The American midwest is quickly becoming a blue-collar version of Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

The American midwest is quickly becoming a blue-collar version of Silicon Valley

qz.com

87 pointswatchdogtimer106 comments

As a tech worker in a startup in the midwest I find this article vaguely insulting. On the one hand I am happy to see more acknowledgement that tech does happen in places other than Silicon Valley, but on the other hand apparently it is only "mid-tech" and only good enough for "blue collar" workers.

Agree. There are plenty of traditional engineering jobs here in Kansas City, and they most definitely require a BS, if not higher. Nowadays the media only equates software with “high tech”.

I don't think the article is discounting those roles, only saying mid-tech is more common in KC than SF.

Does KC have a startup culture yet? There's always been ample engineering jobs (sprint, cerner, garmin, dst, perceptive, etc) but that's what I imagine you're describing as traditional (as opposed to the less euphemistic "blue collar")? Those jobs provide a vastly different culture that appeals to a very different type of software engineer than you'll encounter in the Bay area, Austin, Seattle, Portland, NYC, etc. That culture is precisely why I left KC. It felt too much like I was living in a Dilbert cartoon.

I agree on education though: KC places a very high level of importance on a degree as opposed to ones ability to get things done. This was a decade ago, but I lost count the number of BS/MS/PhD CS-degree-holders I interviewed in KC who couldn't code fizzbuzz.

You won't find the brogrammer hipster startups. What you'll find are small companies in vanilla office and industrial parks. The whole "startup" is asinine. In the old'n days it was callled "starting a business". Things such as medical devices, specialized aerospace parts, etc.

I thought the article was pretty objective. It defines "mid-tech" as jobs not requiring a traditional college degree. ("loosely defined as tech jobs requiring less than a college degree") It's not saying all tech jobs in the midwest are mid-tech, only that those jobs are more likely in areas like the midwest.

I think you're projecting based on a perception that your employer isn't as respected as it would be if it were located elsewhere. (I'm in Houston, working at a company that's not in the energy sector and is run more like a startup, so I recognize that frustration)

It's kind of interesting that that's now a distinguishing factor from SV, since that used to be seen as one of the defining aspects of the Valley's take on tech. While you needed a degree to work in "east coast" tech like IBM or Bell Labs (ideally a masters or PhD) the West Coast ethos more idealized a kind of Woz/Jobs style college dropout lifestyle. Although I realize the latter is not precisely "blue collar" either.

> the West Coast ethos more idealized a kind of Woz/Jobs style college dropout lifestyle

I think this is romanticized. Many startups require college degrees, and the crazy algorithm interviews really aren't passable without a strong CS background. Hell, Woz probably wouldn't have passed one of those interviews (and Jobs wasn't really a developer though he had some early technical roles)

>crazy algorithm interviews really aren't passable without a strong CS background.

Algorithms is one class.

Where did you go where it's only one class? My university (quarter system) required 4 minimum.

I was speaking somewhat in general, with "algorithm" being {crazy_computer_science_problem} (when you're interviewing for a React or Rails gig no less)

Maybe basics. To go deeper it could be many more classes, 4-5 easily. It just depends how deep and wide you want to go. You can't do more then basic overview of couple of standard algorithms in one class tbh.

Which universities have multiple semesters of algorithms as standard undergrad curriculum?

That was besides my point (there probably are universities like that). What I was trying to point out was that a class of algorithms might not be enough to prepare you for some hardcore algorithmic interviews out there that go into lot of detail you probably didn't learn in that one class or throw some more advanced variations or algorithms at you.

Some of the interviews out there will expect you to have much more knowledge than what was taught in that one class in the uni. And sometimes companies with these interviewing processes really don't even do anything else than CRUD apps which is hilarious given their interviewing routines.

I agree - the algorithms whiteboard interview is a distinct skill for which a CS degree is neither necessary nor sufficient.

University of Virginia had 2 semesters of theory as a standard + a practical optional, which was usually something that made heavy usage of math or logic anyways.

I think Emory has the same.

I don't think this is that strange, is it? Which university do you know that doesn't mandate this for Computer Science?

Several semesters of theory is completely normal, but is not the same thing as 4-5 classes on algorithms. I had Discrete Math, Algorithms, and Formal Languages, all purely proof-based. Still, those were 3 courses out of 18 in my major. HN's perception that CS programs are mostly or entirely algorithms classes is baffling to me.

Only one quarter of algorithms was required at Stanford. However, I did end up taking a class on computational mol bio algorithms and I believe there were at least 3 other electives that focused on specific classes of algorithms in discrete domains.

Rochester Institute of Technology CS curriculum breaks up theory courses into 2:

Intro to CS Theory Intro to Algorithms

Both combined I'd say are a good base for technical interviews, but not sufficient.

Most job posts are careful to list CS degree "or equivalent experience".

