One is that we're finally making good on the promise of the Internet. The hype was that it made location irrelevant. And it did for a lot of things. But somehow VC-backed web and companies were immune to that, even though money and software are both digital.
Two is that this is great news for founders everywhere. Before they often had to choose between family and success. Now they can have both. (That didn't matter to me much when I was 25, but now it's easier to see costs of that.)
Three, I think this is great for customers and users. A frequent and frequently valid critique of Silicon Valley startups is that many only make sense in our hothouse atmosphere. E.g., Juicero. There are real-world needs out there that we're missing because we don't see and spend time with the people who have those needs.
Four, I believe that this is good news for both our cities and our startup community. The flood of money has driven up prices just like it did during the gold rush era. That's certainly a problem for people outside of tech. But I think it's also bad for entrepreneurs: it keeps getting more expensive to build a team and a company here. Turning down the heat a little will make it easier for us all to succeed without having to take gobs of money.
> The hype was that [the internet] made location irrelevant. And it did for a lot of things. But somehow VC-backed web and companies were immune to that, even though money and software are both digital.
montrose did a good job of summarizing a recent Wall Street Journal article ("Why Cities Boom While Towns Struggle", March 13, 2018) about this very phenomenon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16611042
To summarize his summary:
> [R]emote exchanges of ideas are no substitute for the elemental human process of face-to-face communication. Innovators don’t do their work in isolation; they stimulate one another. -- Enrico Moretti
I agree that innovators don't do their work in isolation. But I only partly agree that matters much in software.
Where I think it does matter is within the context of a company. There's still nothing better for innovation than getting the necessary people in together in a room. The high-bandwidth, low-latency collaboration enables creativity in a way that digital tools can't currently replicate.
But I think it matters less and less between software companies. Contrast it with physical manufacturing, where there's a real benefit being near your suppliers: you can show each other parts, work out issues, visit back and forth.
But in software, cross-company collaboration is almost all digital regardless. We don't know where our servers are. We don't know where our vendors' servers are either. Even if our offices are in the same city, we'll probably work out technical issues via digital means. I was just building something with Twilio, for example. They're blocks away, but I would never think about visiting them if I needed to talk with someone there.
[R]emote exchanges of ideas are no substitute for the elemental human process of face-to-face communication. Innovators don’t do their work in isolation; they stimulate one another.
Historically, many have. And today, when you can ping almost anyone in the world, it's not an obstacle. Not to mention, most big cities have a research university (if not multiple). Nobody is lacking for input. The claim about "elemental" processes isn't based on anything concrete. I work in multiple remote teams and it's never been an issue. We get more work done than if we had to see each other every day.
That's hardly an endorsement for SV alone unless SV has all the talent in the world (it doesn't). I think your post and some of the other posts advocating for SV have knowingly or not accepted a belief about how things work, but they are essentially mythologies.
Some work as loners, some work in groups. The biggest mythology of all is that it takes hundreds of millions in funding and unethical behavior to build cool stuff - it doesn't. That seems to be the SV way, many of us don't want that.
I think you're correct. I also work on a remote team, and found that I have to make the effort to go out to meetups or connect to a community in some way to get the best ideas.
I think, maybe, there is less effort involved in connecting to a community if the community is also very local and very large (like it is in SV)? I don't really know.
Those historical loner inventors were inventing much simpler things than we work on today. Every city with a university has a baseline amount of research, sure, but at some point a critical mass is more useful.
Agreed on capital - all that VC money slushing around is more akin to chasing the next big thing rather than fixing real world problems. It's just that tech's reliance on unconventional methods of funding makes SV startups more prominent than startups in other industries.
Were they? Individuals are more than capable of learning linear algebra, web frameworks, or any given hot tech in SV. Those historical loners had the massive disadvantage of not having reams of material detailing it and in some cases didn't have modern science because they invented it.
There's almost nothing going on in SV that actually requires large teams or funding, that's just how things are done. Even if individuals have disadvantages v groups, those disadvantages aren't obvious when the phds and top of the class people at Google are building incompatible chat apps (what do they have, 4?) and those at Facebook are forgetting to renew security certs so that VR headsets don't stop working. There's a massive amount of inefficiency there, and at times mediocrity, and that's possible when everyone can pass the buck. It's not nuclear fusion.
Surely the people at those companies as individuals are capable of producing much more than that?
You seem to be ignoring the gap between "large teams" and individuals. The sweet spot for a lot of tech innovation is single, modestly-sized teams.
Individuals working alone, though, are very rarely successful. There are just too many skills for one person to have, and a solo founder loses the advantage of different perspectives clashing and collaborating.
Unsurprisingly, investors are very reluctant to fund both solo founders and large teams. Seed money to support innovative work ends up mostly going to groups of 2-5 people.
I agree with you, but we just weren't discussing it.
My main point is it is possible for individuals to do great things. The gap between that and 75,000 person companies is not just huge, it's massive.
Honestly, what investors will or won't fund isn't that interesting to me because it seems to be root of lots of short sightedness. Investors have concerns antithetical (in many cases) to building great stuff.
My belief is the market's reliance on investors has biased what is or isn't possible. If so many people weren't concerned about what they would fund, we'd probably see more solo founders and we'd probably see more success there. With investor money around, there's less reason to do that, unless you are a masochist.
But yeah, most projects aren't single person, and groups have advantages even if they can be.
The (stereotypical) farmer can surely tell you what would be useful to him and be a great beta-tester who gives valuable feedback.
But if the product is, say, some kind of automatic corn harvester, he’s pretty unlikely to give you much insight into the way to actually build it.
The SV techies have no monopoly on expertise in robotics and hardware and software engineering, but they certainly have expertise. They’re in a much better position to automate farming than farmers are.
You're underestimating farmers, I'm pretty sure a good chunk of them could have very valuable insight on building an automatic corn harvester. A lot of them have second jobs in fields related to natural sciences and engineering, and they have farm machinery and buildings that they probably do a good chunk of the work on.
Show me where I made any claim that SV knows anything about farming.
My point is that SV knows about robotics, software engineering, ASIC design, machine learning, LIDAR systems, compilers, operating systems, networking stacks, open source libraries, debugging, venture capital, and all the rest.
Composers vs. piano makers is exactly what I'm saying.
All of that will certainly help you build a... Juicero, say. Something very high-tech but absolutely useless. To solve real-world problems it very much helps to be aware of them, which isn't something SV has been particularly good lately.
So your farmer understands this real world problem really well. And now he wants to automate a solution to it. And to do that he needs... all that stuff that the SV guys know. And they know that stuff really well, better than anyone else. But they don’t know the first thing about farming. Which leads me back to my original post.
