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I live in a small town myself, which has its own struggles finding enough people for all the jobs. The biggest thing I've noticed when having conversations with

I live in a small town myself, which has its own struggles finding enough people for all the jobs. The biggest thing I've noticed when having conversations with out-of-towners is that those people do not believe the jobs exist at all, at any price point. Somehow we've collectively built up this idea that there are simply no jobs to be found outside of the cities, period. With that, nobody outside the local region even thinks to see what jobs are available in these places while on the job hunt. I have a feeling this idea of no jobs really was, more or less, true at one point in time and the preconceived notions simply haven't kept up with the ever changing landscape of the world. This isn't the only example of where information seems to severely lag reality.

scarmig 10y ago
I'm sure that a job exists for me in Smallville, USA. But I don't need a job; I want lots of jobs. In my city, there are, within a 30 minute commute (Muni willing!), tens of thousands of well-paying, interesting jobs I can jump to if my current company goes south. Having options empowers workers. It's no surprise that most workers gravitate to places where they're empowered.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Bingo. I've lived in Smallville, USA. Single tech job within a 60 minute commute. Maybe 10 in the surrounding counties. In a city, if you lose your job or voluntarily want to move on, there are at least a few others nearby. In small town USA, you have to move--likely to another state! Too risky. No way I'd move back.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    It seems a little myopic to only look at tech jobs. In fact, I'll be surprised if anyone interested in working in tech struggles to find a job at all. But in terms of the number of people employed, tech is not that big of an employer, and software development specifically only accounts for about 0.8% of the workforce. There are more farmers than that. Back to the topic at hand, there are 7,635,000 unemployed Americans. There are 5,040,000 vacant jobs. The vast majority of those counted as unemployed theoretically could have a job, but for various reasons they don't. A big reason, as we've been discussing, is that they live in cities while the jobs are often in small towns. Your story is sound for a tech professional who can jump around from job to job on a whim, but someone who is already struggling with unemployment has proven that the city cannot offer them what it can offer you. At the same time they don't even realize that other options exist (again, not rejecting the job, but not realizing that they exist at all).
pnathan 10y ago
> hose people do not believe the jobs exist at all, at any price point. I used to live in a small town rural area. There were 4 employers of software engineers. I worked for one large one (~500? sw engineers), the other two were universities with poor pay and uninteresting tech prospects, and the fourth had 30 people total. I believe there's a fifth company now. If I wanted to do more things with my career than work for one company for the next 20 years, I had to move. Remote jobs aren't very good for people without connections (because connections typically form through personal contact, something difficult in rural areas), and freelancing/consulting at the junior end is excellent for someone who excels in marketing themselves and building webapps. Moving to a city lets me do things with my career as I want, not what the sole company wants. If the company crashes, my career is not in disarray and I don't have to move. I simply can not recommend to anyone who is looking to make something of themselves to move to a rural area. The connections, niches, specialties, opportunities are just not found in rural areas. You have to build them up manually and it's simply not possible without deploying tremendous effort just to tread water in relation to the you-that-moved-to-a-city. It's of course plausible that a senior person with a lifetime of connections and a deep specialty can live in Nowhere, USA, and have a solid life. But those simply don't hold true for junior/midlevel people.
- randomdata 10y ago
  A software developer does not exactly seem representative of the general population though, and especially not representative of the population that are in need of work! If we're just talking about what careers we have, then as a farmer, I imagine the employment prospects in the city are downright horrible for someone like me.
  - pnathan 10y ago
    Employment prospects for farmers are dismal, as automation and modern methods make possible more land farmed under fewer people. There are just more jobs in cities. this is why housing is such a terrible crunch in cities... crap regulations on housing development, but zillions of jobs and people crowding in for them.
jethro_tell 10y ago
Strangely, I've never been hit up by a recruiter from Smallville. Though it's about 3/week for the city. I've worked as a carpenter for many years in both Smallville and ?Largeville? I never had a LinkedIn, or a resume online. I feel like I worked with a lot of competent people with no options because in both locations, if you want a skilled labor job, you go in person to the office at 730 in the morning before the crew bosses leave for work. This doesn't work if you live in another city or town. There's some Craigslist/ad in the paper but since that usually confined to a town or region that can be limited. It's predominantly a employer's market with the employee reaching out to the employer, where we in tech in the city are mostly used to an employees market where the reverse is true. (Though all the jobs I've had, I've found myself and reached out to the employer) Also, in a world where you are expected to change jobs for a raise or advancement, having options and access to other employment options is a big deal. In these two ways, the Smallville job market is underserved.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jethro_tell 10y ago
Strangely, I've never been hit up by a recruiter from Smallville. Though it's about 3/week for the city. I've worked as a carpenter for many years in both Smallville and ?Largeville? I never had a LinkedIn, or a resume online. I feel like I worked with a lot of competent people with no options because in both locations, if you want a skilled labor job, you go in person to the office at 730 in the morning before the crew bosses leave for work. This doesn't work if you live in another city or town. There's some Craigslist/ad in the paper but since that usually confined to a town or region that can be limited. It's predominantly a employer's market with the employee reaching out to the employer, where we in tech in the city are mostly used to an employees market where the reverse is true. (Though all the jobs I've had, I've found myself and reached out to the employer) Also, in a world where you are expected to change jobs for a raise or advancement, having options and access to other employment options is a big deal. In these two ways, the Smallville job market is underserved.

