8 ms·

Bringing Silicon Valley to the Midwest

89 points by Aubric 13y ago

jakestl 13y ago
As a Midwesterner, I am slightly put off by the use of the term "outsourcing" in the title. Considering the term wasn't used in the article I feel it carries negative connotation. Maybe I am reading too deeply into this...
- wyclif 13y ago
  If it had not been enclosed in quotation marks, maybe. But the presence of those signals that they don't mean strict outsourcing, but are using it with a touch of irony.
- enjo 13y ago
  I have to admit, as a fly-over stater (Colorado) I found the tone be pretty condescending. There's an air of "we're moving the stuff people in the valley are to smart to do" to it. I'm not sure if it's intended, but it seems like they think the midwest is only good for the entry level. That really amazing developers don't exist outside of the valley. If that's true, I for one hope they don't change their position. We're building one hell of an engineering team and much of it is from the midwest. If other folks figure this out, I'd have to actually compete for the best developers!
  - wyclif 13y ago
    Is it possible to get an entry-level engineering job in the Valley today? It doesn't seem like that's common at all. So if you're just starting out and particularly if you don't happen to have a boutique degree, where are you going to start at entry level as a developer? To me, it sounds like a great way to hire.
    - htormey 13y ago
      Yes, their are plenty of startups with less brand name recognition hiring. A friend of mine from a non technical background managed to get a decent PM job after finishing hackbrite. Alternatively you can get in the door of a brand name company by doing QA for a year or so.I have multiple friends that transitioned from a liberals arts degree to being developers by first starting in QA. It's totally possible. Internships are also a good way to get your foot in the door.
      - wyclif 13y ago
        That's interesting; I never thought about the QA angle. Maybe you can say a little more about how that works and what companies?
        htormey 13y ago
        Good QA people are incredibly hard to find, especially ones that can do automated testing. One of my old managers started at Apple in QA and then transitioned over to being a developer after a year or two. I’ve seen this pattern a number of times. The potential risk is that many organizations won’t allow you to leave QA. That may not be a problem if thats what you want to do. QA can pay quite well if you are doing the right thing. The way to play this is to go into an organization with a good brand name, work hard, focus on automation as much as possible and if they won’t help you transition over to being a developer leave after two years for a place that will. Having a good brand on your resume will open a lot of doors. Also, if you are going down this road its a good idea to build a portfolio of software on github. Devops is also a good option to consider. It really depends on what your background is and what skills you bring to the table.
        bcbrown 13y ago
        That's what I did. I had a degree in Physics, and at the time, Microsoft had a small training program for test developers. I did that for a couple years, and through a pair of job hops, am now a developer at an established startup. I didn't try to switch internally at MS, but I believe it would have been possible. The one thing I would note, is that QA generally has lower prestige/pay then dev, so if you want to move to dev, be careful about things. Make sure any QA job you take has a significant development component, ideally letting you design and implement decent-sized projects you can point to when interviewing for a dev role. If you have more questions, email is in profile.
    - aidenn0 13y ago
      The company I work for hires at the entry-level pretty much constantly.
- ahoy 13y ago
  It's being used in a tounge-in-cheek manner here.
  - bchociej 13y ago
    That's true, and I think jakestl understands that. But it's received with a tone of "look, what a surprise, those Midwestern folks are worth something," which definitely isn't a great way to make someone feel.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
  I think you are. This http://www.saturnsys.com/ http://www.saturnsys.com/ "local" (as in ~200 miles away from me) Minnesota company has been using the tagline "Offshore to the North Shore" (...of Lake Superior) in their radio advertising for years. Their home page touts their "Rural outsourcing model." Outsourcing is exactly what it is. Nothing to be offended about.
- columbo 13y ago
  The buzzword term I've seen used is "Onshoring", also, fellow midwesterner here
  - mason240 13y ago
    One company in Duluth MN calls it "Offshore to the North Shore"
- bchociej 13y ago
  Not too deeply, I think. Outsourcing implies the use of second-rate talent (and literally refers to sourcing cheaper talent outside of the company, which is not the case here). It's definitely condescending, and I understand why tech talent in the Midwest would take offense to this tone. There is definitely a large pool of top notch talent in the Midwest, and it's no secret at all that it's the most cost effective part of the country.
