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Detroit: America's Next Tech Boomtown
jfruh writes: "Over the past few years, the growth rate in Detroit tech jobs has been twice the natural average. The reason is the industry that still makes Detroit a company town: U.S. automotive companies are getting into high tech in a big way, and need qualified people to help them do it. Another bonus: the rent is a lot cheaper than it is in San Francisco. '[A]ccording to Automation Alley's 2013 Technology Industry Report, the metro Detroit area grew to a total of 242,520 technology industry jobs in 2011, representing a 15% increase from the 2010 level of 210,984 technology industry jobs. No other benchmarked region had greater technology industry growth than metro Detroit in this period. Further, according to the report, this growth helped propel metro Detroit to a ranking of fourth among the 14 benchmarked regions, passing San Jose."
Detroit's population is success-proof, they will find a way to drive away wealth as they always have, perhaps another riot will return them to the poverty they've earned so well.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
If true, this is great for Detroit. That said, what the heck is the "natural average" of job growth?
Finding God in a Dog
Detroit is the asshole of Michigan.
Flint is 50 miles up it.
I heard that they gave Omni Consumer Products^W^W^W Google to clean up the town. They're doing something with drones.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
in that area of the country? it does not seem so, to me. seems more like deep red states, more or less. not exactly what tech people flock to, to be honest.
weather is a huge turn-off. culture of progress and new ideas is not there.
crime and corruption IS there. well, the ceo's will like it, at least; but the rest of us, not so much..
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Wanted: People who are smart enough to work in tech, but dumb enough to live in an unsafe place.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Over the past few years, the growth rate in Detroit tech jobs has been twice the natural average.
It's not just growth. Detroit has had lots of tech jobs for decades. It's been in the top 5 markets for many types of tech jobs for a long time. There is an ENORMOUS amount of technology that goes into automobile manufacturing. Robotics, CAD, industrial automation, materials science, welding, forming, coatings, chemicals, software and more. There are very few places in the USA with a higher density of engineering talent and opportunity.
Oh and before someone makes yet another ill informed remark about Detroit City, don't confuse Metro Detroit with Detroit City. Oakland County, immediately to the north of Detroit is one of the 10 wealthiest counties in the entire USA and has a AAA credit rating. Michigan is actually a really nice place to live, especially if you love the outdoors. Ann Arbor which is close by is a fantastic college town too if that suits your sensibilities.
List of the most dangerous cities in the US for 2013. Detroit is 3rd, right after Flint, Michigan.
I bet they're counting Ann Arbor and maybe even Windsor Ontario as "Detroit".
Detroit proper? NFW.
... you have to live in Detroit...
I went back for a visit last winter. It's sad. There are tiny pockets of hold outs and then the rest is just a free for all. Scrappers have gutted ever bit of available metal from any empty building not staffed with armed guards. This is best done with a sledge hammer and torch. The buildings are not recoverable after that. The roads are worse than a dirt road. At least gravity levels those out a bit. Then there's the crime.
.5 miles away: "Don't they realize when things get bad enough they're gonna be food for the locals?" He just laughed and said no.
I found a hipster pocket in DelRay. Perhaps one of the most obliterated areas. The homes are early 20th cen and cute. They sell for about $10 - 100. If you can find a buyer. There was a 2 block section of white hipsters fixing up their little gems. Baby strollers, all the trimmings. And I commented to a friend who still lives about
Nothing has really changed there. Sadly it won't. The mentality is still the same. No matter how much money you throw at it. The city is corrupt from the ground up and has been for 100+ yrs. The new mayor may help. But he'll most likely give up like Archer did. Without a major paradigm shift in mentality it will always be Detroit.
shhh, we do not need anymore people in the area. I like to be in demand and getting the proper money for my skill set. Do not blow it for the people here making bank.
It doesn't necessarily mean someone is making a dumb decision. This can be a perfectly legitimate, sensible option, IMO.
I knew people who moved to Mexico in the past, with similar motivations. If you can earn enough money there, you can easily afford to build yourself a fortress of a house and hire people to go out and run errands for you, etc. It might not make sense for someone with a whole family to take care of. But a younger, single person who might tend to be more of an introvert in the first place might be happy to "go where the money is" and spend a portion of it to buy the security that's lacking in the environment otherwise.
Upsides: Detroit gets to pull itself up, maybe a single-digit percentages from the bottom.
Downsides: Tech people have to make a grim choice to take those jobs, consumers have to get more stuff in our cars that we don't really want.
I'm a Rust Belt kid, so seeing northern cities on something of a comeback trajectory is a good thing to me. The problem is image -- you have to find techies who are willing to put up with a very messed up local economy and deal with winter. I'm from Buffalo, and winters there are very long and cold. The obvious benefit is that the cost of living is much lower than California or similar. I couldn't believe last time I was in CA to visit a friend that they had just paid almost a million dollars for a 3-bedroom house with no property. I don't care how good the weather is, that's absolutely nuts, and I live in the NYC metro area, so I know about high real estate prices.
