In Defense of the Midwest
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ntietz.com
I understand the value of physical proximity to lots of other like minded, smart people. However, I would have thought that the tech crowd would be the first to decry the inefficiencies of having one or two (SF and NY) annointed "tech hubs" and actively eschewing every other place. Why crowd every damn programmer in the world into the SF bay area when we have the internet?! That's the whole point of the internet!
There's also the cultural argument. Tech work has tended to attract people who are part of non-mainstream culture. Tech hub cities attract these people because they already have every culture and subculture imaginable and a society that mostly tolerates them. There's also a perception that other places don't have this and that their particular affiliation would invite outright hostility. That's mostly not true. Every large city (>1M people) will almost certainly have communities of people who share your culture or at least tolerate and support it.
Again though, I think that choosing where you live based on whether or not you can surround yourself with exclusively like minded people is counter to the hacker ethos. Let's not forget that Silicon Valley was not always what it is now. People built the place, and the rest of the US and the world could benefit from people who attempted to do the same elsewhere.
That is not enough. There need to be companies willing to hire. Those companies spring around where there is more talent so they don't have to relocate everyone. Where is more talent? Around more companies. It is a feedback loop. Network effect is probably the correct phrase here.
Unless large tech companies perhaps move their main offices or open large offices around these Midwest or Southern cities the situation will not change. But do we see Google, Facebook, Apple moving their HQ to Cleveland, or Memphis?
That's profoundly sad to me though. Concentrating all of the technological revolution's talent and wealth in a few cities will have bad effects on the rest of the country.
There are smaller cities that are called one-company towns. One university, one army base, one large manufacturing plant. That is the largest and most prominent employer in the region. If that one thing goes away, the town will suffer. Remote workers are different because they can hedge that risk. So with more remote work, eventually, perhaps we'll start seeing new patterns emerge, it could revitalize some areas. If there is more talent gathering, a positive feedback loop might start...
Edit: To add, tax incentive structure can be important. Some states do a lot better in that regard. There are even special deals arranged like "If you move your headquarters here, you'll pay lower taxes" or something similar.
While I occasionally visit SF I always get a good chuckle when my friend that lives there talks about how expensive things are and the pains of living there.
CoL might be N-300% higher in SF but salaries (thank wage-fixing companies) are not. Salaries are (necessarily higher) but it's easy to dwarf the spread in normal, requisite expenditures.
CA has a high state income tax, relatively higher sales tax (than most midwest areas), and in the case of SF, the oh-so-obvious (self-inflicted) real estate problem.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/11/21/ultra-high-net-worth...
Phoenix has 80-90% the pay, with significantly less cost of living... other areas can say the same. There is something to be said for being in the Silicon Valley area, but just the same, it's not necessarily better for any given company to be there than any major city with an international airport terminal.
Companies that hire programmers live everywhere. Given the disparate perception of a person working at Paypal, etc., compared to a Bay Area startup, even given the difference in purchasing power... Might'n't (?) we conclude that people choose the Bay Area for other reasons than salary and hiring?
Why is the default to believe people in the B.A. are irrational? I say this as someone with no dog in the fight, but have observed each side arguing to defend their bias.
They don't though, that's the thing. Some towns don't have that many programming jobs. If you are already in a tech hub it seems just apply to 10 companies and you'd get 3 offers in 2 weeks time is not unusual.
Another thing happens is the programmers already there are standing in line applying for the fews jobs available. And sometimes requirements and salaries become too low.
Not all programmers are young college grads wanting to work for cool startups. There are lot of them with homes, families, kids, aging parents, a larger social network etc.
> Might'n't (?) we conclude that people choose the Bay Area for other reasons than salary and hiring?
It depends. I, for example, started looking around the area where I was living already for a job. Didn't find anything there so after that applied to companies all over the country. I had offers in completely different parts of the county and just picked one. Availability of other future jobs was an important factor. But I didn't have 10 placest to pick from. It was just a few. If all were in BA I would have been in BA. If they were in Montana, I would have been in Montana probably. In other words, I didn't first pick the geographic area then applied to work there, I applied to companies, and then ended up in a geographic area.
I imagine if you are exceptionally good, it doesn't matter. Could probably throw a dart at the map, and then find a job there.
I visit my friends in SF every year and although they make more than double my salary, they can't even come close to matching my apartment situation. There is an infinite number of things to do in any city, and I can already afford things (like a house, or an acre of land even!) that aren't even fathomable to them. I won't stay in Cleveland forever, simply because I'd like to experience other cities, but I can't say SF is even in my top three. SF is a great place, but I'd like to find one of the still relatively "undiscovered" great places that isn't completely saturated.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_are...
If Epic rejected your application or laid you off. How many other software jobs would there be in the area?
Just about any kind of software development can be done remotely, really. It's really a function of the skills possessed by everyone involved in a distributed team vs the obstacles distribution may or may not present (and there's different degrees of remoteness -- same city, same time zone, same country, same hemisphere all present different challenges)
> specially to maintain the relationship links between investors and engineers via a CEO. Those jobs need to be in New York or San Francisco.
Unless the CEO doesn't (or your customers don't) live in SF and NY.
I suppose the next line is "well, the investors aren't going to want to visit flyover country." It turns out -- strangely enough -- there are even investors who don't live in SF and NY, though sometimes they strangely don't all want to invest in a slick social deals pyramid or revenue-free chat app or whatever else is hot at the moment...