scarmig 10y ago

I'm sure that a job exists for me in Smallville, USA. But I don't need a job; I want lots of jobs. In my city, there are, within a 30 minute commute (Muni willing!), tens of thousands of well-paying, interesting jobs I can jump to if my current company goes south. Having options empowers workers. It's no surprise that most workers gravitate to places where they're empowered.

ryandrake 10y ago
Bingo. I've lived in Smallville, USA. Single tech job within a 60 minute commute. Maybe 10 in the surrounding counties. In a city, if you lose your job or voluntarily want to move on, there are at least a few others nearby. In small town USA, you have to move--likely to another state! Too risky. No way I'd move back.
- randomdata 10y ago
  It seems a little myopic to only look at tech jobs. In fact, I'll be surprised if anyone interested in working in tech struggles to find a job at all. But in terms of the number of people employed, tech is not that big of an employer, and software development specifically only accounts for about 0.8% of the workforce. There are more farmers than that. Back to the topic at hand, there are 7,635,000 unemployed Americans. There are 5,040,000 vacant jobs. The vast majority of those counted as unemployed theoretically could have a job, but for various reasons they don't. A big reason, as we've been discussing, is that they live in cities while the jobs are often in small towns. Your story is sound for a tech professional who can jump around from job to job on a whim, but someone who is already struggling with unemployment has proven that the city cannot offer them what it can offer you. At the same time they don't even realize that other options exist (again, not rejecting the job, but not realizing that they exist at all).

pnathan 10y ago

> hose people do not believe the jobs exist at all, at any price point. I used to live in a small town rural area. There were 4 employers of software engineers. I worked for one large one (~500? sw engineers), the other two were universities with poor pay and uninteresting tech prospects, and the fourth had 30 people total. I believe there's a fifth company now. If I wanted to do more things with my career than work for one company for the next 20 years, I had to move. Remote jobs aren't very good for people without connections (because connections typically form through personal contact, something difficult in rural areas), and freelancing/consulting at the junior end is excellent for someone who excels in marketing themselves and building webapps. Moving to a city lets me do things with my career as I want, not what the sole company wants. If the company crashes, my career is not in disarray and I don't have to move. I simply can not recommend to anyone who is looking to make something of themselves to move to a rural area. The connections, niches, specialties, opportunities are just not found in rural areas. You have to build them up manually and it's simply not possible without deploying tremendous effort just to tread water in relation to the you-that-moved-to-a-city. It's of course plausible that a senior person with a lifetime of connections and a deep specialty can live in Nowhere, USA, and have a solid life. But those simply don't hold true for junior/midlevel people.

randomdata 10y ago
A software developer does not exactly seem representative of the general population though, and especially not representative of the population that are in need of work! If we're just talking about what careers we have, then as a farmer, I imagine the employment prospects in the city are downright horrible for someone like me.
- pnathan 10y ago
  Employment prospects for farmers are dismal, as automation and modern methods make possible more land farmed under fewer people. There are just more jobs in cities. this is why housing is such a terrible crunch in cities... crap regulations on housing development, but zillions of jobs and people crowding in for them.

jethro_tell 10y ago

Strangely, I've never been hit up by a recruiter from Smallville. Though it's about 3/week for the city. I've worked as a carpenter for many years in both Smallville and ?Largeville? I never had a LinkedIn, or a resume online. I feel like I worked with a lot of competent people with no options because in both locations, if you want a skilled labor job, you go in person to the office at 730 in the morning before the crew bosses leave for work. This doesn't work if you live in another city or town. There's some Craigslist/ad in the paper but since that usually confined to a town or region that can be limited. It's predominantly a employer's market with the employee reaching out to the employer, where we in tech in the city are mostly used to an employees market where the reverse is true. (Though all the jobs I've had, I've found myself and reached out to the employer) Also, in a world where you are expected to change jobs for a raise or advancement, having options and access to other employment options is a big deal. In these two ways, the Smallville job market is underserved.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jethro_tell 10y ago