I think it's all cyclical. Right now where I am, everyone is moving to North Carolina (Why??) People cite a much lower cost of living. That's true -- you can sell your Long Island house and buy (literally) a mansion on several acres in NC. The only problem is that Charlotte, RTP, etc. are still cities and real estate that's close to jobs is going to be more. Your mansion is going to be 25 miles' drive from anywhere. Atlanta has a similar issue -- people deal with multi-hour commutes so they can live in a massive house inside a gated community in the middle of nowhere. Side note - a friend of mine who moved there for a job refers to Cary, NC as an acronym -- Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.
Personally, I love winter and would have no desire to move somewhere like Florida, Texas, or Arizona. Right now, those are the cheapest places business-wise, so jobs move there. But the northern states can play the game too. New York just gave some new businesses a 10 year tax holiday if they locate in certain parts of the state. All the state economic development agencies engage in this kind of poaching. The only problem is that the South is better at it because they don't fund schools and local governments to the same extent. If Michigan and Detroit are serious about this, and can afford it, then the businesses will move back. Executives don't care because they would either stay put or be happy just about anywhere. To them, it's not all that hard to pick up and move.
Low real estate prices, compact metro areas that mean short commute times, etc. are advantages that these states and cities can use. We'll see if it pans out.
Winters are no worse than New York City, Chicago, or Boston. Flyover? You mean like Chicago? Just wait till the next shoe drops on California and your water bill hits $600 a month unless of course you are poor and then they subside that so no one dies of thirst.
California is way too confident.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
> You mean like Chicago?
I change in Chicago when flying to the UK you insensitive clod!
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I smell fuzzy math. It usually smells like bullshit.
Are we talking real, full time, long term jobs, or did they hit the jackpot at the H1-B lottery?
Yanno, I can't help but think of this scene from the Kentucky Fried Movie whenever somebody suggests that something is going to go to Detroit.
This sig no verb.
and cheap wages (lower rent means you can pay people less). People will go where the work is, whether they like it or not.
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A nice package but you have to look under the cover and ask
As a Tech worker do I
Want to deal with East Coast Winters?
Live in the Cultural Mecca of the Mid-West?
Live in Detroit?
Deal with the crime?
Raise kids and send them to school there?
Work at a huge Dinosaur of a corporation?
As someone who has spent time in the Mid-west rust belt, I just don't see many people with real talent being willing to sign up for that.
-Just saying
Detroit a tech hub? LOL, make sure you get a carry permit when you move there. It would have to be a fat paycheck indeed to get me within 30 miles of Detroilet.
And I've known people who have been mugged. I've seen signs posted warning office employees of men running about mugging people whilst brandishing firearms.
Protip: Statistically, you're nobody. Bonus protip: The vast majority of people in SF aren't mugged. The vast majority of people in Detroit aren't mugged.
Hell, the vast majority of people in Camden aren't murdered.
Doesn't mean your threat-free experience equates to the sort of 'safety' people like to imagine, though.
or within the gang wars. Or the urban blight. Or the packs of wild dogs running the streets. Or....
That's a fact.
Nobody dealin' with that winter, for rent.
Funny, because Detroit isn't that far removed from St. Louis weather-wise, and STL is the tech hub of the midwest.
Slashdot's corporate masters will like this tidbit: Dice ranked Missouri as the fastest growing state in regards to tech jobs last year.
Of course, there's plenty of good reasons why tech companies wouldn't want to base out of Detroit, but the weather sure ain't one of them.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That's a fact.
Nobody dealin' with that winter, for rent.
Not everyone is too fragile to handle a little weather.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Denver-Boulder, noticeably absent, recently pegged as having the most scientists per capita than anywhere else in the nation. Hell, Twitter just acquired my downstairs neighbors.
I grew up in the midwest and prefer the west coast. When I want snow, I can go to the mountains to experience it.
I have a few relatives who expressed displeasure because I bought an imported car 16 years ago (don't blame me for wanting a well made car when America's big 3 where producing a lot of junk). I still drive that car today; they've had to replace their American made cars a couple times. They lived a couple of states away from Michigan, I'd guess that Michigan itself would be worse. As a techie, I want to be able to figure out what works instead of clinging to tradition.
I also wouldn't want my kids anywhere near Detroit schools.
I left Detroit for San Diego around 1985. I wrote software for various auto-related stuff (CNC, gauging, factory automation, SQC, Variation Analysis...) when I was there, and the experience was invaluable.
The irony is that the percentage of tech works now is likely many times what it was when I was there. The job loss has been in blue-collor factory jobs, support jobs for the closed factories, service and retail to support all those workers, etc. etc. etc.