You can't argue with returns, and "slick" VC returns trump Smallville's every day of the week.
How'd Groupon's investors make out on their returns?
There are plenty of VC funded startups which aren't in SF or NY, and they will have slower burn rates than those who are in SF and NY, simply due to the cost of living.
I agree that it's probably a network effect rather than anything fundamental about SF/NY. But really, so what? Yes, if all the startups were in Cleveland then it would be smart to go to Cleveland. But they're not.
I'm not even all that liberal politically (politics are probably a source where disconnect might come from for some hackers), I'm pretty middle-of-the road as far as extremes to the American right and left are concerned -- but when I lived in the South, I felt distinctly uncomfortable and out of place. In California and the PNW and even Colorado, I don't generally feel this disconnect with my surroundings; I feel more connected to the place and with a fraction of the populace greater than just a few individuals.
This is 100% personal, but I don't think I'm entirely alone in expressing these sentiments. I moved away because I was sick of always being uncomfortable, which didn't contribute to my quality of life, nor to that of the people who were probably mutually made uncomfortable. & again, by SF or NY standards, I'm not strange/liberal/letting my freak flag fly in the slightest. I'm (mostly) white, but therein lies part of the problem I have with the Midwest and the South.
Also, there's clear evidence [1][2] that people are leaving "mixed" communities to live in areas that are more homogenous and in line with their politics and culture. I don't want to be a part of that, as I consider it a problem.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/13/pe...
[2] http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-3-political-p...
The sort of sentiment I occasionally encountered seems to be a cultural thing, really. Ergo I left.
I would say that the main differences are in scope and pace.
The work ethic & amicability of the midwest is unparalleled pretty much anywhere. That said, as an entrepreneur or founder outside of Chicago-proper, I've found it terribly difficult to connect with any large amounts of people. There are lots of people building small businesses (but have essentially built themselves a job that is dependent on them), but not very many entrepreneurs (building systems that scale).
As far as tech goes, again, it's tough to find people outside Chicago-proper (although it's getting better).
That said, you do tend to have a lot more people who are content & happy, and seemingly a much more consistent pace of life.
Most people on HN seem to have little familiarity with actually living or experiencing the midwest (but many of the cities are well worth visiting - especially in the summer).
The biggest downside to me was the geography. I love Chicago, but for 1/2 the year it's freezing and depressing with not many outdoor activities to partake in :(
In many places like the South (and Mid-West), most people tend to say variants of "Why?", "That's stupid", "That's crazy"; when you tell them what ridiculous, nonsensical or seemingly useless thing you want to build. Here in Bay Area more people say, "Why not? That sounds fun." and they either help you build it or fund it. Yeah a lot of times the things built here are crazy and make no sense... but sometimes, sometimes you end up with a Google.
Of course I could be wrong, since places like Atlanta have institutions like Georgia Tech. Maybe things have changed (or will change) like in New York? ...but I haven't seen strong evidence of that yet.
Yes, exactly. As someone who lives in New York, this is the very definition of "in the middle of nowhere." Your idea of "culture" is Broadway shows, the local jazz orchestra, professional sports, and restaurants. To me, that's all stuff for tourists. Even San Francisco is culturally lacking by New York, LA, London standards.
Fine if you're satisfied by mass-cultural products, but the reality is that most cultural producers migrate to metropolitan centers once they reach a certain level of success and the second-tier cities are left with the loyal, the mediocre, and the novice.
That's not to say that there's nothing interesting going on in second-tier cities, but there's maybe 2 orders of magnitude less activity and the ceiling is far lower.
I would venture to guess that you haven't been to Ohio.
I'm not claiming that it's an epicenter of amazingness, but I can count at least one person that's decided that's the case (Dave Chappelle).
Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns - not quite the same as randomly stumbling upon OKC and deciding it's what you've wanted all along, you know?
And Chappelle's probably not the greatest example, since he very famously got fed up with his celebrity status and wanted to retreat from the world a little. Surprised you didn't go to Lebron instead.
Also, Buffet, Prince, Eminem, etc. You can find an argument about a lot of places. The fact that people write of (any) place without spending any amounts of time there, speaks more about them than the place they're referencing.
Nobody with a modicum of intelligence thinks that is irrational. Of course people are going to have strong attachments to a place where they spent a major portion of their childhood making memories and relationships.
The only seemingly irrational thing would be indifference. You don't spend 18 years in a place and not have any emotional reaction to it (good or bad).
If I'm a brilliant mathematician or a world-class athlete and I choose Kansas over Cambridge/Boston, then yeah, plenty of people are going to think that my attachment to Kansas is making me act irrationally. I don't think they lack a "modicum of intelligence" because of that thought.
There are obviously exceptions where your choice of location doesn't matter, but if you're a high performer then it frequently does (with the obvious notable exceptions e.g. Prince).
[EDIT: I originally just had a quip about not being a sports fan, but I thought you deserved a real reply.]
In particular, if you're an academic mathematician and you ended up in Kansas, then that probably means that you're working at the University of Kansas or Kansas State University.
