Well hey, I live here too! Actually I've lived here my whole life, growing up in West Lafayette and attending Purdue, and then working here as a software engine

Well hey, I live here too! Actually I've lived here my whole life, growing up in West Lafayette and attending Purdue, and then working here as a software engineer after graduation. The author is spot on about many of the drawbacks but there are quite a few nice things that are hard to appreciate unless you've actually experienced them. One I think is quality of living for the price. I'm pretty sure that by several metrics my quality of life is much better than that of many friends living in NYC or SF. I make about 1/3 of their salary on average but I have a relatively large apartment, walk 8 minutes to work every day, see my parents about once a week (starting to appreciate this more and more as I get older), have a steady supply of graduate student friends and my own colleagues who I went to school with to converse and hang out with, and a Purdue community to engage with and learn from. Drawbacks for me are a intense feelings of FOMO as I read about the innovation happening in real tech hubs, a lack of a larger network of startups and strong engineering companies, no big city to experience, and seeing my parents once a week ;). I don't want to stay in West Lafayette forever (although I would strongly consider moving back here to raise a family) and maybe I'm just rationalizing my situation, but the SF-or-bust feelings I used to have in college have subsided quite a bit.