Yea, my old high school (Cass Tech) got gutted by a scrapper fire. (They built a new school, and the old one was to be turned into Condos...)
... Need I say anything else?
Detoilet is a failure because of BLACKS, nothing else.
White create.
Blacks destroy.
Any questions?
they'll move on when the time comes. Most of 'em have degrees. They'll leave behind the slums. While they're there the locals won't mess with them, because if they do the police (who are heavily armed thanks to 30 years of hand-me-downs from the military) will bust some heads until they do. Remember the last round of riots in Los Angeles? Everyone laughed and called them dumb because they trashed their own neighborhoods. That wasn't by choice. There were cops in full riot gear with military grade tanks cordoning off the rich communities so they didn't spill over...
The poor have learned to keep their misery to themselves...
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Right, because aside from cross country skiing, downhill, snowboarding, snowmobiling, hunting, sledding, playing outside with your kids, snuggling up with the fireplace (which is still far from ecologically incorrect in the midwest) with some good movies, there is absolutely nothing to do in the midwest during the winter.
Yeah, here's the other thing. Detroit is like many cities in the U.S. - the horrible parts of town get 100% of the media attention. What doesn't is the fact that like every city in history, there is always a nice part of town, and nice suburbs ringing the city that are where all the upper middle and upper income folks live. They live in a world so far removed from the horrors of the failing part of down town it may as well be on another planet.
$800-1000 /mo for a 2 bedroom apartment with full kitchen, living room, dining area and your own garage vs. San Francisco's $2000/mo to share a house with 3 or 4 other people. Then the cost of living factors in.
I don't even live in Detroit, let alone Michigan, but some of the claims being made in this thread are absurd. A good job is a good job, and there are very nice parts of Detroit far removed from the problem areas, and if you live in/below your means your money will go a hell of a lot further in the midwest than on the coasts. A lot of millionaires are being made among the Dave Ramsey crowd.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Low numbers making small increases can be made to sound impressive if expressed as percentages. True fact.
Stories like this one about the "next Silicon Valley" have been coming out pretty consistently for the past twenty years. As have predictions like yours of their imminent demise. In the meantime the place keeps right on growing.
Nobody dealin' with that winter, for rent.
The winters are not *that* bad, a bit cold and snowy, but you can get used to that.
What makes ME laugh about such articles is that Detroit is in the midst of some *serious* financial issues. Anybody recall that it is in the midst of a huge and nasty bankruptcy? The city is struggling to keep services up to minimal levels and is considering just bulldozing hundreds of thousand abandoned houses rather than keep supplying police, fire, utilities and other city services.
Who would want to live anyplace near such a situation? It's like a third world country in decline, with the crime, blight and debt in abundance.
Nope, articles like this are just the dying gasps of the marketing company hired to try and attract new business to a sinking ship. They desperately need tax payers and at this point are willing to do ANYTHING (including outright lying) to attract them. DON'T go, it's a trap.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
why would they do that to you?
Totally unkool, bro.
You forgot to mention the bankruptcy....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Metro Atlanta with family in Birmingham and Berkeley, CA.
So, I have seen a bit of the differences of American attitude.
Here in Metro Atlanta, we have pockets of folks who would fit right in at Berkely - the stereotype of course - and in Berkely, there are folks who'd fit right in with my Bible thumping-Republicans can do no wrong-anal retentive only dogs can hear them fart Conservatives:FoxNews can be too Liberal for them - type of people.
Generally speaking, outside of the pockets of educated people, the masses here in the Bible Belt are ignorant. They are the ones who think there is a "controversy" when it comes to Evolution. They think the Bible is a historical document - it is fact - not allegorical stories by Iron Age Jews.
You drive down I-75 and below Macon you see billboards by ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES proclaiming their Christianity and "conservative" values.
Here in the Bible Belt, most folks make the Middle Eastern religious fanatics look tame.
The Bible Belt Jesus is a gun carrying, anti-poor, no-empathy or compassion white asshole. Fuck the POOR! They deserve it!
Might makes right and if you're poor, you are defective - the whole "eye of the camel" thing goes past their ignorant heads.
It's all Old Testament here bud - and those people fit the New Testament into that Biblical View.
tl;dr: The people in the Bible Belt are just as bad as the Muslim nuts they condemn. They don't stone anyone or blow shit up because they are 'God fear'in Mericans who follow the law! But don't take our gund away! We may need to kill someone - fuck the "Thou shall no kill" because it ain't applicable!"
P.S. I have NEVER met a Christian in the USofA - ever.
Funny, because Detroit isn't that far removed from St. Louis weather-wise, and STL is the tech hub of the midwest.