But that's not an issue. Because any fule kno that all cultural production is highly derivative, and innovative only at the margins. GP gripes elsewhere about people ignoring the last 100 years of western art music, but seems to miss the fact that there is no Schoenberg without Brahms, Wagner and Mahler, no Reich without the Early Music revival; and, equally, the fact that not all productions of a given opera are alike. Innovation is possible, and happens, within the standard repertoire; that's one of the happy side effects of playing the same things over and over again.
I have no idea how forward-thinking the opera house(s) of Ohio are, admittedly.
Seriously, humans lived in societies for thousands of years without the billion forms of stimulation that we have today. I refuse to believe their lives were in any way deprived because of this. The demand for an urban lifestyle is completely artificial and only serves to create a steady supply of desperate workers filled with envy of movie star lives. Humans in primitive societies today still manage to live happy lives. What would aid us all is to realize our desires are not our own but implanted by marketing to benefit the power elite.
If you're into live theater there's a dozen or more shows going at any one time. I'm sure there's a visual arts scene of which I'm happily unaware, jazz performances, dozens of small clubs, and more.
There's more than enough culture to fill my available time and interest. Living in NYC, I'm not sure I'd go see all that much more of it. Yes, I'd be spoiled for choices (and I miss the American Composers Orchestra) but I'm not really suffering in Minneapolis.
@msutherl is completely right. If you have any creative bent outside of pop culture even a town the size of Minneapolis does not really provide the kind of creative stimulation you need. The kind of diversity and culture mixing that comes from a metropolis like NYC is on a whole other level entirely.
(By the way, the current is a crap radio station and they haven't played anything other than indie top 40 for years. Radio-K is cool, but every town with a university has a college radio station </hipster>)
That's actually the most important thing from my perspective. Somebody called me a hipster, but what I love about having access to a huge array of contemporary art, music, etc. is that it gives me the opportunity to see a lot and really understand what it is that moves me and that I can express myself through. As I learn more, my tastes become more specific and "obscure." On the flip side, knowing more also helps me appreciate more different things on a new level.
Up to a point, and then you're selling Cleveland short. The points on Broadway and the Orchestra both bear repeating - literally world-class in both regards, at half (or less!) the ticket price. On the hipster/contemporary side of things, I was spoiled for choice as a student in Cleveland - fantastic craft beer (I prefer it over most on the West Coast), concert venues like the Grog Shop[0] that rival most places in Seattle, and Ohio City (Cleveland suburb) is nigh indistinguishable from any other yuppie district over here (well, until you look at the prices).
In fact, the only thing that sticks out as missing is the lack of good clubs and an LGBT district, although Cleveland did just host the Gay Games last year. I'll echo other comments here - if someone offered me a 5% pay cut to move to Cleveland, I'd actually give it some thought.
Did you miss the part of my comment where I mentioned seeing a new opera commissioned by the Minnesota Opera that premiered this past Sunday?
And the suburbs are yet another 2 orders of magnitude below my little town.
I've probably attended the Chicago Symphony more times than the average person who refers to their home as "Chicago." As for my town, if I want to play music or attend the Symphony with my kids, we're 10 minutes away.
And while it's true that great artists and musicians move to the metropolitan centers, they also move back out, in droves, because only a tiny fraction can survive the scene, much less prosper. I play in a band with some of them.
This is all without denying the obvious cultural role of the great cities. Thank you for bebop. ;-)
Day to day life in New York is dreary. By American standards it's a filthy city. It smells and will always smell because trash is collected on the sidewalk. It manages to be both too hot and too cold. On summer days, a blanket of pollution hangs in the city air. The waterways are toxic after rainfall because NYC expels raw sewage into them. Most any place of business worth visiting will have a long wait. There are lots of delightful people in the right areas, but the many wrong areas are filled with throngs of really awful people. The amount of cat-calling, homophobia, and racism I experienced on the train or just walking around was an order of magnitude more than I've witnessed anywhere on the West Coast. The cost for living this privilege are some of the nation's highest taxes.
I don't regret my time in New York, but I do think it's one of the worst cities in the US in terms of livability.
From Joan Didion:
> All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore. The last time I was in New York was in a cold January, and everyone was ill and tired. Many of the people I used to know there had moved to Dallas or had gone on Antabuse or had bought a farm in New Hampshire. We stayed ten days, and then we took an afternoon flight back to Los Angeles, and on the way home from the airport that night I could see the moon on the Pacific and smell jasmine all around and we both knew that there was no longer any point in keeping the apartment we still kept in New York. There were years when I called Los Angeles “the Coast,” but they seem a long time ago.
This just isn't true. I know a number of people who work full-time in tech and are deeply integrated into various New York art scenes.
re: New York's awful quality of life compared to other cities, I completely agree. I can't blame anyone for wanting to live in a beautiful place with good weather and a more relaxed pace of life.
If you lived in NYC maybe you understand. In other cities you can get around with public transportation, in NYC it's unquestionably the way to get around by everyone from day laborers to movie stars.
Also, your narrative of grittiness is very different than the other popular narrative, that NYC is now "disney" full of tourists, cops and wealthy transplants.
The simple fact remains that people want to be here in NYC despite whatever criticism.
There are other great cities out there. Many of them do things differently, and do quite well at it. Try Hong Kong or Singapore's underground, or in Europe, Vienna's - even the ones in China are cleaner and easier to navigate.
