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The American Midwest Is Quickly Becoming a Blue-Collar Version of Silicon Valley (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: The economic engine of Silicon Valley seems to have driven right by the midwest. America's urban coastal cities have enjoyed an explosion in their technology sectors. New York's Silicon Alley and Boston's biotech corridor are world-class incubators of talent and startups. Austin (Texas), Seattle (Washington), Washington, D.C, and even Miami Beach claim a piece of the digital economy (and Silicon-something monikers). But what about Columbus and Indianapolis and Kansas City? After years in the doldrums, their fortunes are rising. Venture capital firms are setting up shop. Startups are clustering in old industrial strongholds. But the region's tech sectors look different than their coastal cousins. The midwest is seeing the rise of "mid-tech."
Alongside the traditional high-flying software jobs that are plentiful in Silicon Valley, mid-tech jobs, loosely defined as tech jobs requiring less than a college degree, are growing fast in the Midwest. While not an official designation, mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesn't require a college degree: just intense, focused training on the job or in vocational programs like those of blue-collar trades of the industrial past. [...] Mid-tech jobs composed more than a quarter of all tech employment in major midwestern metropolitan areas, including Columbus, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Nashville, Tennessee; and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota-Wisconsin. More than 100,000 people were employed in such jobs in these cities alone. That proportion never cracked 20% in Bay Area metropolises, the heart of Silicon Valley. While the analyses did not include all cities, it reveals the tech sector's evolution in the Midwest along different lines than Silicon Valley. The findings come from the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit public policy research group, which crunched data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. High and mid-tech jobs in midwestern cities also grew at an annual compounded rate of about 5%. What do these jobs look like? "In Kentucky, the technical skills once applied to things like calculating blast trajectories in mines are going into Javascript," reports Quartz. "The software firm Interapt has set up a training program in Eastern Kentucky to turn former coal miners and others with technical aptitude into software developers."
Alongside the traditional high-flying software jobs that are plentiful in Silicon Valley, mid-tech jobs, loosely defined as tech jobs requiring less than a college degree, are growing fast in the Midwest. While not an official designation, mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesn't require a college degree: just intense, focused training on the job or in vocational programs like those of blue-collar trades of the industrial past. [...] Mid-tech jobs composed more than a quarter of all tech employment in major midwestern metropolitan areas, including Columbus, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Nashville, Tennessee; and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota-Wisconsin. More than 100,000 people were employed in such jobs in these cities alone. That proportion never cracked 20% in Bay Area metropolises, the heart of Silicon Valley. While the analyses did not include all cities, it reveals the tech sector's evolution in the Midwest along different lines than Silicon Valley. The findings come from the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit public policy research group, which crunched data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. High and mid-tech jobs in midwestern cities also grew at an annual compounded rate of about 5%. What do these jobs look like? "In Kentucky, the technical skills once applied to things like calculating blast trajectories in mines are going into Javascript," reports Quartz. "The software firm Interapt has set up a training program in Eastern Kentucky to turn former coal miners and others with technical aptitude into software developers."
"America's urban coastal cities have enjoyed an explosion in their technology sectors. New York's Silicon Alley and Boston's biotech corridor are world-class incubators of talent and startups".
I must be way out of touch, because I just can't think of many specific achievements that all that world-class talent has brought about.
Processor chips - well, I think it's clear that a lot of useful progress has not been made there. GPUs, perhaps some advances. What's new in software, though? When was there last a really important new operating system? It all seems to be apps for extracting money from consumers.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I know a few people out in California silicon valley who say these companies and liberal California is pricing itself out of the business market. I think the escape to a more affordable market is in play and California may eventually be abandon by many tech companies or never considered as a place to do business.
This isn't all that surprising IMHO.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
In my neck of the woods, most of the IT companies focus on manufacturing. Their main innovations are in controls, resource planning, quality control, logistics, etc... These innovations, from the outside, are totally opaque and probably pretty boring to most end-users. However, they mean that stores can easily get the products they need to sell, stuff is easier to make, cheaper to build, and of higher quality.
