I live in Minneapolis, in one of the "less safe" neighborhoods. Compared to the house I lived in in Philadelphia, which had bars on the first-story windows, it's perfectly fine from a crime proximity standpoint.
The house is 2500 sq.ft., with four bedrooms and three stories (not counting the basement), and we pay about $1200 a month for it. The neighbors are quiet and there aren't too many break-ins in the area.
Cost of living is wonderfully low here. Being smack in the middle of the country, and close to Canada, we have access to a ton of stuff that other areas just don't get. As a major transport hub, we also get extremely fresh seafood, which makes the local sushi scene vibrant.
Music, art, and entertainment are huge here. If it's a day ending in y, there's something going on somewhere in the metro.
There are a number of tech meetups in the area. I go to a few, like GoMN, AWS MN, and PHPMN. I'm thinking of swapping out GoMN for RubyMN - we'll see. There's a handful of tech conferences here, too.
The Twin Cities definitely feels like a Millennial city. Like there's a ton of potential, and it's not just on its way to greatness, it's starting to achieve it.
That is not to say it's flawless - like any place inhabited by humans, it has its problems. But the benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks.
From their description I'm guessing Northeast Minneapolis. It is an old blue-collar area currently being revived, and has quite a few older 3-story houses.
A lot of the old warehouse buildings have been gutted and renovated, turned into office spaces, breweries, lofts, restaurants, and coffee shops. Its also considered the arts district of Minneapolis.
I think the crime used to be worse than it currently is, but I'm not certain of that. I started working in the area a few years ago, and I haven't witnessed anything unpleasant. It feels quite safe here.
If you go across the river to North Minneapolis, you'll run into a rougher neighborhood with bars on windows and stuff like that. But even then I've heard things are improving over there too.
The Central neighborhood, just south of Lake St. It's not as ...hmm... exciting as North, granted, but I can still point out the leader of the local gang if I see him and his compatriots driving around.
Minneapolis also has a serious crime problem the article completely ignores.
It has about a 10 murder rate (per 100k people). Which is over twice the national average, higher than SF, twice that of Salt Lake City and 50%+ higher than NYC (but lower than Pittsburgh).
It has over five times the rape rate of SF or NYC.
It has twice the robbery rate of NYC, Salt Lake (and higher than SF or Pittsburgh).
An assault rate higher than those other cities, and twice that of SF.
And a burglary rate three or four times higher than NYC, and twice that of SF.
The article focused on Minneapolis, but talked about the history of the whole Twin Cities region. And when you consider St. Paul and the whole region, I think it's a pretty safe area.
Cities in Minnesota also don't annex neighboring cities, even if it makes sense. That results in a lot of small cities making up the metro area, as opposed to one large city. That can skew statistics, as Minneapolis proper makes up only a small part of our metro area.
Its a midwest thing. I grew up in the MPLS/MKE ish region and its definitely a midwest thing based on my Army travels around the country.
Half the people in the new york metro area live in the city. There is some diversity.
A quarter of the people in the Milwaukee metro area live in the city. Almost no middle class people live in the city, as a percentage. Its all dirt poor in the slums and a couple rich folks along the lake shore areas, thats it.
In MPLS, I kid you not, less than a tenth of the people in the metro area live in the city. Nobody lives downtown but the skyscrapers and some poor people, and as you note, poor people always have amazing high crime stats, so you guess the results. Detroit is pretty much the same way although I haven't spent much time there.
Basically on the coasts, there are middle and upper class people living in cities, which NEVER happens in the midwest. "the city" is a couple soulless skyscrapers, maybe a public uni, and invariably a giant crime filled slum. In the midwest all the cultural and entertainment stuff happens like a quarter mile away from the city or more, in one of the burbs.
If you see a skyscraper, on the coasts its probably a fun place to be, and in the midwest its always the opposite, if you can see a skyscraper, run...
There are two cultural / social effects that really confuse discussions between midwesterners and coasties.
1) Our cities are cultural wastelands with nothing to do except bar hop with fake ID carrying college students. All the cultural stuff happens in the burbs, music, art, parks, most festivals (makerfaire, etc), almost all our sports teams except basketball, all the bars that aren't entirely full of kids with fake IDs or need bullet proof vests to enter, all the good restaurants, all the good or upscale or specialty stores, none of that stuff is downtown in the midwest. My impression of the coasts is ALL the burbs have on the coasts is houses, if you want to buy a pop-tart or a bottle of pepsi you need to drive into the coastal city to shop, etc. So "new urbanism" and all that confuses the hell out of midwesterners. So the coasties say if I move downtown I'll have vibrant cultural activities but there's nothing to do downtown and any time I want to do something I'd have to jump in a car and drive out to the burbs.
