4 ms·

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and yes, it's a great place to raise kids. but it's not a great place to be when you're starting out your life. I love Pgh

by burnte 12y ago

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and yes, it's a great place to raise kids. but it's not a great place to be when you're starting out your life. I love Pgh and always will, but they city has a serious problem thinking ahead and finding ways to grow. It tried being a financial city in the 80s, then a tech city in the 90s, all the while it was growing as a medical city. It's still the best place to get sick for nearly anything, the medical facilities are second to none. But aside from education and hospitals, there's no nearly enough industry there, not nearly enough new-world accoutrements. I, and many people like me, moved away after high school and college because the city can feel small, constrained, and too old fashioned. I don't think it doesn't need to lose that to grow, but I don't know what else it does need. I hope it finds it.

fixermark 12y ago
Your perception doesn't match mine. I wasn't here in the '90s, but Apple, Disney, and Google seem to have bet their chips on Pittsburgh being a tech hub... And the bet seems to be paying off. Maybe the seeds were sown in the '90s and they sprouted in the aughts? I'd have to know what was attempted in the '90s to evaluate the question; looks like I have some research to do. ;)
- johnward 12y ago
  IBM has a pretty good Pittsburgh location now. There seems to be a bunch of startups and other places for tech jobs like FedEx in Moon. I think the tech market is thriving in Pittsburgh.
  - dougb 12y ago
    We has lots of open positions for those of you looking to move to Pittsburgh. http://t.co/g9HmY0wXTS http://t.co/g9HmY0wXTS
bmj 12y ago
I am life-long 'burger (aside from 4 years away for university), and this doesn't match my experience (I'm 41, so I've been around the proverbial block here--I lived through the first "renaissance" in East Liberty, and am observing the re-growth of that neighborhood now). I jumped about the tech boom bus in the late 90s, and from what I've seen, the tech boom never ended. And, in my experience, that industry is varied--want to build websites? Build medical devices? Work on speech recognition software? There are jobs here for you. not nearly enough new-world accoutrements Can you give examples? As others have pointed out, I think PGH does a great job of bridging the gap between a large, cosmopolitan city and a small town where you don't have to feel lost forever. Of course, as you point out, the flip side to that it is a small town--you have to very careful to avoid burning bridges because it is highly likely you may need to cross that bridge again at some point. (Edit: fixed formatting)
- jaaron 12y ago
  > the tech boom never ended As a mostly life-long 'burger (up until I was 26), I disagree. In fact, I'll claim that if you're a software engineer in Pittsburgh, then you're in a dead-end job as long as you remain in Pittsburgh. Yes, you'll have a very nice quality of life; however, you have significantly less opportunities as a software engineer there. Aside from a few firms, Pittsburgh doesn't have an industry that provides the environment, training, challenges and opportunities of both large technology firms and a robust startup community that you see in other major tech hubs. This lowers the wages and, to be frank, lowers the quality of engineers available to hire in Pittsburgh. It makes it more difficult to move out for engineers who have spent the formative part of their career in Pittsburgh. And that's fine. Software programming isn't the be-all end-all of human activity. It's awesome to be part of something bigger, delivering real value aside from shipping the next social-photo-sharing-app. But just because you can get software programming jobs in Pittsburgh in no way allows Pittsburgh to compare to San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, LA, Boston, Austin... It's just not the same environment and we shouldn't pretend it is.
  - bmj 12y ago
    That's probably true. I'm speaking as a non-CS-educated developer who is content in a "dead-end" job, so you're right, perhaps we are comparing apples to oranges.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    It's not the same environment, but I think that you're way off base regarding the quality of engineers. Of course, as a software engineer in Pittsburgh, I may have blinders on. ;) On the other hand, given the rate that Google is growing in Pittsburgh, I suspect they'd disagree with you about available talent quality. (On the third hand, "quality" is a fuzzy metric unless we nail down more concretely how one would evaluate it. Is someone writing thousands of lines of code per day at Facebook higher "quality" than someone writing a hundred lines of code per day on machine-learning cancer detection logic?)
    - bmj 12y ago
mtdewcmu 12y ago
>>It tried being a financial city in the 80s, then a tech city in the 90s, all the while it was growing as a medical city. You make it sound as if these trends were inauthentic. I think they were, in fact, organic outgrowths of the city's strengths. As long as Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh are there, there will always be a strength in tech and medicine. I was a bit too young to be much of an observer of the 80s as they happened, but finance was most likely a strength due to Pittsburgh's prior status as headquarters for a significant number of Fortune 500 companies and banks: PNC, Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil, US Steel, Alcoa, HJ Heinz, Westinghouse... At the tail end of the postwar industrial boom, there must have been a good deal of money in Pittsburgh, ready to create a financial hub.

