21 ms·

Grand Rapids has become a midwestern economic star generating industrial jobs

95 points by prostoalex 8y ago

tjr225 8y ago
I'm from there. Nice enough city...don't know if I would move back.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  I used to live in Toledo as a kid and we went up to Grand Rapids one time for a trip. I remember the forests surrounding the city were really nice, and of course there was a lake nearby with waves big enough to body surf on. I can't really say anything about the city, but that part of the Michigan has a lot to offer.
  - tjr225 8y ago
    Absolutely. I lived the first 25 years of my life anywhere from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo, and it's a lovely, quiet, and still somehow cheap place(West Michigan that is). I will always be fond of my time there, but the longer I am away the less I feel attached to it.
    - taivare 8y ago
      I was visiting friends just west of Grand Rapids, seems like the industry , major foundries Aluminum etc. are polluting the waters. The fishing sucked. The locals were blaming pollutants in the water as well. The party popular in those parts isn't big on regulations. -- Pure Mich. my as#!
      - tjr225 8y ago
        Not surprising at all...the paper mills from the last century in Kalamazoo (South of GR for those who want context) has rendered the Kalamazoo river pretty much unusable for the foreseeable future.
  - qudat 8y ago
    Currently living in Ann Arbor. As a software engineer it's vibrant and full of startups to join. Our javascript meetup usually has somewhere around 50-100 people every event. Not to mention it's a small town with a lot of bigger city amenities, close proximity to Detroit, and with it being a college town the average IQ is pretty high.
    - tjr225 8y ago
      Aren't housing costs in AA a lot higher than Grand Rapids? I was specifically referring to West Michigan.
    - wenc 8y ago
      The fact the UMich is one of the top schools in the country definitely helps. Pittsburgh couldn't turn around like it did without Carnegie Mellon.
    - nprz 8y ago
      Hey, I currently live pretty close by to Ann Arbor. Have any more details on this JavaScript meetup?
      - brett40324 8y ago
        Hi, they're probably referring to https://www.meetup.com/SEM-JS/ https://www.meetup.com/SEM-JS/
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      The only thing I remember about Ann Arbor is my mom visiting a hospital there for some reason. It seemed like a small quaint town, definitely not as bad as Monroe.
      - quadrangle 8y ago
        calling Ann Arbor a small quaint town comparing it favorably to Monroe is just a misunderstanding. Monroe has like a sixth the population in the city limits and still less than half the size comparing the two metro regions. Ann Arbor is in a different class than Monroe. Monroe is a small town. Ann Arbor is a medium-small city (over 100,000 in city, over 300,000 in metro area). Ann Arbor is centered around the University of Michigan, consistently ranked the #2 public school in the country, just behind UC Berkley. It has around 45,000 students. And yet Ann Arbor is big enough that students are still a minority of the population. The UofM hospital is generally ranked one of the top 10 in the country, so it's not surprising for someone to go their for some special visit. But sure, it's small and quaint compared to any real big city.
rmason 8y ago
When I was younger Grand Rapids was seen as a dull place. Downtown closed at 5 pm and there wasn't much fun to be had for a young adult. While the area is still pretty conservative that has changed mightily in the last forty years. The city now has a lively downtown and all those breweries have made the place a magnet for young people from the surrounding areas. The 'lake effect' does mean they get a lot more snow than the eastern part of the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow
- selectodude 8y ago
  I still call it “Bland Rapids”, but I’m up there for work infrequently and it’s always enjoyable enough. Founders is almost worth the trek in and of itself.
- bluedino 8y ago
  I lived in Holland for a short while almost 20 years ago and man did that place shut down on Sundays.
  - rmason 8y ago
    When I worked in the fertilizer industry I was friends with another dealer who was in the Holland area. When crops were being planted we worked seven days a week. I couldn't understand it why he didn't try being open on Sunday. He told me he could be open on Sunday but if he did he wouldn't have the business to stay open the other six days of the week.
- mac01021 8y ago
  Aside from dining out, what fun is there to be had for young adults anywhere? I mean, anywhere with a plentiful supply of other young adults gives you approximately equal opportunity to socialize, right?
  - wenc 8y ago