Not really. The point you were replying in apparent contradiction to said, "a farmer's problems are best solved by interacting with the farmer... not suburban SF techies".
Nobody's denying that there's a concentration of technological knowledge in the valley. But the only time technological knowledge is useful when combined with an understanding of the actual problem. And for farming, that's with farmers, and on farms.
The SV-centric approach leads to impressive technological innovations that don't actually solve the problem. Juicero is one, for example. Another is The Melt, the VC-backed, tech-focused grilled cheese restaurant. In retrospect, it's pretty obvious they didn't have a clue.
Sure, the right kind of technical knowledge is useful. But the wrong kind is useless. And the standard SV arrogance is actively harmful.
The point, really, is that SV guys may know some cool tech (although with SV's chase for the next shiny JS-frameworked AI-based noSQL-stored , whatever else is trendy now-thing it is arguable if that tech is any better than tech people in saner places know just as well) -- but they have no idea what to do with it to solve any real-world problems; because they don't live in the real world. So they come up with Juiceros, $600 "smart" locks, app-based gas delivery. Not even First World problems, that's like Zeroth World problems.
Unless you think the VC-fed bubble can grow indefinitely, it is SV techies who need people from the real world. Not necessarily the other way around.
Fair enough. A juice machine will not automate farming.
But is not SV also the home of companies like Google, Apple, etc., that make real, cutting edge stuff? (And lots of unsexy companies doing boring work too, nevertheless with real customers).
I think it’s fine to give credit to farmers and the insights they have. But SV has a great deal of unique skills, and casting them as somehow unable to solve real problems seems, to me, quite unrealistic.
I am trying to think of anything worthwhile Apple had ever delivered that was actually their idea, but somehow fail...
Sure, there are companies that make real, cutting edge stuff in SV. As there are in other places. But SV has far more noise that just would not even appear any any saner part of the world. Although I would really question whether Apple does (or ever did) anything cutting edge that wasn't... eh... borrowed from somebody else.
But really, what unique skills does SV have? Chutzpah isn't a skill, after all.
Why Silicon Valley is effective at startups is because the insitutions and people that can help you have already formed and there are strong networks and resources to get stuff done. Sure some jobs can be done remotely but being face to face with both talent and VC is still something important. A bunch of these articles pop up with this premise but it mainly is an advertisement for local cities or other places in reality.
VC's are lazy and don't want to travel, while VC's outside Silicon Valley usually don't have the mountains of cash to light on fire with ideas like Juicero.
I would be very interested if there are statistics to back up the idea that Silicon Valley startups are more successful than startups created elsewhere. I guess that would also mean defining what "successful" actually means.
The local startups around here try to self fund so the focus is on making a profit. The types of companies like twitter that can lose money while growing the base for years changes the types of products each will/can make.
To add on, none of these articles seem to talk about the racial diversity in the Midwest. Yes, there is a problem with diversity in Silicon Valley and tech in general, but the West and East Coast seem to advertise themselves to be friendly towards immigrants whereas this and many other articles seem to only gear towards White (and maybe Indian, but it seems to be execs not engineers) as shown in the pictures.
Edit: I mean that it's curious that the Midwest never seems to advertise toward immigrants or minorities in tech. What motivates minorities to move to the Midwest if it seems the culture doesn't seem to support racial integration?
What motivates minorities to move to the Midwest if it seems the culture doesn't seem to support racial integration?
In my case it was simply that the only Minnesotans I had ever known (and one turned out to be Canadian!) were very nice people. Yes, I moved half-way across the continent based on a dataset of N=2!
But further, your comment presupposes that "the culture doesn't seem to support racial integration" when (1) this assumption isn't based on anything beyond speculation and (2) it was honestly something that hadn't even occurred to me.
Stated plainly: as a minority, my experience has been that people who "advertise toward immigrants or minorities" typically have an agenda that I won't necessarily agree with and doesn't help me in any way. I don't need "support," although I welcome it; I need people to stay the fuck out of my way.
I'm not in the Midwest, but am in a place that culturally is, and I'd say the big reason is we just don't talk about it. If I drive five minutes in any direction I'll run across tens of thousands of immigrants (not exaggerating). Mexican, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.
Virtue signaling is a dirty term, but we just don't virtue signal about it the same way. We accept immigrants and they accept us and we get on with life. Anyone is welcome to come build here and they do. Not that racism and such isn't a problem, but I'd guess it's as much an issue in almost every major US city, certain places are obsessed with showing how enlightened they are.
For the record, I work with minorities and immigrants in multiple companies and they are all great at what they do. They want to be respected not tokenized. I've observed many SV companies are good about saying the right things about minorities but don't actually act in ways that support them, nor are they especially racially diverse.
>Virtue signaling is a dirty term, but we just don't virtue signal about it the same way. We accept immigrants and they accept us and we get on with life. Anyone is welcome to come build here and they do. Not that racism and such isn't a problem, but I'd guess it's as much an issue in almost every major US city, certain places are obsessed with showing how enlightened they are.
Maybe some people don't care about diversity or care more about getting a decent job in a low cost of living area? I find it insulting that a company needs to "advertise" towards me in that way.
>I mean that it's curious that the Midwest never seems to advertise toward immigrants or minorities in tech.
What precisely do you mean when you say "the Midwest never seems to advertise toward immigrant or minorities in tech"? Do you mean you won't find the same level of preachy self-righteousness in the Midwest as you do in more liberal coastal areas?
Most of this is happening in urban areas, which are probably more diverse then SV. However I'm sure most of this is also happening at the higher income and education level, which is less diverse in the midwest.
There are still a lot of barriers for non-whites.
Small, young businesses are the (significant) job creators, grow the economy.
This isn't rocket science:
Nationwide broadband, Medicare for All, strong coffee, ready access to capital (eg SBA, grants).
Boom. Economic miracle.
Extra credit:
Then increase teacher pay to attract young families. Because families absolutely do relocate to choose better school districts. (Teacher pay mostly means cutting out all the middle men, waste. May mean more funding for schools in some areas.)
Lastly, subsidize child care, elder care. So people don't have to choose between family and work.
Oh, obvious afterthought, sorry:
Debt jubilee on all student loans. Pay for everyone's education going forward.
I graduated from Purdue in '04 and the job market in-state was terrible. The best offer I received in Indiana was a one year contract @ $35k in Fort Wayne. Several talented people I knew took software jobs at $40k or under to stay close to family.
I didn't even have to go to a tech hub to get more than double that $35k job offer.
As an aside: I will never work for Caterpillar after seeing the way the recruiters treated students at the job fair. An actually overheard sentence (and whatever tone you are hearing in your head is likely less harsh than what was used): "Our requirements list a minimum 3.5 GPA, why are you wasting my time with a 3.2?" this was not a particularly egregious example either, but rather the typical way they talked to candidates once they found a reason to throw away their resumé.
