
The American midwest is quickly becoming a blue-collar version of Silicon Valley - watchdogtimer
https://qz.com/1212875/the-american-midwest-is-quickly-becoming-a-blue-collar-version-of-silicon-valley/
======
rotten
As a tech worker in a startup in the midwest I find this article vaguely
insulting. On the one hand I am happy to see more acknowledgement that tech
does happen in places other than Silicon Valley, but on the other hand
apparently it is only "mid-tech" and only good enough for "blue collar"
workers.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
I found it extremely difficult to find any employer in Indiana that wouldn't
scoff at paying a senior engineer more than $75K in 2015. That is less than my
inflation adjusted junior engineer starting salary 15 years prior. The entire
industry has a problem with fair pay and rushing to the middle is just a way
to squeeze more profit from the labor of tech workers.

~~~
firebones
It's hard making this point if you don't have access to capital, but if the
talent is comparable, doesn't this represent an opportunity to go after an
idea with above-average talent through simply paying globally-optimal market
rates and pricing out the competition for talent?

It seems that there's an opportunity here to incubate ideas at a discount
globally by "overpaying" locally.

Are there VC funds that are exploiting this? And I don't mean simply by making
margin on the back of exploiting the CoL adjustments, but by drawing on
regional talent pools with lower CoLs? I'm shocked there isn't more innovation
coming from the upper midwest hub that lies along the belt connecting UICU,
Purdue, CMU, etc.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> the belt connecting UICU, Purdue, CMU, etc._

Look at the first destinations reports for those CS programs and you'll see
what happens. People leave the region after getting the degree. In droves.

------
shas3
Bizarre article full of unsubstantiated claims (e.g. Midwest cities generally
“spending years in the doldrums” huh? Twin Cities, Chicago, Kansas City,
Indianapolis, etc. have consistently been doing well) and sketchy assumptions
(mid-tech blue collar?). This whole tendency to bunch all mid-west cities
together is ignorant and condescending. Also, “decline of mid west cities” is
mostly a story of _cities_ not necessarily the entire region or even the
cities’ suburbs (Detroit’s wealthy suburbs are as rich as ever). Generally
muddled piece.

~~~
iamdave
_Indianapolis, etc. have consistently been doing well_

I can't speak for the other examples, but...ask me how I know you don't live
in Indianapolis. This city definitely has a lot of potential to really be
something even greater (than I think it is now), and I'm proud to call it my
home-but don't romanticize it _too_ much.

We are having a series of existential crises here; just jumped out of one
political fire and into another with state and municipal leaders (oh dear god
are we about to see the end of Unigov? Probably not but a man can dream),
schools are laughably bad, roads are hilariously worse (I challenge you to
drive a few miles north on Meridian street and try to not have your car
swallowed by one of the hundreds of near-car sized potholes), but
hey....rent's cheap, so we've got that going for us. Which is nice.

Don't sleep on Naptown, if that was your overall sentiment, for sure. Don't
sleep on us because there's some rumblings of a real explosion of change
underneath it all, and I think we've got nowhere to go but up...same time
though yeah we've got a LOT of problems that are going require some very
painful decision making in the next 10 years and we gotta look that horse
square in the mouth.

~~~
nightski
Let's not pretend things are any different in California.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
And CA doesn't even have nature to blame it's infrastructure problems on
(earthquakes aside).

~~~
stevenwoo
The landslides taking out various mountain roads every few years says
otherwise. A single two hundred foot section of road recently got an expedited
replacement so it cost 10 million dollars to fix and that was just a two lane
low traffic road.

[http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/19/highway-35-repai...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/19/highway-35-repairs/)

------
brandonmenc
> “The modern factory job is a mid-tech job”

No it is not.

Anyone could work a factory job. The least intelligent, least motivated people
could punch a clock and earn a decent living tightening the same bolt a
thousand times a day, all day long.

At best, mid-tech jobs are like modern clerking jobs, but even that's pushing
it. The modern factory job is fast-food, and the lack of associated pay and
benefits is a major problem.

Too many people are simply not smart enough to be programmers.

~~~
lsc
>Anyone could work a factory job. The least intelligent, least motivated
people could punch a clock and earn a decent living tightening the same bolt a
thousand times a day, all day long.

I don't have personal experience as a '50s factory worker, but I do have some
experience assembling things and working on cars.

I doubt this description of factory work being completely brainless. If you've
ever tried to watch someone who isn't mechanically inclined assemble anything,
you can see that there is a skill in fitting things together. Even if your job
is to tighten that same bolt every day, you've still gotta figure out how to
properly torque it; too loose and the bolt comes out, too tight and you shear
the goddamn thing off. Use one of those old style torque wrenches and you're
gonna be way slower than the next guy.

~~~
brandonmenc
Low-level factory jobs really aren't that complicated.

You can take a person off the street and have them pressing the "go" button on
an injection molder within minutes.

~~~
iaw
There seems to be a level of arrogance coming across in your descriptions of
"Low-level factory jobs."

Having spent time in both worlds I have to say that your assessment of the
skill and devotion required to work in those positions in inaccurate at best.
Insulting at worst.

~~~
brandonmenc
I have actually worked these jobs.

