<story><title>Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities</title><url>https://www.purpose.jobs/blog/hiring-tech-jobs-has-increased-in-midwestern-cities</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zdragnar</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m white, live in the midwest, and get asked all the time where I&amp;#x27;m from. It&amp;#x27;s a form of small talk around here, where everyone knows everyone, or you might have grown up near someone they knew.  Not too different from talking about the weather (though we do that more often, as well).</text></item><item><author>q845712</author><text>I lived in the midwest for over a decade and am married to a midwesterner.  I&amp;#x27;m also ethnically one of the &amp;#x27;model minorities&amp;#x27; so to some people I&amp;#x27;m white, while to white supremacists I&amp;#x27;m assuredly not.&lt;p&gt;Most people in most places are basically friendly. However.
Even just being recognize you as &amp;#x27;other&amp;#x27; can get old, like being asked &amp;quot;where are you from&amp;quot; or riding the bus in Chicago and having to answer questions about my ethnicity from whoever was feeling tipsy enough to ask them.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s one story of folks being un-friendly: I was at a public event, basically a version of a county fair with my wife&amp;#x27;s family somewhere in the rural midwest. There&amp;#x27;s a stage with small-name bands performing, food vendors, and a small carnival-ride section. As the sun sets we lose track of her parents, and as we&amp;#x27;re looking for them I also got separated from my wife. I felt like the crowd was also slowly changing and like I was starting to attract attention in the form of unfriendly looks.  I find my wife and try to express this, but her face clearly says it&amp;#x27;s all in my head and why am I talking about anything other than how we can find her parents. Just then a physically imposed man walks up, plants himself firmly in front of me, and asks in the least friendly way possible, &amp;quot;how&amp;#x27;s it going brother?&amp;quot; I answer him in unaccented neutral native-born american english (don&amp;#x27;t remember what i said, but likely something like &amp;quot;good how you doin&amp;quot;), and my wife is like, &amp;quot;ok you&amp;#x27;re right, we have to find my parents and leave.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So just to be clear - I can&amp;#x27;t know what might have been, but I strongly suspect that having grown up here and being a native speaker made that evening simpler. And again, I&amp;#x27;m someone who many people look at and just process as &amp;quot;white&amp;quot; so I can easily take my experiences as a shallow sample from the tip of the iceberg.&lt;p&gt;And that kind of &amp;quot;unfriendly&amp;quot; experience is something that happens more often if i leave coastal metropolitan areas.</text></item><item><author>jacobriis</author><text>&amp;quot;What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that when people say things like this they often do so to feel virtuous themselves like only they are so enlightened that only they even consider being friendly to non white people.&lt;p&gt;The idea that people in the Midwest (which has a population of over 65 million people similar to France and the UK) are only friendly to white people is pretty crazy.</text></item><item><author>dexwiz</author><text>Moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area, and tech comes in two forms: IT departments at major industrial firms (manufacturing, chemical, pharma, etc), or companies that are eventually bought by West Coast companies. The pay cap is much lower. Becoming a millionaire through stocks and wages is harder, but you will still be in the top 10% of earners overall.&lt;p&gt;If you want to live in a mansion, the Midwest makes this dream obtainable. Buy a 6 bedroom, lake (reservoir) side, 4k sqr ft home for less than a million. Of if you want an acre of lawn, but not live too far in the country.&lt;p&gt;What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white). (EDIT: This gets more pronounced the more rural you are. Cities tend to be more accepting. What you will find is that rural areas have more relative sway on thought compared to the West Coast.) Towns outside of major metropolitan areas are dying as most major industries that supported that last two generations have left. Drugs are a huge issue, but its not as obvious because the floor for homelessness is so much lower. The only major infrastructure and building projects that get approved are sports stadiums, because idiots in local government rather have sports teams than functioning schools.&lt;p&gt;What the Midwest does have is solid engineering and research universities, that graduate thousands of STEM oriented students a year. Unfortunately there are often over an hour from the nearest 250k+ city. I went to one, and I think less than 25% of my friends stayed in state. The brain drain is real.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>HelloFellowDevs</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s the small talk version of that, but then there&amp;#x27;s the following question of &amp;quot;where are you really from?&amp;quot; if you give them a less exotic answer than they were expecting.&lt;p&gt;Edit: wording</text></comment>
<story><title>Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities</title><url>https://www.purpose.jobs/blog/hiring-tech-jobs-has-increased-in-midwestern-cities</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zdragnar</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m white, live in the midwest, and get asked all the time where I&amp;#x27;m from. It&amp;#x27;s a form of small talk around here, where everyone knows everyone, or you might have grown up near someone they knew.  Not too different from talking about the weather (though we do that more often, as well).</text></item><item><author>q845712</author><text>I lived in the midwest for over a decade and am married to a midwesterner.  I&amp;#x27;m also ethnically one of the &amp;#x27;model minorities&amp;#x27; so to some people I&amp;#x27;m white, while to white supremacists I&amp;#x27;m assuredly not.&lt;p&gt;Most people in most places are basically friendly. However.