I've lived both places within the last 10 years plus I got my education at WashU. St Louis is decidedly NOT the "tech hub of the midwest". Plenty going on there and some pretty good talent and a nice place to live but there is WAY more tech going on near Detroit than in St Louis except for a few areas. If there is a "tech hub of the midwest" it is either Chicago or Detroit depending on how you want to measure it.
Dice ranked Missouri as the fastest growing state in regards to tech jobs last year.
Not hard to grow fast when you don't have all that many to begin with. Plus a lot of the tech jobs in Missouri are in Kansas City.
What makes ME laugh about such articles is that Detroit is in the midst of some *serious* financial issues.
Detroit CITY is in the midst of such issues. Detroit METRO is largely unaffected. Oakland County immediately to the north of Detroit City is one of the ten wealthiest counties in the US and has a AAA credit rating. Guess where 80% of the population of Metro Detroit lives? (hint - it isn't in Detroit City)
Who would want to live anyplace near such a situation?
Because most people who live NEAR Detroit City don't live IN Detroit City and haven't for a long time. Metro Detroit is actually a very nice place to live and Michigan is absolutely beautiful. I know because I've lived there.
It's like a third world country in decline, with the crime, blight and debt in abundance.
If you think that then you really know nothing about it and clearly haven't visited the area. Yes there are some parts of Detroit City that are pretty crappy. That doesn't describe much of the rest of Michigan.
Nope, articles like this are just the dying gasps of the marketing company hired to try and attract new business to a sinking ship.
Automation Alley is not a marketing company. They are a sort of tech transfer organization/incubator that helps Michigan businesses grow. It's actually a pretty neat operation and I've been to events they hold. The studies they cite are actually well researched and factual. There are a HUGE number of tech jobs in Michigan and Metro Detroit has more engineers per square mile than all but a handful of cities in the US. There is an enormous amount of technology that goes into manufacturing and about 50 of the largest manufacturing companies plus their supply chains are headquartered in Michigan, most fairly close to Detroit.
The accent.
It's a number ploy by a marketing firm...
It most assuredly is not a marketing ploy. There is a HUGE number of technology jobs in and around Detroit Metro and always has been because guess what? There is a LOT of technology that goes into manufacturing cars. Robotics, computers, automation, coatings, materials science, welding, forming, stamping, chemicals, etc. As the auto industry has bounced back from 2008-2009, job growth has rebounded too. It's actually not surprising at all that Detroit's job growth is rather high at the moment.
Trust me, you DON'T want to live anywhere near there..
Only morons who have never actually come to Michigan think that. Look, 80% of Detroit Metro is outside the City. Oakland Country which is immediately to the north of Detroit is one to the ten wealthiest counties in the US, has a AAA credit rating and is a genuinely nice place to live. Ann Arbor (20 miles west) is one if the nicest college towns you could ever want to visit and has some really cool business activity going on.
And Detroit still makes cars. You will not see it coming until it is too late.
It will take a while or it may never happen but I would not dismiss it. Frankly Silicon Valley is probably no better for the tech industry than Detroit was for the car industry. It is a little bubble and is too confident and or arrogant to see that it has some real problems. The cost of living is really high so eventually start ups will get choked off by the cost of relocating to SV and all you will have in the way of startups will be spin offs of existing companies.
Look at the "inbreeding" of developers and management in SV today.
From a national point of view the over concentration of venture capital is also a problem. Eventually after a few dozen more pets.com the VCs will dry up and inovation will move not to other loctions in the US but other nations!
A more diverse and dispersed tech industry is needed. Thank goodness for Texas and the Austin tech hub as well as Dallas and Houston.
Oh and if you do not believe that this can happen? Did you know that the hub of computer innovation in the 1960s and early 1970s was not in SV but in Mass? Companies like DEC and Data General where where the innovation was.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
List of the most dangerous cities in the US for 2013. Detroit is 3rd, right after Flint, Michigan.
So what? 80% of the population of Detroit Metro lives outside the City. Most of Detroit Metro is actually quite safe, similar to any other large metropolitan region. Very few people live in the City and most of the near-term economic opportunity and jobs is not in the City either. I've lived near Detroit and very rarely had any reason to visit the City itself. If I dropped you off in nearby city like Birmingham you'll find it to be as nice a place as just about anywhere in San Francisco and VERY safe.
Just wait till the next shoe drops on California and your water bill hits $600 a month
Get rid of your lawn, and you can cut that by 90%. I replaced my lawn with a cactus garden.
unless of course you are poor and then they subside that so no one dies of thirst.
Water subsidies go to rich farmers, not poor people.
Now get off my cacti.
Yesterday I heard it is possible to buy a house with land in Detroit for 1,000USD.
That's a strange way to spell "ghetto".
a lot of car makers can build cars in the USA profitably. even small cars. except GM and Ford
Given that Ford earned $7.2 Billion in net income in 2013 and GM made a $3.8 billion profit over the same period I think GM and Ford will be very surprised to hear that they cannot make cars in the US profitably since most of their profit comes from US operations.
part of the problem is the factories are old and there is no more room to expand.
