In Defense of the Midwest • Hacker News Board

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#151

Post by rdtsc » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

gradi3nt wrote: post #146

rdtsc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every large city (>1M people) will almost certainly have communities of people who share your culture or at least tolerate and support it. That is not enough. There need to be companies willing to hire. Those companies spring around where there is more talent so they don't have to relocate everyone. Where is more talent? Around more companies. It is a feedback loop. Network effect is probably the correct phrase her…

Epic Systems (digital healthcare records) employs 5,000 people just outside Madison, WI. Soon to be 10,000 according to their roadmap. I wouldn't be surprised if other corporations looking to hire gobs of college grads start popping up (or already have popped up) near other small midwest cities.

What other ones employ 10k software developers?

If Epic rejected your application or laid you off. How many other software jobs would there be in the area?

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#152

Post by dagw » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #132

hueving wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe in general is pretty bad for bigotry along different divisions. The stuff people in the UK could get away with saying about immigrants and people in other countries was pretty disgusting. Every country I've spent time in over there (France, UK, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany) seems to have a culture that accepts making blanket offensive statements about people from other countries (or religions in the case of…

I agree that there are some really unpleasant openly racist people in England. Is it as bad as the US? Black americans make up half the US prison population; they're six times more likely to be imprisoned; as of 2001 one in six black men had been incarcerated; http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet Laws are unjustly applied, one example is the rates that black Americans or white Americans are arrested…

Actually the just as interesting questions to ask is what % of senior and C level positions at large companies are filled by blacks? What % of senior government ministers and elected officials are black? What % of senior lecturers and researchers and universities and black? What % of the wealthiest top n% are black?

No matter how bad these numbers may seem in an absolute sense in the US, I strongly suspect they'll stomp all over equivalent numbers in Europe.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#153

Post by lmm » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:01 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #141

lmm wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote != data. Look at the overall stats.

Self re-enforcing loop. The investors are in SF/NY because the startups are in SF/NY, because the investors are in SF/NY... There are plenty of VC funded startups which aren't in SF or NY, and they will have slower burn rates than those who are in SF and NY, simply due to the cost of living.

The investors are in SF/NY because they can make more money there.

I agree that it's probably a network effect rather than anything fundamental about SF/NY. But really, so what? Yes, if all the startups were in Cleveland then it would be smart to go to Cleveland. But they're not.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#154

Post by strictnein » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:03 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #73

bglazer wrote: post #9

I 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 havi…

Yeah, spend a year in Phuket after browsing NomadList, you're culturally adventurous and a hero of frugality. Spend a year in a red state, everyone assumes you're making some terrible miscalculation.

Except with Austin, as it somehow doesn't count as being in a red state.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#155

Post by syncopatience » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

rongenre wrote: post #78

The problem with working in the Midwest is: what do I do if the job I have goes under. In a tech hub I can be lining up interesting interviews in a few days.

It's no different in the midwest, at least in the larger cities (Chicago, Minneapolis, KC, etc).

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#156

Post by amyjess » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

I live in the suburbs of Dallas, and I wouldn't be able to stand living anywhere else.

Cities are expensive, cramped, filthy, and noisy. The Silicon Valley startup scene deeply creeps me out. I couldn't really care less about "culture"; just give me a good local bar to hang out at and a bunch of good restaurants, and I'll be happy. One thing about Dallas is that the suburbs are really ethnically diverse, and that translates into lots and lots of really damn good ethnic restaurants (I've even heard reports that we have more restaurants per captia than NYC, but that's probably a myth -- it's a believable one, though). Oh, and I pay $1200/month rent for a 1500 sq. ft. townhouse in a nice part of town. There's no way NYC or SF can beat that.

By the way, I'm a trans woman, and I went full-time before I started passing. The only time I've ever faced street harassment was the the two years I worked downtown (and I was harassed both before and after transition). Since I'm working in the suburbs again (hallelujah!), I haven't been harassed. Sorry, but I'd rather not have hobos and perverts shouting at me and following me around. Even the most liberal cities are still cities and still have unsavory types crowding the streets. You don't see that in the suburbs, even conservative ones. I never encountered even a single instance of transphobia in the suburbs (again, I went full-time before I was passable) -- and I'd like to repeat that I live in Texas.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#157

Post by strictnein » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

lstyls wrote: post #108

joelrunyon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to say that if there's any specific reason why I'd hesitate to enthusiastically endorse living in the Midwest, it's the racism. The midwest includes a broad swath of states. While I've encountered some racism throughout the area, I'd be hard-pressed to see how it's vastly different than any other racism that permeates US culture.

