Hacker News Reader

I'm a developer. I recently moved to Ann Arbor. I've worked for startups my entire career, only the most recent of which even has an office in SF. Our office there is small, and contains only a small fraction of our sales staff and the people that need to interact with VCs.

I would need to make upwards of $400-500k / year in SF to get the quality of life I get here. Here, there are good school districts, affordable real estate, affordable child care, and low crime rates. No subset of the city perpetually smells like human excrement and trash. I bought a house less than a mile from downtown, and not only can I afford the mortgage, I put 20% down and I can continue to save aggressively. We have a yard substantially larger than a postage stamp. There's a large public park a quarter mile down the street, and a smaller one at the end of my block. My wife can walk to work in ten minutes.

SF is a bustling center of activity in my industry, but it's also a money pit. It's not worth it for me to locate myself there.

All your points are good. As someone who suffered a 6X cost of living increase (but only a 1.5X salary increase) when moving from Flyover, USA to Silicon Valley, I'd love to go back. I hate my 2+ hour (each way) commute. I hate that I can no longer save. I can't stand living in a small space on a tiny lot and paying enormously for it. But you know what I hate more? The feeling that when I need to find my next job, I will have only a handful of local employers to choose from or will have to move to another state to find employment. You always have that hanging over you when you're living in a non tech hub. Here, things suck but at least if you have 10 days you can interview at 10 tech companies all in the same area. That's priceless.

It may be priceless to you, but my utility from marginally increased income stability does not asymptotically approach infinity at "an interview per day".

I'm really surprised by all of the next job worry. I'm a software developer in Iowa and have been doing this right here for 18 years now and that has never been a concern. I was once out of work for about 2 months after being laid off from a start-up after the main VC investor backed out.

I have spent a lot of time interviewing candidates and it is much harder for me to hire than it is for me to go find a job.

I have a nice large home in a quiet neighborhood with easy access to anywhere I want to go. I raise three kids and still manage to invest about 50K a year into retirement every year and so I will retire early with millions saved.

There is so much FUD from everyone that doesn't live here.

Please keep thinking the same way though. If everyone catches on and moves here eventually we really will be the next silicon valley; to that I say, "No thanks."

Interesting. Do you happen to know roughly how many software engineer-hiring companies are within a commutable radius from your home?

I live in Chicago and it can be a bit tough finding the next gig here. Lots of people are hiring, but no one ever seems to be in a big hurry. I had one recruiter touching base with me for over two months as one startup took their time to schedule a second phone interview with me (I was still in contention, they just have a dirt slow process. The recruiter had complained to them about it before).

By the time they were ready, I had finally found something new, but that was after four months (they contacted me when I was 2 months unemployed). I've also had people submit changes in their requirements to recruiters before a phone interview so I was no longer had enough years of experience for them (and I have quite a few), contact me about setting up an interview and then never end up emailing me to confirm a final time, all sorts of stupid stuff that's happened.

I'm at a new company now (in the Chicago area) and even though we've lost four people and we're 'desperate for new developers' according to the boss, we haven't had a new hire in at least six months.

I doubt this kind of crap happens with companies at SV, because they wouldn't be able to hire anyone because other companies would snatch them up too quick.

> I doubt this kind of crap happens with companies at SV, because they wouldn't be able to hire anyone because other companies would snatch them up too quick.

No, I can assure you that it does happen in SV too. Everyone claims to be 'desperate for new developers' but the proof is in the pudding--lots of places interviewing, few places hiring. Lots of slowness, endless rounds of interviews, and foot dragging.

> Yes you can find talent in the midwest but do you think top CS grads from CMU, UIUC, Purdue, etc. want to stay in the midwest after graduating? Think about it.. 22 years old, fresh out of college, after living in the midwest for 4 years...most of them want to come to San Francisco / Silicon Valley, the tech center of the world.

Other people have commented on other things, but this statement seems out-of-touch. You realize that large numbers of students at those universities come from Midwestern states, right? That the singular obsession with Silicon Valley is restricted to a very vocal and enthusiastic minority?

Yeah, I both went to UIUC and did job fairs/interviews there later, and while there certainly is the "let's get out of here" mindset from some students, many students' first question was "what do you have in Chicagoland?" or occasionally the Twin Cities. This was, perhaps obviously, especially true of the students from those cities. Hearing that a coastal job was the only option was definitely not a plus to many. Things were somewhat different for grad students who tend to be more diverse geographically, but it's not like they're taking HS kids from SV, dropping them in the Midwest to get educated and then releasing them from their hell after 4 years.

Unrelated note, how did PA (CMU) get included in the Midwest. Philly is essentially on the Atlantic Ocean and the Navy used to build warships there. That's hardly any sort of degree of West.

CMU is in Pittsburgh, closer to Cleveland than the coast.

And we (Pittsburgh) pride ourselves on being part of the Midwest. It's very Midwestern.