While I was in school from 2011-2015 I noticed the GPA requirements seemed to drop significantly! Cat, John Deere, and Boeing all had 3.5+ requirements when I started. Last I heard, John Deere was at 2.8, and the others dropped as well.
At the time Cat really knew they were the belle of the ball.
They were local and they hired from pretty much all majors in the College of Engineering. IIRC they weren't particularly interested in entry-level software people at the time despite listing it as an opening.
I'm currently at Purdue, and these companies currently have hard requirements of 3.0. If you're below the system won't take you. Other companies have soft requirements and will take you below 3.0, which is becoming more accepted I believe.
Did some custom AutoCAD software for CAT back in the late 1990s. Their IT department auto-deleted our package, had to drive our tech back to Illinois to re-install it.
While 34k is and probably was very low, Fort Wayne Indiana is one of the lowest CoL cities in US. I wish they would tech take more seriously there, but they're in for an uphill battle if they do with Detroit, Indianapolis and Chicago competing for talent in the close proximity.
I think there is a real opportunity for state side digital nomads who want to live cheap while starting a business. Places like fort Wayne Indiana give them access to a lively downtown, cheap housing and access to 1st tier cities in a few hours drive. Source - I grew up there.
I graduated from the College of Science. Since that time there has been a huge increase in software openings in the Midwest.
I was looking at software jobs, with a preference for embedded. At the time there were very low paying jobs in the Fort Wayne area and some startups in Indy.
Now Cincinnati is booming, with Indianapolis falling not too far behind. Big 10 wise, Madison and Ann Arbor both seem to have more of a tech hub than Lafayette. The company I currently work for recruits fairly heavily from Illinois and Rose Hulman. I can track down some recent grads if you want recent midwest job-hunt info.
I think that Indianapolis' job market is much stronger than Cincinnati's is, right now, at least in the DevOps/Linux Tech space.
Most companies around the Cincinnati area don't want to pay more than 80k/year for a good, mid-to-senior linux resource (15+ years). In Indianapolis, I've had a job offers come in at 130, 140, 150, and 180K, but, I'm very hesitant to relocate to Indy because of the RFRA legislation that's in town.
I'm a Linux Sysadmin in the Indy area. I feel like Linux is growing up in the Indy area. Dev-ops positions are paying more, but there are still alot of older style Unix-to-Linux positions at more established manufacturing-centric companies. They don't pay well at all, and they tend to have much older technology, maybe 3 to 5 years behind what you see on the coasts.
When I looked last year it seemed like the midwest was mostly behind the coasts and Denver / Austin were maybe a year or two behind. When I say that, I mean that many of these midwest companies are running old RH 5/6, little cloud, operator style system admin. You have to manage your career to make sure you don't get stuck somewhere that lets your tech skills atrophy.
From talking with my friends the developer compensation and job availability is reversed from that (but not a 2x factor in pay difference; that's crazy!). Also, DBAs seem to do well everywhere in the Midwest (The only person I know who is doing really well in the KS/MO area is a DBA).
The headline is clickbaity. The point isn't that Silicon Valley isn't a major force in tech or that other parts of the US will "beat" it. Rather, it's that you can build valuable tech companies outside of it, and that the Midwest in particular is ripe for more tech companies. I know first hand, I'm building my VC-backed (including coastal $) startup in Madison, and we've stayed put. I realized the pressures we felt to move early on were our own insecurities and the bias of tech/investor media (which I've noticed has changed recently, we're not seen as so crazy!)
I'm glad we stayed put, especially as we've started to focus on real revenue and scaling, and less on trying to be hot for the purposes of raising a big early round. I feel like the market for engineers around here is becoming an advantage for us, and we're not having to fight the same talent wars as those on the coasts. That matters.
Having just moved to SF from Madison, I have to say that the engineering competence of teams there is disappointing in comparison to the Bay Area. Not only that, but Madison companies really do not pay well at all. You can't expect to keep talent if you aren't paying for it.
So far it’s working out and we’re excited about growing here. Our data says we’re competitive on compensation and I’m proud of our retention. I’m very happy about the level of our engineering talent and this team is building a successful product used around the world right here in Madison.
I’m sorry you didn’t have a great experience with your last team.
I'm glad your happy with your company's engineering output.
As an engineer, I would head for Chicago or Minneapolis. Madison doesn't have "the next job". When that time comes, I wouldn't want to uproot my family.
I'm glad your rention is stellar. I would expect increased retention due to lack of alternatives.
Most companies believe their compensation is competitive. A lot of them are wrong.
The Midwest might be a place where companies can skirt those two things fairly easy.
Is there any company out there who actually says “our compensation is NOT competitive?” That’s pretty much the lowest bar. When I hear “competitive salary” it means the company can’t think of a more positive word to describe it that is also truthful.
Everyone at least says their compensation is competitive—-it’s not a way for an employer to differentiate. As a candidate, when I see the word “competitive” that tells me it’s lower than “generous,” “excellent,” “top of market,” basically lower than any other description of compensation out there.
Yes, "Next job opportunity" is the biggest stumbling block in the midwest. It's workable, but more difficult when you become more specialized.
I've always assumed this is the same everywhere, but I've never received a competitive raise outside of my first year with a company. If you come in and make some big adjustments that save money, you might (maybe) get a bump, but after that they take it for granted. I've only ever kept up with inflation (especially health care inflation), by changing employers, so "next job" is a huge consideration.
You certainly would be entitled to make that decision, and many do! The point of my original comment was that we have sufficient talent to build and scale tech companies here. It's certainly not going to attract every talented worker (like yourself), but not even the bay area has that going for it anymore.
For entrepreneurs thinking of building in the Midwest, you absolutely can. Let's not let that point get lost in a discussion about personal values.
My point was there are enough talented people who don't want to work in the bay area that other cities have enough to grow tech companies. This is kind of obvious.
That’s always been the case. The issue is quality. Outside of the valley, top caliber developers tend to congregate in big hubs like NYC or LA; or interesting places like Portland / Seattle, Austin, or Denver. The Midwest tends to be for locals only due to a combination of less agressive investors (not to mention a lack of), bad climate, and lack of stuff to do compared to everywhere else
Chicago would be an exception but crime would keep people away
Can any of this change? Of course, but it’s really hard to change culture and climate takes time (ex even after all these years CA still had a gold rush mindset)
Chicago is typically in the top 10 in the country in terms of crime according to the numbers / population
> Bay Area as being exactly an epicenter of culture either
It depends on what you want. The SF Bay Area is not NYC in terms of fashion or theater. If you want that, you go to NYC. If you want a good clubbing scene, it's either LA or NYC. However it has a bit of everything. If you like the city, there's SF and Oakland. There's also a lot of suburbs and quaint downtowns like Palo Alto if you like that. There's always something going on regardless of whether you're in the city or out. The food scene is good. Wine country is next door. Tahoe isn't too far, and there's a lot of places to hike nearby. There's also fishing and sailing on the Pacific, or canoing in the rivers. Yosemite is doable. Also the weather is almost always temperate year round, hovering around the 60s-70's. These are a few reasons as to why housing is so expensive here. I didn't even go over the professional reasons.
