No one who has done his research doubts that Cleveland can be a really nice place to live. It's a charming midsize city with lots of good stuff happening. Unfor

No one who has done his research doubts that Cleveland can be a really nice place to live. It's a charming midsize city with lots of good stuff happening. Unfortunately, that's often not how we choose our geographic location. America's major cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York) and one midsize city with a special industry focus (the bay area) offer almost inconceivable economic opportunity to people in HN's line of work. Relative to population, their software and technology industries are tens of times the size of Cleveland. If you are a schoolteacher (one of the most common and widely distributed white collar jobs), Cleveland is probably a hugely appealing destination. As a person working in the technology industry (a much more centralized niche), it presents a tremendous trade-off between quality of life and opportunity. It's telling that the essay's author is a 100% remote employee of a firm in the bay area. Not even an ardent defender of the (non-Chicago) midwest was able to build his ideal career there.