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Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

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Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#211

Post by specialist »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #158
scarmig wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm tarring an entire region because I say, truthfully, that I left it because I experienced discrimination there? Can you elaborate the ways I'm obligated to caveat and contextualize my experience so I don't hurt other people's feelings by honestly relaying it?

Being more specific about the locale would help. Nashville is not Atlanta, NOLA is not Tampa when it comes to flavors of discriminatory attitudes - and rural or suburban attitudes are different as well. Describing where you went to for relief also adds even more context.

Memo: There's a gradient from liberal urban islands to the surrounding regressive rural areas. With some exceptions.

Surprised?

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#212

Post by mensetmanusman »

scarmig wrote: post #117
prepend wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The south” is a really big region so maybe someone pops up because you’re tarring an entire region based on your individual experience. As an LGBT person, I grew up with people telling urban legends about gerbils and whatnot. Perhaps they witnessed a single person doing this, but attributing it to a large group is not very accurate. I grew up in the south in a super backwards small town and now live in a really forw…

I'm tarring an entire region because I say, truthfully, that I left it because I experienced discrimination there? Can you elaborate the ways I'm obligated to caveat and contextualize my experience so I don't hurt other people's feelings by honestly relaying it?

Not tarring, maybe he was just pointing out the unconscious bias of the statement not being more elusive.

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#213

Post by throwawaygh »

shortandsweet wrote: post #55
dexwiz wrote: post #17

Moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area, and tech comes in two forms: IT departments at major industrial firms (manufacturing, chemical, pharma, etc), or companies that are eventually bought by West Coast companies. The pay cap is much lower. Becoming a millionaire through stocks and wages is harder, but you will still be in the top 10% of earners overall. If you want to live in a mansion, the Midwest makes this dream…

What are the big schools? I always thought that what was holding the Midwest up, not enough high quality schools.

The midwest has the following top 20 CS schools: Illinois (tied for #1), Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue, maybe Carnegie Mellon (also tied for #1).

In addition, the midwest also has the following universities which are top institutions in some fields: Northwestern, University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Ohio State, Minnesota. I'm probably leaving out at least one Chicagoland school. Indiana is also quite good for CS, but is just not big enough to show up at the top of the rankings.

The problem is not a lack of top-tier universities. The problem, especially in Computer Science, is that everyone leaves after university. E.g., here's a map from CMU (page 4): https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2017_one_pagers/scs/BS_...

From CMU, only 2% go to the midwest while 67% go to the west coast and 17% go to the northeast. Similarly, from UW-Madison, only about half stay in the midwest: https://dataviz.wisc.edu/views/FirstDestinationSurvey_0/Empl...

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US News 20 CS schools by state/region (note that UIUC is now in the tie for top):

1. Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh, regionally ambiguous)

1. MIT (New England/Northeast)

1. Stanford (California/West Coast)

1. Berkeley (California/West Coast)

1. UIUC (Great Plains or maybe Upper Midwest/Midwest)

5. Cornell (New England/Northeast)

6. UW (PNW/West Coast)

6. Georgia Institute of Technology (South)

8. Princeton (New England/Northeast)

8. UT-Austin (Texas/South)

10. California Institute of Technology (California/West Cost)

11. University of Michigan--Ann Arbor (Upper Midwest/Midwest)

13. UCLA (California/West Coast)

13. Wisconsin (Upper Midwest/Midwest)

13. Harvard (Northeast)

16. UCSD (California/West Coast)

16. University of Maryland--College Park (Mid-Atlantic/Northeast)

16. University of Pennsylvania (Mid-Atlantic/Northeast)

19. Purdue (Midwest)

20. Rice University (Texas/South)

20. USC (California/West)

20. Yale (New England/Northeast)

20. Amherst (New England/Northeast)

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#214

Post by twox2 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #136
strictnein wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When factoring in the cost of living, there isn't much of a pay difference. This is especially true once you have a family and have to care about living in a good school district.

I can rent a $4,500 apartment and still save, post-tax , at least $100,000 more than I could save post-tax anywhere in the midwest except maybe Chicago. Even including the value of paying off a mortgage vs. rent. Tech jobs that pay more than $300,000 -- maybe $350,000 -- simply don't exist in large quantities outside major job markets. And the ones that do aren't the "trusted senior individual contributor with plenty…

" simply don't exist in large quantities outside major job markets."

Job's that pay that much don't exist in large quantities period. If you think otherwise, you live in a walled garden.

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#215

Post by PopeDotNinja »

throwawaygh wrote: post #136
strictnein wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When factoring in the cost of living, there isn't much of a pay difference. This is especially true once you have a family and have to care about living in a good school district.

I can rent a $4,500 apartment and still save, post-tax , at least $100,000 more than I could save post-tax anywhere in the midwest except maybe Chicago. Even including the value of paying off a mortgage vs. rent. Tech jobs that pay more than $300,000 -- maybe $350,000 -- simply don't exist in large quantities outside major job markets. And the ones that do aren't the "trusted senior individual contributor with plenty…

> Tech jobs that pay more than $300,000 -- maybe $350,000 -- simply don't exist in large quantities outside major job markets

They don't exist in major quantities in major job markets either.

