid-October, Jill Hazelbaker, the former senior director of communications and government relations at Google (and this year’s fastest-rising executive in the Fortune 100), will start overseeing Snapchat’s PR and policy. And Sara Sperling is Snapchat’s new head of human resources, having recently left her post as Facebook’s Diversity and Inclusion head. Whisper, another hot L.A. startup that recently raised $36 million in funding, also has executive hires from major Silicon Valley companies, as does Cornerstone OnDemand.

“The fact that Snapchat has been able to get those guys and retain them in L.A. is amazing,” noted one tech executive, who asked that his name not be used, over lunch the other day.

While this may not be a full-on talent drain, per se, the fact that a number of high-ranking Silicon Valley folks are willing to make a bet on L.A. and relocate, marks a new milestone in the rapid evolution of Silicon Beach. No longer lampooned as a community of techies lounging around with celebrities and taking off for the beach before sunset, L.A. has gained real cred in recent months, and not just because of its sunny weather and (relatively) low rents. More VC money has flooded the ecosystem, and a series of impressive exits have been turning heads. Last March, Disney bought Maker Studios in a deal that’s potentially worth $900 million. That same month, Facebook snatched up Oculus RV for $2 billion. In April, TrueCar raised $70 million in an IPO.

“There’s a legitimate scene here now,” says Adam Miller, founder and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, which raised $137 million in an IPO in 2011. “We’re still not totally there yet, but L.A. has now been legitimized with multiple exits, through IPOs and acquisitions, as well as multiple major financings.”

Matt Mickiewicz, cofounder of Hired.com, which is launching an L.A. office this week, says there is now a “wealth of opportunity” in Los Angeles.