    > Aside from dining out, what fun is there to be had for young adults anywhere? As someone who used to live in the rust belt, I found my social life to be vastly improved after moving to Chicago. It's true you can be lonely in a big city, but the same is true in a small town. The difference is that in a big city, significantly more options exist if you are willing to step out. After moving to a big city, I was able to connect with more people of like-mind. The diversity of people I meet now is an order of magnitude greater. The Meetup groups are significantly better (I can go to a technical meetup and talk shop with people at my level). If I wanted to hang out with friends, the scope of activities possible are also much wider. If I wanted to learn a skill, take language classes, take evening classes at a world-renowned university, etc., I can and have -- and have met interesting people through these activities. If I wanted to go on a trip with friends, flights are much cheaper out of a hub city. Job opportunities are also much more abundant -- if I decided to change jobs tomorrow, I could do that without moving away. The intellectual and cultural climate in a dynamic, thriving city is vastly different from that of a single-industry town. It's not just dining out.
CamTin 8y ago
Kalamazoo isn't doing bad these days, either. As someone who grew up in Michigan (Saginaw), I would love to move to either, but IT jobs I'm qualified for seem to be rather thin on the ground.
- oneguynick 8y ago
  Saginaw is having issues, but there are a few consulting firms around the area. Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing though are having strong comebacks. As someone from Standish, I look forward to the day that the MBS area is more than just Dow.
  - bluedino 8y ago
    I'm also from the area - don't forget about Nexteer. The IT market is pretty bland, though. There's a handful of MSP's you can work at to build some experience, CRUD programming at accounting consulting firms, or be a one/two man IT shop at any of the smaller companies with 50+ people.
  - timdellinger 8y ago
    One of the interesting things about MBS is that there's a huge amount of under-employed or under-utilized talent that's basically (1) the "trailing spouse" problem (one half of a couple has a Dow job, the other doesn't) plus (2) Dow employees that have been lost in the shuffle and aren't in roles that are a good match. I never quite came up with the right idea to take advantage of the local talent pool... a startup incubator is a maybe. If Dow were the smart and forward-looking, they would encourage a local startup community, but that's not the pattern of decision-making that happens at Dow.
karmicthreat 8y ago
I currently work in GR as a software developer so if you want the inside scoop contact me. I will say Grand Rapids currently has some issues around software developers that are associated with our growing pains. Because of the rust belt depression of wages, we still haven't caught up. Wages for software developers here lag by about 20 percent. Most employers are used to paying a much lower wage than I would expect elsewhere. Senior developers might make 80-90K and juniors can expect to be making 40-50K. If you are an ineffective negotiator you might be lower. Many of my contemporaries have chosen to get remote jobs with the usual suspects. Zapier, Bitbucket, Sourceforge, Slack and others all have local people. That said, this is a wonderful town that is changing all the time. The cost of living is low, though our real estate market is out of control and has been for a couple years. The developers here tend to have a strong sense of community and we generally support one another rather than tear each other down. We have some great local developers. If you would like the low down on our growing town or are interest in moving, setting up a remote shop or building a company in our town let me know. I'd be happy to help you or get you in contact with those that can. (see profile)
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  Not looking to move, but just out of curiousity, how would you say developer salary / cost of living compares, to, say San Francisco? No surprise that both will be a lot lower in Grand Rapids, but I'm wondering how the ratio looks.
  - citrablue 8y ago
    Numbeo is a great site for cost of living comparison. Here's SF versus Grand Rapids[0]. To sum, if your takehome is $7800 in SF, you can live a similar lifestyle on $3700 in Grand Rapids. So, about half the cost of living. [0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Grand+Rapids%2C+MI&tracking=getDispatchComparison https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
    - bpicolo 8y ago
wenc 8y ago
I lived in a rust belt city in for many years, and in recent years have been witnessing a slew of "rust-belt renaissance" articles pop up every now and then about how things are turning around in deindustrialized cities (Pittsburgh is often cited as a shining example of a city that has seen a turnaround). These articles typically state something along the lines of the low COL (cost-of-living) luring young people back from coastal cities. Some even overstate their case quite a bit by projecting they'll be the next Silicon Valley or startup hub. I wonder how folks here feel about such articles? I can't help but notice there's some element of boosterism that misses a something fundamental. To be sure, it makes people who live in rust belt cities feel better about themselves (I was one of those people), but it doesn't seem to really move the needle in attracting the very ambitious to these places. In my observation, the truly ambitious are insensitive to cost-of-living arguments. Paul Graham wrote an article entitled "Cities and Ambition" [1] which speaks to this. It tracks with my observation that people at the top of their games tend to cluster, and are willing to suffer discomfort to live among their peers. --- Some quotes: "How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you'd be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time." "No matter how determined you are, it's hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It's not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do." [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html