That's boilerplate for positions that can't legally require a degree. They'll still ask and filter on CS questions.

Yes, and when you answer them correctly you get the offer. It's only getting easier for autodidacts in this industry, with OCW, Stanford Online, Udacity, etc. The degree itself is a pretty terrible filter unless it comes from one of a very select few schools.

If you're not admitted to one of the best schools you're arguably better off going it alone these days.

>If you're not admitted to one of the best schools you're arguably better off going it alone these days.

Just a note to people making this decision now. I did pretty well without a degree, but my dad and my stepdad both worked in this industry.

This is true of most of the people I know who work in the field without a degree. If you don't already have good industry contacts? breaking in without a degree can be difficult.

On the other hand, there's no harm in trying to get a job, and if you can't, calling it a gap year and heading to college... I'm just sayin' - especially if you don't have family contacts to smooth the way, I wouldn't poo-poo the idea of college. I personally want to go to college now (for other reasons) and I'm kind of pissed at younger me for not taking high school seriously, meaning I've got to spend two years in a community college first, if I want to get into an exclusive school.

Mind you, if you've spent much time developing software to have the experience they seek, you soon start to learn those CS concepts naturally anyway. Really, all they are filtering against is people who are bad at interviewing and maybe they'll catch the odd person who does not even know how to turn a computer on but wanted to see if they could get the job anyway.

> That's boilerplate for positions that can't legally require a degree. They'll still ask and filter on CS questions.

I don't have a degree, I haven't had a job that didn't either straight require a college degree or require a college degree "or equivalent experience" - I've been mostly employed for 20 years now; I'm sure there were a lot of places where my resume went in the bin because there was no 'education' section, but there are plenty of places where it did not.

Sure, sure, they ask CS questions, but... I can handle most of the CS questions even though I have approximately an 8th grade math education, according to khan academy (I recently took the GRE; 95th percentile verbal, 45th percentile quantitative, so I guess that's '8th grade for people who are good at math') - I'm not saying I'm good at the CS stuff, but I can code up a reasonable linked list, and can code up a bubble sort and a quicksort and tell you when to use which.

Point being, you can learn the CS stuff without college without too much sweat. CS, as tested in interviews, is way easier, say, than a community college calculus class.

Have you ever been paid to write a linked list or bubble sort?

Linked list, yes. It is hard to write anything in c without doing a linked list. You aren't a real Unix sysadmin if you don't have at least really basic c skills.

Bubble sort, no. The libraries are enough better than I am to put up with the libraries, and in my space, if it matters, you use a database anyhow.

So to circle back to my point, writing C has a specific need for linked list questions, but many, many more interviews raise the topic than just those for C writers.

Sure, it's a ritual that doesn't directly relate to the work required, like all interviews. Evaluating someone before you hire them is hard - Being interviewed and getting hired, in my experience, is way easier than interviewing, and making a good decision.

I'm just saying that learning the algorithms question for a interview isn't exactly electrical engineering, if you know what I mean. Programming algorithms is way easier, as far as I can tell, than the rest of engineering in that it's largely just a step-by-step process; there's some logic involved, but these are all things that can be done by a person who hasn't passed an undergrad algebra course or equivalent test.

Every time I go to an interview? When I'm done, I write down all the questions I got wrong. I mean, not the exact questions, but the concepts that are asked about. For a certain place and time? often the questions are super similar even when you are interviewing at different companies. More than once, I fail one interview and the same question gets asked on the very next interview. Well, I looked it up, and I got the job.

Point being? every time an interviewer asks you about something you don't know, you spend time researching it. You figure out what is the right answer (test on your next interview) and then you add that answer to your spaced repetition setup.

Yes, there are some positions that really do require a degree (either for the work, or for the "culture fit" or prejudice or whatever) But asking algorithms questions at the interview definitely is not the same thing as requiring a degree.

Really, you can think of this as the sort of social ritual I imagine is required of people working outside of tech. memorize bubble sort? or how to match the right kind of uncomfortable shoes with the right sort of impractical pants? I've made my choice. ''

"Woz/Jobs style college dropout lifestyle"

Only if you drop out from an elite college.

Reed College is considered an elite college? Honestly, I've never heard of it other than in the stories about Jobs.

I can see UC Berkley being considered elite, but Woz completed his studies there. He is not a dropout.

Based on Wikipedia reed is way up in college ranking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_College. His parents could barely afford it. Definitely not a community college.

Gates and Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard.

I just wanted to contradict the myth that SV is friendly towards college dropouts.

Interestingly, what you ended up pointing out is that SV (and, really, the world in general) is most friendly towards people who are born successful. Which is something I think we all implicitly already understand.

College admissions, and especially elite colleges, are careful to admit only those people who have already demonstrated successful qualities. Jobs, Woz, Gates and Zuckerberg were accepted into these schools because they were already successful people. Their later success in business is a result of the same successful qualities that their respective schools saw in them to originally admit them as students.

