This article hit home for me. Though I technically now live in a medium-sized mid-Atlantic city, the culture here is more like the Midwest. I'm not against the Bay area or NYC, but for me, I couldn't imagine living in those places: congestion, price of living, and their lacking of the "down-home" feeling.
I believe it would be more difficult to found a technology-centric company where I live, though. As an example, the company I work for, though very large, is based in a small city. For years, there was not much of an issue attracting new talent. The problem is that our IT organization has grown immensely recently, and attracting new "hacker" talent into the middle of the country is a huge obstacle. One of the solutions was opening another IT office in New Jersey, just a few miles from NYC. Problem solved.
But then there's those of us who grew up in the Midwest. I love being able to buy and own a nice home for under $200K. I enjoy being able to drive to work with minimal traffic. I even like reading about living in the Bay area on HN and laughing at the things so many have to deal with! But the truth is, tech people thrive in the Bay area. And I'd say that the Bay thrives on them. But there will always be a few of us engineers who live in "flyover" country :-)
This article hit home for me. Though I technically now live in a medium-sized mid-Atlantic city, the culture here is more like the Midwest. I'm not against the Bay area or NYC, but for me, I couldn't imagine living in those places: congestion, price of living, and their lacking of the "down-home" feeling.
I believe it would be more difficult to found a technology-centric company where I live, though. As an example, the company I work for, though very large, is based in a small city. For years, there was not much of an issue attracting new talent. The problem is that our IT organization has grown immensely recently, and attracting new "hacker" talent into the middle of the country is a huge obstacle. One of the solutions was opening another IT office in New Jersey, just a few miles from NYC. Problem solved.
But then there's those of us who grew up in the Midwest. I love being able to buy and own a nice home for under $200K. I enjoy being able to drive to work with minimal traffic. I even like reading about living in the Bay area on HN and laughing at the things so many have to deal with! But the truth is, tech people thrive in the Bay area. And I'd say that the Bay thrives on them. But there will always be a few of us engineers who live in "flyover" country :-)