curiouscat321

I’ve got a decade’s worth of 4x6 pictures and negatives from my childhood. Would something like this help me digitize them?

You should have several resumes. Your SWE resume should focus heavily on your technical abilities. Your PM resume can talk more about this other stuff (not an expert).

As it stands, I’m not sure who would be hiring somebody with a founder/manager profile like yours.

I think you do have enough technical experience. You just have to sell it.

What kinds of jobs are you applying for? Your first job talks more about the business side of starting this startup than your technical experience.

I think there needs to be an emphasis on your technical proficiency and less about the status of your startup. Are you even interested in a job given your startup?

Who would possibly buy Chrome? Letting any of the large tech companies purchase it (the only possible buyers) would just give someone else monopolistic power.

Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile.

Wrong link.

The ceiling is so much higher in coastal cities though. I moved right after college because I wanted to become rich. There’s not a strong path in Michigan to become rich (or even nationally upper-middle-class)

I grew up in Michigan and I love seeing how the ecosystem has grown.

Talent retention is a major problem for the state. The brain drain really stems from the University of Michigan. I don’t think there’s a public state university in America that sends so many of its graduates out of the state after graduation. The data is a little sparse, but the career center estimates something like 66% of all graduates leave post-graduation. In Computer Science, it’s like 75% (and I think that’s low).

The fact is, those graduates are the ones that attract jobs and startups. We talk about how egalitarian tech is. But, the fact is that companies want to hire graduates from premier colleges first and then settle for others later (at least for new grads).

Michigan’s economy is so automotive dependent because companies without a Michigan presence can’t hire UMich grads in state en masse. Nobody wants to create a new office out-of-state to hire new graduates from other schools.

I’m speculating that we tend to hear more about startups from top-tier college graduates because those graduates have a bigger cushion thanks to their degrees. A UMich/Harvard/MIT graduate can very easily fall back on their degree to get a regular job if their startup fails. (Yes, I realize there’s a socioeconomic component here as well)

Shopify provided a strong alternative to Amazon, which is the dominant player.

There are plenty of strong alternatives to Netflix. Disney is looking to be the strongest at the moment.

I think you’re overstating what this “secret software does.”

Those organizations are willing to invest money into software that makes them better at what they do. It’s not magic, it’s not secret. It’s just that at large organizations, it’s easier to justify writing pieces of software that have seemingly-small impact because that total impact is so large at their scale.

I would love nothing more than for this to be true. It just isn’t.

A fancy new office building doesn’t change the fact that Ford’s culture, poor salaries, and bureaucracy will scare away top talent.

Automotive doesn’t pay well by tech standards. Amazon’s engineers in Detroit are paid far better than their automotive counterparts.

Detroit has a good tech talent base, but sadly, it isn’t up-to-par with the coastal tech hubs.

On a different note, StockX is a Detroit-based startup. It's awesome to see the area's tech scene begin to thrive.

Why do you say that? As somebody that was briefly looking for a job in SE Michigan, I found the salaries much lower (even with COL taken in account)

Agree with all of this. The Metro Detroit area is diversifying itself better than it ever has.

The biggest problem I see is recruiting talent. The University of Michigan has established itself as a west-coast feeder school.

I personally left the area post-graduation and got a job at a FANG company. As much as I’d love to move back, I just can’t find a job that pays anywhere remotely near what I make on the west coast.

Apparently, salaries are starting to rise, which can only be good for the area as a whole.

For a company that’s trying to automate an industry (Shore), I’ve ancedotally heard nothing good about their technical stack and technical talent.

As a UMich grad, most of us left because of the low salaries. It’s appalling how little software engineers make in the state and how much companies complain about an inability to find talent.

I grew up in the Metro Detroit area and moved out to the coasts after graduating from Umich a couple years ago.

There’s more excitement around Detroit than I’ve seen at any point in my life. As somebody from the suburbs, my family would actively avoid Detroit unless we were going to a baseball game.

That’s changed. There’s many great restaurants and downtown feels more like a real city.

But, all of my friends still left the state. If you’re college educated, there’s a 60/40 chance you’ll leave Michigan right after graduation. Even worse if you graduate from UMich, which is scary since it’s the state’s flagship university.