So, it is unsurprising they were eligible to be students at these elite schools given their successes, but the eliteness of the school ends up being inconsequential. It was who they are that allowed them to succeed in both gaining access to these elite schools and finding success in business. Successful people are successful.

Not only interesting, a concerning trend for tech professionals in the Valley who have become accustomed to being able to walk into any job they want and make a fortune doing it.

Employers only worry about placing arbitrary requirements on jobs when they are receiving more applications for jobs than they can handle. The requirements become a fast way to cull the numbers to more manageable levels for personal review. That they are now seeing more applications than they can handle highlights that competition is starting to heat up, and with more competition comes more difficulty in finding work and lower prices as people start to undercut each other to secure a position.

The stereotypical college dropout lifestyle goes part and parcel with the get rich quick view of the Valley. Even five years ago nobody would have ever suggested a tech job in the Valley requires a degree. It wasn't that many years ago that we used to joke that tech employers in the Valley preferred people without a degree. According to the article, that is no longer the case. When one starts to fade, so does the other. But it is all bound to happen eventually. After all, the cure for high prices is high prices.

>a concerning trend for tech professionals in the Valley who have become accustomed to being able to walk into any job they want and make a fortune doing it.

Bubbles pop and fools get hurt when they do. Water is wet.

> According to the article, that is no longer the case

I think this thread is confusing "degree or equivalent knowledge" with "no really honest to god you don't need a degree".

Mid-tech is the latter. Consider the examples given in the article: "...computer systems analyst, computer network architects, and support specialist..."

The Midwest is not replete with jobs held by self-taught software engineers. It's replete with jobs (dubbed mid-tech) that don't require the self-teaching in the first place.

> It's replete with jobs (dubbed mid-tech) that don't require the self-teaching in the first place.

I worked in a job that seems to match the description of computer network architect in high school. It certainly required a fair amount of self-teaching (in my case; I suppose one could replace that with college or on-the-job instruction). Knowledge provided by a source of some kind was necessary. One is typically not born knowing how to do that type of work.

Does a job that does not require teaching (self or otherwise) even exist? I have family in the manufacturing business that I occasionally help out with when they are short-staffed as a favor. From the outside the job looks about as menial as it gets, but actually stepping in and helping leaves me appreciating what those people are capable of doing with the knowledge they have. There is no way, with my limited knowledge and ability in that industry, I'd be hired to work for them if they weren't desperate.

I farm on the side and that is the most intense ramp-up of knowledge requirements I have ever experienced. That experience has been like learning CS and software engineering, forgetting everything you learned, and repeating several more times. And still feeling like you don't know what you are doing. I've been farming for 10 years now and I still feel like a newbie. After 10 years of software development, while I recognized that there is still more to learn, I at least felt pretty confident in having progressed in my knowledge and abilities to a more advanced level. I don't know that anyone who claims farming requires a degree.

If degree here simply means requires an education of some kind, not specifically a degree from an accredited institution, then I'm not sure that there is a job out there that doesn't match that description in SV, the mid-west, or anywhere else. The only explanation here seems to be the expectations of employers, who trend towards setting more arbitrary expectations as the competition for the work increases. If you only have one applicant, you simply can't be choosy about who you hire.

> I worked in a job that seems to match the description of computer network architect in high school.

I worked a job like this in high school. Pretty sure I could've done it earlier, and learning the job was pretty easy. In contrast, I did some software work in high school as well and was out of my depth (thankfully it worked out).

> Does a job that does not require teaching (self or otherwise) even exist?

I guess it's a matter of degree.

> I guess it's a matter of degree.

Literally! But, jokes aside, how is that amount measured? Software development (which I also had a job doing during my time in high school) seemed quite approachable. I've certainly become a better developer over time (along with everything I've continued with), but I'm still proud of what I accomplished back then. I don't feel that it was out of my depth. I was able to deliver real business value and the employer was happy.

Honestly, I find software development has been one of the easier jobs (in terms of knowledge and ability required) that I have had. Granted, I haven't had jobs in every industry out there. I expect there are easier jobs. But software development does not strike me as one that meets the necessary degree here. If someone in high school can walk into the job and deliver real business value, it does not feel like a "degree required" job to me.

In my opinion, the defining factor here seems to be how desperate employers are. On the farm, we are often quite desperate for help. Timing is critical. Leave the crop out for an extra week and you won't have a crop at all. As such, farm work is considered low-skilled work since employers have no room to be choosy. You take what you can get and deal with what comes from it. It is still better than losing the crop.

Contrast that with software developers, where there is no real pressure to hire people. Who really cares if a feature sits in the backlog for a year? It will still be there next year. That allows employers to be more picky. Don't like your current applicants? Just wait longer. As such, this industry is labeled high-skilled work. If there is any pressure to get the job done, it comes from the competition trying to do the same as you, and they are just as likely to have hiring problems in those circumstances. In reality, the amount of actual skill necessary between these two examples is probably quite comparable.