- cpwright 13y ago
  For the data entry jobs as a contract employee, I think it is actually the correct word. Outsourcing doesn't need to be on-shore, or even remote. IBM outsources its secretaries and maintenance who work in the same building as employees. This company wanted to outsource data entry and customer service. If they are actually hiring the people (as it seems the author of the post had happen to him eventually), then it isn't outsourcing anymore.
- Dewie 13y ago
  So what do you think about foreign developers who work for American companies (that are outsourced muscle)? That they are inferior? I feel like I'm being hostile now, but that is what seems to must follow, if you even accept the term outsourcing. I think outsourcing is either motivated by 1. cost, which does not necessarily have anything to do with quality, might just be that the cost of living is very different, and the cost of living difference in this case seems to be non-negligible. 2. Expertise; we, as a company, don't want to/can't have an X department, so you guys can take care of it. A possible barrier to productive outsourcing is a mismatch in cultures. In that case, you can't really blame the outsourced party for not being American/German/Austrian... This is a thing that can mask itself as incompetence.
  - jakestl 13y ago
    Outsourcing usually means hiring cheap, low-quality third-party labor and firing/not hiring skilled, trained full-time employees. Whether this is from another country or not is unrelated. The situation described in the article has nothing to do with outsourcing, but building a remote team, both foreign and domestic. Using the term "outsourcing" does a disservice to those employees. Since the Midwest was mentioned specifically, I had a similar reaction to the one you had for my comment.
- mbesto 13y ago
  Someone put that in the HN title, the original article does not (for it's worth, I've flagged it thus). Also, virtually every company in the world outsources. Do you use an external account for tax compliance? Outsourcing. Do you have a lawyer that's on a contract? Outsourcing. You got that advertisement created for your online ad campaign from a marketing company? Outsourcing. Using the word outsourcing here is not correct. They are paying full-time employees and managing them as such.
wyclif 13y ago
I'm really impressed by Expensify's approach to solving problems and working with people.
pasbesoin 13y ago
This is sort of my dream. When, while on vacation, I saw that the state had run fiber up to the local state park (a gorgeous, national park sized state park), I asked whether private interests were also attached. I have since heard that there were plans to upgrade backbone service to the local town 13 miles away. Supposedly, an insurance company was going to host a call center there -- although that part of the story and the party involved sounded suspicious. If you all want to explore whether this location might be one you want to add to your list, shoot me an email. (Regardless of whether it does anything for me, personally. I'd like to see the town do well.)
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Which state park? I'm guessing Utah?
  - pasbesoin 13y ago
    It's in the same general area as the OP: Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Approximately 15 miles of Lake Superior shoreline, extending inward 3 - 5 miles, in the eastern part of the park over a series of parallel ridges that are remant uplift of the old Lake Superior syncline. One road around the boundary, and another up to a scenic overlook. The rest of the park is accessed by trails. If you like hiking and camping, or want to spring for one of the better cabin rentals, it's a gorgeous, peaceful place.
supergeek133 13y ago
I wish more companies had this mentality, it's amazing how much talent pool they are leaving out there by not allowing remote work for some positions. Especially for those of us that live in the Midwest but cannot leave for any number of reasons.
- bane 13y ago
  Honestly, the "right" way for companies to do it is to simple lease an office near a concentration of a few workers. Even if it's just 4 or 5 employees, a nice office with internet and a kitchen isn't very expensive. That way it's not "remote" work, it's just another corporate office location. Checking online in Kansas City, MO. 13,000 SF of office space runs < $10k/mo. That's a bargain. Spot checking other places (Colorado Springs, Nashville) doesn't run too much different.
  - bchociej 13y ago
    That's exactly right. A friend of mine in St. Louis is currently negotiating $14/sq.ft. down to, ideally, $12. Last I heard from my CxO friend in California, he was excited to find $30. To me, it's shocking that anyone would start a business out there. (Okay, not really... there is a lot of money out there and it flows much more freely. But I couldn't personally justify spending my cash on 2.5x more expensive real estate!)