The white-collar jobs are there, but they can’t compete with the jobs in other parts of the country. I graduated CS and I can’t name a single friend that didn’t move to the west coast. Even after the COL differences, you still come out ahead by leaving the state.

I want Detroit to grow and I’d love to move back. I just need some solid jobs to attract me back.

The Detroit wealthy suburbs are still very rich. Probably some of the richest in the country (Oakland County is a top 10 county of > 1M pop in terms of per-capita income)

But, as somebody who grew up there (and just recently moved out), I would say they’re in the early stages of long-term decline. There’s a complete inability for them to retain millennials. Most of my friends have moved away.

That’s the biggest issue in the Midwest and areas outside of the coasts. Talent retention.

The salaries, sadly, are really lagging. I just graduated from UMich and I can name a small handful of people who stayed in the state. The vast majority of them moved out west.

Even when you account for the lower COL, the salaries are just too low in the Detroit area. It’s getting better, but the area needs more real tech employers who value software engineers. The automotive companies still seem to treat them as cost centers.

People who espouse remote work seem convinced that it’s the end-all way to work.

I don’t care if I have to go into an office. I like offices. What I care about is that you don’t mind if I work from home every once in a while. I care that it’s okay for me to leave early or come late.

It's interesting how the incumbent auto companies are competing with Apple/Google. They have a lot of ways to go to be able to compete for talent.

The issue of compensation extends far beyond just chipmakers. The large tech companies (FB/GOOG et al.) pay top compensation for most technical fields and have the ability to suck up talent worldwide.

Chipmakers, automotive, media...the question is how long incumbent companies are going to continue poor compensation practices before they figure out how far behind they are.

Those are sales offices with little if any engineering presence.

I actually think everybody has been quite happy with Gilbert leading the bid.

Dan Gilbert is basically the entirely driving force behind the large growth happening in Detroit.

As somebody who grew up in the Metro Detroit area and moved away, I’m unbelievably impressed by the bid Detroit put together.

The entire region is so completely disfunctional. The idea of getting the neighboring counties (which have the money, education, and talent) to work together was unheard of.

I do think the Metro Detroit area is consistently understated as a potential tech hub. It has one of the largest cohorts of STEM people in the nation (albeit in more traditional engineering roles).

I don’t think the tax breaks will be sufficient enough because Michigan only seems to care about manufacturing plants. I hope Detroit gets the HQ2 bid or at least can use this process to start getting good tech jobs in the area.

I know I (and many of my hometown friends) would move back if the job market was closer to Seattle.

It's decades of unions that have led people to believe that there should be a certain sense of equality when it comes to wages. It's a ridiculous idea in the creative economy.

I think the definition is more cultural. The culture of a large bureaucratic car company is a lot different than most tech companies. They also have different views on talent

Ford has a serious marketing problem when it comes to hiring.

It's pretty obvious that Google, Facebook, et al. spend a lot of energy and money marketing themselves as fantastic places to work with great pay and benefits.

Most non-tech companies don't spend this effort. Ford might pay well, but they don't spend effort properly marketing themselves as a great place to work. Part of this is that tech culture != Ford culture and many people might not like Ford's big business culture.

You have to attract talent to Michigan though. California is in a prosperous loop where talented people move to the state for jobs which then encourages other companies to come to California for talent. The side effect of this is rising housing prices and rising wages.

Michigan doesn't have that cycle happening (or, at least to the same extent). Telling somebody to take a hypothetical pay cut to move somewhere with less appeal isn't a sound strategy for attracting talent.

I too grew up in the Metro Detroit area (and then moved to Seattle).

The suburban schools are quite good. Oakland County schools are some of the best in the nation. International Academy was rated as the top public school in America for many years (it's now amongst the top 10 or so).

In my opinion, Michigan is experiencing a statewide cultural divide. The more metropolitan areas are not nearly as culturally close minded as the less metropolitan areas. Ultimately, Michigan companies don't seem to value talent enough to pay them well. There's no reason somebody should be able to make 2-3x more outside of Michigan than in the state.