This also confuses coasties who get imported. So they think our downtown is like Manhattan but a little smaller, and are mystified that its possibly the most boring four square miles of office buildings on the planet, and tell everyone there's nothing to do in Milwaukee but get drunk, get drugs, and get shot at... but drive out to the burbs, like maybe Brookfield, and we have concerts in the park every summer weekend, and symphony and other music in the amphitheater maybe every other weekend, at multiple sites, and festivals and fairs and street parties and parks and great shopping and great food stores and ... But you gotta drive out to the burbs to have any fun, cities are dead.
The imports have a really rough time, property developers have made these million dollar condos for california people to move into because "all the fun is downtown" back home and condos are supposed to cost a million bucks. But it doesn't work that way in the midwest, so the get all depressed / freaked out that there's nothing to do outside their million dollar downtown condo but get drunk, get drugs, get robbed, or get shot. Could buy a great house in a great school district in a great lifestyle area for a quarter mil, but no, the imports all get a million dollar downtown condo and complain there's nothing to do but get drunk.
In the midwest the cities are empty and soul-less, whereas I'm told on the coasts its the burbs that are empty and soul-less. This confuses the heck out of everyone when coasties and midwesterners talk to each other.
2) On the coasts if someone says they're from NY its over 50% odds they are literally living at a postal address in NYC. In contrast, in the midwest, most people you meet are not from the closest downtown office building city but they WILL say they are. 90% of the people who claim to live in Minneapolis do NOT live in MPLS but in a burb in the greater metro area. I tell people I'm from Milwaukee and people who know MKE feel sad for me and the coasties humorously think I grew up in an office building or in the north side slums, but I actually grew up three burbs to the west (about 15 miles?) in something of a paradise.
Some girls I dated a long time ago were "from Minneapolis" or "from Detroit" but what that really means in midwestern speak is they lived in a burb and the closest skyscraper was maybe 2 miles away in Detroit, for example.
There's a kernel of truth to this, but 'city == wasteland + cesspool' is ridiculous. I've lived in south minneapolis most of my life, and never spent any significant amount of time in the burbs. (The last time I made it outside the MSP/St. Paul limits was last november to have my wisdom teeth out, at my local dentist's referral.)
There's plenty of culture here, and I haven't been mugged/shot/raped yet. North minneapolis is essentially a different city, with its fair share of crime and other problems, which I can't speak to.
The big difference between here and a "big coastal city" is that things are a lot more spread out per person. I think this leads to everything being on a smaller scale and more distributed. Most of minneapolis isn't downtown, but mixed use residential. My peers (25-30 year olds) mostly rent houses and live with roommates. Small (3 story max?) apartment buildings are the norm.
As a MSP-ian with a pretty heavy classical & jazz & random stuff habit, I never go to the suburbs unless I'm visiting my grandparents. Ever. Even in quiet and boring downtown St Paul it is easy to rotate through the opera/the chamber orchestra/the Baroque Room/Studio Z/Bedlam Theater/the Amsterdam and match that with drinks at any number of establishments. Minneapolis has many more choices and more beautiful people, all downtown, including one of the most vibrant theater scenes in the country. And our city farmer's markets kick ass. The suburban ones are small and in a church parking lot.
Why would you go to a suburb for culture? I seriously don't understand. There is nothing in the MSP suburbs unless the orchestra drives out there for an outreach concert. And my friend who likes country music drives out of town to a country bar...
Since a few others have said you're wrong about MPLS, I'll say you're wrong about MKE. In my experience, you're wrong, I can't imagine going to the suburbs for "culture," (except perhaps Wauwatosa) I don't know anyone who does regularly, including people who live in the suburbs.
But Downtown is fairly empty, you're not incorrect. It's Offices, and lunch for office workers. For "Culture," or rather events, I go to the neighbourhoods. Bayview, Riverwest, lower East side.
I did some google searches on "things to do in Bayview" and the like:
Bayview: Buffalo Wild Wings chain (oooh), also plenty of places to get drunk at night. Thats about it. Is there anything to actually do in Bayview other than live there and get drunk?
Riverwest: Most of the time nothing to do. Primarily a residential area and student rentals. A couple of annual festivals (like every other small town or neighborhood in the entire state) and a couple places to get drunk although not as many as the east side. They do have a cool annual bike race, again, like pretty much everywhere else.