Comparing the Bay Area to Nebraska is disingenuous. There's no equal in the MidWest, though Chicago would be the closest.
The US MidWest is just a really hard sell to almost everyone except to the people who grew up there. There's just too many other alternatives in the US. (I used to be a consultant going here and there)
Crime in Chicago is very much concentrated. In areas where your average HN reader would live, I very much doubt that your chance of being a crime victim would be any higher than in SFBA. And in most suburbs (from which you can get to Chicago much easier than to SF from SV) it would be significantly less; reading NextDoor here is downright scary.
Certainly, California has more diverse nature than most of the Midwest does. But culturally... as far as theaters, museums, music etc. goes, SF is behind not only New York, but Chicago as well. Food scene, once you pass French Laundry and couple more places in Napa isn't Chicago either, just more expensive. I've left far less money at Alinea than at Atelier Crenn, and while of course this is highly subjective, there really was no comparison between the two.
Weather is nice, but the second year it became incredibly boring; I like my seasons. But then, I've moved here for personal, not professional reasons. And professionally, while I was making quite a bit less money in Chicago, I could live in a hot area, 1 minute from subway, 15 minutes walk to work, 10 minutes walk to NEXT or Moto (yes, I like my food) and somehow had far more money left to squirrel away than I do living in some cheesy apartment complex in a middle of San Jose nowhere.
Certainly, if you get into a startup that actually makes it, gets acquired, or something like that, you have a better chance of striking it rich than in Chicago. But as far as I know, most people don't. And it's not that work here was that much more interesting -- doing yet another JS framework du jour, or yet another noSQL database (because rewriting MUMPS, just not quite as good, is always fun) isn't that exciting once you get old enough and stop jumping at every new and shiny thing. I'd much rather do something interesting at Wolfram (well, if Chambana weren't just as boring as SFBA) than doing yet another chat app in SV...
> once you pass French Laundry and couple more places in Napa isn't Chicago either, just more expensive
We can just agree to disagree on this one. The SF food scene alone is pretty vibrant and constantly evolving. However this isn't just a Chicago vs SF or Napa. It's hard for Chicago to compete against the entire SF Bay Area in terms of food. Also, you may be confusing the cost of Bay Area food with NYC.
> Weather is nice, but the second year it became incredibly boring
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but most people don't like dealing with nasty slush and ice for months on end in their daily lives. Moreover, if one climate in the Bay Area gets 'boring', there are plenty of micro-climates. Also, as I've mentioned before, it's pretty easy to get to Tahoe or go to the desert if you want something really different every weekend.
> Certainly, if you get into a startup that actually makes it, gets acquired, or something like that, you have a better chance of striking it rich than in Chicago.
Ignoring the SV lottery, the Bay Area is just a better place professionally for techies than the Chi Metro.
> But then, I've moved here for personal, not professional reasons.
I don't feel that you're disproving my point that mostly locals like the MidWest better than elsewhere. Besides my main point isn't just that the SF Bay Area is more appealing than the MidWest. If I wasn't very clear, my main point was that there are many other metros in the US that are more appealing overall than the MidWest at large. Of course, different people like different things so not everyone will agree with me.
EDIT:
> Crime in Chicago is very much concentrated.
Unless the data is wrong or I'm misinterpreting it, crime in Chicago doesn't look concentrated like it is in most places or in the Bay Area . It looks pretty well distributed.
I am not sure if the Bay Area is that (or any) better, food-wise, than Chicago, and I've tried most of the well-rated places in both... Matter of taste, of course.
For the difference in cost of living, I probably could fly myself from Chicago to Tahoe every week and still come out ahead. And to each his own, but I like looking in the window and knowing what season it is.
I'm not really a midwestern local, but of all the places I lived or visited in the US, I would certainly pick Chicago well ahead of Bay Area. It might be more "interesting" professionally (although I'd rather work on something actually useful, not the next Juicero or Theranos), but having some money left is pretty sweet, too.
> although I'd rather work on something actually useful, not the next Juicero or Theranos
Bay Area companies have made a lot of what we know of modern life in the 21st century possible. It's not just limited to IT either. This is the birthplace of biotech. It's a lot harder to take your comments seriously when this is what you're writing; it also shows that you're not familar with the professional side of the Bay Area. There are just a lot of companies as well as a big variety of them that give your professional life a lot more flexibilty. The concentration of companies also allow for more serendity i.e. it's not uncommon for people at Googles or FB to just meet by chance and end up working on something together. People are less risk averse and more open to new ideas. I can go on. Does this lead to ridiculous things? Of course. Mistakes are inevitable. At the same time, it's also how major breakthroughs are made.
There's a reason why a lot of things start here and not elsewhere. That said it's not totally exclusive to the valley; it's just no longer in the Midwest. Of course I could be missing something, and I've been totally wrong before and I could be wrong now or in a few years.
> For the difference in cost of living, I probably could fly myself from Chicago to Tahoe every week and still come out ahead
For SF, maybe; but the Bay Area is more than just SF. Outside of SF, Chicago is only about 20% - 30% cheaper than many other parts of the Bay Area metro.
SV does tend to exaggerate its importance. Part of the brand marketing, I guess. I also fail to see how Google and FB meeting to come up with new ways of stealing your private data is a good thing.
Seriously, sure, there are breakthroughs made in SV, too. But if you adjust for the signal/noise ratio with all the absolutely useless things that SV comes up with (and that's the majority of them -- exactly because it is only in SV that you can get financing and sometimes even sell for billions stuff like the aforementioned Juicero) you could find that cornfields of Illinois are just as innovative. They just have to come up with something that, you know, is useful.
As for prices... for anecdotal reference, I am paying about $1000 more a month for a two-bedroom on the outskirts of San Jose, in a crappy apartment cardboard apartment complex with no walking accessibility to anything, no public transport, and nothing to do than I did for a place in a Chicago midrise, with stuff like elevators and garages, 2 minutes from subway, 10 minutes walk from some of the best restaurants in the country, walking distance to downtown, real soundproofing etc. etc.
Sure, I guess Gilroy might compare with Chicago prices slightly better (but then, houses there are at least 2-3 times as expensive as a comparable Chicago suburb; and Chicago wouldn't stink of garlic, either). And a place 3 hours away from anything... why would I want to live there in the first place?