- thesagan 8y ago
  I think these articles speak with the ambition of these cities themselves despite the loss of their industrial base; to my mind this ambitiousness is correlated with boosterism. And it does makes people feel good, and it might work, too, at supporting ambition. Just like how folks in NYC and SF often speak highly (as well as ill) of their homes. It feels good! I'm not sure of how some cities are more expensive correlates with overall ambition so much as it does class. People from all classes can be very ambitious even if they're unequal in wealth.
LarryDarrell 8y ago
After 5 years, I had to leave there. Too much religion. Too much smug mediocrity. Too much fawning over the DeVos's & Meijers.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Meijers is really the HEB of that area. I couldn't imagine living out there long term as a non-religious, non-straight person.
  - anonymous_i 8y ago
    I don't know if that can be generalised. I lived in GR and went to Grand Valley. I saw few churches with rainbow flag raised on them. Grand Valley is also very big on protecting LGBTQ. Had gay friends knew gay bars. For an immigrant like me, GR has been nothing but warm and nice. Sorry to hear about your experience.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - LarryDarrell 8y ago
      After you get asked for the umpteenth time what church you go to, it's easy to get outed as the Company Heathen. After not going to the company picnic over the course of few years (BBQ) it's easy to get outed as the Company Vegetarian. And then, because it is Grand Rapids, and the corporate world is very different from the local public university, you pretty much get shunned. They won't make your life completely miserable, but you will feel the affects of being an permanent outsider. YMMV, but I was batting 2 for 2 and have stories from others. I'm sure there are some good employers around.
      - maxsilver 8y ago
        > After you get asked for the umpteenth time what church you go to, it's easy to get outed as the Company Heathen. Generally, I tell people to just say "I go to Fountain Street Church". Even if you don't know what that is, even if you've never set foot in the place, just say those words anyway. It's essentially a community shared codephrase that means "you aren't going to harass anyone about their religious beliefs". It lets the strict Christians sleep at night (because you 'go to church'), but it usually prevents any follow-up questions (because it's somewhat well known as the 'overly-accepting' church, and they usually won't want to get into orthodoxy specifics). Meanwhile, that same phrase lets most of the non-religious locals know that, regardless of whatever your actual beliefs are/aren't, you are a polite person who doesn't want to face religious discrimination and is claiming not to do so to others. I'm not saying this is a good thing, it's not right to make people jump through these silly hoops. But that's sort of how the game is played in Grand Rapids.
golemiprague 8y ago
So in other words, it succeeds because it is more white, north European and conservative, no surprises there.
knuththetruth 8y ago
It’s very odd that this article goes out of its way to paint the Amway billionaires as “good” and not “extractive.” Everyone I know from the area has horror stories about friends or family members that got sucked into Amway’s cultish pyramid scheme and had their lives destroyed. They’re a big employer in the region, so locals do tend to “look the other way.” But this is far too generous a portrayal of the families/company that have created decades of devastation in the wake of its scam.
- cozzyd 8y ago
  City Journal is run by the Manhattan Institute.
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    Well, that explains it! Bought and paid for...
mark_l_watson 8y ago
I keep waiting for the Silicon Valley/New York/Boston/Seattle/etc. tech hotspot bubble to pop, and companies look to areas of the country with low cost of living, short commutes to work, etc. I will probably have a long wait! The problem as I see it is that companies need to be run with a ‘remote first’ culture, where people in outlying offices are not second class citizens. I recently was in NYC working for a few days, and while the environment is a lot of fun, many people who work there have very long commutes. When I worked as a contractor at Google in Mountain View, I came into the office at 6am to beat the traffic. The cost of living in tech centers is awful compared to non-east/west coast areas. It seems like there is not much middle ground: either have everyone in one or a few urban areas or have a distributed culture. Currently the business model of concentrating workers in high cost areas is winning over distributed teams.
jquast 8y ago
Michigan winters may force you to stay indoors during winter storms. Lots of great code is written in winter for this reason.