East side: This place is more fun. Gentrification is pushing all the fun out. Still, there are some coffee shops and there are tons of places to get drunk (like every other small town in the state, LOL). The annual Brady street festival is fun but, again, its not like its the only block party in the state LOL. Madison has better block parties anyway.
Is there any city, burb, or small town in the state that doesn't offer the exact same stuff as the examples above? I can't find anything listed that Hurley, Sparta, or Beaver Dam doesn't do better. Wheres the "culture" in those neighborhoods other than having fifty places to get drunk? (and note the burbs do not exactly lack places to get drunk, LOL, so why are they a wasteland of culture if all culture is, is getting drunk?)
Some of this might be coastie / new urbanism term redefinition. When they say "culture" they seem to mean something totally different than non-coastie / non-new urbanism people, and I think that leads to confusion much like the geographic limits of city vs burb as I previously mentioned.
(edited to add, I might be brutal but I'm fair, for at least 90 mile radius, the Milwaukee city public museum and the Milwaukee city art museum are the best cultural attractions in their field and the burbs have nothing to compare WRT museums. You have to drive down to Chicago to find better museums. Then again I only go to the art museum maybe every other year, and I get the feeling that makes me an extreme art museum patron compared to most people, especially residents, who never go to either facility at all. Actually I take the train to CHC and hang out at their museums more often than I visit the locals, which is funny.)
Having grown up in Milwaukee (the city proper) and now living in Minneapolis (the city proper), I couldn't disagree more. Milwaukee may be very racially segregated, and Minneapolis may have a high achievement gap, but neither city is all slum the way you portray. Far from it.
Most of the culture in the Minneapolis metro area is in Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Downtown Minneapolis is not in any way a slum area. There are lots of luxury condos and apartment buildings on the Minneapolis skyway. The same for downtown Saint Paul. Downtown Saint Paul is nowhere near as vibrant as downtown Minneapolis but that is slowly changing.
I grew up in the KCMO area, and can confirm a similarity there. Actually, as you mentioned, I didn't actually LIVE in KC, I lived right outside in a town called Independence, but nobody really knew that town very well, so we all just said KC. Downtown was something you tended to avoid, at least until relatively recently where there's been a lot of stuff added to do, but now I live out West. People live in Seattle, but I live south of that, in Tacoma. Still say I'm from "Seattle" or "The Seattle Area." I wonder if that's a carry over from when I was in MO.
> Basically on the coasts, there are middle and upper class people living in cities, which NEVER happens in the midwest. "the city" is a couple soulless skyscrapers, maybe a public uni, and invariably a giant crime filled slum. In the midwest all the cultural and entertainment stuff happens like a quarter mile away from the city or more, in one of the burbs.
That is incredibly inaccurate. Pick any mid-sized midwestern city as a counterpoint.
In the midwest the cities are empty and soul-less, whereas I'm told on the coasts its the burbs that are empty and soul-less.
Many Midwestern cities are great, but some downtown areas (meaning the business district, not the whole city) are what you describe. They feel like New York's FiDi. It's changing, but there are blocks in the Chicago Loop that basically close down at 5:00, even though nearby neighborhoods are still active. That said, there are plenty of neighborhoods in Chicago and Minneapolis and Pittsburgh that are vibrant. There just isn't the convex, contiguous block of them that you get on Manhattan (plus parts of Brooklyn and Queens) minus FiDi.
Midwestern suburbs are even more soulless than on the coasts-- suburbia sucks everywhere-- but many Midwestern small towns are nice-- if that's the scene you want. People who live in, say, Northfield, MN will argue vehemently that they're not in suburbia, and they're right. There's a sense of community that you don't get in some California strip mall. Small towns still exist out there. The public schools are good and people go ice fishing or cross-country skiing on the weekend, but you're 40 miles from the theaters. There's a main street with good coffeeshops and pedestrian traffic... but 5 miles out is suburban crapola or woods or cornfields. Like I said, it's not for everyone, but it's a different lifestyle than the suburban one.
Also, what you're describing doesn't seem to apply to the under-35 set. Young people, even in the Midwest, favor cities and, over time, that's reviving them. But it doesn't happen quickly. It's true that there's no shame in living in suburbia in the Midwest, because people are less focused on the social status of one's neighborhood, whereas moving to Jersey if you work on Wall Street can hurt your professional future. I consider that a virtue of the Midwest (even though I dislike suburbia and personally would not want to live there).