> I also fail to see how Google and FB meeting to come up with new ways of stealing your private data is a good thing.
It doesn't literally have to be just Google & FB. There are plenty of other companies here such as MS, Amazon, NVidia, Intel, AMD and so on. Having a large number of programmers, engineers, and scientists in one location tends to produce a lot of breakthroughs and innovation, similar to what happened with the glass makers in renaissance venice.
> SV does tend to exaggerate its importance. Part of the brand marketing,
Yes, I guess the place where the first commercially viable microprocessor and smart phone were created isn't very important. Most of the work of the foundation of what later became the internet was done here as well. There's a really long list of acheivements that overshadow the bread and circus that's inevitably forgotten.
> As for prices... for anecdotal reference, I am paying about $1000 more a month for a two-bedroom on the outskirts of San Jose
Again, I feel that you're missing (or continuing to ignore) my main point. Despite its problems, Chicago is probably still a great city. The problem is that it has a lot more competition (not including the SF Bay Area) in the 21st century.
These seem like related complaints: low pay doesn't attract top talent. Most of the people looking for higher pay would likely go to Minneapolis or Chicago.
when you factor in the cost of housing in the bay area, I'd be willing to bet anywhere outside the bay area will compensate you much better.
This might not matter if you're a 20 year old deciding between renting a 8' room for 1500$ or 200$. But it most certainly will matter once your in your thirties with a family comparing buying the 3 million dollar crap whole in palo alto vs a nice decent house at 300K (in madison).
I think the best way to go is spend 5 years working in the bay area, save as much as you can. And then get OUT while you still can before you set down roots and meet someone.
Madison has a lower cost of living, but my experience there (working and looking for work), admittedly dated by half a decade, is that the variety and quality of engineering work pales in comparison to that available in bigger hubs. It's mostly very mundane work for one of the many insurers there, maybe Epic, etc. It's also generally very poorly compensated relatively.
That’s a slightly ancillary point to mine. Regardless, a lot has changed in the last two years even (and we’ve had to raise salaries to compensate). It has a ways to go but I’d like to think we’re proof of the potential that is there today. (We didn’t even exist 5 years ago anyways!)
Also I’d like to think what we’re working on isn’t mundane!
Not necessarily: the greater portion of talent there are still there because they lack the desire or ability to work at interesting startups, funded or not. Compensation and opportunity abundance both will have to significantly change that.
My experience hiring here right now is that we have more interesting, qualified candidates than we can possibly hire. If we were struggling to fill open positions with great talent I wouldn't be here. Compensation has gone up across the board to remain competitive, which is a good thing. This has changed dramatically in the last few years, especially as remote work has changed the hiring landscape.
It's a great time to be an engineer anywhere, including Madison.
>I'm glad we stayed put, especially as we've started to focus on real revenue and scaling, and less on trying to be hot for the purposes of raising a big early round. I feel like the market for engineers around here is becoming an advantage for us, and we're not having to fight the same talent wars as those on the coasts. That matters.
Would you say there's any other advantage to your location besides being able to pay people less and having cheaper rent?
Your question sounds pretty sarcastic, but yes, I do think we’re able to focus on building a big company and not getting caught up in the high burn, rocket ship or bust game that is dooming a lot of valley companies and resulting in many premature acquisitions (or worse). People think midwesterners think small, but I don’t relate to that.
I live in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. We used to make kids clothes, now we make trucks(military trucks). I've been writing animation software for the past 2 years. I work 3 hours a day freelancing to pay the bills ( my rent is 540 / month for a 2 bedroom ). When the software is done, it could be a multi million dollar thing, but for now I'm living on beans and rice. It's quite a hard thing, quite giant project for one person to do. Hopefully I think it was all worth it, if and when I get through it.
In my experience, health insurance is no cheaper in the midwest, but you have lower quality care in many areas. Care can be especially difficult in rural areas.
For comparison, I pay about $600 / month for a High deductible plan that pays nothing until I pay $6k. This is through a company with about 300 employees. I'm in an urban area (Indy).
The abundance of startup jobs and VCs in Silicon Valley is not matched anywhere else, and this makes quitting a stable job and working for a startup / starting a company a far less risky proposition than if you lived in an area where there were maybe 1-2 startups big enough to hire reliably. In those places people just don't make careers of working in startups because there aren't enough jobs / funding
That said, there are a lot of complicated industries where domain expertise trumps tech ability (healthcare is a prime example). Most successful health tech companies are not in CA (epic in Madison and cerner in Kansas City as two big examples). As more people learn to code I think there will be a growth in startups with relatively simple tech that is just well suited for the problem it addresses. Solutions that don't scale to millions of users / are not optimally performant but are designed by users can win in a lot of sectors
While China is well on its way to becoming a key player in fields like AI, by far the greatest thing preventing it from becoming the "next Silicon Valley" is censorship and protectionism of the Chinese government. The fact that online social platforms in China have to play by the CPC's rules makes it extremely difficult for a service to have both a mainland Chinese and international market. Places like the E.U. and large democracies like India have a huge competative advantage due to the fact that there are very few bureaucratic and political hurdles to get a business started.
It's not just censorship and protectionism. China is just too used to attempting to centralizing everything. There's a cost. The reason why is because central offices will eventually lack needed localized knowledge to make optimal decisions, resulting in inefficiency, less creativity, and slowdowns when it comes to changing in response to problems or other new conditions. It's a bit ironic that the country that revolutionalized guerilla warfare fails to see this.
China is the best place in the world to start a startup if...you are chinese focusing on the chinese market. China’s outright hostility to immigration and the lack of much international diversity means that it will necessarily be a closed system for the foreseeable future. That’s not even to mention the great firewall and still wicked pollution problems.
No one knows if Chinese consumer sites/apps like Weibo, Tencent etc can compete in an open market. Maybe they can but if so, why hide behind the Great Firewall?
Many Chinese tech companies are expanding overseas, just not much in North America, mostly in high growth areas in Asia. They also own and control many well-known mobile game studios. TBH, apps like Facebook and even Snapchat copied features from Chinese apps like Wechat and Alipay.
As a Danish company who a year ago moved to Minneapolis, I can tell you that there is hidden gold in the mid west.
Especially in Minneapolis there are tons of universities and cost of of living is much lower than the west coast. It makes it a lot easier to keep your employees once they want to start a family, something far too many companies neglect.
Yeah, that's the irony of other cities trying to compete with Silicon Valley. If a city succeeds at this and a lot of well-paid engineers move there, that city will end up a lot like Silicon Valley, including the high housing prices and the traffic.
