Detroit Is Going Bankrupt, But Its Tech Community Is Going Strong

I grew up there, and lived downtown for years before wising up.

Have a medical emergency and call 911? You're lucky if an ambulance shows up within an hour, if at all.

I've been robbed at gunpoint enough times for one lifetime. I'm tired of having to pick up my .45 as the first thing I do after landing at the airport and getting my rental car.

Tell me how cheap rent has to be to make it worth it?

No thanks. My family is there, I know tons and tons of people there, and know the city itself as well as the rest of the metro area like the back of my hand.

You couldn't pay me to live there.

There's a very good reason people run away from that place as if their lives depended on it. It's because they do.

> By some estimates, the city owes as much as $20 billion. But the news is unlikely to halt the growth of Detroit's burgeoning tech scene, according to some of its entrepreneurs.

"according to some of its entrepreneurs"....if this is in the lede, I think it's safe to assume that the reporter isn't going to look at the big picture (i.e. the relative size of the tech startup boom compared to Detroit's job sector in general)...

> "We are the Facebook or the Twitter of the area," Gierak says. "We can get unbelievably good people who are extremely talented and think we're the coolest job in town, as opposed to being the 550th coolest job in town back in San Francisco."

I haven't been in the SF job market...but is the allure of being "Employee #single-digit" enough to outweigh a higher-paying job in a more amenable city?

> Neverthless, the tech scene in Detroit does face challenges. The most recent Census data shows Detroit has just 11,000 young professionals between 25 and 34 who hold at least a bachelor's degree, compared to Chicago's 250,000. Michigan is one of four states that had fewer young professionals in 2011 than it did in 2006.

"...does face challenges"...that's quite the buried understatement. Detroit has a relatively tiny pool of young professionals...at the same time, tech jobs seem to still be in hot demand in nearby Chicago. It's definitely possible that Midwest professionals would like the choice of staying in the Midwest, but how likely is it they'll pick Detroit over Chicago?

This is not to counter the actual achievements of the Stik team, but it's unlikely the tech scene -- especially with startups focused on online remote services -- will have much factor at all in reversing Detroit's deterioration. Not through any fault of their own, but because of the sheer size of local revitalization needed.

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/07/19/emergency-manager-sho...

> [Gov.] Snyder said it’s been a long period of decline in Detroit, and now is the time to do something about it. With “unacceptable” 58-minute emergency response times, he said the 700,000 residents of Detroit deserve better.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20100916/METRO08/9160409

(2010)

> Most shocking, perhaps, occurred when a building collapsed on six firefighters, half of whom were taken to the hospital in squad cars and fire trucks because there were no ambulances on the scene. If that is how people in uniform are treated, imagine what it is like for the average citizen in the dark of night.

>> Mack made a claim to Fox 2 News a few weeks ago that the average response time in Detroit for an ambulance to arrive on a 911 call is 12 minutes -- even while admitting that often there are no units available to get to calls.

According to that 2004 audit, the two-year average at that time was about 12 minutes. And that was before the city cut its paramedics and emergency medical technicians by nearly 40 percent.

As a comparison, the city of Grosse Pointe reports its average ambulance response is five minutes. Dearborn's is four minutes. Warren's is 5:35.

In 2005, there were 303 paramedics and EMTs working the streets and the EMS division of the Fire Department had a budget of nearly $25 million. Today there are just 188 paramedics with a budget of nearly $23 million. With that many fewer paramedics, what happened to their estimated $11.5 million in salaries and benefits?

You might think that the tech sector can't do enough to turn the city around, but I disagree. This isn't just a collection of random startups. There are tech giants like Microsoft, Twitter, Google, and Amazon who are already in the area or looking to be. Quicken Loans (Intuit) is the biggest tech employer downtown and Dan Gilbert is doing everything he can to make the city more amenable to other tech companies.

And the auto industry? That's still there. It'll never be the blue collar manufacturing boomtown it was, but all the auto companies will continue hiring engineers. Both auto and software.