Finally, the Midwest is more suburb-centric than New York and Boston, but it's not really any worse than California or even DC/Baltimore.
Having grown up in Chicago's Loop, it is vastly - vaaaaastly - more fun/exciting/busier afterhours now than it ever was before (or at least, in the 80s/90s when I lived there.)
Interestingly, crime is much less of an issue across the river in St. Paul, even though both cities have approximately the same number of police officers per capita (according to Wolfram Alpha). Housing is also generally cheaper in St. Paul.
Considering talent, you also must consider the culture of the region. Minnesotans are generally very understated and humble. I have met many people here who at first blush consider themselves average, but are amazingly talented.
There are truly amazing people here. They just aren't broadcasting it--and their not looking for work.
Agree. There are a lot of semi-offensive comments about "brain drain" and talent level. It's more subtle than that.
There is a lot of talent in the Midwest. What you don't get outside of the Bay, at the highest levels of specialty, is a continuous rather than discrete/illiquid market. (New York has a continuous market, but you're competing with Wall Street for anyone good.) This is a pain point for job-seekers and companies looking for talent. If you're looking for someone with 5 years of Clojure experience, production experience with three specific NoSQL products, and an extensive knowledge of the Javascript world... you can find that in SF at some price. In the Midwest, you might have to train up into the role... or, if you're a job seeker, accept an 80% match on the tech stack.
It's a quantity rather than quality issue (pound for pound, the talent levels in Minneapolis and San Francisco aren't very different) but this allows employers and job seekers both to be very finicky ("purple unicorn" searches) in the Bay. It also makes it possible in the Bay, if you're adept at this game, to double your comp in a bidding war. It's much harder to start a bidding war in a Midwestern city of 500,000.
This "bidding war" effect is also why you see some not-that-talented engineers making a lot of money. In the Bay, you have Haskell engineers at $125k and Java engineers making $300k. Why the inversion? The Java engineer can get 3 employers into a bidding war at the same time; that's nearly impossible to do if you're a Haskell engineer.
Lived in MN for 18 years now in Southern California. If and when you can afford to leave MN, you do it. I pay the same amount that I would for an entire house per month in MPLS for a single in Santa Barbara and that would put people off. But to me, I get to scrap that whole 5-9 months worth of Siberian weather and inevitable seasonal depression and have an inspiring environment.
People who have never lived in MN and read these articles with even the slightest interest in moving to the state are simply out of their minds. My opinion of course.
80% of my peers are MPLS millennials working for Target Corp., Best Buy, and slew of start-ups and marketing firms and there isn't one person I know that would even blink at the price difference if they had the opportunity to move to a coastal region. If you have the chance to leave MN you do.
Tax me out the ass, increase my rent, and inflate my prices, I do not care, as long as I get to see blue skies for more than 2 months a year (If you're lucky).
I am simply an MN ex-pat hater but I find that the coastal cities are bustling and expensive because the $$ is worth your sanity.
I lived in Mpls for about 28 years, recently moved to Seattle and don't regret it. It doesn't mean I won't come back, my family is there and I love northern Minnesota (cabin country!).
The cold didn't bother me much.
Things that bother me on the coast are the insane traffic, the seemingly lack of aid and/or housing for large homeless populations, yes the high cost of living. But it's mostly awesome.
I'm missing a lot of useful points here, just some ad-hoc thoughts.
Very interesting article. I've actually been kicking around the idea that the midwest will see a braindrain-reversal in the next 20 years, similar to China + India + etc. (where elite educated foreign professionals/entrepreneurs who historically sought the US market are actually realizing equal/better opportunity back home, and also a more comfortable/familiar lifestyle).
Cities like Minneapolis, Cleveland, St. Louis and Pittsburgh still can't necessarily compete with tier 1 finance/law/tech opportunities and gross compensation in NY/SF/LA/etc., but more and more they are offering a solid job market (particularly within the healthcare industry) and more affordable living to the point where net compensation may be the same, if not greater than in the "elite" coastal markets (corporate lawyers in Manhattan feel less rich than corporate lawyers in Cleveland, I'm pretty sure - who knows).
I think the other key is that these cities not only offer good jobs and affordable housing, but also offer a true "city culture", including a good food/bar scene, farmers markets, art galleries, a strong local music scene + music venues that are on the national act rotation, all with a more casual vibe than NY or SF offers (subjective statement: last time I was in Cleveland it felt more like Brooklyn than Brooklyn). Whether it's better or worse is a matter of opinion, but I guess my point is that those factors exist in many mid-western cities, and these are the things that professionals moving into cities really want (and pay higher rent for) and really miss when they move to the suburbs.