95 points by prostoalex 8y ago

tjr225 8y ago

I'm from there. Nice enough city...don't know if I would move back.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
I used to live in Toledo as a kid and we went up to Grand Rapids one time for a trip. I remember the forests surrounding the city were really nice, and of course there was a lake nearby with waves big enough to body surf on. I can't really say anything about the city, but that part of the Michigan has a lot to offer.
- tjr225 8y ago
  Absolutely. I lived the first 25 years of my life anywhere from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo, and it's a lovely, quiet, and still somehow cheap place(West Michigan that is). I will always be fond of my time there, but the longer I am away the less I feel attached to it.
  - taivare 8y ago
    I was visiting friends just west of Grand Rapids, seems like the industry , major foundries Aluminum etc. are polluting the waters. The fishing sucked. The locals were blaming pollutants in the water as well. The party popular in those parts isn't big on regulations. -- Pure Mich. my as#!
    - tjr225 8y ago
      Not surprising at all...the paper mills from the last century in Kalamazoo (South of GR for those who want context) has rendered the Kalamazoo river pretty much unusable for the foreseeable future.
- qudat 8y ago
  Currently living in Ann Arbor. As a software engineer it's vibrant and full of startups to join. Our javascript meetup usually has somewhere around 50-100 people every event. Not to mention it's a small town with a lot of bigger city amenities, close proximity to Detroit, and with it being a college town the average IQ is pretty high.
  - tjr225 8y ago
    Aren't housing costs in AA a lot higher than Grand Rapids? I was specifically referring to West Michigan.
  - wenc 8y ago
    The fact the UMich is one of the top schools in the country definitely helps. Pittsburgh couldn't turn around like it did without Carnegie Mellon.
  - nprz 8y ago
    Hey, I currently live pretty close by to Ann Arbor. Have any more details on this JavaScript meetup?
    - brett40324 8y ago
      Hi, they're probably referring to https://www.meetup.com/SEM-JS/ https://www.meetup.com/SEM-JS/
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    The only thing I remember about Ann Arbor is my mom visiting a hospital there for some reason. It seemed like a small quaint town, definitely not as bad as Monroe.
    - quadrangle 8y ago
      calling Ann Arbor a small quaint town comparing it favorably to Monroe is just a misunderstanding. Monroe has like a sixth the population in the city limits and still less than half the size comparing the two metro regions. Ann Arbor is in a different class than Monroe. Monroe is a small town. Ann Arbor is a medium-small city (over 100,000 in city, over 300,000 in metro area). Ann Arbor is centered around the University of Michigan, consistently ranked the #2 public school in the country, just behind UC Berkley. It has around 45,000 students. And yet Ann Arbor is big enough that students are still a minority of the population. The UofM hospital is generally ranked one of the top 10 in the country, so it's not surprising for someone to go their for some special visit. But sure, it's small and quaint compared to any real big city.

rmason 8y ago

When I was younger Grand Rapids was seen as a dull place. Downtown closed at 5 pm and there wasn't much fun to be had for a young adult. While the area is still pretty conservative that has changed mightily in the last forty years. The city now has a lively downtown and all those breweries have made the place a magnet for young people from the surrounding areas. The 'lake effect' does mean they get a lot more snow than the eastern part of the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow

selectodude 8y ago
I still call it “Bland Rapids”, but I’m up there for work infrequently and it’s always enjoyable enough. Founders is almost worth the trek in and of itself.
bluedino 8y ago
I lived in Holland for a short while almost 20 years ago and man did that place shut down on Sundays.
- rmason 8y ago
  When I worked in the fertilizer industry I was friends with another dealer who was in the Holland area. When crops were being planted we worked seven days a week. I couldn't understand it why he didn't try being open on Sunday. He told me he could be open on Sunday but if he did he wouldn't have the business to stay open the other six days of the week.
mac01021 8y ago
Aside from dining out, what fun is there to be had for young adults anywhere? I mean, anywhere with a plentiful supply of other young adults gives you approximately equal opportunity to socialize, right?
- wenc 8y ago
  > Aside from dining out, what fun is there to be had for young adults anywhere? As someone who used to live in the rust belt, I found my social life to be vastly improved after moving to Chicago. It's true you can be lonely in a big city, but the same is true in a small town. The difference is that in a big city, significantly more options exist if you are willing to step out. After moving to a big city, I was able to connect with more people of like-mind. The diversity of people I meet now is an order of magnitude greater. The Meetup groups are significantly better (I can go to a technical meetup and talk shop with people at my level). If I wanted to hang out with friends, the scope of activities possible are also much wider. If I wanted to learn a skill, take language classes, take evening classes at a world-renowned university, etc., I can and have -- and have met interesting people through these activities. If I wanted to go on a trip with friends, flights are much cheaper out of a hub city. Job opportunities are also much more abundant -- if I decided to change jobs tomorrow, I could do that without moving away. The intellectual and cultural climate in a dynamic, thriving city is vastly different from that of a single-industry town. It's not just dining out.

