For what it's worth, the startup I currently work for is built entirely in C# and .NET, as was my previous employer. Both startups are based in the Dallas, TX area. Across both companies, applications were hosted on Azure and AWS using a mix of PaaS services and virtual machines running Windows and Linux. We've consistently found this stack to enable strong productivity and high-velocity release cadences.
For some reason, .NET is extremely popular outside of major tech hubs (notably in Europe), where you're much more likely to work for (without loss of generality) Ikea than for Google.
The Dallas area is a major tech hub. It’s just an older hub of major enterprisey type companies with major tech divisions there like Texas Instruments, AT&T, Bank of America, defense contractors like Lockheed, etc.
Office Space took place there before the dotcom bust.
Less enterprisey, but John Carmack and id Software also started there.
I lived and worked in Atlanta from 1996-2020. Those aren’t anymore tech companies than Delta, Home Depot or Coke by modern definitions. In all of the companies you named, software development is a cost center, not a profit center - follow the money. Who gets paid the most as a group at those companies? Those are enterprise companies.
I've worked at multiple startups that were built on .Net from day one. One very large music streaming site built entirely on VB.NET [0].
[0] I actually think VB.NET is the superior .Net language, but it lost support at MS and died. I think the code is vastly more readable (to me) than C-style code, and I've coded in every C, Java, C#, whatever variant.
