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Comment by xasos | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the statement the most (also a Chicagoan). Chicago isn't a tech hub, and people need to stop saying it is. Why is it that our flagship university (UIUC) sends more people to Silicon Valley/Seattle than Chicago, which is only 2 hours away? They need to focus on bringing in some more mature tech companies (engineering teams, for one), and that can help potentially bring some more startups here.

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There's actually a UIUC alum center in SF - http://www.sfbayillini.org/. The last estimate I heard was that there are somewhere around 40,000-50,000 UIUC graduates in the Bay Area.

I grew up in Chicago, graduated from UIUC, and I live in SF and work in Silicon Valley. When I moved here, I didn't need to make any new friends if I didn't want to - when I got here, my entire friend group and extended UIUC social network was already here. Shit, my girlfriend (also from UIUC) works at a startup in FiDi where both founders are from UIUC and there are many alums.

It's just too damn easy to move here for us.

Dumb question- is the SF alum center open to non-CoE folks?

I was a math major that took a handful of CS classes... and am in desperate need of employment, but no one seems interested in giving entry-level dev work.

I would guess so. There are tons of startups out there, you just have to find one. Try Angelist[1] or Crunchbase[2] and you should be able to find something. If not, contract work isn't bad either.

[1] http://angel.co

[2] http://crunchbase.com

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