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Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities
- Fiahil 6y agoTheir data only covers 2010 to 2018. It's not related to the pandemic.
- nirav72 6y agoSurprisingly the pandemic has had very little impact on IT dev jobs here in the Midwest.
- blakesterz 6y agoI'm not quite sure on the reliability of this site, but assuming it's reliable... "And, as icing on the cake, seven of the top 10 most affordable states in the nation are in the Midwest." Name any big city you've heard of in the Midwest, and it's on the list. Chicago, Detroit, and so on. The list is, for the most part, "rust belt" cities that are all doing pretty well these days. I'd say the one thing they all have working against them is weather. I'm in Buffalo, and I can see why folks flock to SoCal and places with better weather. Winter can be a real drag sometimes. Working from home makes it much more bearable, commuting in a snow storm can be really rough, dangerous and even deadly.
- encorekt 6y agoThat's not wrong, but as a Midwesterner, I think you also have people have legitimately enjoy experiencing all four seasons. And in cities with good public transit systems (like Chicago and Minneapolis) the damper of driving in crappy weather isn't as present.
- dahfizz 6y agoAs a new englander, I can confirm that it's really nice to have weather and seasons. It would be boring if every day all year was the same.
- nightski 6y agoAgreed, winter has its hardships but having lived in the south I'd never give up winter, fall, and spring ever again. Winter is my second favorite season after fall.
- asdff 6y agoWhen I moved from the midwest to southern california, everyone told me I would get bored of the lack of seasons. What a load of crock. There are seasons here and they are quite distinct. The summer is dry and hot, but it's much more pleasant being out and about in 95* weather with no humidity than 85* after a july thunderstorm in the midwest with humidity you can cut with a knife. I only sweat when I do cardio, whereas in the midwest you could be drenched in sweat sitting in the shade in that humidity. The fall still happens, you can still drive 45 minutes to an apple orchard and see beautiful fall scenery and get your pumpkins and pick your apples, because there are massive mountain ranges nearby. Winter weather here is perfect fall weather everywhere else. 60-70 degrees by day and light jacket and jeans weather by night. Winter is also the rainy season, so you will see some dramatic storms and very interesting fog and mist, and the hills will turn to emerald green while the midwest enters its 6 months of brown mud, salt, and dirty snow phase. Things are in bloom all year at different times, but the spring brings on the jacaranda season, and the region erupts into purple. I've never seen a more glorious spring. As a former midwestern transit user, crappy weather doesn't go away once you are on transit. You still have to hoof it through the snow to and from your stop and wait for the vehicle which is far worse than driving door to door and spending maybe 30 seconds on each end outside. The vehicles aren't adequately heated. Plus no one ever plowed the sidewalks in the morning, so you are blazing your own trail through the slush, getting your feet wet if you weren't prepared with Sorels.
- phkahler 6y agoYou gotta get away from that lake-effect snow. Detroit area winters dont get that, but the western half of the state does. Chicago and Wisconsin are colder but offer clearer skies in the winter, as moisture and heat are picked up from the water as the weather moves west to east.
- qualitydrew 6y agoFormer Buffalo resident in Colorado right now - I've been attracted back to the area due to climate change for the most part. The Great Lakes are the one part of the country that will get (relatively) more habitable in the next ~100 years [0]. Even today, I'd happily trade 6 months of snow and clouds for breathable air year-round. [0] https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/ https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/
- castratikron 6y agoStats are from 2018, any idea what the trend has been in the last six months? Are a significant amount of workers truly leaving places like SF and NYC for a cheaper place in the Midwest?
- mox1 6y agoFrom what I have read a lot of the movement during COVID has been from major metro are to nearby smaller city. For example in my midwestern city (Minneapolis) there was a recent article in the paper about home prices in a smaller (but touristy / historic )town ~2 hours away (Duluth,MN). The claim was a lot of people from Minneapolis were moving there. I've read the same about SF residents moving to Sacramento or something like that. You can work from home, still hit the office 1-4x a month, see family, etc. so it makes sense.
- user5994461 6y agoYes. Droves of workers who got laid off and graduates who can't find a job. It's impossible to remain in the tech hubs without a job given how incredibly expensive the rent is. The average HN commenters at a comfortable FANG really don't grasp how bad the situation is for the rest of the people.