Unlike the folks returning back to China or India however (who often times work even harder for an even greater potential upside back in their motherland), the choice to return/remain in a more regional city may often be driven by a lifestyle choice - a mid-level manager working in Pittsburgh will likely work less, make the same/more and, in the immediate social environment, hold higher status than the mid-level manager in Silicon Valley who is slaving away 80 hours a week to make an IPO happen for a 35 year old soon-to-be billionaire founder (the big/small fish/pond concept) - of course the big draw in SF is that YOU could be that founder, and there's less of those opportunities in Pittsburgh (at least in theory, and for now). I think this also ties into the relative wealth equality and socioeconomic integration when compared to NY/SF/etc., which was well-described in the article.
Anyhow, just a thought - to be honest, much of my conjecture is driven by my own desire to move to Cleveland for a lot of the reasons above, but at the end of the day I have not and probably won't (I tell myself it has at least a large part to do with the fact that I was born/raised in the Bay Area and all my family/friends live here, but I have to admit that part of me still wants to be in the big pond at the end of the day, as chill as it looks in a smaller one - of course that could change haha).
I am very happy that this myth is being perpetuated. The following is a stereotypical view, but there is some truth to it over all. Minnesotans tend to be very soft spoken. They also are very practical. They don't want to spend all their money. They want either a high paying consultancy or a stable job at a big place. So they are out there but you would not know unless you knew their close friends or family and got them to talk over a hot dish or something.
I have friends from MN. I went to school with people from MN. I work about an hour outside of Chicago. I have coworkers that are from MN. I'll give one case. There was a fellow that left and I had to talk about his accomplishments at a lunch. I was floored. I had worked with him for ten years and yes I knew he was sharp and did great work, but I had no idea about everything that he had accomplished in his academic, professional, political, and personal life. I went around asked long timers and got a little clue here and there. Then I would go and ask him and his wife about the things I heard, and he was always like that was no big deal. It was funny to witness how his wife had to push him to open-up.
So you are sort of in a rough spot. The sorts of people that you would want for a start-up largely see almost the same rewards in the endless consultant opportunities with a lot less risk. They figure they can afford a great life with that anyway, so there' just no real upside. They also really don't want to work around the people that they stereotypically expect at a start-up. Then it's also hard for you to know how good they are, cause they talk about the weather or their interests instead of bragging about themselves. It's really hard to get them to open-up. The other side of the coin is that it's almost impossible to get them to criticize anyone else. If they ever do, it's very subtle and non-specific. So you really have nothing to go on unless you have personally worked with them before. I think basically that personality would not mesh well in most cases with you if you formed a start-up there.
I think you are right that there are a lot of developer worker bees in MN who are not excellent.
However, there is a somewhat tight-knit subpopulation of developers that are forward thinking, talented and excellent at CS. You will find them at various tech meetups or at events like minnedemo. A lot of them are alums or connected to alums of some of the startups here (yes we do have them!). I'm thinking of Bloom Health, SmartThings, HomeSpotter, Code42, Gravie and a few others I'm forgetting.
The key to finding talent in MN is a little bit of networking, it is definitely out there.
I'm working at a Minneapolis (well... Minnetonka...) based startup as well and I agree completely. Finding talent in the city is really difficult. I've been wondering if this is unique to the Mpls/StP metro or if CS talent is just getting really hard to come by in general. We currently have 2 (soon to be 3) openings and I still haven't seen a really exciting candidate.
CS talent, please come to Minneapolis. We have beer!
Maybe it's because you're in Minnetonka, but you think you're in Minneapolis.
I live in Minneapolis and have no interest in commuting out to Minnetonka. I won't even bother checking job postings out there. Unless you live on the western suburbs, getting to Minnetonka is a huge pain.
I believe the article was about the entire Twin Cities area, not just Minneapolis/St. Paul proper.
I suspect if you shared the details of the commute that scare you so much, you'd be surprised how much worse it could be in other parts of the country.
I don't have such a hard time getting to Minnetonka and back from Minneapolis. It's about twenty minutes each way with a rare slow down. In the summer I get to cycle past lakes Harriet, Calhoun, and Cedar on my way to the luce line trail which takes me all the way to the office. That's a pretty great way to start/end the day IMHO.
I'm glad I didn't have such a bias when I took the job as my equity arrangement gets more exciting every month.