I agree with nostromo. A day in New York is a day endlessly pushing against roadblocks, those roadblocks being people, traffic, delays, dirt, bad neighborhoods, long commutes, noise, expensive living, expensive eating... and all of that just to live in your tiny box and think that you're a part of it all.
I'll take small to medium-size towns any day, over that.
I'm perfectly open to criticism of the subway compared to other countries more modern systems. As it stands though, for a person with only a US passport, the NYC subway is in a class of its own. On a global scale it is still one of the largest underground systems.
I was born in NYC and have also traveled extensively internationally. Foreigners and transplants often have this misconception that NYC = Manhattan. If I shared that sentiment then I would agree that NYC is not the greatest place to live. Try spending an afternoon in Astoria, Queens or Williamsburg, Brooklyn (two of the most trendy places in NYC at the moment but they work to prove the point). Tourists rarely see these places but residents live comfortable lives there with literally a 5 minute commute to the city.
Even for outer residents it is not great. My wife's family lives in Queens and it is inconvenient as all hell; there is a good reason people pay to live in Manhattan. NYC is bizarrely centered around Manhattan as its central hub, and all of the other boroughs are subservient to it; in a way they are deserts, devoid of all but the most basic businesses and services, as the arts/culture/jobs/education are in Manhattan.
To get to Manhattan takes 20 minutes by bus just to get to the L or M train, then another hour (or often more) to get to the outskirts. If you miss the bus, enjoy a 45 minute walk - the bus only comes every half hour, but is hardly regular, as it goes down the area's only main thoroughfare that is absolutely choked with cars, too many streetlights, and parking.
Maybe for some an 1:30-2:00hr commute daily is normal; at the best of times, in Spring/Fall, it's bearable but annoying. In the hot summer or cold winter, it's awful. I think, why go through all that - is the area really all that spectular? Can't you have 10x more (land,time,sanity) living in the Midwest or the South? Why even bother living in New York, if you're not going to live in Manhattan?
In a lot of cities, the quality of public transportation lies somewhere between non-existent and abysmal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
Culture is people living their lives, pursuing interests and hobbies, being happy (not always), working, raising families. This is culture to me ... New York is just: either work all the time, talk about work, or be in poverty, talk about New York, be angry about New York, talk about leaving New York, talk about your rent.
And I can't even see any of the "mass produced" culture because the prices are absurd and the things sell out in minutes anyways.
How far is it from New York (City) to a good trout stream? Air that you can't see? A mountain peak above 10,000 feet? Powder skiing? (Yes, I know, those things aren't Midwest either, exactly.)
I think Seattle folk are becoming increasingly hostile to the idea of moving down there. Some dream of it of course, but I think they're decreasing in number. Google and Facebook are expanding up here because there's so much talent that simply won't move to the bay. And SpaceX is starting a 1000 person studio soon.
Nashville is a good city. I hope it's tech scene continue to grow. Most west coast folk wouldn't dream of living in country music capital of the world. That's might even be a good thing. More opportunities for new people.
Lots of great places to live in the world. SF wouldn't even be in my top 100. So at least take refuge in knowing you're far from alone.
I think a lot of that is driven by Amazon, because they built the downtown offices. People get used to working downtown and they want to stay there. Easy commutes from Capitol Hill/QA/etc.
Now Facebook is expanding downtown, Google Fremont is growing, etc. because people refuse to commute to the east side.
As opposed to the Valley, where your options are (except for Twitter and mostly startups)
1) Work in the valley, and live the suburbs. Yuck. Pay a billion dollars for the privlege.
2) Work in the valley and live in SF. Pay a billion^2 dollars for the privilege, and have a shit commute (sitting on a private bus is still sitting on a bus).
No thanks.
That being said, I went to Case Western and would move back to Cleveland in a heartbeat, if the salaries and opportunities were even remotely comparable to Seattle.
At some point you might decide you don't need to jump from company to company, or from job to job. You'll realize you really only need a good job at a decent company. And there's a good chance that such a job exists in Cleveland, or Dallas, or Charlotte, or wherever.
At times, you might feel like you're missing out on the action. But then you'll look at your bank account or your house or your kid's college fund, which hasn't been being sucked dry by a ridiculously inflated cost-of-living, and you'll come back to your senses.
I remember the first time I visited San Francisco: I was so excited to visit a city I'd heard so much about. There's a bar there which is supposed to be even better than one of my local ones; I arrived and discovered that a) it sold no food; b) the prices were double; c) the selection was worse; d) it stank of urine.
That entire city was a colossal let-down. I was so glad to return home. Maybe I should have had lower expectations?
Graduated in 2014, moved to Detroit to work for a hardware startup. Live and work downtown, and the professional experience has been phenomenal.
However, the issue that's so frequently left out when discussing the palatability of the Midwest is what it's like to be an Asian American here when you've grown up in a major city on the East or West coast.
And the reality is that it's really difficult. Race goes from being one aspect of your identity to an omnipresent difference that you feel constantly. On the vast majority of days that I spend here, I'm the only person of South Asian origin that I run into. This tends to lend itself to a sense of isolation that's difficult to capture in words.
The midwest includes a broad swath of states. While I've encountered some racism throughout the area, I'd be hard-pressed to see how it's vastly different than any other racism that permeates US culture.
The upper midwest has its own breed of racism. It is quiet but built in to the socio-economic fabric of cities there in a way even worse than the south in many ways.