    - patrickmay 13y ago
      $55 this week in midtown Manhattan.
    - vonmoltke 13y ago
      In the right suburbs of Dallas, you can get flex space for $6/sqft - $9/sqft. The area has great support infrastructure and talent pool for doing hardware, too.
    - hagbardgroup 13y ago
      Quality of life is becoming much higher in both KC and STL over the last few years. Residential rents and house prices are cheap. Offices are practically free. The restaurants are becoming better and attuned to coastal sensibilities. One point that should be mentioned it that both STL and KCMO have significant violent crime problems. The STL crime rate has been improving impressively. When I went there recently, I was shocked by relative improvement. Neighborhoods that were dilapidated in the mid-00s are now happening spots. Flee the coasts! Opportunities await in the country!
bane 13y ago
This is potentially a great way to go and solve the "engineering shortage" in the U.S. There are tons of qualified engineers in places all over the U.S., but S.V. never bothers to look for them. The great side benefit is that the cost of living in most of the U.S. is much lower than on the coasts meaning you can almost get 2 people in nowhere Alabama or Nashville, Someplace for the price of 1 San Franciscan or 1 New Yorker. They'll speak English, share a common-ish culture, and have gone through the American educational system so interfacing with them isn't nearly as hard as real offshored employees or contracted firms. They'll also be within continental U.S. time-zones. You want to solve work visa problems? This is how you do it. I've met a few entrepreneurs who were self-funding and thus really cared about their burn rate while building their product who opted for teams of devs in overlooked places in the U.S. If you want a starting point, checkout towns near DOE National Labs. They're usually out in the middle of nowheresville (because of nukes) and are full of incredibly educated, qualified people, who may have moved there for lab work and ended up not like the stifling academic environment of National Labs. There resumes may not be a string of startups, but they're used to working on bleeding edge stuff and the cost of living in these areas is generally pretty low. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_laboratory
- cwal37 13y ago
  I agree with your overall point of looking in the areas around DOE labs (disclaimer: I'm at one now and worked at a different one in the past), but maybe only half-ish of them are truly in nowheresville. I would say Idaho, Los Alamos, NETL, Pacific, and probably Ames definitely are; while Oak Ridge is kind of on the bubble. This might just be my bias having grown up in the Midwest. The rest are in major metropolitan areas, or very close by, such as: Livermore, Brookhaven, Argonne, and NREL (among others). One thing you might notice is that many of the more out-of-the-way labs are on or next to the campuses of large universities with strong technical bases that maybe you didn't know about, like Iowa State for Ames and West Virginia University for NETL.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Don't forget Fermi National Accelerator Lab (Batavia, IL). I worked there a year (LHC CMS detector), and it was so terrible I jumped right back to the private sector with ~5 other co-workers.
WadeF 13y ago
Folks love to talk about the Midwest as fly-over nation, but the Midwest is a great place to hire. Of Zapier's 9 person team we have 4 people in the Midwest: 2 engineers, 1 marketing, 1 support. And we have no intention of stopping hiring in the Midwest.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Does it have to be the Midwest though? I'm in Chicago, and moving to Florida due to the weather and less-brutal state income/property tax (and I can own a sailboat). TL;DR Don't overlook low-cost locales for talent.
  - WadeF 13y ago
    Correct. We work with folks anywhere. :-)
forkandwait 13y ago
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Rapids,_Iowa http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Rapids,_Iowa
lost_name 13y ago
I'm jealous -- I would love to telecommute from my home town in the Upper Peninsula, but it just wasn't happening when I was looking for jobs after college. I ended up moving to a bigger city just to get a job as a software engineer. Still looking for a way to get back home, though. There have been so few options, and none where I felt I'd be able to advance my career. Self employment has always been the most attractive option.
- swlkr 13y ago
  Hey there is http://weworkremotely.com http://weworkremotely.com, and there's always automattic, if you're into wordpress
- spitfire 13y ago
  You could always start your own company. I loved the upper peninsula when I visited years ago. and it seemed /dirt/ cheap, I paid $20/night for a motel. Plus any place with Cornish pasties at every stop steals my heart.