The big problem with startup talent in MSP, is that the talented ones aren't going to work at a fleabag startup for a handful of magic beans, giving up their multi-year, highly lucrative consulting gig at $bigcorp.
There's actually lots of expensive talent. Very little cheap talent. There's also zero vc money around, despite many deep pockets.
my experience is the opposite: there is a bunch of vc money available. the problem is that it is hard to find because there isn't much infrastructure set up for initial introductions, like in the valley. there is no easy way for a startup to get introduced to vcs, but once you've met one they tend to introduce you to others and finding potential investors becomes much less of an issue.
This has been my experience as well but I'm having a hard time staying here when I could be making 30-50% more in a place like Austin or Seattle for a similar cost of living though. And its not -8 out right now there either.
This is also my experience. The "cheap" cost of living in the Midwest is vastly overstated.
Once you factor in the absolute requirement to own two expensive cars + insurance, the extremely high cost of home maintenance, the extreme high cost of any urban property (which forces you to buy in a far-flung suburb), the lack of any meaningful public transit, and the extreme weather conditions (with extreme utility costs)
That all adds up. You'll loose almost all of money your supposed to be saving.
Add in the fact that 8 years of technology experience here, pulls in wages lower than an intern or fresh graduate at any coastal city, and you can clearly see why there's a "brain drain". And the kicker is exactly what the person above said -- almost no one in the Midwest sees it. Most of the people actually out here in the Midwest either are blind or act blind to the obviousness of what's happening.
(Full disclosure : I am a born-and-raised urban midwesterner from Michigan, trying to relocate my family to a place like Portland or Seattle).
I have to disagree with that pretty much completely.
I moved to Minneapolis from the Northeast 15 years ago and from the very beginning I felt I should have done it 10 years earlier.
The real estate is lower by far. Even with higher heating & cooling costs in my first, poorly insulated, house (built in 1951) in a desirable area in Southwest Minneapolis, the total cost was less than living in Connecticut. Although I didn't use them often, I had buses two blocks from my house. My commute to work in the outer suburbs averaged 25-30 minutes.
There is simply no way "you'll lose all the money you're supposed to be saving." At one point I had two car payments and even all that combined with my housing costs, the total was still less that I would be paying in Connecticut for a small house. Of course real estate in Mpls has gone up, but it's also increased in all those other places people are looking at.
Could I make more money in the Bay area, or Seattle, NYC, etc? No doubt about that, but my quality of life would be far lower. I lived in NYC for years: I'd much rather be here. And I think that's really the key.
More than cost, it boils down to "where do you want to live?" For some, it's worth the astronomical costs to live in coastal cities, for the rest of us we prefer a slower paced life and get the benefit of lower cost of living along with it.
But that's the nice thing about Minneapolis: with only a modicum of planning where you'll live, you can bike or take public transit year-round, and it's not that expensive. I can walk/bike to two neighborhood grocery stores and a Whole Foods (all within a mile or so), three coffeeshops (blue-collar/hipster/coffee snob), etc. I only drive a few days a week because I work evenings and just want to get home at 9 pm instead of waiting for a bus transfer, and the high-frequency buses are concentrated around rush hours. (We can take a direct bus to the opera and delicious cocktails, fortunately.) Our house was not cheap but not expensive and the utility prices are not high because it's reasonably insulated, even though 90 years old.
My friends in Ann Arbor have the two cars and the high utility costs, but here in MSP we've got the one ancient car, non-expensive house in the heart of the city, and unremarkable utility costs (and we cover our year's electricity with solar panels).
I'm another Midwesterner thinking of taking my family to a coast. My biggest concern is that, being well past college-age (but a bit under where people usually start hitting age discrimination) I may have waited too long.
I lack a top university pedigree, and I have a fair bit of experience but it's all of the typical Midwestern sort—nothing exciting, nothing you've ever heard of. I reckon I'm somewhere between the top 25% and 5% around here talent-wise, but I fear I may be so far down in the bottom 50% anywhere near an ocean that I'll be unemployable, especially without a household-name university on my résumé. I haven't put hundreds of hours in to open source so my GitHub is unimpressive. I've never had an employer who paid me to contribute to open source. (Damn do I envy the people who get paid for that! No agonizing over whether to spend time with the wife or kids, do any of a hundred other things that aren't programming and I also like to do, or try to log some unpaid commits to impress prospective employers!)
