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Comment by rubicon33 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is nobody wants to live in Madison WI.

If you're a top performing engineer you're likely to want to head straight to the epicenter of tech innovation. You want to knock heads with the best of 'em, and that isn't in Madison WI or any other small town.

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As a New Yorker, this comment is hilarious. Madison is about a third of the size of SF. As a polite reminder, SF is a little more than a third of the size of Queens, and fundamentally still kind of a small town compared to real cities. It's about the same size as Hempstead, NY which is certainly a small town. Hell, I bet more people bike to work as a % in Madison than in SF.

Lake Nebagamon WI is a small town.

This comment is hilarious. You assumed (incorrectly) that we're talking about just SF. Try the entire Bay Area.

It's also worth pointing out if it's not already clear, that "small" does not always refer to population size, or even geographical expanse. "Small" can refer to accomplishments, and impact/significance in the tech world. By comparison, Madison WI is quite small.

And for the record I don't live in the Bay Area. Nor do I want to.

It's not the size of an area or the number of people that indicate it's quality level as a tech high quality area either. The population of NYC is not the indicator of the number leading tech workers and companies there, of course.

Comparing these places to the Bay Area would probably be more appropriate.

This is exactly why big employers leave smaller regions. I've seen it happen on numerous occasions. People in Seattle/SV/RTP/NYC are seen by leadership to be "better" than those in podunk mid-western towns. They are more than happy to pay $160k for a median NYC dev rather than $100k for a great mid-westerner.

So what incentive is there to stick around unless you really want to? All the good jobs are in those cities.

If that's the case they should absolutely stop complaining about housing prices. It's self inflicted pain. If you must live in the most expensive city in the world due to your own desires, you have no right to complain that it's expensive. The option to live somewhere cheaper exists, you just choose not to take it.

Try and look at it another way...

It's not that they MUST live in the most expensive city. Rather, they MUST live with (and work) the most bright minds. That creates a geographic pooling problem.

I don't think that's an entirely dismissible goal, by the way. Humans are social beings and more often than not we're better off working with other smart people. Collaboration of bright minds is responsible for some of the incredible achievements of humanity.

I've seen no hard evidence that the minds there are actually brighter. More arrogant maybe?

What a ridiculous comment. Who exactly do you expect to be collecting this "hard evidence" to prove such a thing to you?

Clearly if the likes of some of the biggest, and most successful tech companies in the world are located in the bay area, that might be proof enough that some pretty impressive minds reside there? I'm merely making the point that IF one wanted to work with like minded, smart people, moving to the bay is one way to maximize your chance of finding said people. I think we could both agree you're less likely to find them in Nebraska, though of course there are some very talented people there as well.

Furthermore, who is being arrogant here? The person who wants to live in and among bright minds, or the person who denies the bright minds exist? Takes a pretty arrogant person to deny that there's a lot of talent in the bay.

Talent appears to be a myth.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myt...

If talent is a myth, then the New Yorker should fire their editors and let anyone who can write a sentence publish freely on their platform. Certainly that makes sense if there's no such thing as being a "good" writer.

Isn't the stereotype of SF arrogance? Most of the smartest people I've met work in O&G or aerospace, in places like Texas and Connecticut.

Well that and your labor market power is maximized in places where there are many potential employers. If you put down roots in a one company town, they can just tell you to go pound sand when you ask for a raise or promotion. Also, being in a place with lots of employers is a hedge against layoff risk.

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