5 ms·
You need colleges. You want the next Silicon Valley, pump money into the CS programs of area colleges.
by bena 4y ago
You need colleges.
You want the next Silicon Valley, pump money into the CS programs of area colleges.
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y agoAnd unfortunately, your best universities are not in the heartland and very few in red states. Silicon Valley has the luxury of educational centers, as well as large tech firms that can be used to seed the area with talent they create and attract. You would be hard pressed to find such a confluence of actors in the heartland.
- ghaff 4y agoYou can argue the "best" point I guess but there are all the large state schools (which can give a very good education if you seek it out), Purdue, Notre Dame, University of Chicago... But probably more around the great lakes than further south.
- saalweachter 4y agoCarnegie-Mellon, UIUC, Michigan/Ann Arbor, University of Wisconsin/Madison, Northwestern, Ohio State...
- pnutjam 4y agoPurdue is great, but it's in Indiana and the social policies will continue to disincentivize both workers and investors. a quick list of reasons not to locate in Indian: * abortion ban * no renter protection * strict non-compete's allowed * school funding keeps getting worse
- ghaff 4y agoWell, it doesn't seem to be keeping a lot of companies and people from heading to Texas, especially Austin.
- pnutjam 4y agoAustin is relatively close to California. Both Texas and California have huge populations. What does Indiana have?
- ghaff 4y agoIndianapolis is a three hour drive from Chicago which is the third most populous city in the US. Whereas Austin is over 1,000 miles from SF. (Once you're getting in a plane anyway, 1K miles vs. 2K miles doesn't make much of a difference.)
- juve1996 4y agoIt has brutal winters compared to Austin.
- ghaff 4y agoFor me, Austin's summers are brutal. Lots of people live in northern states where it snows. You get used to it. I would not in general make a decision about a job based on the weather.
- juve1996 4y agoWhy not? Why would anyone not consider climate when deciding on a place they'll be living?
- lotsofpulp 4y agoClimate and geography are basically my number 2 and 3 for deciding on where to live, because I like to spend time outside. Number 1 is obviously security of shelter and other resources, including income to procure them.
- ghaff 4y ago
- prottog 4y agoStrict non-competes being allowed is probably the only factor that really matters there. Jurisdictions that favor renters almost universally have higher rents and a poorer experience for normal renters who don't cause damage and pay rent on time. If you compare the average rents in Indiana[0], which is well known to favor the rights of property owners, against some states with roughly comparable population densities that are well known to favor the rights of renters, like Vermont[1] or Delaware[2], you can see that Indiana is only about 80% of the other two. The near-total ban on abortion in Indiana is misguided and I believe local voters will move in a more moderate direction sooner or later, but you'll find that social matters generally do not hold as much sway as economic matters. [0]: https://www.rentdata.org/states/indiana/2021 https://www.rentdata.org/states/indiana/2021 [1]: https://www.rentdata.org/states/vermont/2021 https://www.rentdata.org/states/vermont/2021 [2]: https://www.rentdata.org/states/delaware/2021 https://www.rentdata.org/states/delaware/2021
- ghaff 4y ago>Strict non-competes being allowed is probably the only factor that really matters there. And, honestly, while this can be a big deal in other states--especially if you want to start a competing business--there seems to sometimes be a belief that people don't change jobs in other states. I've worked pretty much my whole career in Massachusetts and non-competes have never been an issue. The one time I had to sign one after an acquisition, it was reasonably scoped. Mass has very recently, over long-time resistance from some local large employers, put somewhat weak garden leave requirements in place, however. While not ideal, it does mean an employer has skin in the game if they really don't want someone to go to a competitor.
- yardie 4y agoI consider Rice and UT-Austin as two of the best universities in a conservative, red state. But they don't get a lot of respect from coastal elites because they aren't in NYC or SF.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LanceH 4y agoAnd A&M. But there is no density in Texas. Dallas, Austin, and Houston are 4 hours apart. There is virtually no synergy between them for a corporation other than existing under the same state laws. If these three were all half the distance from each other, and the weather was mild year round, and they were on the coast, it would be a different story.
- natch 4y agoI don't know that those two universities don't get a lot of respect. I have always heard good things about them, here in my elite coastal bubble. As a counterexample, MIT is not in NYC or SF, and it gets respect. For the universities you mention, maybe the (perceived?) sense of lower respect comes from picking up on outsider's suspicions that a Texas university may draw from the state, and thus may have a higher percentage of, you know, people who put tribe and faith ahead of logic and reason (which is not a swipe at all Texans, just more my personal opinion of the red voter types nationwide). Of course those suspicions may be unfounded.
- prottog 4y agoBoston is an archetype of the "coastal liberal elite" city in the line of NYC or SF, so clearly it gets respect. ;-) > people who put tribe and faith ahead of logic and reason For many things, one man's logic and reason is another's tribe and faith. A red voter type might see blue voter types engage in all sorts of illogical policy behavior that, to the red voter, appears solely grounded in blue tribalism and orthodoxies that might as well be church doctrine.
- 4y ago
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
- ghaff 4y agoThere are a lot of universities with good CS programs scattered around the country. I expect if I took a list of the top 50 (or whatever) programs and put pins in a map. I expect you'd see some clusters that correspond to tech centers (Bay Area, Boston), secondary tech centers without an outsized academic presence, and some groupings of schools in areas not especially known as a tech hub.
- natch 4y agoNecessary but not sufficient.
- torstenvl 4y ago4-5 of the top 20 CS programs are in the Upper Midwest, depending on whether you count Western Pennsylvania (I personally do — politics are solidly Midwest conservative; manufacturing is a major industry; ethnicity is largely German-American rather than British; religion is largely Catholic and mainline Protestant rather than Quaker and Congregationalist; and so on. Pittsburgh looks and feels more like Columbus than like Philly.)
- prottog 4y agoIf we define the Midwest as the plains between the Appalachians and the Rockies, Pittsburgh is clearly closer to the Midwest than the East Coast.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- juve1996 4y agoPittsburgh politics are not midwest conservative, unless you include the heavy suburban regions which are not where the tech companies are.
- bart_spoon 4y agoNo city is "midwest conservative", even in the heart of the midwest. Pittsburgh is 100% a Midwestern city.
- juve1996 4y agoIt 100% isn't, born and raised. It's nothing like or Indianapolis. The topography and history are completely different. Not northeastern != midwest. Pittsburgh has far more in-common with Baltimore than it does Indy.
- bart_spoon 4y agoThe topography and history are closer to Baltimore than Indy? It's historically been part of the Rust Belt. It's considered part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis [0]. It's on the Western side of the Appalachian divide. Culturally it has far more in common with Cleveland or Columbus than Philly or NYC. The only reason it's even a question is because its in Pennsylvania, which contains Philly which is clearly East Coast. But cultural, geographic, and economic regions aren't defined by stat borders. If instead of being a part of Pennsylvania, there was a "Western Pennsylvania" and "Eastern Pennsylvania", no one would question lumping Western Pennsylvania in with the rest of the Midwest. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_megalopolis#/media/File:MapofEmergingUSMegaregions.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_megalopolis#/media...
- bart_spoon 4y agoThere's a ton of world class engineering colleges in the Midwest. The graduates all move to the coasts for jobs. It isn't a lack of colleges, its a comparative lack of jobs.