- fossuser 6y agoEven many of those at a comfortable FANG still live with roommates in shared housing and have no hope of buying a house on the peninsula where the median price is approaching $3M. The anti-housing people are mostly locals that bought their house for $300k 20yrs ago and pay no property tax on its new value due to prop13.
- claudiulodro 6y agoFor people that work in any of these cities, how have you been enjoying it? What sort of tech companies are around? What do the job interviews and salaries out there look like?
- slimed 6y agoInterviews are really tough. Salaries are awful. Seriously. Please stay in your coastal enclave. It's terrible here :)
- RobRivera 6y agoDon't forget the terrible bbq and crowded traffic and Ferris Buehler's crashing all the parades!
- rubidium 6y agoFor programmers in Indianapolis, there's numerous opportunities. Salesforce has helped advance the salary curve. Job interviews are pretty straightforward. Nothing like the FAANG grind. Salaries are $80K fresh out of college. Surpassing $200k is doable at places like Salesforce, Eli Lilly, etc.. Lots of "routine" programming jobs are in the $100-$140k range going from Senior to Staff. Higher levels of IC and management of course go up from there. A nice house costs $200k.
- Sindrome 6y agoNo thanks
- chrisco255 6y agoHow does this increase compare with other regions?
- bradlys 6y agoAnd importantly, how does this increase compare with the amount of engineers available? It’s all fine and dandy to say there have been cities where “tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these cities” but it says nothing of the labor market. I am under the presumption that labor is exploding for software/tech. My biggest reason for not moving to non-tech hubs is the lack of companies employing engineers. There are only so many, whereas in the Bay... you could make interviewing your full time job and likely never run out.
- swashboon 6y agoI worked with two developers in Boston who were DINK (Double Income No Kids) and they sold their Boston condo, moved to the Midwest (Minneapolis) and bought a six bedroom house on a lake and two jet-skis for the same price as their condo. Their cost of living went down tremendously. By their own standards they lost nothing compared to Boston (food/services/entertainment actually got better) except that they had to deal with people on the Coast saying how boring it must be - scratch that - they weren't listening because they were having to much fun on their jet-skis...
- jrockway 6y agoNot that winter in Boston is particularly pleasant, but I feel like the jetskis are going to be a lot less fun when it's -40 out.
- samschooler 6y agoTrade out jetskis for snowmobiles my friend
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- myself248 6y agoJetskis in summer, snowmobiles in winter. Bass boat in the summer, ice-fishing shanty in winter. Hiking in summer, hiking wearing more layers in winter. We do just fine. :)
- davidf18 6y agoMinneapolis is unbearable during the Winters. It is so cold you have to plug cars into outlets to keep the oil warm. They have underground tunnels between shopping malls, etc. I lived in Boston and it is a much, much nicer environment.
- vdnkh 6y agoThis is a very consumerist world view (get big house, get fun toys) that not everyone believes in. I choose to live in a more vibrant city where I essentially trade my money for opportunity, experiences, and community.
- rezeroed 6y agoOff-topic - for any other non-Americans wondering why this eastern area is considered western: "The term West was applied to the region in the early years of the country. In the early 19th century, anything west of Appalachia was considered the West" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States#Backg...
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoRight, but news flash: It's not 1840 any more. Chicago isn't the frontier. Chicago and anywhere east of there is east. ... at least geographically. Culturally, those places are midwest, just like everywhere from just west of Pittsburgh to just east of Denver. (Culturally, Pittsburgh is at least partly east, and Denver is at least partly west.)
- rezeroed 6y agoYou're news-flashing me? I know what east and west are, hence the explanation for a name that currently makes no sense.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoWell, news-flashing whoever keeps using the name for places east of Chicago. Related gripe: The University of Michigan's fight song calls them "the champions of the west". Once upon a time that sort of made sense, because they played in an athletic conference that had "west" in the name. But the name of the conference didn't make sense, because California already was a state.