I'd like to point out that midwestern cities are among the most segragated in the U.S.[1] Minnesota, the place where I grew up, is famous for having one of the best public school systems in the country. What you won't hear Minnesotans talking about, though, it the ugly fact that Minnesota has the highest discrepancy in educational outcomes of any city in the country.
If you're from there, its easy to see why. There are exclusive suburbs with incredible schools for the local upper-class kids. But if you go to the inner city the schools are a joke. The difference is shocking in person.
The worst part is, there is not even a conversation in the upper midwest about race. The dominant narrative is that its a southern problem.
[1] http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/03/24/10-of-the-most-segreg...
Extra reading: http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2015/02/minnesota_has_the...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/02/17/if...
*Edited for completeness
That's just simply incorrect (and, also, Minnesota is a state, not a city, you're probably referring to Minneapolis?). That's in the major local paper (Star Trib) weekly, if not more frequently. It is a topic of significant conversation and another proposed effort is being debated in the MN House currently, as well as efforts to decrease the number of suspensions disproportionately received by minority students, and a push to offer "free" preschool for lower class families, which will likely be approved soon.
Also, simply chalking up the cause of these issues to "racism" is lazy thinking. There's far more at play, including a significant immigrant population (large populations of Somali and Hmong, for instance), an inability for the MPLS school district to recruit good leadership, and more.
I've lived in a lot of places: The UK, Alabama, Illinois (for a short time), Guam, Washington, New York, and California. Not having a home town, I think I'm better positioned to evaluate these places. My least favorite region is the south, followed closely by the midwest. The reason is simple: overt racism. Nowhere else have I seen such blatant and hateful discrimination. Even if the weather, food, jobs, and night life improved, I'd still shy away from living there.
I'm not saying you're wrong but it's worth noting that the black population has been increasing in the south for a while due to migration. It's an interesting trend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/us/25south.html?pagewanted...
Actually, migration flows show people preferring the Sun Belt, despite the lower salaries and productivity rates. The coasts simply can't build housing fast enough to both accept migrants and maintain their own native-born populations.
I'm not white, and I've lived in the South for most of my life. From my experience, the South is less racist than either the West Coast or East Coast. Why? Because minorities are forced to hang out with people that aren't their own ethnic group. When this happens the larger ethnic groups become familiar with your own ethnic group as well as some of the culture that comes with it. Conversely in the larger metros in both the East and West coasts, this seems to happen a lot less often because there are enough ethnic minorities here so that there's a lot less mixing socially. Consequently, I've actually been the subject of inadvertent racism in the Bay Area at work. There wasn't any malice behind it, just ignorance, but it was really unpleasant and that would be inconceivable in a Southern metro (from my experience).
Every country I've spent time in over there (France, UK, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany) seems to have a culture that accepts making blanket offensive statements about people from other countries (or religions in the case of the UK).
Is it as bad as the US? Black americans make up half the US prison population; they're six times more likely to be imprisoned; as of 2001 one in six black men had been incarcerated;
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
Laws are unjustly applied, one example is the rates that black Americans or white Americans are arrested for cannabis drug crime. http://nytimes.com/2014/07/29/opinion/high-time-the-injustic...
Based on the numbers I find the the ratio for blacks in the US is 40-45% prison to population vs 12% general population. In the UK the numbers seem to be about 12-15% prison population vs 2.5% general population.
If you look at Muslims instead of blacks then you'll find similarly lopsided ratios in many European countries. According to some sources as many a 70% of prisoners in France are Muslim (read North African or Turkish in most cases) compared to 10-12% of the general population.
So to answer your question in one word "Yes".
No matter how bad these numbers may seem in an absolute sense in the US, I strongly suspect they'll stomp all over equivalent numbers in Europe.
I've been to both coasts and many large cities in the US and abroad. I'd still rather live here than anywhere else.
It's a struggle just to get gigabit to the home in Chicago.
On the other hand, if you're an entrepreneur, you don't live in SF and you're building a consumer internet startup, you're fucked. Primarily because your access to capital is so limited it's ridiculous. Most people that live in the midwest aren't able to put in the time required to build out the relationships needed to successfully fundraise in the Valley.
1. http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=26301...
http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/02/yik-yaks-new-funding-round-...
The Midwest also lacks the intellectual vibrancy that a place like Boston does. It just seems to me that there are overwhelming concentration of smart, ambitious people from the coasts compared to those from the Midwest.
Personally, I love it here in Boston, way more than I do at home. Ohio was a good, safe place to grow up, and I imagine that it’s a great place to raise a family. However, I couldn’t imagine spending any more of my life there than I already have without dying from boredom or a creeping sense of mediocrity.
At uni, I was friends with a group of expat Manhattanites (not wealthy though) and similar to what you say, they looked at St. Louis as a quaint toy city. Many inconclusive dorm debates were held on the merits of the two environments. Of course neither of us could give ground, so similar to what you read nearby, we were talking past each other. Too defensive.
But that was 20 years and several cities ago. I still visit the Midwest and enjoy family and a few friends. I experience it as not open to newness, to difference, or to the exceptional. These things are just not valued. It is valued to be a regular person and to be comfortable and respectable.
This won't work for me. I love LA, where I live now, and have great respect for the Bay Area as well.
Everyone points out the obvious differences like the weather, seasons, and cost of living (housing in particular).