Anyone in a similar position had any luck getting offers on the coasts? How about remote positions with coastal companies? Frankly, I find my résumé so embarrassing compared to what seems to be the "typical" applicant in SV or Seattle that I'm not sure it's worth the hours it takes to submit to a few positions. Is this just the HN effect where it seems like everyone's really amazing all the time except me, or will the rest of the stack truly be full of MIT and Harvard grads with three years at Google and numerous international awards for building cancer-curing, firefighting, baby-kissing drones that also make a mean cup of coffee?
Is this just the HN effect where it seems like everyone's really amazing all the time except me, or will the rest of the stack truly be full of MIT and Harvard grads with three years at Google and numerous international awards for building cancer-curing, firefighting, baby-kissing drones that also make a mean cup of coffee?
In my experience, this is just perception. When people discuss their work, here or elsewhere, they generally don't talk about the mundane minutiae and un-glamorous failures that went nowhere. It makes people sometimes look superhuman, which is a false perception.
I'm in a similar situation (live in MPLS, want to move to a coast), but I don't think it is quite as bad as you think. Most decent employers shouldn't give a shit about where your degree came from, or if you even have a degree, so long as you can do the work.
i noticed that you only mention seattle and silicon valley, and you only seem to talk about top schools and companies (i.e., household names). you're probably right - you'll never work for those companies, or in silicon valley. but is that what you really want? i mean have you actually gone to the middle of, for example, mountain view, and looked around? it's a bunch of generic office parks and shitty suburban tract homes that cost $2M+.
LA, portland, new york, south florida, va/nc are all on the coasts and have strong tech job markets and hiring all the people like you, but you're sitting here moping about silicon valley. seems a bit like you're missing the point. the boom is happening everywhere and if you want in, you gotta find your way in.
>the absolute requirement to own two expensive cars
This is no more a requirement in the midwest or Minneapolis than it is anywhere else, and by that I mean not a requirement at all. I know plenty of devs here that drive $4,000 cars (or ride the bus!) and have no problem getting steady work with great wages.
As someone who does occasional work for the auto industry though, thanks!
Public transit is pretty good in MSP. Rent for homes is also reasonable. Schools are decent. And the commutes are not terrible if you do need to drive.
I moved from Sunnyvale to Chicago suburb cause I could not afford it anymore with a second kid on the way. Yes I do make less, it goes way farther though.
I'll bite my tongue about the perceived skill gap. It's been eye opening to read what some of my peers think on HN today.
Your complaints apply to the suburbs of everywhere (needing cars, home maintenance, no public transport, etc). I think you might be inflating your experience in Michigan's metropolitan areas with the entirety of the midwest, judging by 'extreme weather conditions'. My total gas/electric bill this month was $140, which is on the high end for me.
There are tons of places in the midwest where urban property is well within reach and public transport is available, obviating the need for two vehicles, much less two expensive vehicles. No one in the midwest sees the 'brain drain'? It is talked about constantly.
You don't need 2 cars if you live near work. You'll probably need 1. If you live in a city, you might not need any. Heating is not that expensive unless you have far more space than you need. It's true that a quality urban lifestyle is not cheap in the Midwest (I've heard people on the coasts say that 3000 SF houses in Chicago cost $100k, which is not true... more like $700k) because it is not cheap anywhere in the US, but it's cheaper than in NYC or SF by about 40%.
In practice, most people end up spending only slightly less on housing when they move out here, but take a quality-of-life bump. I'm paying (in Chicago) what I was in NYC, but I have 800 SF and a pool in the building, and I can walk to work.
At a previous job, we had an office in Shoreview. I live in Austin now. I would consider Minnesota winters and Austin traffic an even trade at this point (40 minutes to drive 8.5 miles to work this morning).
One thing I noticed about Minneapolis is that the people there are nice. I never ran into anyone that was a jerk. They were all hard working, except in their brief summer when everyone took their vacations.
Aren't you using 'technical talent' too narrowly to only refer to CS? There are some pretty solid non-CS science/tech companies in the mid-west that employ a large number of elite talent in the respective areas: mechanical engineering in Detroit, food/bio/chem in MN, health-care in Pittsburgh (UPMC), etc. (Anecdotally) I know highly talented people in the top of their respective fields who consider working in companies in these cities to be highly desirable because of how good these companies are in their respective fields.
Totally agreed - I think especially with healthcare, cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and St. Louis have nationally elite medical centers (Cleveland Clinic, University of Pittsburgh and WSL, respectively) along with all the healthcare service industries that surround such centers, and therefore are able to attract and retain top talent at all levels of the healthcare industry.