- dexwiz 6y agoMoved from the Midwest to the Bay Area, and tech comes in two forms: IT departments at major industrial firms (manufacturing, chemical, pharma, etc), or companies that are eventually bought by West Coast companies. The pay cap is much lower. Becoming a millionaire through stocks and wages is harder, but you will still be in the top 10% of earners overall. If you want to live in a mansion, the Midwest makes this dream obtainable. Buy a 6 bedroom, lake (reservoir) side, 4k sqr ft home for less than a million. Of if you want an acre of lawn, but not live too far in the country. What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white). (EDIT: This gets more pronounced the more rural you are. Cities tend to be more accepting. What you will find is that rural areas have more relative sway on thought compared to the West Coast.) Towns outside of major metropolitan areas are dying as most major industries that supported that last two generations have left. Drugs are a huge issue, but its not as obvious because the floor for homelessness is so much lower. The only major infrastructure and building projects that get approved are sports stadiums, because idiots in local government rather have sports teams than functioning schools. What the Midwest does have is solid engineering and research universities, that graduate thousands of STEM oriented students a year. Unfortunately there are often over an hour from the nearest 250k+ city. I went to one, and I think less than 25% of my friends stayed in state. The brain drain is real.
- humbleMouse 6y agoThis is a good summary
- shortandsweet 6y agoWhat are the big schools? I always thought that what was holding the Midwest up, not enough high quality schools.
- coreycr 6y agoMost midwestern states have a world-class research university. Northwestern, U of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue...
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- goodells 6y agoI'm surprised not to see Madison, WI on this list. Our tech sector has been strong and growing for several decades - locally we have Epic Systems, Exact Sciences, Promega Corporation, Thermo Fisher Scientific, several large insurance companies like American Family Insurance, Sentry Insurance. It might be easy to miss the agglomeration of these companies in one area because some of them are technically in different municipalities than the City of Madison. But it's a great area, and most of the big players here have been spared or even strengthened by the unique circumstances of the pandemic.
- managerclass 6y agoProbably because it's measuring the last 3 years and Madison already had a sizable tech workforce for many years now. Good area. Wish more people wore masks though.
- _qulr 6y ago> Good area. Wish more people wore masks though. Huh? We have a mask mandate in Dane County. Everyone wears them, by law.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoRules can and are broken sometimes. There are noticeable differences in proportion of people wearing masks in different areas.
- _qulr 6y agoThis was a specific comment about the Madison, Wisconsin area. Do you have specific data about mask wearing in Madison?
- lotsofpulp 6y agoMy bad, I thought it was for any location with laws about face masks.
- congxing_cai 6y agoIt is hard to tell if this is general trend or workforce relocation, when only looking at data in these picked cities and for past few years. Job posting data from this year due to pandemic may tell a better story.
- shekharshan 6y ago"Take him to Detroit"!!
- claydavisss 6y agoThis is appropriate as the bulk of high-tech jobs are trending down the wage scale and are increasingly less-likely to provide a middle-class lifestyle in major metros.
- bobwall 6y agoYup, just did this. Got an extra master suite, and 1.75 more bathrooms with much bigger yard and garage for $1100 less. And neighbors that actually talk to you. Not to mention half the price for gas and food. Oh, and the swings aren't chained up. Good-bye LA, I will not miss you one bit.
- silexia 6y agoI did the same thing, I traded a third of an acre in Los Angeles for over a hundred acres in Washington State.
- williamstein 6y agoMe too; two weeks ago I traded a small house in Cap Hill, Seattle for a lot more space and friendly neighbors in more rural Washington about 20 minutes from the city. Loving it!
- konjin 6y ago>And neighbors that actually talk to you. It's things like this that keep me living in the big city. I can have a mental break, run around naked for 8 hours and be back to normal with no one ever realizing anything happened.
- bobwall 6y agoHaha. Pre-kids I was right there with you.
- sjg007 6y agoMinneapolis has a bunch of tech and startups. Microsoft, Cray, Amazon, AWS, Target, Best Buy, then a bunch of medical tech and insurance companies as well as associated startups. I imagine the med tech AI space will develop here as well. Google is working with the Mayo in Rochester for example.
- silexia 6y agoJust wait till all the companies start to figure out that they can hire highly talented people in places like the Philippines or India for one tenth of the price of the Midwest.
- strictnein 6y agoMost large companies in the US have offices in India and have had them for a while now.
- nunez 6y agoThey have, which is why on-shoring has been making a comeback for the last five years
- dogman144 6y agoHere I was just recently eyeballing Minneapolis tech jobs and as salaries vs. 5 bedroom non-mcmansion houses with front porch and some woods nearby. Man it's getting to be an interesting sell. Chicago too if NYC is more your vibe.
- lliamander 6y agoWhat states other than California have reasonable protections for employees' side projects and protections against non-compete agreements?