> Software development seemed quite approachable... software development does not strike me as one that meets the necessary degree here

The job title "software developer" is almost meaningless in the context of this conversation given the extraordinarily high variance in what that job title actually entails.

The software development job I had in high school required knowing what for loops are and knowing how to google web shit. The technical content was almost non-existent. The difficult part of that type of job is managing relationships with customers, knowing how to estimate deadlines and working in a team. I would consider most web development a mid-tech job.

At my last software job, I used graduate-level mathematics almost every day. The "at my desk" hours of the day were 60% reading mathematics papers and 40% implementing that stuff. Along with all the soft skills, of course. 100% of the technical problems I faced were not a Google search away, because I was the first person solving those problems.

As far as BLS is concerned, those are the same jobs. Clearly, they are at two extremes of the "skills" spectrum. And the compensation is wildly different. And the availability of talent for these jobs is radically different. But BLS doesn't see that because the job title is the same. Hmph.

> where there is no real pressure to hire people

Again, a HUGE "it depends"!

> The "at my desk" hours of the day were 60% reading mathematics papers

Are you even appropriately labeled a software developer if that is how you spend the bulk of your time? I'm not convinced you are. The 40% definitely sounds like software development, but there are plenty of jobs where development is part of a larger job that are not given the software developer label. The farm, for instance, involves writing some software as a minor part of the job. It still gets the farming title, not software development.

And can we really classify a job where you literally spend most of your time learning how to do the job a "degree required" job? Degree required to me at least implies that you need to already know how to do the job before you are hired. The BLS provides this information to indicate what is needed to get a job. Anyone can read up on how to do something while they are already on the job.

> Again, a HUGE "it depends"!

There are always outliers. We have to be observing the typical or average case for this discussion to have any meaning.

> I'm not convinced you are.

We totally agree here -- these are two different jobs.

My point is that you can't tell that from the job title.

> And can we really classify a job where you literally spend most of your time learning how to do a job a "degree required" job?

Yes. There's a quantum leap between jobs where you're "learning on the job" trivial perturbations to things that hundreds of millions of other people already know and jobs where you're "learning on the job" stuff that no one / 10 other people know.

ALL jobs require learning on the job. Some jobs require you to learn stuff that's not possible to learn without already having a degree or two's worth of background knowledge. Some jobs require you to learn stuff any high schooler can learn. That is the difference between mid-tech and high-tech!

> There are always outliers. We have to be observing the typical or average case for this discussion to have any meaning.

Yes. And I'm pointing out that understanding that typical/average case is difficult for "Software Development" because the job title encompasses so many different types of jobs.

> My point is that you can't tell that from the job title.

Considering that you are not (primarily) a software developer, if you are being classified as a software developer in BLS data, the entire dataset is suspect. How many others are misclassified? What should we take from a dataset that is full of known inconsistencies?

> Some jobs require you to learn stuff that's not possible to learn without already having a degree or two's worth of background knowledge.

For instance? I'm honestly just curious about what you think is especially challenging. Everyone seems to have a different opinion about what this means.

> Some jobs require you to learn stuff any high schooler can learn. That is the difference between mid-tech and high-tech!

So do we agree that software development is, on average, mid-tech? And if so, why do we say it requires a degree? The software I was building in that after-school job in high school isn't a whole lot different to the dominant types of projects I see out there today. In my adult career, I've been involved with Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 500s and this seems to be the type of tech work that is most prevalent for software developers.

I'll agree that a small segment of the industry is working on the fringes, doing things that only 10 other people will encounter in their lifetimes. But this is not the typical case that the BLS is drawing their conclusions from. They are looking at the entire industry as a whole.

> For instance? I'm honestly just curious about what you think is especially challenging

Well, just look up active research labs at any top-tier university. Or peruse the work that's happening in top industry labs. And then realize that there are lots of groups within companies working on similar types of problems.

And then a lot of stuff that's not "research" but still demands lots of background in some field of science/engineering in order to avoid Bad Things. Designing the control software for a new power plant, for example.

> So do we agree that software development is, on average, mid-tech?

I'm not sure the question is even well-formed. It's like asking if "health-care" is mid-tech. Well, certain nurses certainly are. Neurosurgeons certainly aren't.

> The software I was building in that after-school job in high school isn't a whole lot different to the dominant types of projects I see out there today

TBF maybe you shouldn't have been building that software without a lot more training? Maybe the lack of seriousness in the software industry is fundamentally unethical. See Equifax.

As a high schooler I built software that interfaced with a database containing a shitload of social security numbers/dobs/names/addresses. I should not have been allowed to build public-facing interfaces to that database without oversight from a practiced software engineer.

> But this is not the typical case that the BLS is drawing their conclusions from. They are looking at the entire industry as a whole.