Since this is HN, I guess the question is when will the developer / VC ecosystem develop, but I personally think it's just a matter of time before successful "tentpole" startups will pop up in each market, and after that when your significant other gets into a 7 year residency at WSL you don't break up because you want to do a start-up in NY/SF/SEA - you just move too and hopefully are able to bootstrap more efficiently than you would be paying $3,000 for a studio =)
I come from Minneapolis and moved back here as an adult. A few observations:
1) Of course lots of stuff still sucks, this is a low bar for miracles ;)
2) The region of influence is huge – going west the next real city is Seattle. This has always been an important part of the city, first for lumber, then agriculture, and now medicine and education.
3) Sure there's a brain drain, but we also have that large region draining into this city. Rural areas produce smart and interesting people as well.
4) Government is quite competent. I get a broad and consistent sense that people who work in government, elected or not, see it as a form of service.
5) Government is generally fiscally conservative. Not bullshit fiscal conservatism, but the kind that keeps expenditures low AND taxes high. As a result the squeezes we have had (the same everyone has had lately) haven't been too destructive.
6) Minneapolis is embedded in a quite large county, that includes a lot of suburbs and even some rural areas (even if those are dwindling). Minneapolis is not the majority of the county, population or area. I know many urbanists get excited about unified governments like Indianapolis where county and city take on the same boundaries. I think that's unsafe – you can get shit done, but shit can also fall apart. St. Louis is a good counterexample.
7) We're even less unified than that, because Minneapolis and St. Paul make up one metro area, the two being largely indistinguishable from each other. I liked this opinion piece on the problems with city government: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/19/urban_malgove... – specifically the problem with a lack of political competition in core cities. Like most big cities Minneapolis is almost one-party (there's a Green Party that manages to just barely hold on to relevancy), but the competition between Minneapolis and St. Paul I think helps keep both of them honest. It's a friendly competition, but it helps moderate things. For instance, a useful critique lately has been that St. Paul Public Schools manages to spend considerably less and has better outcomes, for a student body that looks largely the same. I'm hoping we explore that further.
8) Cost of living isn't that low. Lower than San Francisco, sure, but everything in the U.S. is cheaper than that. We don't have the bursts of speculation that drive prices up in weird ways, and we have the naturally suppressive power of our weather, but it's not cheap.
9) There are many criticisms of the disparities here – that Minnesota generally and Minneapolis along with it have a greater difference in outcomes for whites and minorities, across many measures. Some of these are problematic (I'm very unhappy with our policing), but some of the criticism I think is unwarranted. We have a large Somali population, for instance. They are struggling. But they JUST MOVED FROM SOMALIA. Families torn apart, no background in an educational or economic system like here, I'm certain many people hold trauma from their experiences in Somalia. Of course they aren't doing awesomely. But they are doing okay, and all considered that's kind of incredible. And that population is in Minnesota ENTIRELY because of our social services. And I'm glad this community can use its wealth to help these people, but the talk of disparities is just off. I think this is largely true for many of the minorities here who are fairly recent immigrants, we could do better but we're also doing good by them. (The same assessment doesn't really apply to Native Americans, that's a sad situation where this community is not living up to its obligations.)
I think the refugee policy is a very important plus for Minnesota. As a foreigner, I get nervous in places where there isn't enough diversity in the police force or other governmental services, for example. But in Minnesota, it is very common to see Hmong, Somali, and Nepali police officers, etc. It is a reality that immigrants who come to the US for employment are usually better off, and their children are less likely to become police officers, etc. whereas refugees and their children are more likely to take up such jobs. (Caveat: this is an observation of facts a posteriori, not a comment on the innate abilities of refugees vis a vis skilled immigrants, etc.)
The house is 2500 sq.ft., with four bedrooms and three stories (not counting the basement), and we pay about $1200 a month for it. The neighbors are quiet and there aren't too many break-ins in the area.
Cost of living is wonderfully low here. Being smack in the middle of the country, and close to Canada, we have access to a ton of stuff that other areas just don't get. As a major transport hub, we also get extremely fresh seafood, which makes the local sushi scene vibrant.
Music, art, and entertainment are huge here. If it's a day ending in y, there's something going on somewhere in the metro.
There are a number of tech meetups in the area. I go to a few, like GoMN, AWS MN, and PHPMN. I'm thinking of swapping out GoMN for RubyMN - we'll see. There's a handful of tech conferences here, too.
The Twin Cities definitely feels like a Millennial city. Like there's a ton of potential, and it's not just on its way to greatness, it's starting to achieve it.
That is not to say it's flawless - like any place inhabited by humans, it has its problems. But the benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks.