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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

#291

Post by bb611 »

jjav wrote: post #281
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 m…

> I can walk to multiple supermarkets, pharmacies, everything pretty much.

This is an essentially nonexistent characteristic of the kinds of places people are moving in the Midwest. The walkability of most of suburban America is ~0.

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

#292

Post by jjeaff »

zdragnar wrote: post #177
q845712 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in the midwest for over a decade and am married to a midwesterner. I'm also ethnically one of the 'model minorities' so to some people I'm white, while to white supremacists I'm assuredly not. Most people in most places are basically friendly. However. Even just being recognize you as 'other' can get old, like being asked "where are you from" or riding the bus in Chicago and having to answer questions about m…

I'm white, live in the midwest, and get asked all the time where I'm from. It's a form of small talk around here, where everyone knows everyone, or you might have grown up near someone they knew. Not too different from talking about the weather (though we do that more often, as well).

If you are white, then take how many times you get asked "where are you from" and multiply it by 10. Then decide if you don't think it would get annoying.

It's rarely out of malice. But that doesn't really matter. If you get asked it enough, you will start to feel like you don't belong.

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

#293

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rezeroed wrote: post #290
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, news-flashing whoever keeps using the name for places east of Chicago.

Related gripe: The University of Michigan's fight song calls them "the champions of the west". Once upon a time that sort of made sense, because they played in an athletic conference that had "west" in the name. But the name of the conference didn't make sense, because California already was a state.

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

#294

Post by jjeaff »

pb7 wrote: post #274
mark-r wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think their point was that there are very few jobs even in the bay area paying $300k or more.

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

#295

Post by lotsofpulp »

_qulr wrote: post #152
managerclass wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because it's measuring the last 3 years and Madison already had a sizable tech workforce for many years now. Good area. Wish more people wore masks though.

> Good area. Wish more people wore masks though. Huh? We have a mask mandate in Dane County. Everyone wears them, by law.

Rules can and are broken sometimes. There are noticeable differences in proportion of people wearing masks in different areas.

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

#296

Post by zdragnar »

jjeaff wrote: post #292
zdragnar wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm white, live in the midwest, and get asked all the time where I'm from. It's a form of small talk around here, where everyone knows everyone, or you might have grown up near someone they knew. Not too different from talking about the weather (though we do that more often, as well).

If you are white, then take how many times you get asked "where are you from" and multiply it by 10. Then decide if you don't think it would get annoying. It's rarely out of malice. But that doesn't really matter. If you get asked it enough, you will start to feel like you don't belong.

There aren't enough people here to do that (that I actually speak to at least).

As an aside, I have a last name with an unusual spelling. Literally everyone who sees it asks how it is pronounced, followed by where it is from. It is just a fact of life.

By asking the question, people clearly want to know more. Sure, they might be asking the wrong question, but the reality is, they are trying to include you.

If people didn't want you to belong, they would just make the assumption on their own and not ask (and probably avoid talking to you altogether).

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

#297

Post by pb7 »

jjeaff wrote: post #294
pb7 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think their point was that there are very few jobs even in the bay area paying $300k or more.

There are more jobs paying $300K+ than there are qualified candidates for them otherwise there wouldn't be thousands of job openings for them at any given time.

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

#298

Post by _qulr »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #295
_qulr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good area. Wish more people wore masks though. Huh? We have a mask mandate in Dane County. Everyone wears them, by law.

Rules can and are broken sometimes. There are noticeable differences in proportion of people wearing masks in different areas.

This was a specific comment about the Madison, Wisconsin area. Do you have specific data about mask wearing in Madison?

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

#299

Post by lotsofpulp »

_qulr wrote: post #298
lotsofpulp wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rules can and are broken sometimes. There are noticeable differences in proportion of people wearing masks in different areas.

This was a specific comment about the Madison, Wisconsin area. Do you have specific data about mask wearing in Madison?

My bad, I thought it was for any location with laws about face masks.

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

#300

Post by dredmorbius »

dredmorbius wrote: post #267
curiousllama wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should normalize by population/ Chicago has a lot of tech jobs, but also a lot of people. 3rd in population and 8th in tech suggests it's the opposite of a hub. I wonder how much of the hiring is companies like McDonalds, United, or Boeing rather than FAANG.

Maybe, but I think probably not. Market rates (a measure of local supply and demand) would be more useful. Applying network theory, though up to a substantial fraction of total employment , it's absolute and not relative size that matters. As of May 2019, total SF Bay Area tech employment was 835,600, an increase of 116,900 over the December 2000 dot-com peak. That increase alone would rank 4th on this midwest list.…

Just because the markup glitches are annoying me so much:

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Maybe, but I think probably not. Market rates (a measure of local supply and demand) would be more useful.

Applying network theory, though up to a substantial fraction of total employment, it's absolute and not relative size that matters.

As of May 2019, total SF Bay Area tech employment was 835,600, an increase of 116,900 over the December 2000 dot-com peak. That increase alone would rank 4th on this midwest list.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/05/tech-jobs-soar-all-ti...

In that 835,600 Bay Area workforce, what you're going to find is both breadth and depth. Need the best, or a top-ten, or the top-ten devs in a specific skill? You'll likely find it. Need 10, or 100, or 1,000, or 10,000 bodies within a given specialty or skillset? Likely there as well, certainly more likely than elsewhere.

Want to attract remote talent? Pretty good odds. At least until housing got too rich and smoke too thick. Want to swipe local talent? Noncompetes illegal FTFW, just make a good enough offer.

It's not as if tech talent competes against non-tech talent. It doesn't. At least not for jobs. For housing and transport, yes, but that's where the SF Bay Area by and large loses.

And I'm not making the case for the midwest hubs, mostly the opposite. Unless there's some specific centre of excellence ... they're simply not going to attract talent. The body counts are likely for basic tech skills generally.

The West coast offers entertainment (VFX/CGI/gaming), search, social, ads, business automation (Oracle, Salesforce), commerce, HW & devices (Apple), and some relic defense tech, plus modest manufacturing. NYC has more ads & entertainment, and finance. DC has government, defence, and surveillance.

The midwest has ... relic manufacturing, some new manufacturing, healthcare, food & ag, a lot of back-office work, and ... not too much else that really comes to mind. Real estate? (Cratering.)

Plus a lot of tech-unfriendly legal and political legacy.

Chicago ... kind of has scale? But at 40% the size of the Bay Area's scale, even if equally complex and skilled, by Metcalf's law it would have one sixth the net value.

(There are plenty of issues with Metcalfe's law, this just illustrates how much scale effects alone might affect net prospects.)

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