by burnte 12y ago

fixermark 12y ago

Your perception doesn't match mine. I wasn't here in the '90s, but Apple, Disney, and Google seem to have bet their chips on Pittsburgh being a tech hub... And the bet seems to be paying off. Maybe the seeds were sown in the '90s and they sprouted in the aughts? I'd have to know what was attempted in the '90s to evaluate the question; looks like I have some research to do. ;)

johnward 12y ago
IBM has a pretty good Pittsburgh location now. There seems to be a bunch of startups and other places for tech jobs like FedEx in Moon. I think the tech market is thriving in Pittsburgh.
- dougb 12y ago
  We has lots of open positions for those of you looking to move to Pittsburgh. http://t.co/g9HmY0wXTS http://t.co/g9HmY0wXTS

bmj 12y ago

I am life-long 'burger (aside from 4 years away for university), and this doesn't match my experience (I'm 41, so I've been around the proverbial block here--I lived through the first "renaissance" in East Liberty, and am observing the re-growth of that neighborhood now). I jumped about the tech boom bus in the late 90s, and from what I've seen, the tech boom never ended. And, in my experience, that industry is varied--want to build websites? Build medical devices? Work on speech recognition software? There are jobs here for you. not nearly enough new-world accoutrements Can you give examples? As others have pointed out, I think PGH does a great job of bridging the gap between a large, cosmopolitan city and a small town where you don't have to feel lost forever. Of course, as you point out, the flip side to that it is a small town--you have to very careful to avoid burning bridges because it is highly likely you may need to cross that bridge again at some point. (Edit: fixed formatting)

jaaron 12y ago
> the tech boom never ended As a mostly life-long 'burger (up until I was 26), I disagree. In fact, I'll claim that if you're a software engineer in Pittsburgh, then you're in a dead-end job as long as you remain in Pittsburgh. Yes, you'll have a very nice quality of life; however, you have significantly less opportunities as a software engineer there. Aside from a few firms, Pittsburgh doesn't have an industry that provides the environment, training, challenges and opportunities of both large technology firms and a robust startup community that you see in other major tech hubs. This lowers the wages and, to be frank, lowers the quality of engineers available to hire in Pittsburgh. It makes it more difficult to move out for engineers who have spent the formative part of their career in Pittsburgh. And that's fine. Software programming isn't the be-all end-all of human activity. It's awesome to be part of something bigger, delivering real value aside from shipping the next social-photo-sharing-app. But just because you can get software programming jobs in Pittsburgh in no way allows Pittsburgh to compare to San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, LA, Boston, Austin... It's just not the same environment and we shouldn't pretend it is.
- bmj 12y ago
  That's probably true. I'm speaking as a non-CS-educated developer who is content in a "dead-end" job, so you're right, perhaps we are comparing apples to oranges.
- fixermark 12y ago
  It's not the same environment, but I think that you're way off base regarding the quality of engineers. Of course, as a software engineer in Pittsburgh, I may have blinders on. ;) On the other hand, given the rate that Google is growing in Pittsburgh, I suspect they'd disagree with you about available talent quality. (On the third hand, "quality" is a fuzzy metric unless we nail down more concretely how one would evaluate it. Is someone writing thousands of lines of code per day at Facebook higher "quality" than someone writing a hundred lines of code per day on machine-learning cancer detection logic?)
  - bmj 12y ago

mtdewcmu 12y ago

>>It tried being a financial city in the 80s, then a tech city in the 90s, all the while it was growing as a medical city. You make it sound as if these trends were inauthentic. I think they were, in fact, organic outgrowths of the city's strengths. As long as Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh are there, there will always be a strength in tech and medicine. I was a bit too young to be much of an observer of the 80s as they happened, but finance was most likely a strength due to Pittsburgh's prior status as headquarters for a significant number of Fortune 500 companies and banks: PNC, Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil, US Steel, Alcoa, HJ Heinz, Westinghouse... At the tail end of the postwar industrial boom, there must have been a good deal of money in Pittsburgh, ready to create a financial hub.