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI don't think any do. Washington almost had a non compete ban, and hopefully it goes through next time. I would never consider a state that didn't even have parental leave benefits, simply because I would rather my descendants live in a state with some level of protections for employees versus employers. Although a mix of California's laws about overtime pay, giving option of sitting, non competes, and personal projects plus Washington's minimum wages for both hourly and salaried exempt employees would be ideal.
- lliamander 6y ago> I would never consider a state that didn't even have parental leave benefits, simply because I would rather my descendants live in a state with some level of protections for employees versus employers. I can understand that, thought I don't personally relate. Once they're grown my kids will likely be able to live in whatever state they want, I just want to make sure they have a good environment for growing up. For me, things like school choice are more important (which California is actually pretty good on). Also, I haven't personally been in a position where using the state sponsored parental leave made sense. Instead, a combination of saving up vacation time, working from home, and whatever benefits my employer provided for me made more sense. Not a complaint, just an observation.
- bmd3991 6y agoEdit: The below applies to people who don't want kids. I get why you wouldn't want to raise kids in somewhere like NYC (though I can also see the inverse). I don't comment often on HN but I feel like I had to chime in here with a bunch of questions. These may sound inflammatory but I mean them sincerely, I just don't see where people are coming from. I understand that a lot of the things I'm listing are negatives for some people, I'm just shocked that it seems like they're negatives for 99.99% of people. Like, I'd expect at least a little more of a balance I don't understand all of the hate for big cities recently. I mean do THAT many people truly hate living in a big vibrant city? Do that many people really want to have to get into their car and drive 25 minutes to the only (probably subpar) ramen shop in town. Does everyone just want a big 6 bedroom house that they can sit in and read/watch TV all day? Are you gonna go out on all that land more often then you would go out to eat world class, multicultural food? No one likes/wants public transit anymore? Having tons of theaters, shops, bars, etc around? You don't want access to the [some of the] most interesting jobs in the world? Surrounded by people who are world class at what they do? Being able to go to a bar and find someone who's a musician, someone who's an actor, someone from wall street, someone who sells hotdogs, etc all in the same place? How could you go from NYC to Madison, WI and not be so bored that you want to blow your brains out? It's a completely different world. Maybe it's just the midwestern cities that I've been in, but they're all so dead. Everyone just seems to be ok with the status quo. Everyone just goes home and watches TV until work the next day. Maybe once a year they take a beach vacation, and then the other week they have off they see family for the holidays. I mean yes, I get that it's expensive. I'm just surprised that SO may people have been seemingly staying in this place that they hate, driving up rent prices for everyone who wants to be in the city, just so they could keep whatever job they have. I mean if you really hated the city wouldn't you have looked elsewhere by now? It's not like it's competitive to get a job in one of these midwestern cities, so surely that great job you had in NYC that tied you there would guarantee you a way out of the city.
- ng12 6y agoAt a certain age a backyard for your kids to play in matters way more than being close to authentic ramen.
- dredmorbius 6y ago1. Chicago: 8th overall US, 344,146 positions, 17.9% growth 2010--2018. 2. Detroit: 11th , 241,135, 37.2% 3. Minneapolis, 14th, 196,151, 17% 4. Kansas City, 24th, 100,782, 17.3% 5. Cincinnati, 28th, 82,088, 23.9% 6. Cleveland, 29th, 76,698, 16.3% 7. Indianapolis, 31st, 74,615, 24.2% 8. Milwaukee, 32nd, 71,755, 9.2% 9. Omaha, 40th, 37,508, 10.7% 10. Des Moines, 42nd, 28,693, 26.9% TFW article is basically a textualised spreadsheet. Not listed: wage levels, cost-of-living, industries, skillsets.
- curiousllama 6y agoThey should normalize by population/ Chicago has a lot of tech jobs, but also a lot of people. 3rd in population and 8th in tech suggests it's the opposite of a hub. I wonder how much of the hiring is companies like McDonalds, United, or Boeing rather than FAANG.