Well, yes, that's been exactly my point since the first post...

Although it can also be a strategic advantage to be underestimated. Love my Midwest life and it is an odd comfort when big city elites denigrate the "flyover" states. It's fully fine with me if they stay right where they are.

> It's fully fine with me if they stay right where they are.

You won't be laughing if they decide they like your city enough to import all their SV problems. Happened to Colorado. It might happen again.

Out of curiosity, which part? CO is very appealing as a worker.

Yes, why does everything in the midwest have to be "blue collar" -- or even worse, "Rust Belt"? These are very unwelcoming words/stereotypes.

A more fair version of this headline is "The American midwest is quickly becoming the next Silicon Valley" -- which I actually see happening right now, as more and more of my friends give up on the beyond-repair housing market in SF and decide to move out (in many cases their employers even let them keep their jobs as remote positions).

"The American midwest is quickly becoming the next Mumbai." What you're seeing is SV outsourcing to America.

I found it extremely difficult to find any employer in Indiana that wouldn't scoff at paying a senior engineer more than $75K in 2015. That is less than my inflation adjusted junior engineer starting salary 15 years prior. The entire industry has a problem with fair pay and rushing to the middle is just a way to squeeze more profit from the labor of tech workers.

This is very true. Even after CoL adjustments, high-tech jobs in the midwest don't typically pay as well as the coasts. Especially in senior roles. Notice that this is especially true for the vast number of coastal-state cities that aren't SFBA [1].

However, this apt observation is not what the article is actually about. Mid-tech jobs are things like "...computer systems analyst, computer network architects, and support specialist...", which are very different jobs from software engineering.

[1] As an aside, CoL adjustments between the Midwest and coastal-state cities are extremely favorable to the Midwest in cases where you can actually afford to buy a house (read: not SFBA). If you buy a house in the midwest, you usually have to be okay with treating it as "not an investment". Whereas a house in Portland, Seattle etc. function as both a place to live as well as an investment likely to appreciate handsomely. Personally, I'm OK treating CoL as a sunk cost and not engaging in real estate speculation during my non-work hours. But from an objective perspective, the CoL pay cut suffered in MW cities is often unjustified given the opportunity cost of not living in an area with more and more predictable real estate appreciation. Selfishly, I wish folks in the Midwest had more success convincing their employers that "cheap land" is not a good justification for severely underpaying their labor force.

Have you taken a look at the real estate markets in Austin, Pittsburgh, or Raleigh?

"Buy low, sell high" is the adage of any savvy investor -- the markets in SF have been stagnant for years now.

What? The median San Francisco house is up 6.8% between 2016 and 2017.

> Austin, Pittsburgh, or Raleigh

My post was about the Midwest [1]. None of these are in the Midwest [2]. Except maybe Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is technically not Midwestern because it's slightly more than a commute away from Ohio. But it's also actually not Midwestern because it's not a good prototype for a typical Midwestern city.

"The Midwest" does not mean "not the coast".

Also, all three of these are in the "coastal states" I'm contrasting with the Midwest.

> the markets in SF have been stagnant for years now.

Yes, I repeated some rendition of "except SF, which is uniquely terrible even among coastal places" many times in my post. And the problem with SF isn't lack of predictable appreciation. The problem with SF is that you can't afford to make the investment in the first place.

[1] https://ces4thgradewiki.wikispaces.com/Midwest+Region+of+the...

[2] PA and NC are mid-Atlantic and Texas is most certainly in the South.

This is the first time I have heard that SF housing market has been stagnant for years. I made 200k profit on my 600k house in East Bay in 2 years (sold in 2016). That house is up another 100k. So not sure what you are referring to here.

That's why I had to leave the midwest. I was getting low offers and it was even hard to find companies to interview with. As soon as I started interviewing with companies on the coasts and South (TX), I had multiple offers in hand within a few weeks. I would have rather not left family and friends behind but I simply had no choice.

One major shift that could happen is if remote work becomes more popular. Imagine if the majority of tech companies were that way. There would be a lot less risk moving back to the midwest or well anywhere knowing that it would easy enough to find another remote job.

It's hard making this point if you don't have access to capital, but if the talent is comparable, doesn't this represent an opportunity to go after an idea with above-average talent through simply paying globally-optimal market rates and pricing out the competition for talent?

It seems that there's an opportunity here to incubate ideas at a discount globally by "overpaying" locally.

Are there VC funds that are exploiting this? And I don't mean simply by making margin on the back of exploiting the CoL adjustments, but by drawing on regional talent pools with lower CoLs? I'm shocked there isn't more innovation coming from the upper midwest hub that lies along the belt connecting UICU, Purdue, CMU, etc.

> the belt connecting UICU, Purdue, CMU, etc.

Look at the first destinations reports for those CS programs and you'll see what happens. People leave the region after getting the degree. In droves.