zgohr 13y ago
I approve this message, as I am a web software developer in the midwest. I'm also involved in a great startup focused community here, http://digitalfertilizer.org/ http://digitalfertilizer.org/ with a network of high quality developers and designers, many of whom are full-time employed by startups all across the country. I'm also on the market for remote work. Same username on Twitter.
zedpm 13y ago
There is absolutely an opportunity to hire talented people at affordable rates outside major urban areas. I just finished an eight year adventure growing a startup from nothing, and I did it remotely from South Dakota. In a few months I'll be looking for another remote opportunity with a company like Expensify that "gets it"; I'll get to work from my beautiful hometown and they'll likely get talent cheaper than they could in an expensive major metro area.
donretag 13y ago
Good for them. It really helps when the entire company embraces a distributed workforce and not just having that "one guy". I live in California, two hours away from the Bay Area, and I still cannot convince employers to hire remote. Yet they still send me recruiting emails.
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Pyrodogg 13y ago
The Valley != Access to Tech Jobs Most of the Midwest doesn't have a dying need for "The Valley". This article reads a bit like SV is the saving grace of the Midwest, If only those people had access to tech. I think there's a very healthy tech scene in many areas of the Midwest. I live in Minneapolis and there are plenty of local companies doing well with local people. There are also quite a few local resources for entrepreneurs without the need to be involved in SV. For starters: http://tech.mn/ http://tech.mn/
- platz 13y ago
  St. Louis too, although I am Chicago
- aidenn0 13y ago
  When I graduated Purdue, 9 years ago, there was very little in the way of software jobs at least (And I got the impression that the top companeis hiring Mech E and EE students could be as selective as they wanted). I had to go to one of the coasts to get a sane offer. The only real job offer I got in Indiana was a one year contract for $30k/year in Fort Wayne, which was less than half the salary for the non-contract position I took in California. There is no sane cost of living adjustment that will cause those to be comparable.
  - shas3 13y ago
    Twin Cities and Chicago areas are exceptions to the rule, when it comes to Midwest. Both have a healthy mix of old-school industrial giants, financial, retail, and new tech and bio companies. This is different from other big metros in the region like Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. Pittsburgh is another (arguably) Midwestern city that has a growing new-tech/bio industry (Google and Intel + recently, old-school Bosch Research Center + several medical-sector startups).
up_and_up 13y ago
I currently live in Michigan and telecommute fulltime for a company on the East Coast. I highly recommend it! It works well as our entire team is distributed.
imroot 13y ago
I don't really call this "Outsourcing." I call it smart hiring. I have two teams -- one in Cincinnati, and one in Walnut Hills, CA. On my teams, I have a blend of about 60% onsite and 40% remote workers. I pay equally across the board, with the guys in CA getting an extra $1K/month due to the insane cost of living. I hire wherever I can find talent, and I find technology that works to bring us together as a team regardless of our location.
geebee 13y ago
Although I won't be moving to the midwest, I am rooting for this. I'm in SF because I grew up here and have a lot of family in the area. I don't live here because of the excellent salaries, because while the average software developer here earns (according to sfgate and us news best jobs) between $110,000 and $120,000 a year, the median 3br house costs 1.1 million. It would be a great triumph if the tech industry found a way to function without needing to move every software developer internationally into a the 48 square miles of SF plus a small corridor down the peninsula. I've read about startups in Baltimore, St. Louis. These are bustling, interesting old cities with cool architecture, walkable downtowns, great old gardens and museums, and vastly lower rents. If the tech industry could find a way to convert some of those 110K a year jobs in SF into a large number of $95k a year jobs in cincinatti or st. louis, it would have an exceptional effect on the world. And you know, if you are paying $110k in a place where a reasonably nice 3br house can be had for $300k, I'd be a lot more receptive to worries of a worker "shortage" than if you're offering that salary in a place where a 3br house is $1.1. So all I'm really saying here is good luck, I hope this works for everyone involved.
h1karu 13y ago
why pick a geographic region at all ? Why not just hire the best people no matter where they are ? 37signals.com/remote/
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89 points by Aubric 13y ago