But one thing I rarely see mentioned is it seems that people in Northeast Ohio seem far less judgmental in general. Whereas here, I feel like every third person you meet is trying to size you up or “demonstrate” how smart they are.
Granted that’s probably a side effect of an overall higher bar of success for the region…
But it’s still refreshing to get a break from that attitude when I visit family back home. Unfortunately the there’s such a severe lack of tech jobs in Ohio that I doubt I’ll ever be moving back.
America's major cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York) and one midsize city with a special industry focus (the bay area) offer almost inconceivable economic opportunity to people in HN's line of work. Relative to population, their software and technology industries are tens of times the size of Cleveland.
If you are a schoolteacher (one of the most common and widely distributed white collar jobs), Cleveland is probably a hugely appealing destination. As a person working in the technology industry (a much more centralized niche), it presents a tremendous trade-off between quality of life and opportunity.
It's telling that the essay's author is a 100% remote employee of a firm in the bay area. Not even an ardent defender of the (non-Chicago) midwest was able to build his ideal career there.
I live in the midwest and visited Cleveland last year. Outside of about two streets downtown, it's pretty much a ghost town at night.
Many, many businesses have left over the past 5 years because of the economy.
I would even go so far as to say you're better off starting a company in the Midwest. It's a hell of a lot cheaper, and you can still find good talent. Sure, it will be harder to raise money; however, money will find the truly good ideas.
If you can do this arangement, it is not bad, agreed.
However I found tech jobs wise Ohio was a shithole. The number of available jobs, the salaries, the expectations were just not there when I was looking.
Like he said, the people are great, I had to leave a lot of friends and family behind, which hurt. The food, art scene, music wasn't bad, so agree on those fronts.
Edit: Interesting, getting downvoted without any comments. Not sure if this is an instinctive defense "he is attacking out Midwest pride"... Like I said, I like Midwest, and would have rather not had to leave. Unfortunately companies I got offers from didn't allow remote work.
I'd say it's a pretty great arrangement ... but probably difficult to pull off. Which means you're screwed if you lose your job. Doubly screwed if you already have a mortgage in place-that's-good-to-live-but-not-to-work.
Question is, how would I get a job after moving there...?
Guess what? It's just a location. Everyone has different tastes and different priorities. Some people are happy with where they live and wouldn't consider living anywhere else. Others wish they could move somewhere else where the pace of life is different -- slower or faster. Some people want a big house and plot of land. Others don't want to deal with the hassles of home ownership and like renting a modestly sized apartment.
Why do we feel the need to keep arguing this? Just let people live where they want to live, and stop wasting time evangelizing any particular city. No one needs to justify their city of choice.
Utilities stay up - water, electricity, internet. It is not a big deal. People work from home and understand this; those that must go to work arrive late and go home early, this is understood too. Just have a padded coat.
There are cheap cities in America in much warmer climes.
I've never in my career felt more productive and fulfilled than I have since doing this. It was the best career choice I've ever made.
The only complaint I have is that not just my local area, but Ohio and surrounding states in general seem to still be in the equivalent of the dark ages when it comes to technology and the web. I've lucked into some really good, steady clients who appreciate my work, so I know it's out there. The ratio of tech-savvy businesses is definitely obviously lower than you would expect to find in New York or San Francisco. I imagine it's only going to get better though, which I'm really looking forward to.
One other side effect of having more diverse demographics is people are less bios against ethnicity. Because people are exposed to a lot of people from other ethnicities.
In contrast, I honestly never felt like the urban techie parts of the Bay Area were hugely diverse when I lived there. Lots of really interesting people but there are much more interesting places to live as far as non-tech stuff goes.
This article hit home for me. Though I technically now live in a medium-sized mid-Atlantic city, the culture here is more like the Midwest. I'm not against the Bay area or NYC, but for me, I couldn't imagine living in those places: congestion, price of living, and their lacking of the "down-home" feeling.
I believe it would be more difficult to found a technology-centric company where I live, though. As an example, the company I work for, though very large, is based in a small city. For years, there was not much of an issue attracting new talent. The problem is that our IT organization has grown immensely recently, and attracting new "hacker" talent into the middle of the country is a huge obstacle. One of the solutions was opening another IT office in New Jersey, just a few miles from NYC. Problem solved.
But then there's those of us who grew up in the Midwest. I love being able to buy and own a nice home for under $200K. I enjoy being able to drive to work with minimal traffic. I even like reading about living in the Bay area on HN and laughing at the things so many have to deal with! But the truth is, tech people thrive in the Bay area. And I'd say that the Bay thrives on them. But there will always be a few of us engineers who live in "flyover" country :-)
I always thought I'd move to the valley to work for a startup and then eventually start my own. After my first offer right out of college with a company in SF didn't work out I ended up taking a job in DC.
My god am I glad that I held out on that one. Not only did I make a comparable salary in DC but the housing cost was at least half. I was paying slightly less than $2k for a nice 600 sqft one bedroom. In SF it would have been closer to $3.5k.
Now two years later I work remotely from Portland for a company based out of Madison Wisconsin. Who would have thought right? Certainly not me 2 years ago. As I've grown and traveled the US I've found the valley to be less and less desirable (and yes, I've been there several times).