The company I work for, for instance, makes software to automate regulatory filings with the FDA, which is an incredibly cumbersome process. The only electronic filing method, for instance, is formatting data using a custom XML DTD into separate files, zipping them together in a specific directory format, then uploading it, manually, via a Java 2 *swing* based desktop application.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
... from TFA:
"While not an official designation, mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesn’t require a college degree..."
The kind of work Bill Gates does, then?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I heard about some of the retraining programs setup under the Obama Administration that are finding their funding cut as well as students no longer showing up because those lucrative coal jobs are coming back.
While I support the idea of vocational jobs getting their due value, I also see this as any one particular area becoming too flooded is likely to devalue that job. Over supply and lack of demand will destroy any industry.
That being said, I am aware of some areas where not enough technical jobs exist and companies would rather pay more in an urban area than to pay the same amount and bring high paying jobs to a rural area. Don't ask why this is, I don't get it. I am just saying I have witnessed this and have yet to reconcile why such happens.
Place something witty here
speaking as a former CAD/machinist/electrician for a manufacturing company in Indiana, this work has always seemed to exist and the money has always been pretty good (~75k a year) but you'll owe the devil his dues. Manufacturing companies take 1-2 downtimes a year, during which you'll likely work 60-70 hour weeks doing this "intensive" type of work TFA describes. You'll be issued a sprint direct-connect phone because managers love the idea of a walkie talkie that works even when you're asleep at home, yet they'll pretend its not something they rely on when you start expensing 1 am PTT conference calls with the furnace operators. You'll spend most of the day writing excel reports in the cramped heat-treat or shipping office on a desktop with a missing '3' key that hasnt seen an upgrade since the bush administration, only to turn around and realize your boss also expects you to reprogram a new set of Cincinnati CNC's the mover/millwrights are slowly snaking through the plant.
and dont expect to delegate any of this because your title never changed, just the money. Sure, I was still "big john" on the floor but ill be damned if anyone was helping run new hydraulics for me, or retrofit my reprogrammed fork truck scanners at the dock. Then theres your boss. Are you actually keeping up with the work? you can expect to have every other time card "flagged for further review" because your managers and leadership dont understand what you do anymore, but have come to rely so implicitly on it that your face is practically on the company card.
When i gave this kind of work up for a salaried ladder logic programmer job, I was hired back part time at twice my pay for downtime events and documentation. I miss being "big john" on the floor, but i sure as shit dont miss juggling chainsaws on a sunday for pay.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"In Kentucky, the technical skills once applied to things like calculating blast trajectories in mines are going into Javascript,"
so that they can asplode your browser.
Where are the jobs? A software firm doesn't need so much headcount.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The economic engine of Silicon Valley seems to have driven right by the midwest
No it hasn't. It only seems so to clueless people on the coasts because the people who live in Silicon Valley live in a bubble. If you are looking for tech jobs, Southeast Michigan routinely outperforms Silicon Valley in R&D spending, revenue, and hiring. Why? The automotive industry uses a HUGE amount of tech. People tend to forget how much technology goes into designing and making cars. Oakland County just outside of Detroit City is one of the richest counties in the entire US. Michigan has a ridiculous amount of engineering talent - but it isn't centered around PCs and phones. It's in robots, automation, chemicals, controls, metalworking, etc.
Venture capital firms are setting up shop. Startups are clustering in old industrial strongholds. But the region's tech sectors look different than their coastal cousins. The midwest is seeing the rise of "mid-tech."
Venture capital firms have always been here in the midwest. So have startups. The culture is different and the economy doesn't look the same but none of that is anything new. It's kind of amazing how condescending folks from the coasts are about parts of the country they never bother to visit and know little about. They hear that the City of Detroit is having a hard time so they assume that the entire midwest is a desolate hell hole with no jobs and no technology.