As a Midwesterner, I am slightly put off by the use of the term "outsourcing" in the title. Considering the term wasn't used in the article I feel it carries negative connotation. Maybe I am reading too deeply into this...

wyclif 13y ago
If it had not been enclosed in quotation marks, maybe. But the presence of those signals that they don't mean strict outsourcing, but are using it with a touch of irony.
enjo 13y ago
I have to admit, as a fly-over stater (Colorado) I found the tone be pretty condescending. There's an air of "we're moving the stuff people in the valley are to smart to do" to it. I'm not sure if it's intended, but it seems like they think the midwest is only good for the entry level. That really amazing developers don't exist outside of the valley. If that's true, I for one hope they don't change their position. We're building one hell of an engineering team and much of it is from the midwest. If other folks figure this out, I'd have to actually compete for the best developers!
- wyclif 13y ago
  Is it possible to get an entry-level engineering job in the Valley today? It doesn't seem like that's common at all. So if you're just starting out and particularly if you don't happen to have a boutique degree, where are you going to start at entry level as a developer? To me, it sounds like a great way to hire.
  - htormey 13y ago
    Yes, their are plenty of startups with less brand name recognition hiring. A friend of mine from a non technical background managed to get a decent PM job after finishing hackbrite. Alternatively you can get in the door of a brand name company by doing QA for a year or so.I have multiple friends that transitioned from a liberals arts degree to being developers by first starting in QA. It's totally possible. Internships are also a good way to get your foot in the door.
    - wyclif 13y ago
      That's interesting; I never thought about the QA angle. Maybe you can say a little more about how that works and what companies?
      - htormey 13y ago
        Good QA people are incredibly hard to find, especially ones that can do automated testing. One of my old managers started at Apple in QA and then transitioned over to being a developer after a year or two. I’ve seen this pattern a number of times. The potential risk is that many organizations won’t allow you to leave QA. That may not be a problem if thats what you want to do. QA can pay quite well if you are doing the right thing. The way to play this is to go into an organization with a good brand name, work hard, focus on automation as much as possible and if they won’t help you transition over to being a developer leave after two years for a place that will. Having a good brand on your resume will open a lot of doors. Also, if you are going down this road its a good idea to build a portfolio of software on github. Devops is also a good option to consider. It really depends on what your background is and what skills you bring to the table.
      - bcbrown 13y ago
        That's what I did. I had a degree in Physics, and at the time, Microsoft had a small training program for test developers. I did that for a couple years, and through a pair of job hops, am now a developer at an established startup. I didn't try to switch internally at MS, but I believe it would have been possible. The one thing I would note, is that QA generally has lower prestige/pay then dev, so if you want to move to dev, be careful about things. Make sure any QA job you take has a significant development component, ideally letting you design and implement decent-sized projects you can point to when interviewing for a dev role. If you have more questions, email is in profile.
  - aidenn0 13y ago
    The company I work for hires at the entry-level pretty much constantly.
ahoy 13y ago
It's being used in a tounge-in-cheek manner here.
- bchociej 13y ago
  That's true, and I think jakestl understands that. But it's received with a tone of "look, what a surprise, those Midwestern folks are worth something," which definitely isn't a great way to make someone feel.
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HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
I think you are. This http://www.saturnsys.com/ http://www.saturnsys.com/ "local" (as in ~200 miles away from me) Minnesota company has been using the tagline "Offshore to the North Shore" (...of Lake Superior) in their radio advertising for years. Their home page touts their "Rural outsourcing model." Outsourcing is exactly what it is. Nothing to be offended about.
columbo 13y ago
The buzzword term I've seen used is "Onshoring", also, fellow midwesterner here
- mason240 13y ago
  One company in Duluth MN calls it "Offshore to the North Shore"
bchociej 13y ago
Not too deeply, I think. Outsourcing implies the use of second-rate talent (and literally refers to sourcing cheaper talent outside of the company, which is not the case here). It's definitely condescending, and I understand why tech talent in the Midwest would take offense to this tone. There is definitely a large pool of top notch talent in the Midwest, and it's no secret at all that it's the most cost effective part of the country.
cpwright 13y ago
For the data entry jobs as a contract employee, I think it is actually the correct word. Outsourcing doesn't need to be on-shore, or even remote. IBM outsources its secretaries and maintenance who work in the same building as employees. This company wanted to outsource data entry and customer service. If they are actually hiring the people (as it seems the author of the post had happen to him eventually), then it isn't outsourcing anymore.
Dewie 13y ago
So what do you think about foreign developers who work for American companies (that are outsourced muscle)? That they are inferior? I feel like I'm being hostile now, but that is what seems to must follow, if you even accept the term outsourcing. I think outsourcing is either motivated by 1. cost, which does not necessarily have anything to do with quality, might just be that the cost of living is very different, and the cost of living difference in this case seems to be non-negligible. 2. Expertise; we, as a company, don't want to/can't have an X department, so you guys can take care of it. A possible barrier to productive outsourcing is a mismatch in cultures. In that case, you can't really blame the outsourced party for not being American/German/Austrian... This is a thing that can mask itself as incompetence.
- jakestl 13y ago
  Outsourcing usually means hiring cheap, low-quality third-party labor and firing/not hiring skilled, trained full-time employees. Whether this is from another country or not is unrelated. The situation described in the article has nothing to do with outsourcing, but building a remote team, both foreign and domestic. Using the term "outsourcing" does a disservice to those employees. Since the Midwest was mentioned specifically, I had a similar reaction to the one you had for my comment.
mbesto 13y ago
Someone put that in the HN title, the original article does not (for it's worth, I've flagged it thus). Also, virtually every company in the world outsources. Do you use an external account for tax compliance? Outsourcing. Do you have a lawyer that's on a contract? Outsourcing. You got that advertisement created for your online ad campaign from a marketing company? Outsourcing. Using the word outsourcing here is not correct. They are paying full-time employees and managing them as such.