Honestly the only draw to the valley is the higher volume of jobs. Aside from Google, Apple, et al, you're going to be saving far less in the valley than anywhere else. There's no incentive to move the valley if you can find a job anywhere else. I know people will tell you the network of VCs, the atmosphere, etc. But it's all overrated. If you're right out of school your number one concern should be saving money and learning. If you work in the valley you're only getting access to one of those and it's certainly not saving money (again, unless you're working for Big Tech Co.).
Now don't get me wrong. There are certainly places out there that are far superior to others. I would certainly rather live in the valley than Houston. The cultural aspect is key. I'm simply saying don't run to the valley because you have some idealized image of it. Research and do the math.
I live in Kansas City now and am hoping to see big things start to happen more often in the technical start-up world. The city is embracing start-up culture it seems and it's just so damn cheap that I believe it to be inevitable.
Cities are expensive, cramped, filthy, and noisy. The Silicon Valley startup scene deeply creeps me out. I couldn't really care less about "culture"; just give me a good local bar to hang out at and a bunch of good restaurants, and I'll be happy. One thing about Dallas is that the suburbs are really ethnically diverse, and that translates into lots and lots of really damn good ethnic restaurants (I've even heard reports that we have more restaurants per captia than NYC, but that's probably a myth -- it's a believable one, though). Oh, and I pay $1200/month rent for a 1500 sq. ft. townhouse in a nice part of town. There's no way NYC or SF can beat that.
By the way, I'm a trans woman, and I went full-time before I started passing. The only time I've ever faced street harassment was the the two years I worked downtown (and I was harassed both before and after transition). Since I'm working in the suburbs again (hallelujah!), I haven't been harassed. Sorry, but I'd rather not have hobos and perverts shouting at me and following me around. Even the most liberal cities are still cities and still have unsavory types crowding the streets. You don't see that in the suburbs, even conservative ones. I never encountered even a single instance of transphobia in the suburbs (again, I went full-time before I was passable) -- and I'd like to repeat that I live in Texas.
On the other hand I love the road biking scene in IA.
there's great stuff happening here, and anyone with an open mind would recognize that. let's talk up our successes instead of being bashful because we're "not SF".
I uniquely have friends around the world and spread out all over the US - location doesn't matter as much to me, since I could hang out with everyone I want. As a single man though, the Bay area makes a lot of sense for me as a result, since the pay still outpaces the cost of living for me. Being tired of wintry weather was also a huge factor in me migrating out west.
There is a chance I might migrate south to the Austin area in the future, or back east to the NY or DC area eventually - I do miss the strong ties I have to the east coast from having lived there for most of my life, but Austin sounds attractive as a tech hub and due to more sane housing costs.
Some of the author's points seem valid but a bit odd (mentioning the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra as being "world-renowned" instead of the Cleveland Orchestra? No mention of the art museums? Mention the Browns several times but not the Cavaliers, especially this year?) but overall it's a good piece. The thing that's missing is this: what makes Cleveland genuinely interesting is that it's a two-hundred year old city which is still figuring out what it's going to be when it grows up. It really could go a few different ways.
Moral of the story: everyone has different preferences and things they value, so assuming that any particular person would want to live in any particular place is pretty foolish. As a corollary, assuming that anyone talented will want to live in California (because everyone wants to live in California) seems like a pretty bad strategy.
However, Columbus is freaking awesome, I was so happy I decided to come here just because of the place and the friendly people (in fact, I have met one or two people who frequent this very site there!), not to mention the variety of great food and great coffee!
I have since starting planning leaving uni, but I probably want to stay in Columbus, if possible. How ironic, isn't it?
I'm also from Ohio and completing my undergrad, and considering where to possibly move for a career. (If that means much at all)
If you're lucky enough to work in a state with no (or low/fixed) income tax, that 10% combined with the hilarious housing cost situation covers the spread in salary difference very quickly.
And if you're working remotely there are obviously other potential lifestyle savings to be had (parking, generally less restaurant expenses, etc.)
New Englander here and quite frankly I think the Midwest is politically and socially backwards and I do not want anything to do with your part of the country. I have the same feelings about the South.
Politically you're still debating the merits of gay marriage in many of your states and thankfully only because of the courts are you being forced to accept it as a legitimate thing.
Too much religion and not enough education.
Too conservative. Especially your desperate need to cling to gun-ownership as some sort of ultimate freedom.
If i'm picking petty things to dislike... we'll you're also boring. You don't export any interesting cultural artifacts you just soak up whatever the coasts have to offer. That's not much of a reason though and as I said, it's petty.
See how the folks in rural Maine feel about gay marriage - I'll point out that 47% of voters in 2012 were opposed which on the surface sure doesn't seem too different to me than the 46% of Ohioans apposed as of last polling in 2014.
I'd bet I'd find remarkably similar polling in Ohio, Maine, Vermont or New Hampshire about gun rights too.
When it comes down to it, the conservatives have lost the war they might not realize it yet, but history is on the side of those for equality and equitable treatment.
As for the culture comments? You're just a snob, but that very nearly goes without saying.
If that's decides where you move... I honestly feel extremely sorry for you.
I think of the price for housing and how it reflects demand.
I live in Seattle, so my viewpoint is slightly different, but, eh. I used to live in a rural place, and I don't plan to go back, for a long time, if ever.
Let me pick apart this article a bit, and demonstrate how skew these high points are from things I care about.