- dredmorbius 6y agoMaybe, but I think probably not. Market rates (a measure of local supply and demand) would be more useful. Applying network theory, though up to a substantial fraction of total employment, it's absolute and not relative size that matters. As of May 2019, total SF Bay Area tech employment was 835,600, an increase of 116,900 over the December 2000 dot-com peak. That increase alone would rank 4th on this midwest list. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/05/tech-jobs-soar-all-time-record-heights-bay-area-apple-adobe-facebook-google/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/05/tech-jobs-soar-all-ti... In that 835,600 Bay Area workforce, what you're going to find is both breadth 8and* depth. Need the best, or a top-ten, or the top-ten devs in a specific skill? You'll likely find it. Need 10, or 100, or 1,000, or 10,000 bodies within a given specialty or skillset? Likely there as well, certainly more8 likely than elsewhere. Want to attract* remote talent? Pretty good odds. At least until housing got too rich and smoke too thick. Want to swipe local talent? Noncompetes illegal FTFW, just make a good enough offer. It's not as if tech talent competes against non-tech talent. It doesn't. At least not for jobs. For housing and transport, yes, but that's where the SF Bay Area by and large loses. And I'm not making the case for the midwest hubs, mostly the opposite. Unless there's some specific centre of excellence ... they're simply not going to attract talent. The body counts are likely for basic tech skills generally. The West coast offers entertainment (VFX/CGI/gaming), search, social, ads, business automation (Oracle, Salesforce), commerce, HW & devices (Apple), and some relic defense tech, plus modest manufacturing. NYC has more ads & entertainment, and finance. DC has government, defence, and surveillance. The midwest has ... relic manufacturing, some new manufacturing, healthcare, food & ag, a lot of back-office work, and ... not too much else that really comes to mind. Real estate? (Cratering.) Plus a lot of tech-unfriendly legal and political legacy. Chicago ... kind of has scale? But at 40% the size of the Bay Area's scale, even if equally complex and skilled, by Metcalf's law it would have one sixth the net value. (There are plenty of issues with Metcalfe's law, this just illustrates how much scale effects alone might affect net prospects.)
- padseeker 6y agoI work for a sizable consulting firm with multiple offices including one in Chicago. We saw a lull during the early months (april-june) of Covid/quarantine, we froze hiring, and a few projects were cancelled (one was a major airline). We had a heavier bench for a short time, and utilization fell 10-20%. That lull is over, at least in Chicago, and not just our office. We have almost no bench, utilization is reaching 100% for at least tech centric practices, and we're hiring again. Front end, back end, devops, salesforce implementation and integration, you name it, demand is exceeding supply for resources available. On one hand it's comforting to have job security. But it's also surreal to hear reports about 13% unemployment. These are strange times. It does feel like anyone in the tech profession that we are insulated from the worst effects of this catastrophe. Most of us can easily do our jobs remotely. My brother and his girlfriend are both chefs living together in Chicago. Enhanced unemployment benefits expired in July and their lease ended in August so they both moved back in with their parents. I know what is happening out there but at times I feel like we live in a bubble.
- asdff 6y agoIt really makes you wonder how this will go down in the next 5 years. Rents are high in cities because of highly paid workers who are capable of paying those rents. Now the middle class is priced out because their wages have been stagnant despite highly paid workers reliably getting raises. Either wages for the middle class has to go up dramatically, or rents have to crash, and rents aren't going to crash if the whole reason why they went up is because demand from highly paid workers, who haven't gone away. Something will have to give, people can't live in their parents house or commute 3 hours one way forever.
- myself248 6y agoIt's remarkable to see Detroit on this list, and I'd love to learn how they gathered these numbers. Years ago, I heard the quip that "the janitor at Apple is counted as a tech worker, but the supercomputer engineer at Ford is counted as an auto worker". Clearly this analysis has solved that. Why have so others missed it?
- ryathal 6y agoIt's not the auto companies that are bringing Detroit up for tech. They are ancient outdated behemoths working on auto focused things. There are a handful of smaller tech companies that do the sexy work for the big 3 though. It's the places like Quicken or Dominos that are putting Detroit on the map for tech.
- curiousllama 6y agoThese jobs are tech roles in non-tech companies. Boeing, United, McDonalds, Koch Industries... all are big in the midwest, all need lots of tech folks, none are particularly techy companies. All the really good tech people I've met either (1) leave for SV/NY or (2) work for quant trading shops. For context, FAANG job postings in the midwest are all satellite-office positions: they'll hire good engineers here, but you're kinda working remote in the downtown office at a certain point.
- d33lio 6y agoWell yeah, you can pay people pennies on the dollar here while they're convinced it's "cool" to live in bum-f*ck middle america. If you're lucky they might even buy a house, adding another barrier to leaving and moving to a real tech-hub once covid is no longer an issue.