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> It feels like what you’re saying is ... “why would an average tech worker want to move to somewhere that isn’t a spitting image of California and SV culture?”

> It feels like what you’re saying is ... “why would an average tech worker want to move to somewhere that isn’t a spitting image of California and SV culture?” ... Expecting other places to coddle your tastes and expectations I mean, this was the topic at hand. I recognize it hurts to hear one's chosen home disparaged, but when you're trying to recruit candidates into a location, you can't exactly demand they put up or shut up. You're not just competing with LA, you're also competing with SF, Portland, and Seattle, as well as Denver and other cities in Colorado. The 'blue bastion in a red state' pitch for specific cities basically relies on the supreme court to protect blue cities from their state governments, and well, we probably need to see a term or two of today's Supreme Court before we understand the full ramifications of recent appointments. On the other hand, Amazon's HQ2 strategy seems to be 'let's find a lower CoL city to house all the accountants and HR specialists', so nationwide recruiting may not be an actual concern.

Apocryphon 8y ago
Austin is a bigger deal than Denver or Portland, for tech.
BoorishBears 8y ago
You’re not “disparaging my chosen home” (again strongly implying to me you have a pretty narrow experience with living in different places, once you’ve lived in varied enough places you embrace the fact nowhere is perfect) If anything you’re whining that the US isn’t a white SV techie monoculture, and it’s music to my ears... I don’t want NC to put for or put up with SV yuppies, I want NC to grow it’s own culture that is different than its current culture, but also different from what a coddled liberal wants apparently. There’s a difference. This thread wasn’t “where in the South can SV run it’s Xerox machine and make San Francisco 2”. It’s where the would an average tech worker, who FYI is not a stereotypical FAANG employee, want to settle down. There’s plenty appealing about NC, and plenty of other places that don’t fit your narrow minded, and frankly conceited view of how the world works.
- jldugger 8y ago
  > (again strongly implying to me you have a pretty narrow experience with living in different places, once you’ve lived in varied enough places you embrace the fact nowhere is perfect) Heh, I actually did live briefly in NC as a child. And Texas, and Georgia, and Kansas, because my father was a contract software consultant. And I've spent my career in three different states. When I chat with my former colleagues from Kansas City about recruiting, there is always a tone of defensiveness about why none of my student employees consider their companies. > If anything you’re whining that the US isn’t a white SV techie monoculture, and it’s music to my ears...It’s where the would an average tech worker, who FYI is not a stereotypical FAANG employee, want to settle down. Eh, it's just the uphill battle you face in recruiting. And we haven't even really touched the subject of recruiting foreign nationals. I don't particularly care much about most of the items I posted, I just wanted to offer perspective to the 'we don't need to change to recruit, the recruits need to change' crowd seen here and elsewhere. If you want my personal justification for not moving to NC or further south, it's pretty easy: Fire Ants.
  - BoorishBears 8y ago
    You lived in all of these places but apparently it didn’t affect your development. Living in a place doesn’t need mean you let it change or affect you, I’ve lived in Ghana, Canada, various Western European countries and a few states, and the important part has always been being open to the culture of a place, not just being there (at a young enough age you don’t control that, but you don’t have to be that old to become more of a passive observer of your surrounding culture than an active participant) I say that because you’re just doubling down on my point. Why do FAANG employees come into recruiting an average tech worker? In a sentence... “who needs them?”. You seem to be in this, again, somewhat conceited, line of thought that the rest of the US combined does so little that the SV microcosm is the average of US tech and to change that you need to include the whole world (foreign nationals). It screams this “oh what they do doesn’t count” or “you need that stereotypical FAANG guy” mentality that I see so much in trendy tech. The average recruits don’t have to change to come to places like NC, or really places that aren’t don’t have Sillicon in their name (Sillicon Alley, Sillicon Mountsin, etc. included). All they need is an open mind. Not the “Open to everyone in my hive mind, everyone else is not even worth communicating with” mind that I’ve seen grow strong in “trendy tech” The recruits who think they’re being asked to change only think so because of closed minded thoughts almost all of the time. They become so attached to this idea of an “open monoculture” that anything that isn’t their existing culture is an attack on it instead. “How dare you try and make it change which monoculture I follow”. NC would be a terrible place if it worked like SV because everyone would be the people who support the guy want Jews to accept Christ and repel anyone who felt differently and try and change you for not agreeing. That would be a close race, it’d be a won race. And people who are in that “open monoculture” mindset immediately try and apply their lens to NC and see that. At the end of the day people are coming to NC, and NC has accepted them. It’s not the place these people would project it as (Replace NC with literally any “off the beaten path but somewhat up and coming locale that’s not a traditional ultraliberal playground)

Apocryphon 8y ago

Austin is a bigger deal than Denver or Portland, for tech.