You don't need to expand factories to make the efficient. Inefficient factories get shut down and those that remain are doing just fine. I have visited numerous Ford and GM assembly plants (as well as Toyota and Honda) and for the most part they are as efficient and profitable as those of their leading competitors.
Once you get past all the glitz, glamour and Robocop statue, you're still left with Detroit.
The problem is, Texas has been electing politicians that while they apparently are exactly what Texas thinks is good, look to the rest of the non-red country as not so hot.
You mean like how the rest of the country elected George Bush twice?
Oddly, I moved from the Detroit area to Phoenix a few years ago, and my water bill dropped significantly.
When the need becomes sufficient, California (and Arizona, and even Nevada by proxy*) will pay for desalting. The average home's water bill might "only" increase by about $50 or $60 a month. Note that that figure is based on current technology, not on whatever amazing breakthroughs are predicted over the next few years, either.
*Las Vegas obviously wouldn't ship (pipeline) desalted water from the Pacific, but they could (for example) pay for a few desalting plants *for* LA in exchange for (some of) LA's share of Colorado River water. Phoenix probably could pipeline up from the Sea of Cortez (the appropriate treaties with Mexico are already in place, I understand), but the proxy arrangement might make more sense there, too, as the Colorado already feeds the state-wide canal systems (Central Arizona Project, or CAP), which would greatly simplify delivery.
Arizona actually has banked a 5 to 6 year supply of water, even after years of drought; remember in 2008 (?) when Atlanta had less than a 30 day supply left? People who bemoan Phoenix's supposed water-unsustainability tend to do so out of ignorant assumptions; for instance, local surface rainfall has never been sufficient for Phoenix (and thus Phoenix never depended on it), but most water-sustainability studies start from that or similar assumptions that don't apply to Phoenix's situation, and never have. Meanwhile, Tucson, with a much worse natural water supply profile, is one of the world's best studies in urban water management and conservation.
Arizona also requires developers to prove a 100 year supply before they can build new neighborhoods. This is typically done by purchasing guarantees of future Colorado River allocations. (This does present a potential "shell game" problem based on where the water is bought and where it is used, but it's a problem that has been recognized and can be solved.)
Desalting is the final ace up the sleeve, but there's still no imminent sign of needing to play that card, and in the meantime, the expected price tag will almost certainly continue to shrink.
LA lives like it'll never have to pay for desalting, but Phoenix lives like it wants to delay having to pay for it as long as possible.
Never confuse law with justice, nor religion with morality.
The infrastructure here is crumbled to dust, any real data pipelines are to the west at Ann Arbor which by the way is where any michigan real tech companies are at.
Detroit is dead, they need to bullzose the whole thing and start over.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A detroiter thinking winters are bad..... HAHAHAHAHA!
I live in michigan to the west, I would get 8-20X more snow than detroit ever did. This winter I had 6 feet in my front yard. 6 feet of snow, think about that.
Detroiters are as wimpy as Atlantaians when it comes to snow, come on over and visit the lake michigan side where we get real amounts of snow. 1 foot overnight doesnt even close schools.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I take it the executives of these companies will be living somewhere the weather is livable and the food is decent.
The weather in Michigan is tremendous unless you are a complete wuss about a little snow. If you actually like to go outside the weather is terrific, particularly if you like boating. Never more than 80 miles from one of the Great Lakes anywhere in Michigan. In the summer I never been anyplace with better weather. Detroit Metro has about 4 million residents who think you are a big old wuss.
Furthermore there are terrific food establishments and markets in the Detroit Metro area. Roast, Zingermans, Eastern Market and lots lots more. There are high quality grocery stores and farmers markets everywhere. The fresh produce is tremendous.
Cars are no longer made in detroit. they are made in MExico and Canada. there is shipping of cars here at the depo, but the large bulk of Ford and GM cards are NOT made in the USA.
Honda and BMW cars are more American made than GM and Ford.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It may not be as bad outside the city, but in my experience, it was nearly so.
Bullshit. Where did you live? Oakland, McComb an Washtenaw counties are all very nice places to live.
... if they can live long enough without being murdered.
I'm sure that's true if you're counting traditional engineering fields, meaning not including software engineers. I'm not sure it would still be true if you included software
Not as much software as some other places but that is changing FAST. Cars are getting a lot of software these days and so is the equipment used to make them. Plus a lot of software companies have a presence in the area including Google and some other big names. University of Michigan produces a lot of pretty good software talent and places like Ann Arbor are great places to start tech ventures.
Software is just a small, though important, part of technology. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook hardly comprise the entirety of the technology universe.
please don't move here, i hear SanFran is nice.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
We need a Detroit ETF
Real Christians don't discriminate other Christians. These Bible Belt Christians discriminate against Asian-American Christians.
