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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

#281

Post by jjav »

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…

NYC is a wonderful place, I spent my 20s trying to find ways to afford living there but never could (so I lived across the river in NJ and spent all my time in Manhattan).

The compromises to live there full time are brutal though. You need to be content to live in what amounts to a closet anywhere else. No space for anything and you better have zero hobbies or interests that take more space than a laptop.

> Do that many people really want to have to get into their car and drive 25 minutes to the only (probably subpar) ramen shop in town.

This is a common misconception by big city dwellers, but stuff does exist outside as well!

I live in the outskirts of Silicon Valley in a town/village, of ~10K people surrounded by forest. And no I don't have to drive 25 minutes to get to a restaurant. I can walk to great sushi, thai, mexican, etc. I can walk to multiple supermarkets, pharmacies, everything pretty much. In fact other than for a few lumber yard runs I haven't really driven anywhere since March. Everything is walking distance. But at the same time I can have a yard, garages, space for woodworking and planting trees, ride a bike on quiet streets and forest trails and all that. And while silicon valley area is expensive, all this is still probably cheaper than a studio in NYC.

In a fantasy world where I'm ultra-rich, I would also have a NYC apartment to visit every now and then. It is a fun place.

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

#282

Post by prepend »

scarmig wrote: post #240
asdff wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like when people hear a statement like you've made they recoil and assume that 100% of your interactions in a region involve discrimination. What they fail to understand is that the rate you experienced discrimination is higher in these areas than in others. It's a probability, it's clear to me from the context that surely not every interaction of yours in the south is bad, but given drawing a random interaction…

Exactly. I've also experienced discrimination in San Francisco, for what it's worth! But as soon as you make any statement that it tends to be more common in the South (or even if it's merely implied), people end up triggered and rise up in defense of it.

I’m not defending the south, per se, I’m defending statements like “it tends to be more common in the South.”

The experience you described doesn’t seem to me that it justifies saying the south is worse or better than other regions.

The reason why you see people jump in the defend the south is that you are making a general statement about an entire region.

Here’s what I mean. Someone said that midwesterners are nice to people if they are white. Downthread you share that part of the reason you left the south is because of discrimination you experienced and I think you were pointing out that it was odd that people jumped in to defend the south.

It seems reasonable that people would try to more accurately describe the south and share their experiences as well.

Saying people are triggered seems to belittle their input. If I want more input I don’t call you triggered for feeling compelled to share info.

This is totally different if you think that there actually is some higher level of discrimination in the south or midwest or wherever. But I don’t think your anecdote isn’t really that helpful for tarring or exonerating a region. Despite how true or honest it may be.

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

#283

Post by scarmig »

prepend wrote: post #282
scarmig wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I've also experienced discrimination in San Francisco, for what it's worth! But as soon as you make any statement that it tends to be more common in the South (or even if it's merely implied), people end up triggered and rise up in defense of it.

I’m not defending the south, per se, I’m defending statements like “it tends to be more common in the South.” The experience you described doesn’t seem to me that it justifies saying the south is worse or better than other regions. The reason why you see people jump in the defend the south is that you are making a general statement about an entire region. Here’s what I mean. Someone said that midwesterners are nice t…

So, first point: I reject the idea that in my first comment I made any general statements about the South. I recounted a particular experience I had, and some people extrapolated that into a claim that all of the South is uniformly homophobic or some other statement I'm being held to which I didn't make.

If I'm actually making general statements, I would say that big cities in the South are more gay friendly, though they're still impacted by state politics and as you enter the suburbs and especially rural areas you encounter much more bias. Two hours north of Atlanta is much worse than two hours north of San Francisco. If push came to shove, I'd feel more welcomed in Atlanta ITP than in many parts of the Central Valley; but I'm also not particularly interested in grading on a curve. But everyone's mileage will vary, and all the tradeoffs involved are complicated and will differ between different people and even in the same person at different times in their life.

These subtleties are lost, though, because my comment wasn't intended to provide a comprehensive overview of life as an LGBT person in the South, but to counter someone who was writing off someone else's experience as merely a way to feel virtuous about their self instead of anything real. It's a common response to many negative experiences from marginalized groups, so I see it as perfectly natural that I drew on my own experiences to call it out.

