Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #219

jacobriis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

"White guys have names like Lenny, whereas black guys have names like Carl."

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

#272

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #178

prepend wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not obligated to do anything, especially not to help me and others better understand you or make your comments useful. “The south” ranges from Virginia to Texas. Maybe you lived everywhere and experienced discrimination everywhere. For me, I grew up in a down of a 1000 people and live just a few hours away in a town with maybe one of the most diverse cultures (including LGBT) in the country. If I said that bec…

To be clear, you're accusing me of tarring an entire region for relaying an experience I had in it. I didn't even make any claim that the South is more discriminatory against LGBT people than elsewhere, though if you're going to project that onto me anyway... I guarantee you apply this kind of radical stance against all generalization in a very selective way. Do you get upset if someone says that Russia is a repressi…

> Russia is a repressive country?

This is usually interpreted as a statement about the russian government, which is an abstract entity, unlike "the midwest" which is interpreted as referring to the people living there which is not.

> At some point I'd have to be listing all the individuals I had negative experiences with

This paradox is the subject of "statistics" which resolves this problem with ideas of "representative" samples. I think the issue here is that most people would consider a sample size big enough to represent an area as big as the midwest would exceed the lifetime of any individual, such that no one could prove anything from their own experiences alone.

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

#273

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #144

Chris2048 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

someone is always happy to butt in to say ... the South is perfectly open and tolerant which would be a generalisation, which is exactly what jacobriis is warning of

No, jacobriis is not doing that. He's stating > when people say things like this they often do so to feel virtuous themselves You're laundering his comment into some abstract statement about how you can't make generalizations about anyone, when he was the one making a generalization that people who say that they experienced X are making things up.

Yes he is, here is the relevant quote:

  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 white people is pretty crazy.

You quoted a different part. I'm not "laundering" anything, there are multiple statements there. I didn't get the link between "someone is always happy to butt in" and whether or not OP experienced racism in the Midwest, but I am speaking of the generalisation of those experiences to the whole area, which jacobriis covers in the above quote.

> how you can't make generalizations about anyone, when he was the one making a generalization

generalisation in original post:

  people are friendly, as long as you look like them

generalisation by jacobriis:

  when people say things like this they *often* do so to feel virtuous

unless that's a silent "often", the generalisation is qualified, versus the unqualified generalisation in the first case.

But it's not just that - "generalisation", or specifically "bad" generalisation takes a particular form, otherwise how do you distinguish it from a metaphor? The way the first characterises a specific area based on personal experience, versus the second which talks of "people" in general based on some personal judgment makes them different kinds of statement: the first as an objective account, the second an explicitly subjective opinion.

> that people who say that they experienced X are making things up

No, he said they "do so to feel virtuous themselves" i.e. their motivation, they didn't say anything about the actual truth of the statement. They did not say anything to suggest that they are "making things up".

Given you just accused jacobriis of saying this, I now have to wonder about your original statement: "someone is always happy to butt in to say I'm making it all up" - did they specifically say that, or was that your interpretation?

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

#274

Post by pb7 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #259

pb7 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true but they still appear an order of magnitude less in the Midwest than coastal hubs so the point is the same.

So your chances of getting such a job go from 0.001% to 0.01%? I'll take my chances in the Midwest.

Given a candidate is already in the software industry, the odds of getting a high paying job in the Bay Area are much higher than 0.01%. Top paying companies have the same interview standards everywhere but the number of positions are significantly higher in tech hubs. Not sure why you think your chances are better in the Midwest. Self-defeatist attitude will pull those chances down to zero everywhere though.

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

#275

Post by ryathal » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #199

It's remarkable to see Detroit on this list, and I'd love to learn how they gathered these numbers. Years ago, I heard the quip that "the janitor at Apple is counted as a tech worker, but the supercomputer engineer at Ford is counted as an auto worker". Clearly this analysis has solved that. Why have so others missed it?

It's not the auto companies that are bringing Detroit up for tech. They are ancient outdated behemoths working on auto focused things. There are a handful of smaller tech companies that do the sexy work for the big 3 though. It's the places like Quicken or Dominos that are putting Detroit on the map for tech.