They are Pharisees at best, the exact group of people Jesus trying to condemn.
New Economic Perspectives
You are @#$%ing crazy if you think Detroit is safer than Oakland, in the aggregate, by any measure.
Real estate is dirt cheap compare to San Francisco. Heck, you can get a house for a few HUNDRED dollars!
New Economic Perspectives
Detroit? There are two kinds of people in Detroit. Corrupt politicians and union bosses on the take and stubborn backwards people who would rather starve than change. If you're not bringing back the glory days of the 1960's where a high school grad could make $40,000/yr with benefits then they won't listen to you.
Replacing a grass lawn with a cactus garden violates the terms of many homeowners' associations. Keeping property values steady requires verdant grassy lawns. Think about your community, not just yourself.
dont forget north carolina, That place is a boom these days as well
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Land is like $1.99 per 500 acres, but you get no mail, trash service, recycling, ambulance service or cops. You DO get door-to-door squatters, though...
Let's not forget the world class symphony, an excellent opera company, a first rate art museum, three major sports teams, nearby excellent college teams (some people may have heard of Michigan and Michigan State), and amazing outdoor recreation opportunities. Some of the best kayaking in the midwest is a quarter mile from my back door. You can also forget wasting money on Carribean beach vacations: if you want beautiful beaches, there's nothing in the Carribean that can touch the beaches on Lake Michigan.
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I challange these claims. It looks like a bunch of spin doctoring to me.
1. Automotive industry there is bust. and without that, there isn't enough demand for technology, so the market can't be that big.
2. The city is bankrupt, and that is never a good environment to move or initialize a startup technology venture.
3. Austerity measures have already raided pensions to nearly 5%. That is a very toxic workplace.
No, you can lease it from government. If you don't pay their high and illegal property tax, then they take it from you. This is in effect a lease, where the government can change the rate and amount, any time they like.
>Nope, articles like this are just the dying gasps of the marketing company hired to try and attract new business to a sinking ship. They desperately need tax payers and at this point are willing to do ANYTHING (including outright lying) to attract them. DON'T go, it's a trap.
If you're interested in high tech manufacturing with a skilled workforce, it would be hard to find a better place than the automation alley counties. What you'll spend in wages will be more than made up in productivity. And you won't be spending a fortune in recruiting costs. If you build a factory your staffing problem won't be finding qualified workers, engineers or tradesmen, but getting a big enough HR department to hire them.
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Okay, with that bit of context, it's clear that you, at least, intend it as racism, and are looking for a way to pretend it's not. Are you aware of how your broad-based assertions of this sort actually help clarify your racist intentions, and that many people are familiar with people pretending to care about Dr. Kings words while in practice doing no such thing?
Like... we've seen this for years. We know you guys. We aren't fooled. You might as well go back to the transparent racism.
Mod parent up. Defense contractors. Lots of good work, but also a lot of waste.
If you're interested in high tech manufacturing with a skilled workforce, it would be hard to find a better place than the automation alley counties. What you'll spend in wages will be more than made up in productivity. And you won't be spending a fortune in recruiting costs. If you build a factory your staffing problem won't be finding qualified workers, engineers or tradesmen, but getting a big enough HR department to hire them.
The reason all but one automotive assembly line has pulled out of Detroit is that the unions wouldn't allow that much automation, or you were "allowed" to have it, but you had to still hire the same number and type of workers to satisfy the contracts, so it didn't do crap to change your value to unit labor cost ratio.
You are an absolute idiot if you locate a manufacturing facility in a state where the unions are in charge of whether or not you get labor, and you can't push costs down by automation.
Most blue collar jobs have migrated outside the U.S. due to inflated labor costs relative to value produced. It has dick all to do with what a living wage is or isn't, and *absolutely everything* to do with value produced per unit labor cost. Most U.S. auto manufacturing that still exists in the U.S. at all is in non-union states, in non-union shops.
As Steve Jobs said, "Those jobs are gone, and they're not coming back". Near the end, before they sold it to Canon, the NeXT factory producing laser printers required exactly two (2) full time workers to operate the entire factory.
New technologies have left Detroit behind.
OK, let's get started. I've had this dream for more than a decade now. and I've asked you all to share with me. In six months we begin construction... of Delta City. where Old Detroit now stands. I grew up in Old Detroit.... as a child I played in its streets.... those same streets have become a breeding ground for crime and social decay. Before we employ the 2 million workers that will breathe life into this city again we must pacify Old Detroit. Although shifts in the tax structure have created an economy ideal for corporate growth, community services, in this case law enforcement, have suffered. I think it's time we gave something back. Dick?
Fellow executives... it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to the future of law enforcement. ED 209. ....
