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Comment by shas3 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

I currently live in Indiana but my family is mostly in CA.

Most of the dirt roads in Death Valley are nicer than most of the major roads in Indiana.

Yes weather is a major player...but the roads are terrible. They don't invest in the schools - aggressively. And farmers as a group are antigovernment to the point that it imperils the ability of the state government to function and attract talent.

I started applying for post graduate school jobs in the fall. I applied for one in IN and one in CA that have the same salary. Given the choice, I will pick CA.

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

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...

The Detroit wealthy suburbs are still very rich. Probably some of the richest in the country (Oakland County is a top 10 county of > 1M pop in terms of per-capita income)

But, as somebody who grew up there (and just recently moved out), I would say they’re in the early stages of long-term decline. There’s a complete inability for them to retain millennials. Most of my friends have moved away.

That’s the biggest issue in the Midwest and areas outside of the coasts. Talent retention.

I wouldn't say KC is doing all that well. It's fairly pretty, of course, but opportunity-wise there was basically . . . Sprint.

Did you time travel from 2000 to make this comment? Garmin, Cerner and DST are nearly twice Sprint's market cap. KC is nowhere near its potential, and it's no Austin (nor Omaha), but come on, Sprint's heyday was long ago.

1. Garmin is in Olathe, not KC.

2. Fair on the Cerner and DST point, although I'd argue that they aren't particularly good opportunities to work for.

3. Three (or four, if you want to include Garmin) medium sized companies in a city aren't particularly great if you're trying to represent success.

1. Pedantic much? I didn't know we were talking strict city limits rather than metro area.

2,3: Your references make it sound like you last sampled the market in tech in KC in 2001, if Sprint is your benchmark for KC tech employers.

KC isn't as good as it could be, but it's a heck of lot better than when Sprint was the only game in town.

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