As long as those new liberals don't outnumber the existing population, they should continue to allow for growth and hence housing won't be a problem. Housing doesn't get expensive because highly paid workers go there. Housing gets expensive because voters and politicians don't allow enough housing to be built (lack of supply).
well, mainly the problem is the city doesn't prepare for it. For example, not keeping up with housing demand, public transit demand etc. THEN you get the bay area ;)
The private market will make the housing available and keep rent low, which you can then serve with infrastructure via. property tax. San Fransisco and other coastal cities are the only ones that haven't figured out to just build homes.
Well, I think they have, but there is a vested interest in keeping the housing prices high.
And as much as I hate it, I do understand it. CA asked for this problem and now it will be hard to reverse. What would you do if you had millions of dollars tied up in your home and it was your only asset of value?
Huh? There's UHC/Optum sure, but also Best Buy, Target, and a bunch others. Most of the people I know don't know or care about the healthcare scene here.
But she was hesitant to move. She’d grown up in Northern Indiana and studied communications at DePauw University. She and her husband, a commercial real estate developer, had built a life for themselves and their two kids near the capital city.
This is an important aspect that I can't assume is only important to the Midwest, but something that I come across myself here, also in the Midwest.
Occasionally an over-enthusiastic recruiter will reach out about a relocation opportunity. I sometimes can't help but reply "No. I love it here." Much to what I assume is confusion.
We can still move fast and break things out here in Fly Over Country. And our salaries can afford us better opportunities in comparison. I think a lot of 'Coasters have a hard time even rationalizing that. No technology I've encountered is locked down to a location.
I dunno...I make a lot more out here on the coast...I graduated from school at the end of 2014 and I make 2.75x more than my first job offer out of school back in my home state of MI. The weather is a lot more mild and pleasant. There are also things on the coast that you simply can't get in flyover country- mountains, ocean, vast empty national parks, for instance...I swear it feels like I'm on vacation every other weekend. OTOH I don't really want to buy a house out here just because it's a daunting prospect but there are pros and cons to living and working in each area.
Good luck going car free anywhere in the Midwest outside of Chicago- and I mean at all, period. Even if you do, you still don't have the opportunity to experience the other- say, if you have friends with cars...which sounds pretty plausible to me(SF or otherwise)...if you think public transportation in the Bay Area is bad...every single city in the Midwest(outside of Chicago) is shockingly bad. You can commute 5-20 miles round trip by bicycle if you want if you feel like having your life threatened by motorists on an almost weekly basis(I speak from experience).
FWIW, my confrontations on public transportation haven't been any worse than confrontations on the road (rare occurrences; current 60-mile commute, 24 years driving).
A car is very much a rite-of-passage here still, sure. For those that can afford it (that is the bad part about it), it's the most freeing, invigorating thing you can own at 16.
Being car-free seems completely asinine here; you're going to need it for something. That's the lifestyle here. No worse than a bicycle. And one day, when we can go emission-free; it really won't be.
> I graduated from school at the end of 2014 and I make 2.75x more than my first job offer out of school back in my home state of MI
I started my first development job in 2013 and I'm making 2.4x more, now (without school). In comparison, (as you know) my cost of living is significantly cheaper.
I get where you're going, but just to give you more perspective...
I live 60 miles or so south of Seattle. I pay ~300$ more in rent for a 3 bedroom house with a fenced in yard and a garage than I did in Kansas City for a 800 sq foot condo. I'm also not a software developer(who would make more than I do). A house would cost me more, but as a young renter with a wife(who also makes 20k more than she did in KC/MI) we are able to pay off our debt obligations(and save) much faster here than we were in the midwest(I wish like you that I hadn't gone to college, but it's too late)...and I still get to enjoy all of the things that only location can get you. Heck I just went for a jog on the Puget Sound with my dogs 15 minutes ago. You might say my commute is bad, which it is, but thankfully due to the nature of Seattle traffic, many Seattle employers- mine included- have pretty flexible office hours and remote work arrangements.
I'm not trying to convince you that the midwest sucks or whatever, but that there are options out here if you want to work in coastal job markets without the cost of living. That said, nobody move here, the weather is awful and the food is bad.
We can still move fast and break things out here in Fly Over Country
But can you find an investor there that will fund you to spend 2 years breaking stuff with 50 engineers on staff and no revenue?
Some startups are much harder to launch outside of Silicon Valley where an investors are willing to make speculative investments on expensive ideas that may never pan out and where the investor can keep a close eye on his/her investment.
It was cool at first, but annoying secondly as the product became an ever-moving target designed to fit an assumed goal the current pitch deck was tossed to.
I liked the swivel chairs, though.
Honestly there's probably more [startups] here, but I haven't looked since my second kid. As hinted in previous comments, it's really geared towards family here. If I didn't have one, I'd probably be elsewhere. Though - to be honest - I'd also probably not be in development, either.
I'm not debating that there are startups there, there are startups everywhere.
But I'm questioning whether there are many VC's outside of Silicon Valley that are willing to pump $10M+ to fund a startup for a few years when both product and revenue are years away.
Silicon Valley has a radically different viewpoint and set of priorities than the rest of the world. This discrepancy still has not been exploited to anywhere near its full potential.
Edit: To clarify, I think SV is increasingly insular, and there is untapped innovative potential outside the bubble.
The singular success of SV might point to some of its values being linked to its success. “Correlation is not causation” doesn’t even apply, because regardless of causality (a->b, b->a, or even x->a && b) it would seem that it’s difficult to have one without the other.
It’s also important to note that the high reaches of other creative industries espouse values very similar to those of The Valley.
Times change. The "SV values" of 40 years ago are noticeably different than the ones of today. Heck there's been a pretty noticeable shift even in the past 5 years. If SV did have the right values for success 20 years ago, I'd at least put out the suggestion that that opens the possibility that it doesn't have the success values today.
It might also mean that the hard work of the people creating interesting things has not yet been outweighed by other negative factors in its environment. The old school hacker culture is very contrarian to the current dominant SV viewpoint due it’s nerdiness and focus on what you can create above all other values.
> She was running into the same issue that Case had observed in other cities. It had been easy enough to scrounge up seed money and desk space in Indianapolis, but the venture capital she’d need to bring her company to scale was much harder to find locally.
> Case acknowledged that the investment culture of Silicon Valley is unique. It “encourages fearlessness,” he said, “and that’s something to be admired.” It can also be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
This is one of the many things that keeps SV dominant. Unless this changes in the MidWest, things will stay the same. It will still be more beneficial for your company to move to California than stay if you need money. Investors in other parts of the country (and the world) are just less risk tolerant than California.