Except ED 209 will be a General Atomics Predator.
What, you mean people living in the desert want a lawn full of grass? How about.... don't live in the fucking desert then?
Can't put concrete over it?
I'm really surprised that technology companies still have this "old school" thinking when it comes to the location of their people. A good technology company should not have a geographic area if they are able to leverage remote workers effectively. Unfortunately the "butts in seats" mentality still exists despite the technology existing to make life better for everyone. The Linux Kernel team is a great example of effective remote teamwork.
NSaaaaaa NSaaaaaa
USA is going no where you have ZERO TRUST...
You mean like claiming San Francisco's rent is twice as much as it actually is? No one I know in S.F. is paying anywhere near $2000 for shared housing.
Homeowners' Associations are like little Nazi dictatorships enforcing a bland conformity on everyone. "Think of my neighbors"? How about they worry about their own shit instead of the color of my deck railing?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I find it odd that you would bring up pets.com from 14 years ago. Is there no better example of the waning importance of Silicon Valley?
This just underscores my point of how folks have been incorrectly predicting the decline and fall of SV for a long time now. Going out on a limb, IMHO, a lot of this is rooted in a desire to see SV taken down a notch. In other words, I believe such negative assessments are based more on emotion than any real evidence the bay area is slowing down. The failure of pets.com in 2000 might make for a sensational story, but it's unwise to write off the bay area as "a little bubble", "too confident" or "arrogant". To do so in 2000 would have meant missing out on things like the transformation of Apple, the ascension of Google, the success of startups like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
I've lived in both Austin as well as SV. Both places are great, but from a tech perspective, IMHO Austin doesn't hold a candle to SV. I just now googled some stats on VC funding in Austin vs SV. In Austin it surged from 81.7 million in Q1 2013 to 213.8 in Q1 2014. Not bad.
http://www.bizjournals.com/aus...
But this compares with 2.2 billion invested in Silicon Valley in Q1 2013 and 4.7 billion in Q1 2014 (or about 1/2 of the world-wide venture capital investments).
http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...
For good measure, I looked up VC stats for the entire state of Texas. In all of 2013, Texas got 1.3 billion. 50% went to Austin startups. This compares with 12.3 billion for Silicon Valley for 2013.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap...
There's a reason VCs choose to invest their money in bay area startups. They believe in the place...its past, present and future...and are willing to bet substantial amounts of money on it.
The reason all but one automotive assembly line has pulled out of Detroit is ...
One? Just one plant? Even if you are just talking about Detroit itself, ignoring the suburbs, there is a GM plant and 2 Chrysler plants in Detroit. But when people talk about Detroit and auto companies, they mean the entire metro detroit area. And in that area, there is:
Ford: (Wayne, Flat Rock)
GM: (Detroit, Orion)
Chrysler: (Detroit x 2, Sterling Heights, Warren)
So that's 8 auto assembly plants in metro Detroit. Yep, just one plant here.
This is doomed to failure anyway, simply because car manufacturers are going for the wrong high tech. Self driving cars work, they work well on today's roads with today's technology and no current auto manufacturer wants anything to do with it. Because they'll replace traditional human driven automobiles wholesale, turning cars into something closer to a fungible commodity rather than a potential high profit margin status symbol they can be today.
But consumers aren't going to care. Self driving cars are safe, and 99% of the population is going to want the car to drive itself while they do whatever over any amount of other high tech gadgetry. What's the point of a high tech infotainment system and a thousand "driver alert" safety things when you can just stare at your phone in perfect safety while you're on your commute? The horse and buggy of human driven cars have numbered days, and like all the big carriage manufacturers of a hundred+ years ago today's auto manufacturers are too scared and too stolid to acknowledge as much, hoping instead that somehow giving their outdated products better amenities will cancel their obsolescence.
Yesterday I heard it is possible to buy a house with land in Detroit for 1,000USD.
That is very true. Check out some real estate sites like zillow. The city owns many thousands of houses that have been abandoned. Some are good, some aren't. They are in the process of selling them off several hundred at a time to not overly flood the market. They vary from 1 to 2 thousand. It has become very popular to buy several of them at once all in a row, bulldoze all but the best one, fix it up and make a huge urban garden in the city acreage you just made adjacent. It is a win for everyone as the property values increase, a sense of community is developed (dropping crime), and the abandoned houses become usable again.
you paranoid conspiracy theorist!
It can't be that. Tech hubs like Boston, Austin, and the San Francisco region seems to be getting along just fine with Democratic leadership.
Come to think of it, where are all of the republican tech hubs hiding?
Internet speeds in Ann Arbor don't look significantly different than the rest of Metro Detroit or any other major metro area.
See for yourself.
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/sp...
Slashdot is a forum for engineers, not blue collar workers.
It's in our best interest to support our own jobs by supporting our fellow engineers.