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#216

Post by throwaway0a5e »

swashboon wrote: post #12

I worked with two developers in Boston who were DINK (Double Income No Kids) and they sold their Boston condo, moved to the Midwest (Minneapolis) and bought a six bedroom house on a lake and two jet-skis for the same price as their condo. Their cost of living went down tremendously. By their own standards they lost nothing compared to Boston (food/services/entertainment actually got better) except that they had to de…

>I worked with two developers in Boston who were DINK (Double Income No Kids) and they sold their Boston condo, moved to the Midwest (Minneapolis) and bought a six bedroom house on a lake and two jet-skis for the same price as their condo. Their cost of living went down tremendously. By their own standards they lost nothing compared to Boston (food/services/entertainment actually got better) except that they had to deal with people on the Coast saying how boring it must be.

Not understanding that other people might not want to live exactly the way you do is probably the most stereotypical Massachusetts thing ever.

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#217

Post by bmd3991 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #179
bmd3991 wrote: post #130

Edit: The below applies to people who don't want kids. I get why you wouldn't want to raise kids in somewhere like NYC (though I can also see the inverse). I don't comment often on HN but I feel like I had to chime in here with a bunch of questions. These may sound inflammatory but I mean them sincerely, I just don't see where people are coming from. I understand that a lot of the things I'm listing are negatives for…

>I mean yes, I get that it's expensive. I'm just surprised that SO may people have been seemingly staying in this place that they hate, driving up rent prices for everyone who wants to be in the city, just so they could keep whatever job they have. I mean if you really hated the city wouldn't you have looked elsewhere by now? It's not like it's competitive to get a job in one of these midwestern cities, so surely tha…

All good points, nothing to counter on my end lol

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#218

Post by dogman144 »

bmd3991 wrote: post #188
dogman144 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a big country I guess, and I don't mean that to be sarcastic and snarky. That's usually the disconnect. There are places between the poles of NYC to Madison, WI, York, PA, and other suburban hell. And, they also aren't millennial ex-pat havens like Austin/Nashville, where the "culture" is a strip of craft breweries and expensive pizza places and basically Brooklyn 2.0. When you throw in cities with more access t…

Agreed about the trendy medium sized cities - people love them but they seem so bland to me for the same reason (great another craft burger place...). You're right that there are probably more natural little Italy's out there, but no way you'll find an equally good Chinatown within a 2 hour drive of that little Italy. But, if you love Italian food and hate Chinese, then maybe that's a trade you're (not you specifical…

So, I'd actually push back on that and say you will find cities with a variety of "new" immigrants and related community cultures stacked on top of the older immigrant communities that are still there (think your various Eastern Europeans). It makes for a unique mix.

There's a variety of reasons for this I could speculate on, and three of the firmer ones are refugee resettlement (Minneapolis and Somalis, pre-cool Cali and Hmong, Michigan and Syrian refugees), Central/South American immigration patterns beyond the border states, and military bases which tend to show up all over the midwest/west/southeast/southwest (Korean, Vietnamese, German and maybe smaller ones but those stand out).

These communities exist alongside the traditional cultural elements of the city and can often be blocks away. But, the areas tend to look a lot less like Chinatown and more like Flushing - maybe more insular, but still plenty authentic.

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#219

Post by asdff »

jacobriis wrote: post #62
dexwiz wrote: post #17

Moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area, and tech comes in two forms: IT departments at major industrial firms (manufacturing, chemical, pharma, etc), or companies that are eventually bought by West Coast companies. The pay cap is much lower. Becoming a millionaire through stocks and wages is harder, but you will still be in the top 10% of earners overall. If you want to live in a mansion, the Midwest makes this dream…

"What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)." Be aware that when people say things like this they often do so to feel virtuous themselves like only they are so enlightened that only they even consider being friendly to non white people. The idea that people in the Midwest (which has a population of over 65 million people similar to France and the UK) are only friendly to whi…

People might not be objectively racist, but if you grew up in a school district where the high school of 14,000 kids only had 10 black people attending, you will hear some disgusting stereotypical comments and some very off color jokes eventually whether you are a minority or not. People uttering these things might not even see how damaging these comments are to the groups they target, because they've never met very many of these groups or ever been around someone who would check their behavior. It's just a fact of life when you grow up lacking any perspective of another culture, and the national culture encourages you to adopt biases that aren't rooted in reality, and you have no personal experiences to disagree with them.

People also so kindly forget that the midwest experienced white flight like nowhere else. That sentiment is still in living memory among the older generation.

Re: Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities

#220

Post by bmd3991 »

dogman144 wrote: post #195
curiousllama wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Chicago is the 3rd largest city in the country. It's a wonderful foodie town, has great theaters, public transit, etc - everything I always hear is great about NYC. You're thinking Cleveland (yes - that's dead), not Chicago, Minneapolis, or Pittsburgh.

Putting aside that Prince and the LGBT capital of the midwest make Minneapolis the coolest of cool, Chicago is the real dark horse in all of this. The costs there, especially for apartments, and in really interesting areas(as in actually interesting to a NYC person), are honestly no slouch. Add in legit fintech jobs and salaries, it sounds like only the state politics and city challenges are keeping people away.

I'd say Chicago is such a dark horse that it's unfair to include it in this article. Well not unfair exactly, but it doesn't fit in with the rest of the list given its size. The list is about midwestern cities, but we all know it's really talking about the migration of people from large to medium sized cities, of which Chicago is not one
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