Mid-tech jobs composed more than a quarter of all tech employment in major midwestern metropolitan areas, including Columbus, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Nashville, Tennessee; and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota-Wisconsin. More than 100,000 people were employed in such jobs in these cities alone.
Detroit metro alone has a population of over 4 million. 100,000 people is kind of a rounding error. Plus those jobs have always been there. If you didn't know that you weren't paying attention. You don't need a four year degree to learn how to program a robot or a CNC mill but those definitely are technical jobs.
The jobs here are probably pretty much the same as any place else. The major difference might be most places are more set in the Windows environment than on the coast. Basically, whatever tech was "hot" 10-15 years ago is just now getting implemented here. But we all use the same type of switches, hardware, phone systems, etc as the rest of the country. We're not sending smoke signals and fighting off angry Indian tribes with muskets or using a horse and buggy for transportation. We lay fiber just like they do on the coast, we use VMWare, Active Directory, and Airwatch just like the rest of the planet. We even have these giant metal things in the sky, any they go so what we call an "International Airport"! We have 4G cell networks, electricity, electric cars, and all sorts of new-fangled tech. Our physics operates the same way as Silicon Valley, our electrons flow just the same.
Ironically, the Waffle House is considered by some top Chefs (Anthony Bourdain for instance) to be an outstanding example of American comfort food
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Good to see there is a push to reskill workers in areas where industry is dying out but this >>> "The software firm Interapt has set up a training program in Eastern Kentucky to turn former coal miners and others with technical aptitude into software developers." isn't that simple. While it sounds impressive to say they are creating developers with a training program, aka "Reskilling Americans for the Future!", it's not that easy. You don't become a developer by taking some training classes that most likely show you have to write HTML and maybe some basic logic. These will be more like programmers. Some will probably figure it out and go on to become devs, after finding bugs in the vendors applications or trying to debug code someone wrote 3 years ago and never documented. So invest in coffee companies and organic beef companies as these folks will be ordering americanos and the latest food crazes soon enough.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
They might start moving here. Keep your nuttiness over on the coast where it belongs. ;)
Seriously though, the Midwest has always been a hub of technological innovation, it's just not the sexy kind that makes news. SE Michigan (where I am) has a large amount of talented engineers because of all the automotive companies and suppliers. We also have a lot of biotech and high tech manufacturing communities. It just seems that unless it's related to one of the major west coast tech companies no one cares. Personally I love it out here, the people are friendly and way more welcoming (my wife is from CA and seemed surprised by this when she moved here), the cost of living is low, and while we're not as trendy as the coasts, we do have a lot of trendy areas (check out Ann Arbor sometime). The only thing that sucks here is the weather, but it's not as bad as it's made out to be. There really is more to the US than the coasts.
My first job was in a tech startup in Naperville, Illinois. In 1992. (Right down the street from Bell Labs. The founder of this startup was a former Bell Labs employee).
This company was literally bought by a competitor (who sold inferior products), and shut down. That's what happens to tech workers who choose jobs not in Silicon Valley or WDC. You get bought and shut down. That's IF your startup is successful. Same goes for companies that open satellite offices in other cities. They may not shut down these remote offices, but they are used as an accounting tool to relieve payroll pressure during a downturn. (that means these offices bear the brunt of layoffs).
You want a hiccup-free career in tech? Don't start it in the midwest. Or any place else. The big money will come along and fuck you over. You stand a better chance in Seattle, of course, and the WDC area (if you are into Fed. Contracting), and I think New York and Boston are starting to look good too.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It seems I am a polar opposite to those who are in love with the expensive living on the coasts. I live and work in the Midwest and will certainly retire here. By living in the middle of the country, I can easily visit both coasts, and the lower cost of living is going to allow me to retire early. Despite the claims that there is no culture or a diverse community, I would say that most Midwest college towns defy that notion. I have everything but an ocean and a large local lake can take care of that need. I grew up in Florida and survived the drug-addled rat race for many years before venturing west. It was the best decision I made in my life. I almost didn't write this because frankly, I would rather the coasties not know how good us "blue collar" IT folks have it.
