In Defense of the Midwest
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In Defense of the Midwest
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Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#2I guess I find it a bit off-putting that a blog post trying to dispel stereotypes about a geographic region stoops to saying things like "On both coasts, the pace of life is really, really high: you just go, go, go and work constantly." This might be the norm in New York and Silicon Valley, but the south isn't this way, and I have been to towns as far east as MA that have laid back cultures — visit the town of Wellesley, MA if you want to see that. I am not disagreeing that there are great things about living anywhere, but trying to overturn stereotyping by stereotyping doesn't ring very true to me.
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#3As a fellow Midwesterner, I say "Amen". I live halfway between Chicago and St. Louis - a two hour drive in either direction. We've got everything we need, including great schools and tons of dining and entertainment options. I own a 2500 square foot house that will be completely paid for in 10 years, and my mortgage is ~$700/month.
I've been to both coasts and many large cities in the US and abroad. I'd still rather live here than anywhere else.
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#4Also, gun laws aren't total shit like they are on most of the coast.
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#5No one who has done his research doubts that Cleveland can be a really nice place to live. It's a charming midsize city with lots of good stuff happening. Unfortunately, that's often not how we choose our geographic location.
America's major cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York) and one midsize city with a special industry focus (the bay area) offer almost inconceivable economic opportunity to people in HN's line of work. Relative to population, their software and technology industries are tens of times the size of Cleveland.
If you are a schoolteacher (one of the most common and widely distributed white collar jobs), Cleveland is probably a hugely appealing destination. As a person working in the technology industry (a much more centralized niche), it presents a tremendous trade-off between quality of life and opportunity.
It's telling that the essay's author is a 100% remote employee of a firm in the bay area. Not even an ardent defender of the (non-Chicago) midwest was able to build his ideal career there.
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#6Having lived in Pittsburgh for 10 years, I can say that I miss a lot about that City. I miss the seasons, the people and the landscape, and in Pittsburgh, there are a lot of great technology companies. Nothing compared to SF, of course, but you can definitely have a great life there. The thing that I can't overcome is the lack of an Ocean. It is very to beat a beach sunset after work.
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#7Ah but it is not a defense of Midwest as a workplace. It is a defense of the Midwest as a living place and effectively working on the West cost, and by implication, getting a West coast salary.
If you can do this arangement, it is not bad, agreed.
However I found tech jobs wise Ohio was a shithole. The number of available jobs, the salaries, the expectations were just not there when I was looking.
Like he said, the people are great, I had to leave a lot of friends and family behind, which hurt. The food, art scene, music wasn't bad, so agree on those fronts.
Edit: Interesting, getting downvoted without any comments. Not sure if this is an instinctive defense "he is attacking out Midwest pride"... Like I said, I like Midwest, and would have rather not had to leave. Unfortunately companies I got offers from didn't allow remote work.
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#8As a fellow Midwesterner, I say "Amen". I live halfway between Chicago and St. Louis - a two hour drive in either direction. We've got everything we need, including great schools and tons of dining and entertainment options. I own a 2500 square foot house that will be completely paid for in 10 years, and my mortgage is ~$700/month. I've been to both coasts and many large cities in the US and abroad. I'd still rather…
Agreed. Hi neighbor. Have 200mbit fiber now. Getting gigabit fiber in a few days. Welcome to Central Illinois. NO TRAFFIC!
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#9I live in Memphis TN and I've found that comments on HN towards the middle of the US are skewed negative. Perhaps I have a bias for remembering negative comments. Nonetheless, I find this attitude perplexing from the HN crowd.
I understand the value of physical proximity to lots of other like minded, smart people. However, I would have thought that the tech crowd would be the first to decry the inefficiencies of having one or two (SF and NY) annointed "tech hubs" and actively eschewing every other place. Why crowd every damn programmer in the world into the SF bay area when we have the internet?! That's the whole point of the internet!
There's also the cultural argument. Tech work has tended to attract people who are part of non-mainstream culture. Tech hub cities attract these people because they already have every culture and subculture imaginable and a society that mostly tolerates them. There's also a perception that other places don't have this and that their particular affiliation would invite outright hostility. That's mostly not true. Every large city (>1M people) will almost certainly have communities of people who share your culture or at least tolerate and support it.
Again though, I think that choosing where you live based on whether or not you can surround yourself with exclusively like minded people is counter to the hacker ethos. Let's not forget that Silicon Valley was not always what it is now. People built the place, and the rest of the US and the world could benefit from people who attempted to do the same elsewhere.
Re: In Defense of the Midwest
#10There's also a really great budding startup scene in Columbus centered around Ohio State. The midwest really shouldn't be discounted for work, especially considering how cramped the valley's becoming.