wyclif 13y ago

I'm really impressed by Expensify's approach to solving problems and working with people.

pasbesoin 13y ago

This is sort of my dream. When, while on vacation, I saw that the state had run fiber up to the local state park (a gorgeous, national park sized state park), I asked whether private interests were also attached. I have since heard that there were plans to upgrade backbone service to the local town 13 miles away. Supposedly, an insurance company was going to host a call center there -- although that part of the story and the party involved sounded suspicious. If you all want to explore whether this location might be one you want to add to your list, shoot me an email. (Regardless of whether it does anything for me, personally. I'd like to see the town do well.)

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Which state park? I'm guessing Utah?
- pasbesoin 13y ago
  It's in the same general area as the OP: Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Approximately 15 miles of Lake Superior shoreline, extending inward 3 - 5 miles, in the eastern part of the park over a series of parallel ridges that are remant uplift of the old Lake Superior syncline. One road around the boundary, and another up to a scenic overlook. The rest of the park is accessed by trails. If you like hiking and camping, or want to spring for one of the better cabin rentals, it's a gorgeous, peaceful place.

supergeek133 13y ago

I wish more companies had this mentality, it's amazing how much talent pool they are leaving out there by not allowing remote work for some positions. Especially for those of us that live in the Midwest but cannot leave for any number of reasons.