This person seems completely out of touch with the tech sector in the Mid-West.
"Austin (Texas), Seattle (Washington), Washington, D.C, and even Miami Beach claim a piece of the digital economy (and Silicon-something monikers). But what about Columbus and Indianapolis and Kansas City?"
Trust me, I wish Kansas City WASN'T given the moniker Silicon-Prairie.
"...mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesn't require a college degree: just intense, focused training on the job or in vocational programs like those of blue-collar trades of the industrial past." .COM-like businesses like the one I use to work for in Kansas City. Free pop, two story slide, regulation dodgeball court, segways... all of it. I've met Steve Wozniak more times than I could count. A coworker even got him to sign his Android phone. But maybe that is just all part of being a "mid-tech" worker in the doldrums.
Now, being from the Mid-West I may not be intelligent enough to put together a rational counter argument against this point, but please allow me to try and someone from the coasts can correct me. In the Mid-West we have large software companies like Cerner, Garmin, and Boeing. We have software companies that control and influence most of the financial transactions in this country, like Bats and Tradebot. We even have
You talk like there aren't other employers that need help. If you're any good then it's no problem to get another tech job if your employer goes under or is bought out.
I've been working tech jobs in Chicago for 20 years now; I've never ever had a problem finding work in less than a month of looking. It's ranged from 3 days to maybe 3 weeks.
They key is having actual skills. If you're an experienced system or network admin and have a programming background in languages like C, Perl, Python or Java you will have no problem getting a job making well over six figures. Even the front-end developers get to pick who they work for. Talk to a recruiting agency, there's more jobs available than developers.
While not an official designation, mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesnâ(TM)t require a college degree: just intense, focused training on the job or in vocational programs like those of blue-collar trades of the industrial past.
Companies in my region don't require college degrees for the high-tech jobs, you just need to have the skills and experience to get the job done. The only companies that require degrees tend to be large corporations. Sometimes they won't promote people above a certain level without a degree, but that's just their policy and they lose good workers because of it.
They might start moving here. Keep your nuttiness over on the coast where it belongs. ;)
Seriously though, the Midwest has always been a hub of technological innovation, it's just not the sexy kind that makes news. SE Michigan (where I am) has a large amount of talented engineers because of all the automotive companies and suppliers. We also have a lot of biotech and high tech manufacturing communities. It just seems that unless it's related to one of the major west coast tech companies no one cares. Personally I love it out here, the people are friendly and way more welcoming (my wife is from CA and seemed surprised by this when she moved here), the cost of living is low, and while we're not as trendy as the coasts, we do have a lot of trendy areas (check out Ann Arbor sometime). The only thing that sucks here is the weather, but it's not as bad as it's made out to be. There really is more to the US than the coasts.
I am in the St. Louis area, and there are quite a few good companies to work for here. I am at one now that has built a very complex system that was built over the span of 15 years, and was acquired by a larger company. The problem is that we are a total Windows shop. As many companies do, they think the smart thing to do is to go with all Microsoft technology because... Microsoft! So instead of trying to fix all of our technical debt (IE-only, SQL Server only, Silverlight, and even a bit of VB6) because it would literally take years to rewrite, we are building new things in the AWS cloud. It's a whole new stack for us, and it has been very painful. It's a challenge to find people with that skillset here, so we have hired some people remotely who have those skills. Problem is they are more 'wild wild west' and don't really follow sound software engineering principles. (e.g. everyone writes their own components instead of using shared components)
After being in the software game for 25 years, working at huge companies and startups, on everything from proprietary systems to mainframes to mobile, I can see how it would be kind of nice to settle in on something and just do it instead of trying so damn hard to innovate.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What about our families that used to make a good living harpooning whales, or the other side of my family that made horseshoe nails? People with those fancy high school degrees looking down at me and mine, screw em all!
Here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, I've worked for two highly innovative small companies that pretty much were (or are) the best in the world at what they did (or do).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes