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Comment by fred_is_fred | Hacker News Reader

"With a population of just 579,315, Wyoming is positioning itself to become a leader in one of the fastest-growing industries in the world: cybersecurity."

No it's not.

Outside of Jackson and environs it is frankly a miserable place to live. Imagine a wind-swept steppe petro-state inhabited by a mostly rural, extremely conservative population. Cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and perpetually windy. I could say "windy" 8 more times and it still wouldn't capture the reality. Like many states in this position, mostly rural, most jobs don't require a degree, almost everyone who gets one leaves for better pay, usually to Colorado.

I do believe that this bill is a great idea, but it's not going to magically transform their economy.

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So I want to address the people downvoting you. Last summer I went to Big Horn. The town next to it was somehow more third world than where I'm from, the Deep South. Examples:

* Google maps told me to get off at Exit 29B. It turns out it was exit 298, just somehow Google maps had only OCRed the signs, and as of summer 2017 no one had cared to correct them.

* Screw LTE or 3G, somehow the city center only had 2G. Outside of the city, even with visible line of sight, there was simply no service.

* I ordered biscuits and gravy at a restaurant for breakfast. I was informed that it would be a few minutes, as the owner's daughter needed to go down to the grocery store and pick up another can of biscuits.

* At said restaurant, I was asked if I wanted smoking or non. The two rooms had no separation, and both were filled with smoke.

I love Wyoming, it's a beautiful state and I'll be back this year, but they aren't going to be the next forefront on cybersecurity.

One time I went to San Fransisco and literally waited 30 minutes to go three blocks.

Then I went to a restaurant and was charged $15 for coffee.

There also seemed to be a lot of people who had become homeless.

Terribly slow and difficult city; I don't see how it gets anything done.

I'm not just saying that Wyoming has negative properties (everywhere has tradeoffs).

I'm saying that Wyoming doesn't have the physical, financial, and educational infrastructure to support a modern computer industry.

EDIT: also, I don't live in San Fran.

You went to a single unincorporated town in with a couple hundred people, and think that is somehow reflective on the greater part of Wyoming.

I'm from Colorado and have been going to different parts of Wyoming several times a year for nearly a decade.

Outside of Cheyenne and Jackson Hole, what I listed is extremely representative of Wyoming. Cheyenne isn't much better, and the whole point of Jackson Hole is to get away from computers for a while.

Edit: also this was Buffalo, so it was a full on incorporated city of thousands.

Ha! I know that restaurant. Pretty abysmal - but I think it's the only place in town that's quite that bad.

But the town does have two redboxes, so it's got that going for it...

I know a couple of people in that area (a bit up the mountain to the east) that choose to live there. One is a CostCo executive that is the regional manager some vertical (I want to say produce, but that might not be right) for most of the stores of the north half of everything west of the rockies. He's on the road a lot, but seems to want to live there. The other is an IT guy (well, internal developer) for Whole Foods and moved there and works remotely. Now - Montana is a more common place for remote hermit developers to go to, but a shocking number of retired/retiring people move to Buffalo. (Well, shocking to me because I wouldn't, but for a town of 4,500-or-so of that particular average age, having the influx-rate match (or exceed) the death-rate is in itself surprising (to me). It also fluctuates a lot with oil & natural gas prices -- I think the population was down around 3,000 by mid-2015)

Ah, you had mentioned Big Horn; I didn't understand you were talking about Buffalo 40 miles south.

Indeed, Casper then Cheyenne have the most modern economic situation Wyoming has to offer.

> Indeed, Casper then Cheyenne have the most modern economic situation Wyoming has to offer.

Which is still pretty shitty. I live in Casper, and tech jobs are basically non-existent. I know of some places that hire people for PLC stuff. Outside of that there are three places I could work as a developer.

Cheyenne may be different. I've noticed they have tech meetups, a tech bootcamp, etc.

The root post on this is harsh but accurate in my opinion.

Big Horn, the National Forest, not the town of less than 500.

And Jackson is really expensive. Not quite Bay Area expensive yet, but Seattle area expensive. There are some parts of the state that are cheaper, beautiful, and less wind blown, like the Big Horn mountain area where I grew up. But they're still cold, conservative places dominated by the extractive industries. I got out as soon as I could.

It is nice to see the state making an effort to attract new industries, but it's really hard going. This Bloomberg article[1] sums it up pretty well: The small population is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. People don't want to live there because there are no jobs, and companies don't want to relocate there because there are no people.

There's also cultural resistance to new industry. People (men especially) want their coal and oil and timber jobs back, not these new high-tech jobs. It's not even that the populace isn't smart enough to do them--mining is actually a pretty technical field at this point. But there's a deep rooted perception that sitting at a desk all day isn't a "real" job.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-19/why-wyomi...

> There are some parts of the state that are cheaper, beautiful, and less wind blown, like the Big Horn mountain area where I grew up. But they're still cold, conservative places dominated by the extractive industries. I got out as soon as I could.

Personally I prefer the more conservative environs versus the often over-bearing liberal attitude which dominates the Bay Area or other large cities. Perhaps the cold wind blown regions help people keep a level head. ;) So it's a matter of perspective.

Regardless, there are a lot of beautiful parts of the state and the K-12 education in many parts of the state excels [1]. Partly thats due to taxes from the mineral extraction industries.

> There's also cultural resistance to new industry. ... It's not even that the populace isn't smart enough to do them--mining is actually a pretty technical field at this point.

Unfortunately the cultural resistance to new industries does exist and dampens the development of new industries. Wyoming has a lot of talented industrially minded people. Many people grow up mechanically inclined due to the culture (here and surrounding states). This leads to younger Wyoming residents who are much more open to technology industries and looking for ways to stay in the state and willing to start businesses or create new technologies [2, 3]. There's also technology initiatives by the University of Wyoming, which due to the small population, have a impact across the state [4]. There is even some interesting deep learning research happening at the university in conjunction with a well known SV company [5].

All in all, the state has a small population but a relatively out-sized opportunities for those inclined to find them. Initiatives like the one in the article do make an impact here.

1: http://trib.com/news/local/education/wyoming-ranked-th-in-na... 2: http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/laramie-farming-start-has... 3: https://gizmodo.com/maximize-a-lazy-summer-afternoon-with-th... 4: https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/19/wyoming-and-new-h... 5: https://eng.uber.com/vine/

Jackson is REALLY expensive, even for a ski town and even compared to the Bay Area. Plus, there aren't any jobs that would allow anyone to live there for the house prices.

If it's so windy, and they have experience in energy fields, a natural thing would be to use that to develop new and better wind based power gen. Of course, it's really hard to embrace the new thing that is killing the old thing you made lots of money from.

They do: there's a very prominent amount of windmills along the I-80 in Carbon County that's quite a sight to drive by :)

http://www.uwyo.edu/werc/wind-wyo.html

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