Even just being recognize you as &amp;#x27;other&amp;#x27; can get old, like being asked &amp;quot;where are you from&amp;quot; or riding the bus in Chicago and having to answer questions about my ethnicity from whoever was feeling tipsy enough to ask them.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s one story of folks being un-friendly: I was at a public event, basically a version of a county fair with my wife&amp;#x27;s family somewhere in the rural midwest. There&amp;#x27;s a stage with small-name bands performing, food vendors, and a small carnival-ride section. As the sun sets we lose track of her parents, and as we&amp;#x27;re looking for them I also got separated from my wife. I felt like the crowd was also slowly changing and like I was starting to attract attention in the form of unfriendly looks.  I find my wife and try to express this, but her face clearly says it&amp;#x27;s all in my head and why am I talking about anything other than how we can find her parents. Just then a physically imposed man walks up, plants himself firmly in front of me, and asks in the least friendly way possible, &amp;quot;how&amp;#x27;s it going brother?&amp;quot; I answer him in unaccented neutral native-born american english (don&amp;#x27;t remember what i said, but likely something like &amp;quot;good how you doin&amp;quot;), and my wife is like, &amp;quot;ok you&amp;#x27;re right, we have to find my parents and leave.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So just to be clear - I can&amp;#x27;t know what might have been, but I strongly suspect that having grown up here and being a native speaker made that evening simpler. And again, I&amp;#x27;m someone who many people look at and just process as &amp;quot;white&amp;quot; so I can easily take my experiences as a shallow sample from the tip of the iceberg.&lt;p&gt;And that kind of &amp;quot;unfriendly&amp;quot; experience is something that happens more often if i leave coastal metropolitan areas.</text></item><item><author>jacobriis</author><text>&amp;quot;What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that when people say things like this they often do so to feel virtuous themselves like only they are so enlightened that only they even consider being friendly to non white people.&lt;p&gt;The idea that people in the Midwest (which has a population of over 65 million people similar to France and the UK) are only friendly to white people is pretty crazy.</text></item><item><author>dexwiz</author><text>Moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area, and tech comes in two forms: IT departments at major industrial firms (manufacturing, chemical, pharma, etc), or companies that are eventually bought by West Coast companies. The pay cap is much lower. Becoming a millionaire through stocks and wages is harder, but you will still be in the top 10% of earners overall.&lt;p&gt;If you want to live in a mansion, the Midwest makes this dream obtainable. Buy a 6 bedroom, lake (reservoir) side, 4k sqr ft home for less than a million. Of if you want an acre of lawn, but not live too far in the country.&lt;p&gt;What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white). (EDIT: This gets more pronounced the more rural you are. Cities tend to be more accepting. What you will find is that rural areas have more relative sway on thought compared to the West Coast.) Towns outside of major metropolitan areas are dying as most major industries that supported that last two generations have left. Drugs are a huge issue, but its not as obvious because the floor for homelessness is so much lower. The only major infrastructure and building projects that get approved are sports stadiums, because idiots in local government rather have sports teams than functioning schools.&lt;p&gt;What the Midwest does have is solid engineering and research universities, that graduate thousands of STEM oriented students a year. Unfortunately there are often over an hour from the nearest 250k+ city. I went to one, and I think less than 25% of my friends stayed in state. The brain drain is real.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crocodiletears</author><text>This has been exactly my experience. &amp;#x27;Where are you from, where were you raised?&amp;#x27; are the first questions after  &amp;#x27;where do you work, what do you do for a living?&amp;#x27;</text></comment>