That's an interesting note I'd never heard before. Never spent more than a few days in either, but I guess I would say it's more Detroit than Philly.

Wha? Pennsylvania hasn't been part of the west or even middle west since the days of Natty Bumppo.

Ignore this person, they don't know what they are talking about.

I realize CMU is in Pittsburgh, but that's still pretty far East as far as the US goes.

Buffalo and Rochester are also closer to Cleveland than the coast, so I'm not sure that's a great metric.

Anyway, always interesting how terms differ among people

My son included. From CMU to Cupertino pretty much direct.

>do you think top CS grads from CMU, UIUC, Purdue, etc. want to stay in the midwest after graduating?

Without some real surveys it's hard to make conclusive statements, but these are the top reasons I hear for why people don't leave Minneapolis for the coasts:

* Housing (and cost of living in general)

* Family and social network

* The Bubble (SF in particular).

* They just love the city and don't feel the need to move.

For me personally housing is the big one.

I don't have source for you other than I went to Purdue, but I believe the 25% number for research dollars. You have Purdue, Indiana, Ohio State, Michigan, and many other research universities in the Midwest. Did you know that because both Purdue and Indiana are such powerhouses for biotech research that Indiana is one of the best places in the US to start a biotech company? As for a source, I did biotech research during my graduate studies at Purdue.

Honestly I am glad to hear a VC finally say that Silicon Valley isn't necessarily the best place to start a tech company. The reality is it depends. Maybe SV is the best place and maybe it isn't.

I think the germ of truth was in the article - you need to be close to your customers. If your customers are tech firms, or the kind of people who work at tech firms, Silicon Valley is a good place to be. If your customers are biotech or banks or any of 100 other disciplines, you're better off being elsewhere.

I agree. That was the biggest takeaway for me as well.

>really? source on that? What states exactly does that entail?

Is that really that surprising? The Census Bureau defines the midwest to be 12 states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Their accumulated GDP is 3.6 trillion vs California's 2.4 trillion or approximately 50% more(numbers found on wolfram alpha). But then that is 12 against one, not exactly exciting that the Midwest isn't a third world country.

Not sure how CMU and Pittsburgh ended up there though that is Midatlantic not Midwest. Probably just makes the math more favorable.

"Next Silicon Valley" articles are speculative hype. That said, SV's housing crisis, crumbling infrastructure, and sheer inequality seems pretty unsustainable. Let's hope that the other 90% [1] get a bigger piece of the pie soon, for the sake of developers not being obligated to work here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12385926

Better than CalTech, most certainly (the school is just too small, and too science focused I would guess). But it's indeed iffy to argue that any one of Stanford, UC Berkeley, CMU or MIT are the best, it really depends on what you're looking for. E.g. if you want a lot of EE with your CS, go to Berkeley or MIT. Pure CS? CMU would seem to have a strong case (certainly much more than MIT), its competitor would be Stanford. Also a very selective program, you have to apply separately to it, and they only accept 135 students per year. By comparison, MIT and I would guess UC Berkeley's enrollment are a lot larger.

Correction: CMU CS undergraduate program admits 300 each year, 135 enroll. The acceptance rate is around 6%

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten about "yield".

To throw out some more numbers, the last I got for MIT, which was before a degree from it was perceived as being relatively more valuable in the Great Recession, it received 13,000 applications, 3,000 of which were judged capable of doing the work, and the admissions office aimed for a yield AKA class size of 1,100.

Do you mean out of 300 admitted, only 135 finally join, or something else?

If these really are top grads, they should be able to do math. And if they do the math, they will find that the cost of living and tax situation is such that they will net less money living in California than they would in, say, Austin Texas.

I did the math. I got offers from some prominent bay area startups. They are constantly recruiting me, but none of them can offer a competitive deal on salary (and don't get me started on their "stock options" packages.)

You seem to be projecting your aspirations/desires or preferences and assuming that is the case for everyone else. I do understand that for your first job working for someone like Amazon seems glamorous, but once you've put in a couple years there (and Amazon is a particularly abusive hellhole for engineers) that wears off.

The top talent is not swayed by "name brands" but by places where they can really be innovative.

I can imagine the top MBAs from Midwest universities DO want to go work for these "name brands" because it pads you their resumes nicely.

But hackers? Hackers want to hack. They want to be on the cutting edge.

And that's no longer silicon valley. Hasn't been for awhile. It's just nobody told the people who live in silicon valley, apparently.

Not to mention since when the fuck is Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh in the Midwest?

It's so obvious that whoever wrote this is not from the Midwest. If you are going to call CMU as in the Midwest, you might as well say Seattle and Phoenix are suburbs of Silicon Valley.

I don't think where developers go to school have all that much to do with it... The best developers I know don't even have college degrees. They were self taught and it is just in their blood.

Stanford?