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Comment by cschmidt | Hacker News Reader

Even $100k doesn't do much for you if you live in Midland, MI and just left the only chemical company in town. You'll have to move, probably out of state, and be competing with thousands of other newly unemployed folks chasing a few jobs in a mature industry. (Disclaimer: I grew up in Midland, and my family all worked for Dow.)

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I appreciate the difficulty of having to find a new job with a bunch of other folks, but at the higher-end salary range is "finding a new job in town" still a reasonable expectation?

I suppose it depends on where you live, and what you do. I live in Boston doing software, so I can always find another job without moving. It will affect Midland more.

Midland is an old company town, and there isn't a huge amount of chemical industry in the state, other than the Dow support system of suppliers. The other employer in town, Dow Corning, was a joint venture but (as was also announced today) is also being absorbed back into Dow.

The house prices in Midland will collapse, as lots of people move out of town together. There just aren't going to be enough open jobs in the chemical industry. I think most people will either have to retrain or retire early.

I know that's how the world works these days, but it is sad to see my hometown come to such hard times.

With all the shift to contract labs abroad, is finding a new job in chemistry still a thing? The trend for medchem startups these days is to be "fabless", it's a dude with an idea who contracts synthesis and testing out to labs in China.

That seems like a terrible idea from what I've heard about factory IP concerns in China. Or are labs more trustworthy?

If we ignore the long term, we can trust anyone!

There's friction through off-site coordination, there is loss of informal knowledge, there is silo-ing - these are all very immediate concerns. IP leakage is much further down on the list.

I'm surprised we never bumped into each other; I grew up in Midland and worked at Dow myself.

Dow High class of '89, then majored in ChE at U of M, class of '93. Any overlap?

Hah! Dow High Class of 98' here.

Dow High represent!

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