True, the midwest as a region is broad and well-defined. But I'm guessing what the poster referred to us the midwest north of the mason-dixon line. The upper midwest has its own breed of racism. It is quiet but built in to the socio-economic fabric of cities there in a way even worse than the south in many ways. I'd like to point out that midwestern cities are among the most segragated in the U.S.[1] Minnesota, the p…

> What you won't hear Minnesotans talking about, though, it the ugly fact that Minnesota has the highest discrepancy in educational outcomes of any city in the country.

That's just simply incorrect (and, also, Minnesota is a state, not a city, you're probably referring to Minneapolis?). That's in the major local paper (Star Trib) weekly, if not more frequently. It is a topic of significant conversation and another proposed effort is being debated in the MN House currently, as well as efforts to decrease the number of suspensions disproportionately received by minority students, and a push to offer "free" preschool for lower class families, which will likely be approved soon.

Also, simply chalking up the cause of these issues to "racism" is lazy thinking. There's far more at play, including a significant immigrant population (large populations of Somali and Hmong, for instance), an inability for the MPLS school district to recruit good leadership, and more.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#158

Post by jackmaney » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #90

msutherl wrote: post #24

(1) Cleveland gets all the Broadway shows once they go off Broadway, but at about half the cost, (2) We have great music here, including the world-renowned Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and tons of bands come through, (3) We have some great sports teams (hi, OSU) and a ton of great sports fans (hi, Browns fans), (4) We have great food at very affordable prices Yes, exactly. As someone who lives in New York, this is the v…

New York does have a great arts scene; but unless you're an artist, it'll always be peripheral to your day to day life. Day to day life in New York is dreary. By American standards it's a filthy city. It smells and will always smell because trash is collected on the sidewalk. It manages to be both too hot and too cold. On summer days, a blanket of pollution hangs in the city air. The waterways are toxic after rainfal…

I went to NYC for the first time last year when I went to a conference. I wouldn't mind visiting the city itself, but I wouldn't live there for anything under seven figures per year (and not just because of the high cost of living).

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#159

Post by jackmaney » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

Ollinson wrote: post #115

nostromo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New York does have a great arts scene; but unless you're an artist, it'll always be peripheral to your day to day life. Day to day life in New York is dreary. By American standards it's a filthy city. It smells and will always smell because trash is collected on the sidewalk. It manages to be both too hot and too cold. On summer days, a blanket of pollution hangs in the city air. The waterways are toxic after rainfal…

The subway makes the culture in NYC different than almost any other major city in the US. If you lived in NYC maybe you understand. In other cities you can get around with public transportation, in NYC it's unquestionably the way to get around by everyone from day laborers to movie stars. Also, your narrative of grittiness is very different than the other popular narrative, that NYC is now "disney" full of tourists,…

> In other cities you can get around with public transportation

In a lot of cities, the quality of public transportation lies somewhere between non-existent and abysmal.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#160

Post by jackmaney » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

ChainsawSurgery wrote: post #138

hueving wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns Nobody with a modicum of intelligence thinks that is irrational. Of course people are going to have strong attachments to a place where they spent a major portion of their childhood making memories and relationships. The only seemingly irrational thing would be indifference. You don't spend 18 years in a place and not have any emotional…

I thought it was pretty clear that the implied irrational part of it is the opportunity cost of choosing your hometown, not the actual attachment itself. If I'm a brilliant mathematician or a world-class athlete and I choose Kansas over Cambridge/Boston, then yeah, plenty of people are going to think that my attachment to Kansas is making me act irrationally. I don't think they lack a "modicum of intelligence" becaus…

As a mathematician by training, I would venture to say that there are probably few mathematicians who are able to choose a location first and then a suitable job in academia or industry (in academia, that number is almost surely zero).

In particular, if you're an academic mathematician and you ended up in Kansas, then that probably means that you're working at the University of Kansas or Kansas State University.