CamTin 8y ago

Kalamazoo isn't doing bad these days, either. As someone who grew up in Michigan (Saginaw), I would love to move to either, but IT jobs I'm qualified for seem to be rather thin on the ground.

oneguynick 8y ago
Saginaw is having issues, but there are a few consulting firms around the area. Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing though are having strong comebacks. As someone from Standish, I look forward to the day that the MBS area is more than just Dow.
- bluedino 8y ago
  I'm also from the area - don't forget about Nexteer. The IT market is pretty bland, though. There's a handful of MSP's you can work at to build some experience, CRUD programming at accounting consulting firms, or be a one/two man IT shop at any of the smaller companies with 50+ people.
- timdellinger 8y ago
  One of the interesting things about MBS is that there's a huge amount of under-employed or under-utilized talent that's basically (1) the "trailing spouse" problem (one half of a couple has a Dow job, the other doesn't) plus (2) Dow employees that have been lost in the shuffle and aren't in roles that are a good match. I never quite came up with the right idea to take advantage of the local talent pool... a startup incubator is a maybe. If Dow were the smart and forward-looking, they would encourage a local startup community, but that's not the pattern of decision-making that happens at Dow.

karmicthreat 8y ago

I currently work in GR as a software developer so if you want the inside scoop contact me. I will say Grand Rapids currently has some issues around software developers that are associated with our growing pains. Because of the rust belt depression of wages, we still haven't caught up. Wages for software developers here lag by about 20 percent. Most employers are used to paying a much lower wage than I would expect elsewhere. Senior developers might make 80-90K and juniors can expect to be making 40-50K. If you are an ineffective negotiator you might be lower. Many of my contemporaries have chosen to get remote jobs with the usual suspects. Zapier, Bitbucket, Sourceforge, Slack and others all have local people. That said, this is a wonderful town that is changing all the time. The cost of living is low, though our real estate market is out of control and has been for a couple years. The developers here tend to have a strong sense of community and we generally support one another rather than tear each other down. We have some great local developers. If you would like the low down on our growing town or are interest in moving, setting up a remote shop or building a company in our town let me know. I'd be happy to help you or get you in contact with those that can. (see profile)

rossdavidh 8y ago
Not looking to move, but just out of curiousity, how would you say developer salary / cost of living compares, to, say San Francisco? No surprise that both will be a lot lower in Grand Rapids, but I'm wondering how the ratio looks.
- citrablue 8y ago
  Numbeo is a great site for cost of living comparison. Here's SF versus Grand Rapids[0]. To sum, if your takehome is $7800 in SF, you can live a similar lifestyle on $3700 in Grand Rapids. So, about half the cost of living. [0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Grand+Rapids%2C+MI&tracking=getDispatchComparison https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
  - bpicolo 8y ago

wenc 8y ago

I lived in a rust belt city in for many years, and in recent years have been witnessing a slew of "rust-belt renaissance" articles pop up every now and then about how things are turning around in deindustrialized cities (Pittsburgh is often cited as a shining example of a city that has seen a turnaround). These articles typically state something along the lines of the low COL (cost-of-living) luring young people back from coastal cities. Some even overstate their case quite a bit by projecting they'll be the next Silicon Valley or startup hub. I wonder how folks here feel about such articles? I can't help but notice there's some element of boosterism that misses a something fundamental. To be sure, it makes people who live in rust belt cities feel better about themselves (I was one of those people), but it doesn't seem to really move the needle in attracting the very ambitious to these places. In my observation, the truly ambitious are insensitive to cost-of-living arguments. Paul Graham wrote an article entitled "Cities and Ambition" [1] which speaks to this. It tracks with my observation that people at the top of their games tend to cluster, and are willing to suffer discomfort to live among their peers. --- Some quotes: "How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you'd be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time." "No matter how determined you are, it's hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It's not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do." [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html