What's wrong with 75k anywhere in Indiana? As a hoosier myself I'd buy a home in fountain square and have a cush life at 75k.

For me, the answer would be that in the midwest I have to work for 5-10 extra years. Marginal QoL improvement while doing my 40/wk is less important than accumulating enough to quit the grind.

I'd not do SFBA, but other coastal cities with less severe CoL differences pay substantially better than the midwest. You won't be house rich, but you'll be actually rich. And that equals retirement.

It pays far less even when accounting for the cost of living benefits in the Midwest. However, in my experience, there is less to spend money on, but those savings do not come close to the higher pay on the coasts. Another issue, at least in Detroit, is that a number are startups in name only. A significant number of them are spun out of Quicken Loans. There is far less chance that you get equity as part of a pay package as well with these startups

Bizarre article full of unsubstantiated claims (e.g. Midwest cities generally “spending years in the doldrums” huh? Twin Cities, Chicago, Kansas City, Indianapolis, etc. have consistently been doing well) and sketchy assumptions (mid-tech blue collar?). This whole tendency to bunch all mid-west cities together is ignorant and condescending. Also, “decline of mid west cities” is mostly a story of cities not necessarily the entire region or even the cities’ suburbs (Detroit’s wealthy suburbs are as rich as ever). Generally muddled piece.

Indianapolis, etc. have consistently been doing well

I can't speak for the other examples, but...ask me how I know you don't live in Indianapolis. This city definitely has a lot of potential to really be something even greater (than I think it is now), and I'm proud to call it my home-but don't romanticize it too much.

We are having a series of existential crises here; just jumped out of one political fire and into another with state and municipal leaders (oh dear god are we about to see the end of Unigov? Probably not but a man can dream), schools are laughably bad, roads are hilariously worse (I challenge you to drive a few miles north on Meridian street and try to not have your car swallowed by one of the hundreds of near-car sized potholes), but hey....rent's cheap, so we've got that going for us. Which is nice.

Don't sleep on Naptown, if that was your overall sentiment, for sure. Don't sleep on us because there's some rumblings of a real explosion of change underneath it all, and I think we've got nowhere to go but up...same time though yeah we've got a LOT of problems that are going require some very painful decision making in the next 10 years and we gotta look that horse square in the mouth.

Let's not pretend things are any different in California.

I currently live in Indiana but my family is mostly in CA.

Most of the dirt roads in Death Valley are nicer than most of the major roads in Indiana.

Yes weather is a major player...but the roads are terrible. They don't invest in the schools - aggressively. And farmers as a group are antigovernment to the point that it imperils the ability of the state government to function and attract talent.

I started applying for post graduate school jobs in the fall. I applied for one in IN and one in CA that have the same salary. Given the choice, I will pick CA.

And CA doesn't even have nature to blame it's infrastructure problems on (earthquakes aside).

The landslides taking out various mountain roads every few years says otherwise. A single two hundred foot section of road recently got an expedited replacement so it cost 10 million dollars to fix and that was just a two lane low traffic road.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/19/highway-35-repai...

I wouldn't say KC is doing all that well. It's fairly pretty, of course, but opportunity-wise there was basically . . . Sprint.

Did you time travel from 2000 to make this comment? Garmin, Cerner and DST are nearly twice Sprint's market cap. KC is nowhere near its potential, and it's no Austin (nor Omaha), but come on, Sprint's heyday was long ago.

1. Garmin is in Olathe, not KC.

2. Fair on the Cerner and DST point, although I'd argue that they aren't particularly good opportunities to work for.

3. Three (or four, if you want to include Garmin) medium sized companies in a city aren't particularly great if you're trying to represent success.

1. Pedantic much? I didn't know we were talking strict city limits rather than metro area.

2,3: Your references make it sound like you last sampled the market in tech in KC in 2001, if Sprint is your benchmark for KC tech employers.

KC isn't as good as it could be, but it's a heck of lot better than when Sprint was the only game in town.

The Detroit wealthy suburbs are still very rich. Probably some of the richest in the country (Oakland County is a top 10 county of > 1M pop in terms of per-capita income)

But, as somebody who grew up there (and just recently moved out), I would say they’re in the early stages of long-term decline. There’s a complete inability for them to retain millennials. Most of my friends have moved away.

That’s the biggest issue in the Midwest and areas outside of the coasts. Talent retention.

> “The modern factory job is a mid-tech job”

No it is not.

Anyone could work a factory job. The least intelligent, least motivated people could punch a clock and earn a decent living tightening the same bolt a thousand times a day, all day long.

At best, mid-tech jobs are like modern clerking jobs, but even that's pushing it. The modern factory job is fast-food, and the lack of associated pay and benefits is a major problem.

Too many people are simply not smart enough to be programmers.

Some factory jobs are that repetitive, but most factories are increasingly automated and the skills needed to maintain that automation are every bit as technical as programming.