BoorishBears 8y ago

You’re not “disparaging my chosen home” (again strongly implying to me you have a pretty narrow experience with living in different places, once you’ve lived in varied enough places you embrace the fact nowhere is perfect) If anything you’re whining that the US isn’t a white SV techie monoculture, and it’s music to my ears... I don’t want NC to put for or put up with SV yuppies, I want NC to grow it’s own culture that is different than its current culture, but also different from what a coddled liberal wants apparently. There’s a difference. This thread wasn’t “where in the South can SV run it’s Xerox machine and make San Francisco 2”. It’s where the would an average tech worker, who FYI is not a stereotypical FAANG employee, want to settle down. There’s plenty appealing about NC, and plenty of other places that don’t fit your narrow minded, and frankly conceited view of how the world works.

jldugger 8y ago
> (again strongly implying to me you have a pretty narrow experience with living in different places, once you’ve lived in varied enough places you embrace the fact nowhere is perfect) Heh, I actually did live briefly in NC as a child. And Texas, and Georgia, and Kansas, because my father was a contract software consultant. And I've spent my career in three different states. When I chat with my former colleagues from Kansas City about recruiting, there is always a tone of defensiveness about why none of my student employees consider their companies. > If anything you’re whining that the US isn’t a white SV techie monoculture, and it’s music to my ears...It’s where the would an average tech worker, who FYI is not a stereotypical FAANG employee, want to settle down. Eh, it's just the uphill battle you face in recruiting. And we haven't even really touched the subject of recruiting foreign nationals. I don't particularly care much about most of the items I posted, I just wanted to offer perspective to the 'we don't need to change to recruit, the recruits need to change' crowd seen here and elsewhere. If you want my personal justification for not moving to NC or further south, it's pretty easy: Fire Ants.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  You lived in all of these places but apparently it didn’t affect your development. Living in a place doesn’t need mean you let it change or affect you, I’ve lived in Ghana, Canada, various Western European countries and a few states, and the important part has always been being open to the culture of a place, not just being there (at a young enough age you don’t control that, but you don’t have to be that old to become more of a passive observer of your surrounding culture than an active participant) I say that because you’re just doubling down on my point. Why do FAANG employees come into recruiting an average tech worker? In a sentence... “who needs them?”. You seem to be in this, again, somewhat conceited, line of thought that the rest of the US combined does so little that the SV microcosm is the average of US tech and to change that you need to include the whole world (foreign nationals). It screams this “oh what they do doesn’t count” or “you need that stereotypical FAANG guy” mentality that I see so much in trendy tech. The average recruits don’t have to change to come to places like NC, or really places that aren’t don’t have Sillicon in their name (Sillicon Alley, Sillicon Mountsin, etc. included). All they need is an open mind. Not the “Open to everyone in my hive mind, everyone else is not even worth communicating with” mind that I’ve seen grow strong in “trendy tech” The recruits who think they’re being asked to change only think so because of closed minded thoughts almost all of the time. They become so attached to this idea of an “open monoculture” that anything that isn’t their existing culture is an attack on it instead. “How dare you try and make it change which monoculture I follow”. NC would be a terrible place if it worked like SV because everyone would be the people who support the guy want Jews to accept Christ and repel anyone who felt differently and try and change you for not agreeing. That would be a close race, it’d be a won race. And people who are in that “open monoculture” mindset immediately try and apply their lens to NC and see that. At the end of the day people are coming to NC, and NC has accepted them. It’s not the place these people would project it as (Replace NC with literally any “off the beaten path but somewhat up and coming locale that’s not a traditional ultraliberal playground)