Hondas and BMWs are not engineered in the United States. GM and Ford cars are however.
Milwaukee has a number of parallels to Detroit, but just enough differences that we are not, and will not be, the "next Detroit." Milwaukee is on the upswing. The city has a growing population once again, following its decline during the era of deindustrialization and urban-to-suburban flight. Milwaukee still has good bones, and as more people come here, they find it has a real vibrancy to it. We're truly blessed with a number of great local coffee roasters, including Anodyne, Stone Creek, Sven's, and Valentine, in addition to the ubiquitous Colectivo (formerly Alterra). Pabst, Schlitz and Miller made Milwaukee a beer capitol, and now we've got fantastic microbreweries, Lakefront Brewing, Milwaukee Brewing Company, St. Francis Brewery, and the crowdfunded Brenner Brewing Company. There's five colleges and two major universities within city limits, and a great publicly-owned international airport.
Milwaukee's Green Corridor along S. 6th Street is our sandbox for sustainable development. Among many attributes, it has the world's largest slab of water-permeable concrete, which was made part of the stormwater containment system that runs a beautiful stream and provides water for the on-site community gardens. A food hub is being developed just across the street from there, and we're showing true green development is replete with benefits.
The 20th century saw Milwaukee's first apex, and we're building toward a larger, more sustainable one right now. I'm thrilled to be part of it.
-- haaz.
Detroit industries went from being run by the competent to being run by the relatives of the competent. To top it off it became the playground of MBAs replacing technical management, and considered itself to have too good a reputation to every have to worry about the likes of Toyota. When a slightly tweaked version of a 1938 German car was vastly more technologically advanced than their product they didn't react, and their sheer size and inertia was the only thing that stopped Detroit being a ghost town in the 1960s.
Silicon Valley doesn't quite have that problem yet - apart from disasters in progress like HP of course.
Replacing a grass lawn with a cactus garden violates the terms of many homeowners' associations.
Guess what? Homeowners' associations will change. Their rules aren't static, unending, never-changing dictates. No, they're capricious dictates and they could be different after the next meeting.
Don't forget the Ford stamping plant in Woodhaven.
I'm in tech. I own a home in Metro Detroit (because hardly anyone who says they're from Detroit actually lives within the city limits). I grew up here. I've seen innumerable flashes of hope followed by complete failure and two recessions. Let the hipsters move in and resurrect the slums - I want no more part of it. I'm moving to where governments and fiscal policies are more** sane, where unions don't run the town. I don't understand why people continue to defend such a backwards, bleak, cold and dreary place incapable of handling success and where the majority populace of the largest city in the area refuses to break free from a cycle of public assistance and plantation mentality. Call me racist, call me a bigot, I could care less - Live here, spend years here, and you'll see the region for what it is. The sad matter of fact is that Henry Ford's dystopia will never rise from the ashes of entitlement run absolutely amok. Detroit and the region will remain a minor player for generations to come. It'll probably be followed by jeers and shouts of 'good riddance,' but I'm out the door, heading out of state. Leaving that mess, the negative attitudes, the shitty weather and the awful political and financial climate behind me.
that's why it's such a rathole.
Starting with the Model Cities Program in the sixties, it's been the Social Scientists' paradise. Every liberal idea has been implemented there. Any number of youtube videos will show you how wonderful The D is.
And you want racism? Detroit has plenty of it, the black on white variety. You didn't hear about it, but a white motorist accidentally hit a black youth. When he got out of his vehicle to render assistance, he was beaten nearly to death by blacks. Yes it was a hate crime, yes he was attacked for his skin color, no it won't be prosecuted as such. What a great place to raise kids /s.
I'll take the south any day, it's much more tolerant. This Michigander has had it.
Well, what about all the IT jobs lost in the last 20 years in the Detroit area?
Troy/Auburn Hils etc used to be a 'hi tech corridor' when GM/EDS etc etc
were hiring all those Liberal Arts grads and teaching them to code in PL/1,IMS/DB2...
Would be nice if there actually WERE some jobs in Michigan. there aren't any right now...
still in detroit?
That's why the Detroit the article is talking about, is all of southeast Michigan except the liberal utopia of the city of Detroit.
Disclaimer: I escaped it in 1970.
You can buy a WHOLE HOUSE in Detroit for the cost of one month's rent in the Bay Area. And enjoy a city with a thriving arts and music scene, free-thinking spirit and authentic culture.
Yes, how do you manipulate the mouse and spacebar without opposable thumbs?
Let's not forget Toyota's engineering facility outside of Ann Arbor. I haven't been there, but the vehicles their engineers drive are popular in the local used car market. Trucks with like-new milage but used prices.
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And the GM/Nissan assembly facility in Flint. And the absolutely gigantic number of parts suppliers that feed all of these assembly plants.
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