When I was a teenager I had temp jobs where I was literally bussed into a
plastics factory, given a few minutes of instruction, and put on the shop
floor to press a button on an injection molder.

No "skill" or "devotion" required. Just a warm body.

~~~
iaw
There is a distinction between working a temp position and people that worked
in factories for a career. I'd argue that temp positions will bias away from
skill and devotion by the nature of position undermining your anecdote.

It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you
understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers.

~~~
brandonmenc
> It's like saying you worked as a fry cook at McDonald's for a day so you
> understand the in's and out's of all restaurant workers.

Based on a quick search, in the U.S. there's something like 5-6 million
restaurant workers, and nearly 4 million of them are fast food workers, so a
fry cook at McDonald's _can_ say they understand the ins and outs of the
majority of restaurant workers.

Which, is my point.

Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the
least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-
skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are _not_ the new factory jobs,
because by definition fewer people are able to work them.

~~~
lsc
>Most factory jobs are not skilled in the sense that programming is, and the
least-skilled tech job is still more complicated and difficult than the least-
skilled factory job - meaning, tech jobs are not the new factory jobs, because
by definition fewer people are able to work them.

Ah. well, my main point was just that I think most of the 'high paying factory
jobs' were jobs that took some skill and experience. You didn't just walk in
and say "I've got hands!" and get a good wage for easy work. I'd guess it'd be
more like working at one of those tech support script farms today, I mean, if
you show up without obvious skills or credentials. "Here, read this script, we
will judge you on how fast you get the customer off the phone, rather than,
you know, actually solving problems."

My own career came up through the really low paying jobs in tech, and I spent
some time in such a tech support farm; the difference in both the number of
people who could do it and what we get paid is vast between level one scripted
tech support and the sort of systems administration/production engineer work
that I do now. Much like how one could work one's way up from a very basic
factory job to something that was comfortable and remunerative.

------
wavefunction
"mid tech" is an interesting descriptor because I'm doing the much the same
work as Silicon Valleyites despite not having a degree. Not having a degree
has cut me off from some opportunities but I can just pursue those in my own
time.

I guess I find as I get older less value in the opinions of folks out in SV as
I read more and more crazy things about the place and the environment out
there. I do appreciate the opportunity for folks who love that environment to
partake of it though.

I also appreciate the functional advances coming out of SV like libraries and
frameworks that I get to use and improve my own work but at the end of the
work day I love getting home to my .25 acre lot with my two dogs glad to see
me and go for a nice walk in a green-belt.

I'm going to be dead some day so why not enjoy what I have.

------
anonytrary
52% of _network architects_ don't have a degree but 95% of app developers do?
This is the exact opposite as I would expect.

~~~
closeparen
A network architect is an experienced technician (the "blue-collar" form of
IT) who graduated from help desk and break/fix to helping out with project
work to getting to design and lead projects. In that world, you may have a
trade-school degree in IT/MIS and/or vendor certifications, but a CS degree
isn't going to help you operate the Windows Server admin panel, configure
Cisco routers, know which model number of HP switch is appropriate for a
situation, or make sure that your underlings get the low-voltage cabling and
patch panels right. It's going to help you write Windows Server and the router
firmware that technicians operate.

Planning, installing, configuring, and integrating off-the-shelf components to
create an IT environment for a business is a totally different world from
software engineering, particularly in the Silicon Valley style.

~~~
anonytrary
Thanks, this is very clear now. I must have been confusing "network architect"
with "software architect".

------
germinalphrase
I have family in the trades (electric & plumbing) - but I would love to hear
from anyone who works in advanced manufacturing, automation, or other
specializations about their career path and field growth/career longevity.

I am considering a career change. I went into k12 education due to the
mission, but I'm burning out on the time/emotional investment in relation to
the compensation.

------
fictionfuture
Silicon Valley is mostly a place for group thinkers with a "get rich quick"
mentality and rich parents. That was my impression after living in Sf working
as a CEO for 5 years.

------
booleandilemma
What is the difference between a computer programmer and a software
application developer?

Aren’t these titles used interchangeably?

~~~
TheCoelacanth
As titles they are often used interchangeably, but the BLS categorizes them
separately based on kind of an old-fashioned idea of how software is
developed. The distinction is that software developers[1] plan out how
software will work and the computer programmers[2] write the code to make it
work.

The idea that these are separate roles is rapidly going out of fashion in the
industry and is already pretty outdated. Only 300k workers are categorized as
computer programmers while 1.3 million are categorized as software developers
and on top of that the number of software developers is projected to grow by
24% over the next decade while the number of computer programmers is projected
to decline by 7%.

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/software-developers.htm)

[2] [https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/computer-programmers.htm)

~~~
ams6110
I have always listed my occupation as "Computer Programmer" on my tax return,
though I have a CS degree and do everything from database administration to
network administration to software design and development (including writing
code).

~~~
pmorici
I think you might be missing the point. Think of it this way. Ask yourself, is
there a difference between a software consultant and a software freelancer?
Everything else equal which person do you think gets paid more a consultant or
a freelancer.

------
cylinder
Quartz is quickly becoming a glossy version of a clickbait farm