Yes but the article wasn’t talking about modern factory jobs.. it suggested that mid-tech is equivalent to the factory jobs of yesteryear — which were repetitive and not necessarily requiring superior intellect (relatively speaking.)

>Anyone could work a factory job. The least intelligent, least motivated people could punch a clock and earn a decent living tightening the same bolt a thousand times a day, all day long.

I don't have personal experience as a '50s factory worker, but I do have some experience assembling things and working on cars.

I doubt this description of factory work being completely brainless. If you've ever tried to watch someone who isn't mechanically inclined assemble anything, you can see that there is a skill in fitting things together. Even if your job is to tighten that same bolt every day, you've still gotta figure out how to properly torque it; too loose and the bolt comes out, too tight and you shear the goddamn thing off. Use one of those old style torque wrenches and you're gonna be way slower than the next guy.

Low-level factory jobs really aren't that complicated.

You can take a person off the street and have them pressing the "go" button on an injection molder within minutes.

There seems to be a level of arrogance coming across in your descriptions of "Low-level factory jobs."

Having spent time in both worlds I have to say that your assessment of the skill and devotion required to work in those positions in inaccurate at best. Insulting at worst.

I have actually worked these jobs.

When I was a teenager I had temp jobs where I was literally bussed into a plastics factory, given a few minutes of instruction, and put on the shop floor to press a button on an injection molder.

No "skill" or "devotion" required. Just a warm body.

There is a distinction between working a temp position and people that worked in factories for a career. I'd argue that temp positions will bias away from skill and devotion by the nature of position undermining your anecdote.

It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers.

> It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers.

Based on a quick search, in the U.S. there's something like 5-6 million restaurant workers, and nearly 4 million of them are fast food workers, so a fry cook at McDonald's can say they understand the ins and outs of the majority of restaurant workers.

Which, is my point.

Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are not the new factory jobs, because by definition fewer people are able to work them.

>Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are not the new factory jobs, because by definition fewer people are able to work them.

Ah. well, my main point was just that I think most of the 'high paying factory jobs' were jobs that took some skill and experience. You didn't just walk in and say "I've got hands!" and get a good wage for easy work. I'd guess it'd be more like working at one of those tech support script farms today, I mean, if you show up without obvious skills or credentials. "Here, read this script, we will judge you on how fast you get the customer off the phone, rather than, you know, actually solving problems."

My own career came up through the really low paying jobs in tech, and I spent some time in such a tech support farm; the difference in both the number of people who could do it and what we get paid is vast between level one scripted tech support and the sort of systems administration/production engineer work that I do now. Much like how one could work one's way up from a very basic factory job to something that was comfortable and remunerative.

So I am at the beginning of my mechanical and materials engineering education, but I do know enough to tell you that making your injection molding come out okay is not easier than swapping the head gasket on your motorcycle.

Machines need to be operated and maintained. How do you properly load the feed stock? How clean does it need to be? Will humidity duck it up?

A lot of this is lore and experience, too, because the manuals are often pretty bad(or written for the engineers, which is bad when you have someone less educated doing the operations).

I mean yeah, you can be the apprentice and do all this under the supervision of someone more experienced, but usually pay scales accordingly. I am not saying it is as hard as chip layout or anything, but there is skill and experience involved.

Sure, in a modern plastics factory there will be a couple of machine experts on shift who roam around the shop floor troubleshooting and fixing things. But for every one of them, there are dozens if not hundreds of workers just standing there feeding and unloading the machine, pressing buttons, cutting flash off of parts, and loading pallets.

There are a ton of jobs in a factory that require little to no skill or intelligence, even today. I'm not sure why everyone is trying to make it seem like everything is high skilled labor, because it's not, even in a heavy factory. Trust me - the guy in the forge doesn't need to be even as remotely smart as a programmer.

Huh. But I would assume that pay scales with skill? I mean I did warehouse labor one summer myself for a few months, and they mostly wanted people who could show up on time, who could pay enough attention to get a list of compact disks into a shipping box, but it paid almost nothing. (And I can't really show up on time, and that level of focus on something that boring is quite difficult for me, so it didn't last long)

I assume that those who have good paying factory jobs are going to have jobs that require a degree of skill. I kinda find it unlikely that this has changed over time.

My point is just that I think people might be thinking of work that requires skill or training or something when they talk about high paying factory work. I don't think the 50s were so different that unskilled labor paid the same as skilled or semi skilled labor, and there is a lot of the latter to be done in a factory.

> I assume that those who have good paying factory jobs are going to have jobs that require a degree of skill. I kinda find it unlikely that this has changed over time.

In union shops, the pay rate is dictated mostly by seniority. There's definitely some skill-based variation, but the guy driving a forklift for 40 years is likely making more than the fresh hire wiring the electronics on a train.