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

#276

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #268

asdff wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd sooner see wages fall than rise. People are working those salaries in cheap areas because they couldn't get a higher salary elsewhere, after all. There is a finite amount of these highly paid positions and far more qualified people.

> There is a finite amount of these highly paid positions and far more qualified people. Disagree - I think that the reality is that most of those in the US who are qualified are already living on the West coast. People underestimate the entry barriers to tech because they are already good at tech. Salaries will fall as more Gen Z (grew up with tech) enter the labor market, but I'm already seeing higher offers in LCO…

The real differentiation between west coast/{"non-traditional"|LCOL} areas seems to be around non-base compensation offerings.

I've got a friend who is a remote L6 solutions architect with AWS. His compensation is decidedly west coast: ~30% annual bonus and insane RSU grants, while his base is near or below mine. Stock offerings are atypical in the companies in many of these areas, and 30% bonus is unheard of for technical people.

So while LCOL areas may have better base comp, people expecting six figures worth of stock grants aren't going to bite.

What that means I'm not smart enough to know. :)

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

#277

Post by learc83 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #122

learc83 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm making it all up and the South is perfectly open and tolerant. I'm sure you're not. But "the South" is diverse. Atlanta has a very large LGBT community (both in absolute terms and as a percentage) and culture that is completely different from areas just an hour away. It's very possible that you and the people you are talking to had completely different experiences. Both of you are almost certainly overgeneralizi…

Thanks for explaining my experiences to me, as someone who spent twenty years living in exurban Atlanta.

I'm not explaining your experience to you. I'm telling you that your experience growing up in 1 place doesn't give you the ability to generalize a entire region.

>exurban Atlanta

Exurban Atlanta is not Atlanta. That's like saying the Jersey Shore is Manhattan.

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

#278

Post by learc83 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:39 PM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #263

scarmig wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for explaining my experiences to me, as someone who spent twenty years living in exurban Atlanta.

It’s amazing how many people are going out of their way to prove your point.

What point? That living in one small exurb in the South gives them enough experience to generalize a region of 125 million people?

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

#279

Post by danans » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

ericye16 wrote: post #28

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…

What do two developers who are DINK need 6 bedrooms for? Genuinely curious.

I get what you're saying, but even though I also think that's a ridiculous amount of space for two people without kids, plenty of people's purchase decisions are based on factors beyond the functional.

Some people like feeling of living in a palace. We have after all for millennia equated living in huge spaces with class and prosperity, and The industrial age, especially in last 30 years, has enabled more people than ever to live in palaces.

Of course, heating a six bedroom palace in Minnesota is no joke.

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

#280

Post by scarmig » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #277

scarmig wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for explaining my experiences to me, as someone who spent twenty years living in exurban Atlanta.

I'm not explaining your experience to you. I'm telling you that your experience growing up in 1 place doesn't give you the ability to generalize a entire region. >exurban Atlanta Exurban Atlanta is not Atlanta. That's like saying the Jersey Shore is Manhattan.

> I'm telling you that your experience growing up in 1 place doesn't give you the ability to generalize a entire region.

And where did I do that? I am actually quite happy to generalize, but the only thing I've said in the comment you were replying to is that I experienced discrimination in the South. A simple factual statement that says nothing in general about the South, aside from the fact that at least one person experienced discrimination there. You're inventing statements in your head ("he's saying every last person in the South is homophobic!") and attributing them to me, based off of... nothing.

All that said, I do think there are accurate generalizations you can make about the South, or any large region. To take an extreme example, if someone said they had left the Middle East because the people around them were homophobic, you wouldn't be jumping in to defend the region because Beirut has a comparatively bustling gay scene right now.

ETA: And, on further thought, if we're going to be stridently anti-generalization, you're generalizing about Atlanta. Forsyth County, for instance, is definitely exurban and just as definitely part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Just because you want to present a rosy picture doesn't mean you can generalize and say that every place in Atlanta is a beautiful utopia for LGBT residents.