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Yes, of course. If you're a deep sea fisherman, it's trivially provable that you can't do that job in Nebraska :) But that's never what these guys mean. It's

Yes, of course. If you're a deep sea fisherman, it's trivially provable that you can't do that job in Nebraska :) But that's never what these guys mean. It's always casually advanced as a blanket statement about the hopelessness of living somewhere that you can't smell the ocean. I don't know why it became popular to demonstrate such obvious ignorance about the job markets of inland cities, but here we are. I, for example, know precisely nothing about the job market in, say, Salt Lake City, but that's why I don't make statements on the internet about the job market in Salt Lake City.

wetpaws 8y ago
This is precisely what I meant. Good luck searching for tech jobs in Portland or even in Seattle outside of Amazon/MS
- jacquesm 8y ago
  There are tech jobs everywhere. From Toronto to Paraguay and from SF to NYC and everywhere in between. Technology is everywhere, it is almost impossible to find a place where there are no tech jobs. But the bigger cities tend to have more of them and for better pay and Silicon Valley, New York, DC, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and so on will have the best paid jobs but also the highest cost of living. Silicon Valley is an outlier in many respects, you should not calibrate your worldview by it. If you mean by tech job: a place where I can sit in a chair and make 7 figures easily then indeed, there are no tech jobs outside of SV and Seattle.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    Look, yes, obviously there are more jobs in the biggest cities. Why people insist on translating this into “there are no jobs anywhere else” is anybody’s guess. But it extends beyond preference or opinion and into objectively, verifiably, factually wrong territory with remarkable consistency. It makes the people who claim it look ridiculous, but they seem to think it makes them look — I don’t know what — something not ridiculous. They don’t merely say it; they say it with aplomb and even contempt. (Maybe because they get universal agreement every time they bring this up with people in their real life?) The person we’re responding to in this thread is an almost archetypical example. Is this some sort of “winner take all” bias? It’s very weird. Programmers in the most expensive cities are doing fine. But this cultural wisdom is doing very real harm to people who would be much better off in cheaper cities. They think, “well, sheesh, it’s hard here, but I probably couldn’t even find a job in Pittsburgh.” And that’s factually, dangerously wrong.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Echo chambers are dangerously wrong in many ways but today anybody that can use a browser should be able to verify the information for themselves with a little bit of work if it really mattered to them.
    - souprock 8y ago
      Heh, the psychology underlying that opinion is fascinating. Part of this could be a need to feel that one's own choice was rational or ideal. People make decisions based on emotion, and then invent reasons to justify the decisions. A related factor could be the fact that a person could be compelled to move if they knew of a better place, but moving is a pain. Another possibility is being unreasonably picky. Maybe somebody feels they need to be near all of the big internet giants, not that they can simultaneously work at them all. A failure to consider cost-of-living may lead one to an unreasonable cut-off point. If a person does normal software development and sets a minimum salary of $300,000 then yes, there are "no jobs" in nearly every location.
      - dionidium 8y ago
        I’ll humbly quote myself from an earlier comment: If you accept that the South and the Midwest are legitimate places to live, then you're forced to really consider it, which is difficult -- moving long distances is hard! It's much easier to conclude that those places aren't real options.
        magduf 8y ago
        The South is a legitimate place to live, just like Saudi Arabia is. If you want to talk about quality of life, that's another issue. If you're not a gun-loving church-going conservative, you're not going to be very happy relocating to the South. It's already horribly hard to make friends over the age of 30 (this comes up here on HN often), and moving someplace where the locals are diametrically opposed to your worldview is not going to help with that.
        8y ago
- dionidium 8y ago
  I’m from St. Louis and even there six-figure programming jobs are pretty easy to get. There’s no nice way to say this: you don’t know what you’re talking about.

wetpaws 8y ago

This is precisely what I meant. Good luck searching for tech jobs in Portland or even in Seattle outside of Amazon/MS

jacquesm 8y ago
There are tech jobs everywhere. From Toronto to Paraguay and from SF to NYC and everywhere in between. Technology is everywhere, it is almost impossible to find a place where there are no tech jobs. But the bigger cities tend to have more of them and for better pay and Silicon Valley, New York, DC, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and so on will have the best paid jobs but also the highest cost of living. Silicon Valley is an outlier in many respects, you should not calibrate your worldview by it. If you mean by tech job: a place where I can sit in a chair and make 7 figures easily then indeed, there are no tech jobs outside of SV and Seattle.
- dionidium 8y ago
  Look, yes, obviously there are more jobs in the biggest cities. Why people insist on translating this into “there are no jobs anywhere else” is anybody’s guess. But it extends beyond preference or opinion and into objectively, verifiably, factually wrong territory with remarkable consistency. It makes the people who claim it look ridiculous, but they seem to think it makes them look — I don’t know what — something not ridiculous. They don’t merely say it; they say it with aplomb and even contempt. (Maybe because they get universal agreement every time they bring this up with people in their real life?) The person we’re responding to in this thread is an almost archetypical example. Is this some sort of “winner take all” bias? It’s very weird. Programmers in the most expensive cities are doing fine. But this cultural wisdom is doing very real harm to people who would be much better off in cheaper cities. They think, “well, sheesh, it’s hard here, but I probably couldn’t even find a job in Pittsburgh.” And that’s factually, dangerously wrong.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Echo chambers are dangerously wrong in many ways but today anybody that can use a browser should be able to verify the information for themselves with a little bit of work if it really mattered to them.
  - souprock 8y ago
    Heh, the psychology underlying that opinion is fascinating. Part of this could be a need to feel that one's own choice was rational or ideal. People make decisions based on emotion, and then invent reasons to justify the decisions. A related factor could be the fact that a person could be compelled to move if they knew of a better place, but moving is a pain. Another possibility is being unreasonably picky. Maybe somebody feels they need to be near all of the big internet giants, not that they can simultaneously work at them all. A failure to consider cost-of-living may lead one to an unreasonable cut-off point. If a person does normal software development and sets a minimum salary of $300,000 then yes, there are "no jobs" in nearly every location.
    - dionidium 8y ago
      I’ll humbly quote myself from an earlier comment: If you accept that the South and the Midwest are legitimate places to live, then you're forced to really consider it, which is difficult -- moving long distances is hard! It's much easier to conclude that those places aren't real options.
      - magduf 8y ago
        The South is a legitimate place to live, just like Saudi Arabia is. If you want to talk about quality of life, that's another issue. If you're not a gun-loving church-going conservative, you're not going to be very happy relocating to the South. It's already horribly hard to make friends over the age of 30 (this comes up here on HN often), and moving someplace where the locals are diametrically opposed to your worldview is not going to help with that.
        8y ago
dionidium 8y ago
I’m from St. Louis and even there six-figure programming jobs are pretty easy to get. There’s no nice way to say this: you don’t know what you’re talking about.