bane 13y ago
Honestly, the "right" way for companies to do it is to simple lease an office near a concentration of a few workers. Even if it's just 4 or 5 employees, a nice office with internet and a kitchen isn't very expensive. That way it's not "remote" work, it's just another corporate office location. Checking online in Kansas City, MO. 13,000 SF of office space runs < $10k/mo. That's a bargain. Spot checking other places (Colorado Springs, Nashville) doesn't run too much different.
- bchociej 13y ago
  That's exactly right. A friend of mine in St. Louis is currently negotiating $14/sq.ft. down to, ideally, $12. Last I heard from my CxO friend in California, he was excited to find $30. To me, it's shocking that anyone would start a business out there. (Okay, not really... there is a lot of money out there and it flows much more freely. But I couldn't personally justify spending my cash on 2.5x more expensive real estate!)
  - patrickmay 13y ago
    $55 this week in midtown Manhattan.
  - vonmoltke 13y ago
    In the right suburbs of Dallas, you can get flex space for $6/sqft - $9/sqft. The area has great support infrastructure and talent pool for doing hardware, too.
  - hagbardgroup 13y ago
    Quality of life is becoming much higher in both KC and STL over the last few years. Residential rents and house prices are cheap. Offices are practically free. The restaurants are becoming better and attuned to coastal sensibilities. One point that should be mentioned it that both STL and KCMO have significant violent crime problems. The STL crime rate has been improving impressively. When I went there recently, I was shocked by relative improvement. Neighborhoods that were dilapidated in the mid-00s are now happening spots. Flee the coasts! Opportunities await in the country!

bane 13y ago

This is potentially a great way to go and solve the "engineering shortage" in the U.S. There are tons of qualified engineers in places all over the U.S., but S.V. never bothers to look for them. The great side benefit is that the cost of living in most of the U.S. is much lower than on the coasts meaning you can almost get 2 people in nowhere Alabama or Nashville, Someplace for the price of 1 San Franciscan or 1 New Yorker. They'll speak English, share a common-ish culture, and have gone through the American educational system so interfacing with them isn't nearly as hard as real offshored employees or contracted firms. They'll also be within continental U.S. time-zones. You want to solve work visa problems? This is how you do it. I've met a few entrepreneurs who were self-funding and thus really cared about their burn rate while building their product who opted for teams of devs in overlooked places in the U.S. If you want a starting point, checkout towns near DOE National Labs. They're usually out in the middle of nowheresville (because of nukes) and are full of incredibly educated, qualified people, who may have moved there for lab work and ended up not like the stifling academic environment of National Labs. There resumes may not be a string of startups, but they're used to working on bleeding edge stuff and the cost of living in these areas is generally pretty low. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_laboratory

cwal37 13y ago
I agree with your overall point of looking in the areas around DOE labs (disclaimer: I'm at one now and worked at a different one in the past), but maybe only half-ish of them are truly in nowheresville. I would say Idaho, Los Alamos, NETL, Pacific, and probably Ames definitely are; while Oak Ridge is kind of on the bubble. This might just be my bias having grown up in the Midwest. The rest are in major metropolitan areas, or very close by, such as: Livermore, Brookhaven, Argonne, and NREL (among others). One thing you might notice is that many of the more out-of-the-way labs are on or next to the campuses of large universities with strong technical bases that maybe you didn't know about, like Iowa State for Ames and West Virginia University for NETL.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Don't forget Fermi National Accelerator Lab (Batavia, IL). I worked there a year (LHC CMS detector), and it was so terrible I jumped right back to the private sector with ~5 other co-workers.

WadeF 13y ago

Folks love to talk about the Midwest as fly-over nation, but the Midwest is a great place to hire. Of Zapier's 9 person team we have 4 people in the Midwest: 2 engineers, 1 marketing, 1 support. And we have no intention of stopping hiring in the Midwest.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Does it have to be the Midwest though? I'm in Chicago, and moving to Florida due to the weather and less-brutal state income/property tax (and I can own a sailboat). TL;DR Don't overlook low-cost locales for talent.
- WadeF 13y ago
  Correct. We work with folks anywhere. :-)

forkandwait 13y ago

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Rapids,_Iowa http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Rapids,_Iowa

lost_name 13y ago

I'm jealous -- I would love to telecommute from my home town in the Upper Peninsula, but it just wasn't happening when I was looking for jobs after college. I ended up moving to a bigger city just to get a job as a software engineer. Still looking for a way to get back home, though. There have been so few options, and none where I felt I'd be able to advance my career. Self employment has always been the most attractive option.

swlkr 13y ago
Hey there is http://weworkremotely.com http://weworkremotely.com, and there's always automattic, if you're into wordpress
spitfire 13y ago
You could always start your own company. I loved the upper peninsula when I visited years ago. and it seemed /dirt/ cheap, I paid $20/night for a motel. Plus any place with Cornish pasties at every stop steals my heart.

