Hacker News Reader

Comment by partyboat1586 | Hacker News Reader

>Sr Devs who did not move to tech hubs because they preferred to stay where they are. (Personally think this is unlikely)

You would be surprised at how many people value their hometown or where they have settled. Technical only equates to high aspiration in SF. There are smaller slower more steady tech companies (probably using the Microsoft stack) outside of the tech hubs that offer stable jobs with decent pay and good work life balance. Being a software engineer in SF means constantly learning new tech and 'keeping up' but if you're not building a massively scalable consumer facing product that doesn't matter so much. In SF even B2B SaaS is built like this but it doesn't have to be.

View on HN

Yeah, but the best of the best? Most of those people relocate.

I think you're confusing 'competitive' with 'skilled'. They are correlated but not the same thing. The best of the best who want to be the best relocate. The best of the best who don't care to be the best stay where they are. People in the second category are driven by an intense interest in their subject and their work rather than competition.

> Being a software engineer in SF means constantly learning new tech and 'keeping up'

No, it does not.

> You would be surprised at how many people value their hometown or where they have settled.

I would love to see actual data about this rather than articles from hometown newspapers and posts by hometown residents, enthusiastically praising their way of life. It's easy to argue the counterpoint as well, right?

1). There are many jobs that have to be done in person 2). Many people prefer to live in large cities and accept the downsides in order to get the benefits

So, next time you want to make a claim like this, can you share anything objective about this? Thanks.

I know this is more anecdata, but I'm from Ohio and worked on a joint project with a couple of New York devs at #{famous company}. They were very good, and I learned a lot from them, but I could definitely hold my own with them technically (as could another senior dev from my company). We're both family men in the Midwest with no desire to move. Even if you offered me $350,000 or whatever I'm still staying here. But I would obviously take a remote job with #{famous company} if it paid 60-70% of that and I felt like I wouldn't be a second-class citizen as a remote dev.

Chiming in as a Midwest engineering manager here (Michigan). There's no lack of talent in the Midwest, although it's certainly a different calculus to try and match hiring to the supply/demand of engineers here and not everyone does so appropriately.

>>Being a software engineer in SF means constantly learning new tech and 'keeping up' >No, it does not.

Maybe you consider Kubernetes an old technology by now? Maybe you consider React.js an old technology by now? What about docker? How about ES6?

People at slower tech firms are still building working B2B web services with ES5 jQuery and ASP.NET. The engineers there have been working with jQuery since it's inception. They know it inside and out and have the skill and depth of knowledge to work around the drawbacks and design flaws.

This is from my experience working at smaller tech firms. I've moved to the city now and I can see the difference in tech and I can feel the difference in attitude too. I'm not going to link you a study or any data because no one is out there studying this stuff. This is opinion not science.

>1). There are many jobs that have to be done in person 2). Many people prefer to live in large cities and accept the downsides in order to get the benefits

Both of these statements are true but I don't see how they are relevant? I'm not denying either of these facts but it doesn't stop the small town engineers from existing.

> Maybe you consider Kubernetes an old technology by now? Maybe you consider React.js an old technology by now? What about docker? How about ES6?

My father (and many others like him) has been programming in C at a prominent SV company for the past 15 years (OK, it's based in the South Bay). I know many people in SF doing similar jobs, just coding away in Java or C++. Those people come to work, do their work, then go home. They don't tweet, or write Medium posts, or have dark green GitHub activity profiles. They don't work with you, so they don't talk to you. You aren't aware they exist. However, these people build many of the systems that make our day-to-day lives possible.

> I'm not denying either of these facts but it doesn't stop the small town engineers from existing.

I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm just saying that there just aren't that many of them.

Fair enough and I agree there aren't that many of them.

I have a lot of respect for people like your father. That's why I wanted to represent the small town devs who are similar in many ways. I personally am a little sick of the whole scene and constant newness.

I'm learning C++ in my free time because I've become disilusioned with life as a JavaScript developer. I know there are C jobs in embedded systems and OS dev but I didn't know there were still a lot of C++ jobs around outside of games.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com