Apologies for the tangent - I have never been to the bay area, but I am frequently reminded many times when I meet a “pure tech company” ala google, msft, amzn, fb software engineer (I’m only 3 years out of school, studied CS) of this self-righteous and condescending narcissism that I haven’t seen repeated across other workers in other industries and a kind of deep sense of self-congratulatory entitlement. It is a little bit akin to what you see with Ivy League students -> Banks/Mgmt Consulting, but infinitely more detestable given how flippant toward the rest of the world the tech attitudes can be.
Silicon valley is obviously the new wall street in terms of attracting the big brains and bringing a focused collection of hard working or brilliant individuals - yeah, we need the infrastructure to make the world spin faster but it can really bring out the worst and most myopic visions even from the “best and brightest”. I like automation and disruption, purely for its own sake, because we can. But the hyperaccumulation of wealth driven entirely by advertising is absurd and is effectively non-productive and I hope more people refuse to take classical VC funding and instead opt for organic growth and/or pure public raises. The only reason a web app development company (basically all these startups) that is 6 months old needs 5 million bucks is to create a legal fiction that from its inception is designed to create liquidation events that make VCs extremely wealthy, done in a way that gives the impression of “risk taking” without any real risk being taken because of the ability to create unicorns from deliberate successive raises - all of these entities exist within the same monoculture, with huge overlap in board of directors and investor groups.
I think that ICO related innovations can help in potentially mitigating the development and solidication of this monoculture as we have seen in Wall Street, but unfortunately the criminality of some of the newer players in this field is staggering and equally disappointing
Tech almost certainly doesn’t need Silicon Valley and a decoupling of peoples thinking in those terms will be very useful step in the right direction
I think parent was agreeing with what you said, in that OP is preaching to the wrong audience because their salary depends on ignoring this information
I think this conversation is missing a big piece of what made SV in the first place. Namely, the military industrial congressional complex. I can't remember the author but he gave a good Google talk on the origins of SV from war engineering.
I think since the type of warfare of the future is largely informational, and governments are increasingly neo-fuedal and authoritarian, in the future SV will be seen as a base of operations of the enemy of tech. Not only does tech not need SV, but they are going to largely be at odds. SV will probably still have the highest concentration of VC to IPO cycles but the problem is so many of them aren't solving problems with products or services and are generally focused on how to turn customer data into an advertiser money pit while they angle for the IPO boom and exit (betraying users more and more the closer the exit is)
I'll tell you what tech does need though... non SV big money representation on the hill.
That said, there some good things in SV like the EFF, and I don't have much knowledge of the area other than riding my Harley up 1 to visit a friend a few times. I do know Pelosi is a a horrible authoritarian in democratic clothing and it surprises me SF hasn't gotten rid of her yet.
One thing I forgot to mention is how bad, constitutionally speaking, NSL's and other pressures from the government are. We just don't know how prevalent it has become, perhaps the government is NSL strong-arming companies left and right at the moment... Which is why the legislation that enabled NSLs is unconstitutional imho.
> Poring over the available data, Case discovered that plenty of Midwestern and Southwestern cities were leveraging tax incentives to stanch local brain drain, and a few, such as Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, were cultivating their own robust startup scenes.
Tax incentives means competing on price, which is a loser in the long run. Lower taxes sounds good until you consider the implications: less money invested in the society itself.
> “We have a lot of quality-of-life advantages: not a lot of congestion, good restaurants, low home prices,” he said. “It’s a place where a young family won’t bankrupt themselves buying a house with a yard.”
* Not a lot of congestion just means they have car-dominant sprawl that hasn't hit a huge economic boom yet. That's a downside to me.
* Somehow I really doubt their restaurants are significantly better than the bay area, NYC, or Boston.
* Home prices aren't so much a quality of life advantage as a cost of living advantage.
> Lower taxes sounds good until you consider the implications: less money invested in the society itself
Or, perhaps the Laffer Curve? Maybe revenue actually increases? Look at Texas: huge budget surpluses and lower taxes and public schools ranked higher than California.
I am not trying to debate which state is better, but I am trying to make the point that lower taxes does not correlate to a lower quality state. A poorer state does correlate: such as Mississippi for example, but low tax “rich” states do just fine.
Yes, but look at what usually happens. For example, most of the top 10 GDP per capita states are blue (and the ones that aren't are tiny petro states), while most of the bottom 10 GDP per capita states are red. This directly contradicts the conservative mantra of "low taxes spurs economic growth", if anything it looks like the opposite is true.
> I am not trying to debate which state is better, but I am trying to make the point that lower taxes does not correlate to a lower quality state.
Well, "quality" is a pretty subjective word, but it does seem to generally lead to certain things being worse, like social safety nets, education, etc.
For example, in the case of Texas, it also has an insanely high maternal mortality rate, and while public schools there may outrank California's, California has an extremely strong public university system.
As someone who went to school in the Midwest, moved away, and then moved back, I think it's good that this is happening. That being said, I plan on moving away from the Midwest for good later this year, as there are better opportunities (and weather) elsewhere.
sure Silicon Valley sucks from a housing stand point, and you’d think that you can fire up an AWS instance from anywhere, and you can. However SV has one thing no place else has, a density of talent and capital unrivaled in the world. That’s why it continues to exist.
Compare it to Hollywood. Sure you can make movies anywhere, but you don’t.
One important factor at work here is the Internet. Effects companies, for example, are all over the place, including London, New Zealand, Vancouver, LA, and even here in San Francisco. Big movies will often use multiple companies, something that would have been very challenging 30 years ago.
Silicon Valley does have capital and talent. But it's not like that capital is in doubloons in a vault. It's purely digital. A big reason it's not more mobile is that VCs wouldn't deign to stop in a flyover state. Talent isn't quite as mobile, but a) advances in technology mean talent is less necessary, and b) the rise in remote work means the location of talent is less and less meaningful.
The talent is also considerably more expensive and not substantially better unless you need people in a specific niche. And if you really need talent from SF, you could always hire them on remotely.
> However the total tax burden is still high, e.g. there is a "freelancer" tax in Los Angeles with onerous reporting rules.
BS. The online form literally takes 5 minutes to fill out. "Creative artists" earning under $300,000 are exempt from paying city taxes, as are small businesses grossing under $100,000.
You have a strange idea of not high and onerous if you think taxes in LA are attracting work rather than repelling it, as the top of this thread explains clearly.
Take 30 seconds to search and you can find stories of folks who got shafted for thousands because they didn't even know such a thing existed and needs to be reported early even if you do. The fact you most get an exemption is another example of big brother showing who's boss for no gain to the city.
How about you stop being a libertarian keyboard jockey and actually try to get involved in running a business or two in Los Angeles, like I am doing? Everything you have posted is bullshit.