I thought pay was stratified among roles. For that matter, I would assume that the two would be in different unions. I don't think a forklift operator would be in the ibew with the electrician.

afaik, large shops are usually organized by a single union. For example, GE Aviation is organized by IBEW and GE Transportation is organized by UE.

The situation you're talking about, I think, is more common in construction.

"mid tech" is an interesting descriptor because I'm doing the much the same work as Silicon Valleyites despite not having a degree. Not having a degree has cut me off from some opportunities but I can just pursue those in my own time.

I guess I find as I get older less value in the opinions of folks out in SV as I read more and more crazy things about the place and the environment out there. I do appreciate the opportunity for folks who love that environment to partake of it though.

I also appreciate the functional advances coming out of SV like libraries and frameworks that I get to use and improve my own work but at the end of the work day I love getting home to my .25 acre lot with my two dogs glad to see me and go for a nice walk in a green-belt.

I'm going to be dead some day so why not enjoy what I have.

52% of network architects don't have a degree but 95% of app developers do? This is the exact opposite as I would expect.

A network architect is an experienced technician (the "blue-collar" form of IT) who graduated from help desk and break/fix to helping out with project work to getting to design and lead projects. In that world, you may have a trade-school degree in IT/MIS and/or vendor certifications, but a CS degree isn't going to help you operate the Windows Server admin panel, configure Cisco routers, know which model number of HP switch is appropriate for a situation, or make sure that your underlings get the low-voltage cabling and patch panels right. It's going to help you write Windows Server and the router firmware that technicians operate.

Planning, installing, configuring, and integrating off-the-shelf components to create an IT environment for a business is a totally different world from software engineering, particularly in the Silicon Valley style.

Thanks, this is very clear now. I must have been confusing "network architect" with "software architect".

Sysadmins are also historically a non-degree position, because there is no degree for it. People who come out of university with the skills and interest to go into systems or neteng often have learned through working for the university's IT department, not through classwork.

>Sysadmins are also historically a non-degree position, because there is no degree for it.

Sure there is. Computer information systems. Management information systems. Computer Information Technology.

Now, as far as I can tell, these are degrees usually offered at community colleges and lower status four year schools. And for that matter, I've spent much of my career as a sysadmin, and the only people I've met with those degrees have been managers who have moved in from other industries rather than moving up.

But the degrees exist, even if Stanford or Berkeley probably won't offer them.

In my experience, the dominant source of people I've seen come through admin channels on IRC are those who arrived there through running e.g. their own game servers. In my experience, the degree/certs you mention are chiefly offered through the business schools where they're offered and are indeed the domain of middle managers.

There can be electrical engineering in neteng, but really only at the upper levels.

> Sure there is. Computer information systems. Management information systems. Computer Information Technology.

The last time I looked into these degrees, they didn't teach many of the skills I use in my sysadmin ("devops" these days) work. There _are_ some degrees for it, however - http://nsa.rit.edu/ for example. But not many.

It's rare to see anyone with this training who can install Gentoo.

...the only people I've met with those degrees have been managers who have moved in from other industries rather than moving up.

This is telling.

I have family in the trades (electric & plumbing) - but I would love to hear from anyone who works in advanced manufacturing, automation, or other specializations about their career path and field growth/career longevity.

I am considering a career change. I went into k12 education due to the mission, but I'm burning out on the time/emotional investment in relation to the compensation.

Silicon Valley is mostly a place for group thinkers with a "get rich quick" mentality and rich parents. That was my impression after living in Sf working as a CEO for 5 years.

What is the difference between a computer programmer and a software application developer?

Aren’t these titles used interchangeably?

the term "programmer" is generally used to describe software jobs where you aren't expected to do much design or critical thinking or have in-depth knowledge of computer science or engineering concepts.

A good analogy might be like the difference between a doctor and a nurse.

I design and implement system architecture and user interfaces, manage people and projects, plan future areas of R&D, etc. and I still call myself (in conversation) a computer programmer. I find it helps distinguish me from all the talking heads in this industry who couldn't actually build an information system if their lives depended upon it.

As titles they are often used interchangeably, but the BLS categorizes them separately based on kind of an old-fashioned idea of how software is developed. The distinction is that software developers[1] plan out how software will work and the computer programmers[2] write the code to make it work.

The idea that these are separate roles is rapidly going out of fashion in the industry and is already pretty outdated. Only 300k workers are categorized as computer programmers while 1.3 million are categorized as software developers and on top of that the number of software developers is projected to grow by 24% over the next decade while the number of computer programmers is projected to decline by 7%.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

I have always listed my occupation as "Computer Programmer" on my tax return, though I have a CS degree and do everything from database administration to network administration to software design and development (including writing code).

I think you might be missing the point. Think of it this way. Ask yourself, is there a difference between a software consultant and a software freelancer? Everything else equal which person do you think gets paid more a consultant or a freelancer.

Quartz is quickly becoming a glossy version of a clickbait farm

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