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

#284

Post by learc83 »

scarmig wrote: post #280
learc83 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm always direct when pointing out that I left the South partially because of discrimination

Any reasonable person who reads will infer that "the South" is that thing that is discriminatory in general. If you instead meant something else you worded it very poorly.

I honestly have a hard time believing that you don't understand how the sentence "I left X because of Y." implies that X is Y.

"I left my marriage because of domestic violence." It's entirely possible to construct a meaning where your spouse wasn't the one beating you, but that's the logical inference.

If you didn't intend to generalize that the South is discriminatory overall then why didn't you just say: I left my hometown because of discrimination? What additional meaning does "the South" add to that if you really just mean:

"I left my home town because of discrimination. My hometown happens to be in the South, but I don't think the South at large is any more or less discriminatory than any other region."

>All that said, I do think there are accurate generalizations you can make about the South, or any large region.

Sure. I don't think you can based on the experience of having lived in one tiny area of that region.

>Forsyth County, for instance, is definitely exurban and just as definitely part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Exurban is one step away from farmland. The differences between Cumming and say the area around Little Five Points is much greater than the difference between that same area of Atlanta and San Francisco.

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

#285

Post by [deleted] »

curiousllama wrote: post #187
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by justin66 »

tjr225 wrote: post #160
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 have a family(kid, partner, dogs) and just relocated from the Midwest back to Seattle. I couldn't stand living in the Midwest and lasted just under a year. I grew up there, and have lived in a couple larger cities throughout the midwest. The weather is absolutely terrible and if I lost my remote tech job I'd be SOL until I could find another one. It is harder to find other parents/families/friends with things in co…

> Here in Seattle we have a lot of crime but not a lot of violence. In larger midwestern cities there are huge poor black neighborhoods, even entire parts of cities encompassing many neighborhoods, where the violence and suffering is incredible.

I don't think those living and working in San Francisco are exactly strangers to human misery and poverty.

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

#287

Post by cptskippy »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #266
cptskippy wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atlanta has a lot of high paying tech jobs, they just aren't as fashionable as Google or Facebook.

Just curious, are these high paying tech jobs as high paying as G or FB? I know, for example, MailChimp and Microsoft have offices out there but last I saw they were paying significantly less than either of the aforementioned companies - levels.fyi can validate this further, too.

When you say "high paying" do you mean Silly Valley 10x Coder positions that are as likely as landing a job as frontman for Aerosmith? Or are you talking about $125-200k code monkey positions?

Atlanta has plenty of the later.

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

#288

Post by RickJWagner »

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)."

I grew up in snow-white South Dakota. In my hometown of 15,000 I knew of only one African-American family. The father was the town mayor.

I guess we had different experiences.

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

#289

Post by DetroitThrow »

cptskippy wrote: post #287
DetroitThrow wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, are these high paying tech jobs as high paying as G or FB? I know, for example, MailChimp and Microsoft have offices out there but last I saw they were paying significantly less than either of the aforementioned companies - levels.fyi can validate this further, too.

When you say "high paying" do you mean Silly Valley 10x Coder positions that are as likely as landing a job as frontman for Aerosmith? Or are you talking about $125-200k code monkey positions? Atlanta has plenty of the later.

I do mean those higher paying ones than I see at levels.fyi than the Atlanta companies I listed, but I can guarantee that it's far easier to get into G, FB, Snap, Stripe, Netflix, etc than to be a frontman at Aerosmith if that's what you're considering the former - they are literally some of the biggest employers of software engineers after all.

Additionally, they hire in many more places than Silicon Valley - there are a lot living on those high salaries in the Midwest and South, for example.

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

#290

Post by rezeroed »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #59
rezeroed wrote: post #14

Off-topic - for any other non-Americans wondering why this eastern area is considered western: "The term West was applied to the region in the early years of the country. In the early 19th century, anything west of Appalachia was considered the West" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States#Backg...

Right, but news flash: It's not 1840 any more. Chicago isn't the frontier. Chicago and anywhere east of there is east . ... at least geographically. Culturally, those places are midwest, just like everywhere from just west of Pittsburgh to just east of Denver. (Culturally, Pittsburgh is at least partly east, and Denver is at least partly west.)

You're news-flashing me? I know what east and west are, hence the explanation for a name that currently makes no sense.
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