zgohr 13y ago

I approve this message, as I am a web software developer in the midwest. I'm also involved in a great startup focused community here, http://digitalfertilizer.org/ http://digitalfertilizer.org/ with a network of high quality developers and designers, many of whom are full-time employed by startups all across the country. I'm also on the market for remote work. Same username on Twitter.

zedpm 13y ago

There is absolutely an opportunity to hire talented people at affordable rates outside major urban areas. I just finished an eight year adventure growing a startup from nothing, and I did it remotely from South Dakota. In a few months I'll be looking for another remote opportunity with a company like Expensify that "gets it"; I'll get to work from my beautiful hometown and they'll likely get talent cheaper than they could in an expensive major metro area.

donretag 13y ago

Good for them. It really helps when the entire company embraces a distributed workforce and not just having that "one guy". I live in California, two hours away from the Bay Area, and I still cannot convince employers to hire remote. Yet they still send me recruiting emails.

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Pyrodogg 13y ago

The Valley != Access to Tech Jobs Most of the Midwest doesn't have a dying need for "The Valley". This article reads a bit like SV is the saving grace of the Midwest, If only those people had access to tech. I think there's a very healthy tech scene in many areas of the Midwest. I live in Minneapolis and there are plenty of local companies doing well with local people. There are also quite a few local resources for entrepreneurs without the need to be involved in SV. For starters: http://tech.mn/ http://tech.mn/

platz 13y ago
St. Louis too, although I am Chicago
aidenn0 13y ago
When I graduated Purdue, 9 years ago, there was very little in the way of software jobs at least (And I got the impression that the top companeis hiring Mech E and EE students could be as selective as they wanted). I had to go to one of the coasts to get a sane offer. The only real job offer I got in Indiana was a one year contract for $30k/year in Fort Wayne, which was less than half the salary for the non-contract position I took in California. There is no sane cost of living adjustment that will cause those to be comparable.
- shas3 13y ago
  Twin Cities and Chicago areas are exceptions to the rule, when it comes to Midwest. Both have a healthy mix of old-school industrial giants, financial, retail, and new tech and bio companies. This is different from other big metros in the region like Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. Pittsburgh is another (arguably) Midwestern city that has a growing new-tech/bio industry (Google and Intel + recently, old-school Bosch Research Center + several medical-sector startups).

up_and_up 13y ago

I currently live in Michigan and telecommute fulltime for a company on the East Coast. I highly recommend it! It works well as our entire team is distributed.

imroot 13y ago

I don't really call this "Outsourcing." I call it smart hiring. I have two teams -- one in Cincinnati, and one in Walnut Hills, CA. On my teams, I have a blend of about 60% onsite and 40% remote workers. I pay equally across the board, with the guys in CA getting an extra $1K/month due to the insane cost of living. I hire wherever I can find talent, and I find technology that works to bring us together as a team regardless of our location.

geebee 13y ago

Although I won't be moving to the midwest, I am rooting for this. I'm in SF because I grew up here and have a lot of family in the area. I don't live here because of the excellent salaries, because while the average software developer here earns (according to sfgate and us news best jobs) between $110,000 and $120,000 a year, the median 3br house costs 1.1 million. It would be a great triumph if the tech industry found a way to function without needing to move every software developer internationally into a the 48 square miles of SF plus a small corridor down the peninsula. I've read about startups in Baltimore, St. Louis. These are bustling, interesting old cities with cool architecture, walkable downtowns, great old gardens and museums, and vastly lower rents. If the tech industry could find a way to convert some of those 110K a year jobs in SF into a large number of $95k a year jobs in cincinatti or st. louis, it would have an exceptional effect on the world. And you know, if you are paying $110k in a place where a reasonably nice 3br house can be had for $300k, I'd be a lot more receptive to worries of a worker "shortage" than if you're offering that salary in a place where a 3br house is $1.1. So all I'm really saying here is good luck, I hope this works for everyone involved.

h1karu 13y ago

why pick a geographic region at all ? Why not just hire the best people no matter where they are ? 37signals.com/remote/

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