

Changing Careers at 31 - mattdeboard
http://mattdeboard.net/2011/06/17/career-change-in-your-30s-is-possible/

======
hapless
Matt might be a little out of touch with the local IT community. Working for a
small consulting group in Indianapolis, I've been pushed into Python and
Django work more than once, and I was certainly not looking for it. I
blundered into it, unavoidably.

Contrary to the stereotype you see on TV, Indiana is a predominately urban
state. Parks and Recreation's "Pawnee" couldn't be further from typical.

The central metro area, the Carmel-Indianapolis MSA, is two million people.
The part of the Chicago MSA that lies in Indiana is another half million. The
Fort Wayne, Evansville, and Muncie-Anderson MSAs are good-sized cities in
their own right. Needless to say, in those millions of people, there are many,
_many_ python/django users.

You might say this hit a nerve for me. I feel the need to shill for my home
state:

    
    
      - Indiana's major industries are manufacturing and logistics, not agriculture. 
    
      - Technology work is readily available, in a number of industries.
    
      - Indianapolis routinely attracts technology startups.
    
      - Indiana is home to two major research universities and many large corporations.
    

In short, it looks a lot more like the east coast than the plains. It's a
small state, but it's relatively densely populated. There's no shortage of
tech jobs, only a shortage of tech workers. You may take a 25-40% pay cut
versus the coasts, but the money goes a heck of a lot further in a place where
a detached home costs <$100k.

~~~
mattdeboard
hapless, I think you drew conclusions about my remarks far beyond what I
intended.

There are a couple of Python foundries in Indy that I know of, SixFeetUp and
my current employer. SixFeetUp uses Plone for their work (and are extremely
active in the Plone community), and of the guys I've met they're pretty damn
smart. They're actually looking for a Python dev as well.

All that said, my impression of Indy is that it's overwhelmingly .NET-
oriented, with a side of Ruby. I'm not sure what prompted you to launch into a
general multi-pronged defense of Indiana based off a couple lines of my blog
post. If you took anything I wrote as "all the programmers in Indiana suck",
you're wrong. The devs at my shop are clearly talented and smart, and I love
picking their brains. Same for many of the programmers I've met at meetups.

We both know Indy isn't a tech mecca. That doesn't mean there aren't smart &
talented people here, or that there aren't companies doing exciting,
interesting things. But, from my observations and conversations, the companies
doing exciting and interesting things are almost certainly not doing them with
Python.

Is that observation wildly different than reality? If so, please let me know
because I'd love to get more plugged in.

Sorry that you got offended; I certainly didn't intend that.

~~~
hapless
I consciously over-reacted, Matt. By its nature, I expect HN to be a
predominately coastal audience. I came away from your blog post with a bad
impression of Indiana, and I wanted to get in front of that problem in the HN
thread. If it had been inside baseball, a piece written for an audience of
midwesterners, I would not have needed a proactive defense.

I agree with your impression of Indy as "overwhelmingly .NET-oriented."
Microsoft has a huge market presence at every level. Nevertheless, in my
experience, python is at least as common as any other non-Microsoft stack.

~~~
mattdeboard
Come now. Ruby is extremely dominant here.

Also, Indiana is boring, has poor infrastructure, and any special events that
would lure young people are concentrated almost exclusively in Broad
Ripple/Mass Ave/etc. Mass transit is a joke. I mean, really, bus stops in a
ditch?

I was born and raised in Indiana; Greenwood no less. After high school I left
and lived all over the world. Indiana is bland and very boring. It has very
little in common with the East coast unless you're talking about places like
Wilmington NC or Jacksonville, FL. Oh, and the utterly shit weather.

I still don't get your defensiveness. I moved back for cheap schoolin' since
I'm still an in-state resident. It's fine if you're ready to settle down and
play some golf, mow the lawn, etc. But in the context of my blog post, where
businesses are doing exciting things with Python, Indiana is dead in those
terms.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Ruby seems to be dominant everywhere - but that might just be because they
have better marketing. Or, maybe, they just have louder supporters.