My wife happens to be a "creative artist" who does a lot of work in the film industry here. She is also the type of person who did not do basic research into starting a business and did not bother to find out what taxes she was supposed to be paying. I don't know why you think that being an airhead is the city's fault. The fine was not "thousands of dollars," it came out to $80-something for two years of unreported city taxes. It was literally a letter and a couple of phone calls to settle that.
Paid shill from the city government? Sure sounds that way. It's obvious you've never lived in sane tax environment like New Zealand where you file in about thirty minutes a year on their website. That's what you're competing with.
Well, unfair is a matter of opinion. The concentration of moviemaking in Hollywood was a historical accident. From the point of view of present cities, there's no reason to see that as fair.
They also aren't unfair in the sense that LA can't do exactly the same thing. The theory of places like Atlanta and Vancouver is that the film industry has positive externalities, so in theory there's nothing wrong with capturing some of that value and paying the people who create it. It's a free country, after all, and if LA isn't willing to bid as high, then perhaps the market has spoken.
Personally I'm not a big fan of tax incentives, but unfair isn't a word I'd particularly use to describe them.
Unfair in the sense of paying business to relocate, not that the folks in other places don't deserve it. Some of it has been tax "dumping" at below cost.
Not so much a natural law but definitely a natural tendency for a lots of types of businesses to cluster. It's probably particularly pronounced in industries where there is a lot of in-person deal making, "power lunches," etc. (Which is one of the reasons why traditional publishing tends to be pretty centralized as well.)
As you say, actual filming has become somewhat more distributed though that is somewhat constrained by the whole ecosystem of associated trades that are needed to setup and do filming.
Not only that, but smaller, non-union productions also do everything at the last minute. This is possible in Los Angeles, where there is enough work to go around to support a lot of people in all the specialties - you can call your contacts and someone will be available. Getting custom props or set design on an 8 hours' notice is possible. Only larger projects can afford to have all of the production requirements planned in advance, something that you need if you are planning to film somewhere without a well-established film industry.
I would posit that the overwhelming majority of startups don't require "unrivaled density of talent". Most computing problems just need a decent availability of moderately competent engineers. Additionally, locating elsewhere reduces the need for such an abundance of capital.
>a density of talent and capital unrivaled in the world
The Four Asian Tigers have already surpassed SV on that. There's obviously a government-related cultural gap that won't win them any popularity contests.
I grew up in Fishers, and currently go to Purdue (an hour north). I can say from what I've seen that tech really is coming here, it isn't trying anymore. I know there is a lot of 'Silicon Valley of X', but I don't think Indy is trying to be the next Silicon Valley. It feels like the people here are content at solving problems big and small, and not as focused on capital and business. Personally I think this a good thing, and prefer it. And of course as the article states, a little Midwest politeness pervades the area.
Salaries are also way higher in the area then they used to be (expect maybe $50,000-60,000 in the area, at least for new grads in the area for larger name companies). It's not SV wages, but it's not city living either, and the area is great.
To follow some of the people in the area, I'd look at @DonWettrick [0] on twitter, he's an educator in the area and a lot of his students are a part of Launch Fishers and are coming into the local start up scene. If you care about the next generation, definitely a class to keep up with!
In my experience, if you like working and you're top 10%, you will do well in a big city. By the time you're 26 to 28, and you have an MBA/JD/MD, I see my friends making $200k+ easy. If you're in this group, then you're household income is $400k+ easy, but the big difference is the connections you're making which can enable you to go up to 7 and 8 figures or more. Really depends what you want to gamble on, but if you're top of the class and want to make money I would definitely try out a major city.
I live in Lincoln, Nebraska and this has been clear to us for years. We've a few startups and agencies of decent size and reputation that have made their home here.
Quite interestingly, it's not been that terribly difficult to find tech jobs paying 80-110k here where one might find a good rental for 600-700/m (I should add home ownership in Nebraska is quite large).
I quite like the idea of the west-coast salary in a midwest cost of living. Hoping it stays that way :)
If you're asking if it's typical of the area, no. It appears that job board only has two companies posting to it. Indeed or LinkedIn are better indicators of the market.
If you happen to be an Indianapolis-based (or surrounding area) developer reading these comments, please tweet me @_swanson and I'd be happy to get you invited to our local Slack instance.
As a startup founder who moved to the Bay area and moved back. I can see why, literally I own a house, with better internet, 5 minutes from a store, with no traffic, no distractions, and can communicate with anyone online...
Honestly, location matters to an extent, but it's really what you make of it. I know people across the country, they intro me to others. Many I never meet in person, yet we all help one another. I think it's more than possible to grow connections in the absence of presents, just harder.
Kind of an irrelevant tangent, but I think the reason why Snapchat is suffering is that HQ is in LA. I noticed that you have to pay great developers/designers more to relocate away from the Bay Area. You also get slower iteration on new hires since they have to fly to/from SF/LA for interviews. It's great that these founders could stay in the Midwest, but if they're ever to compete against the giant companies, they'd probably have to relocate to the Bay Area or Seattle.
The internet I would contend didn’t make location completely irrelevant. I think the existing gap lies in access to capital. And while we do not have crypto done anywhere near correctly, the true democratization of capital will do a lot more for the redistribution of wealth displacing the SF VC CF that currently exists today.
Hopefully this will reduce some of the techno-elitism that's been on such a sharp rise for the past decade. It's heartening to see an intersection of the progressiveness of tech with the groundedness of people outside The Valley.
Does Boulder count as the Midwest? Plus... Colorado/Denver/Boulder has a lot more sex appeal than Des Moines IA or Columbus OH so I’m not surprised it isn’t facing the same salary challenges as the actual Midwest.
Silicon Valley needs tech, not the other way around. Tech needs investment though, and often flocks to where the money is. Right a lot of people are throwing a lot of money around Silicon Valley, so a lot of tech (or bullshit masquerading as tech) lives there.
One is that we're finally making good on the promise of the Internet. The hype was that it made location irrelevant. And it did for a lot of things. But somehow VC-backed web and companies were immune to that, even though money and software are both digital.
Two is that this is great news for founders everywhere. Before they often had to choose between family and success. Now they can have both. (That didn't matter to me much when I was 25, but now it's easier to see costs of that.)
Three, I think this is great for customers and users. A frequent and frequently valid critique of Silicon Valley startups is that many only make sense in our hothouse atmosphere. E.g., Juicero. There are real-world needs out there that we're missing because we don't see and spend time with the people who have those needs.
Four, I believe that this is good news for both our cities and our startup community. The flood of money has driven up prices just like it did during the gold rush era. That's certainly a problem for people outside of tech. But I think it's also bad for entrepreneurs: it keeps getting more expensive to build a team and a company here. Turning down the heat a little will make it easier for us all to succeed without having to take gobs of money.