* Housing cost. That's where the pay difference comes in. And my $800/mo in student loans doesn't change if I live on the coast or in the middle of nowhere. So it's actually better for me, because the proportional cost of fixed payments goes way down.
* Broadway shows, okay. But wouldn't you rather be in a vibrant place where creation happens, than be the "second hand"?
* Same for music. Do you want to be in the place where creation happens, or a pit stop on the tour?
* Sportsball. Meh.
* Foodwise, my mind was blown by the quality difference between St. Louis and Seattle/SF when I visited recently. Maybe I hit the wrong joints, but STL had terrible food. Absolutely shockingly worse. I'll have to shake down some people for more reccs next time.
* Seattle is incredibly friendly and polite. Drivers in the city are probably the friendliest I've ever come across. While it retains the historical Scandinavia reserve, people are really just decent here in general. SF is famous for its collaboration between businesses.
* I don't even understand the idea of wanting to turn off work on a daily basis. I left that attitude behind me when I last worked fast food. The 9-5er attitude is "yuck".
* The author is generally ignoring the intense network effects of having zillions of nerds in the same city.
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Anyway. Not that TFA is wrong. But its priorities are very skew from mine.
I want to live in a place where technology is a significant lifestyle, where nerds are your neighbor, where programmers aren't weirdos. I want to live in a place with tons of cultures colliding and the resultant froth. I want to live in a place where there are new companies forming weekly. I want to live in a place where the optimism is in the air, where young people are flooding around the town with new ideas, new thinking, and crazy things no sane adult would do, and tech is in the heart of all that. Where the next thing is being done at 3 in the morning fuelled by coffee, math, and being young and foolish. Maybe that means I never will leave Seattle/SF/The-next-big-thing until I retire, but I'm okay with that.
This one is bullshit. Plenty of bands came from Ohio, including OAR, the Foo Fighters, and the Black Keys. IMO, the live music scene in Columbus is way better than SF, with a diverse group of talented bands playing every night of the week.
My ten-year residence in Seattle (U District, Lake City, and Burien/Tukwila) led me to use terms like "passive-aggressive", "frigid", and "unaware".
Seattle drivers are particularly terrible -- they'll force a line of 20 cars to stop just so they can "politely" let someone in who would have been able to turn just fine ten seconds later when all the cars had passed; they're perfectly willing to inconvenience multiple other people in order to be superficially polite to one. If there's a space in front of them, they'll speed up, getting right on the bumper of the car in front of them -- even if there's plenty of room to pass -- and then follow closely, as if they just can't stand being more than a few yards behind the next car. (This particular passive-aggressive maneuver is so distinctive that I once identified a vehicle on the interstate in Kansas as "drives like they're from Seattle" from a distance, confirming from the licence plate when I got closer.)
I also noticed that everyone in Seattle was polite to my face, but the majority of long-term friends I made while in Seattle were from other places. The people who turned out to be fake friends were mostly the natives.
That's not to say that Seattle entirely sucks. It was a neat place to live, and there are a lot of good people there. But I find it interesting how differently we perceive the same social scene, and how that contributes to my being much happier far away from there.
You should think supply instead. San Francisco is quite small geographically. It doesn't take much demand to drive the prices quite high under those conditions. Most places in the Midwest can grow in any direction as necessary.
>* Broadway shows, okay. But wouldn't you rather be in a vibrant place where creation happens, than be the "second hand"? >* Same for music. Do you want to be in the place where creation happens, or a pit stop on the tour?
As someone involved in tech all of the time, I frankly don't care if I'm "where the creation happens", and most people I know don't. You don't have to be where art was originally made to enjoy it and to argue otherwise is pretty stupid.
1. World class food. There is no way you can get the same quality of chinese,japanese,korean,indian,french,italian,californian,thai,vietnamese in Cleveland.
2. People creating things in coffeeshops on the weekends, instead of wasting life watching TV or drinking beer. You only get one life in this great country.
3. It's not ice freezing cold
4. It's not superficial (like LA), not money worshipping (like NY), not power hungry (like DC), not gun/football crazy (like Texas), not corrupt (like Florida)
5. Diversity
6. Tech, Venture networks
7. Silicon Valley people are great people. The entrepreneurs are supportive of each other, since they know how much pain it is to start a company. The people who take risks moving across country to here are brave and adaptive and optimistic. (instead of rotting away on a couch in midwest complaining about lack of jobs)
Pennsylvania is a big state.
In that sense, Pennsylvania is a big state. Perhaps "wide" is a better descriptor.
Pittsburgh is kind of a buffer between the east coast and the midwest. Architecturally, it feels more like an east coast city, but culturally it feels more midwestern.
I grew up in Illinois/Missouri and lived in Pittsburgh. This is spot on.
Obviously Philadelphia is not, so I would argue that the dividing line is somewhere in the middle of the state.
But to say that Ohio and western PA are "Midwest" because they're west of the Appalachians... bah. You easterners need to get out more. And if you think steel town culture makes you part of the Midwest, well... come west of Chicago and look around. You don't see many steel towns out here.
I mean, I suppose that's the labels that you grew up on, and it's how the locals label themselves, so on that level it's hard to argue with. But anything that includes "West" as part of the name (or even "Mid") that includes Pittsburgh... look at a map of the country, and then explain to me how that makes any sense at all.