thesagan 8y ago
I think these articles speak with the ambition of these cities themselves despite the loss of their industrial base; to my mind this ambitiousness is correlated with boosterism. And it does makes people feel good, and it might work, too, at supporting ambition. Just like how folks in NYC and SF often speak highly (as well as ill) of their homes. It feels good! I'm not sure of how some cities are more expensive correlates with overall ambition so much as it does class. People from all classes can be very ambitious even if they're unequal in wealth.

LarryDarrell 8y ago

After 5 years, I had to leave there. Too much religion. Too much smug mediocrity. Too much fawning over the DeVos's & Meijers.

StudentStuff 8y ago
Meijers is really the HEB of that area. I couldn't imagine living out there long term as a non-religious, non-straight person.
- anonymous_i 8y ago
  I don't know if that can be generalised. I lived in GR and went to Grand Valley. I saw few churches with rainbow flag raised on them. Grand Valley is also very big on protecting LGBTQ. Had gay friends knew gay bars. For an immigrant like me, GR has been nothing but warm and nice. Sorry to hear about your experience.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - LarryDarrell 8y ago
    After you get asked for the umpteenth time what church you go to, it's easy to get outed as the Company Heathen. After not going to the company picnic over the course of few years (BBQ) it's easy to get outed as the Company Vegetarian. And then, because it is Grand Rapids, and the corporate world is very different from the local public university, you pretty much get shunned. They won't make your life completely miserable, but you will feel the affects of being an permanent outsider. YMMV, but I was batting 2 for 2 and have stories from others. I'm sure there are some good employers around.
    - maxsilver 8y ago
      > After you get asked for the umpteenth time what church you go to, it's easy to get outed as the Company Heathen. Generally, I tell people to just say "I go to Fountain Street Church". Even if you don't know what that is, even if you've never set foot in the place, just say those words anyway. It's essentially a community shared codephrase that means "you aren't going to harass anyone about their religious beliefs". It lets the strict Christians sleep at night (because you 'go to church'), but it usually prevents any follow-up questions (because it's somewhat well known as the 'overly-accepting' church, and they usually won't want to get into orthodoxy specifics). Meanwhile, that same phrase lets most of the non-religious locals know that, regardless of whatever your actual beliefs are/aren't, you are a polite person who doesn't want to face religious discrimination and is claiming not to do so to others. I'm not saying this is a good thing, it's not right to make people jump through these silly hoops. But that's sort of how the game is played in Grand Rapids.

golemiprague 8y ago

So in other words, it succeeds because it is more white, north European and conservative, no surprises there.

knuththetruth 8y ago

It’s very odd that this article goes out of its way to paint the Amway billionaires as “good” and not “extractive.” Everyone I know from the area has horror stories about friends or family members that got sucked into Amway’s cultish pyramid scheme and had their lives destroyed. They’re a big employer in the region, so locals do tend to “look the other way.” But this is far too generous a portrayal of the families/company that have created decades of devastation in the wake of its scam.

cozzyd 8y ago
City Journal is run by the Manhattan Institute.
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  Well, that explains it! Bought and paid for...

mark_l_watson 8y ago

I keep waiting for the Silicon Valley/New York/Boston/Seattle/etc. tech hotspot bubble to pop, and companies look to areas of the country with low cost of living, short commutes to work, etc. I will probably have a long wait! The problem as I see it is that companies need to be run with a ‘remote first’ culture, where people in outlying offices are not second class citizens. I recently was in NYC working for a few days, and while the environment is a lot of fun, many people who work there have very long commutes. When I worked as a contractor at Google in Mountain View, I came into the office at 6am to beat the traffic. The cost of living in tech centers is awful compared to non-east/west coast areas. It seems like there is not much middle ground: either have everyone in one or a few urban areas or have a distributed culture. Currently the business model of concentrating workers in high cost areas is winning over distributed teams.

jquast 8y ago

Michigan winters may force you to stay indoors during winter storms. Lots of great code is written in winter for this reason.