You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you'd be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference.
This is exactly what I thought out of college. "I'm a product engineer! I can work from anywhere. I'm going to move back to my hometown and turn the rust belt economy around with a billion dollar startup!"
As it turns out, I didn't have the talent to start such a business by myself (and based on my knowledge of startup history, no one does).
And that's why this essay nails it.
In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.
YOU may be a self motivated person, regardless of environment. But your founder may not be. Your first ten employees may not be. Your investors and vendors and strategic partners may not be.
When any of these stakeholders hang out with their friends in the rust belt, they hear depressing stories. They start to look at success like it's impossible, and they come back to work the next day less energized and less motivated.
Or maybe they've got a good circle of friends, but not an ambitious circle of friends. They love their friends, so they stay out with them a little later, sleep a little less, end up a little less productive the next day and leave work earlier to go meet them. Same thing goes for a family, but with the added responsibility.
This isn't to say that friends are bad or families will hold you back. In my experience, good friendships and a loving, functional family are better than any business success.
The point is that your environment will affect your ambitions - even if you never needed help feeling ambitious. At some point or another you'll need help for something, and if your city doesn't drive ambition in that direction, you'll have to work that much harder to motivate the help you need.
Yep, agree with this 100%. I'm from New Zealand, but live in San Francisco. Went back a few weeks ago for a wedding, and was struck by how I had changed compared to the environment. I don't see how I could live back there in the next ten years (I'm only a few years out of college) without it having a significantly detrimental effect on my career. Simply put, my friends in San Francisco are smarter, harder working and more ambitious than my friends back home. I think a big part of this is that they've also all chosen to live here.
There are autodidacts who can go a long way with a big library (or nowadays: sci-hub, b-ok, MOOCs) and their own self-directed study. But if you haven't started on that path before finishing high school, it seems extremely risky to assume that you can start doing it instead of attending a university. Further, if you're already self-motivated and learning on your own, you're probably going to have a lot of (intellectual) fun attending one of the more rigorous institutions, learn faster with access to proper labs for experimental sciences, and fill in gaps that you might have tended to neglect with pure self-study. The credential will also be a big help later whether you want to go on deeper into research or find an "ordinary" full time job afterward. (College degrees are still economically worth it for those who complete the degree. If you can learn degree-material on your own you aren't going to be one of those sad cases who takes on student loan debt without graduating.)
I hated school before I reached the university level. I maintained good grades but I was usually bored and learned most interesting things on my own. A university was the first place I found a majority of fellow students who were straining forward to learn due to interest in what they were learning. It makes the experience far different from being with people who are just being goaded forward by a teacher or evaluating everything in light of "will this be on the test?"
You must have gone to a University with better students than the one I went to, because the majority of the people I went to University with just wanted a piece of paper, and so "will this be on the test" was essential to their well-being and learning was at best secondary.
I was a freshman in 1998 and received my BS 4 years later. Was your experience more recent? I wonder if my experience was better due to the respective schools we attended, the timeframe, or perhaps both. I get the impression that credentialism is still worsening over time.
Intensified credentialism has the effect of diluting classrooms that could be engaging with a bunch of people who are just XP-grinding to level up to a job in 4 years. I do feel bad for people who are there due to distorted economic incentives rather than genuine interest. I also resent them for polluting the intellectual environment of students who are actually interested in the material.
Obviously, everything you said is true. Manifestly, there also exist professional athletes. My advice to teenagers remains: you're not going to be one of them.
My advice to teenagers remains: you're not going to be one of them
This is not usually very hard to check, depending on the sport. Professional athletes at specific positions have fairly specific body types that enable them to succeed. Ask them what sport and position they want to play, and check their body types against the prototypical player at that position.
They'll always be able to point to exceptions - someone who had ridiculously high physical coordination or work ethic, but those traits are often more obvious than physical traits.
They'll always be able to point to exceptions - someone who had ridiculously high physical coordination or work ethic, but those traits are often more obvious than physical traits.
Yes, and my sort of utilitarian calculation is that you'll do more good in the world by discouraging a few would-be exceptions while not misleading a billion kids who obviously aren't going to be a professional athlete (or an extreme autodidact, or a Supreme Court Justice, or anything else like a handful of humans can do that the rest of us can't).
The truly odd thing about a forum like this one is that some of the people here actually are truly exceptional, one-in-a-million talents. I'm not talking to you :)
Anyway, my hypothesis (similar to yours, I think) is that those one-in-a-million talents receive a lot of reinforcement that they're one-in-a-million talents, already. They don't need it from me.
What an interesting essay. I've lived in Atlanta for 12 years and I can't really figure out a message it's trying to send. One of the most up and coming industries here is film, and I know people in that industry and have spent time marinating in it, but it's not the siren call that riches is in NYC.
Atlanta seems to still be finding its identity. All the industries are nascent, it always seems just on the cusp of a big transformation. I have a theory about cities, that property values are largely constrained by geography as the first and practically only factor, and Atlanta has no geographical limitations that jack up prices. As a result, property has always been comparatively cheap.
Atlanta seems to be a big sponge, not even close to hitting scaling limits. I feel like you could almost pour the same amount of wealth that NYC has into the area and it still won't look like even Chicago. It'll just sprawl outwards into adjacent metro areas like Alpharetta or Decatur. Even the city centers here, Downtown, Midtown, and increasingly Buckhead, feel like three distinct cities rather than part of a whole.
As a result it simply won't ever come to have a more coherent identity and message than it did in the nineties with rap and the music industry.
I had a professor some years ago who summed up Atlanta perfectly for me - "[...] it's the biggest small town in America".
Having spent the past 15 years in the region I think he hit the nail on the head. I believe the biggest message Atlanta is sending out is one of music - musical arts are alive and kicking in Atlanta in ways that are very different to the other big music cities. I'm really hopeful that the general creative vibes continue to flourish there.
> I had a professor some years ago who summed up Atlanta perfectly for me - "[...] it's the biggest small town in America".
My friends and I regularly make similar comments about Dallas. I very rarely meet someone new without finding out that they are somehow connected to somebody I know.
Sayings like "Dallas is the world's biggest small town" and "I know I shouldn't be surprised, but how do the hell do those two know each other?" are common utterances among people I know. Also, for people I have a ton of oddball connections with, "Dallas is the world's biggest small town, and it's all [name]'s fault".
Clearly the message that Atlanta sends is "you should sit in traffic".
(I'm joking, but I feel like this might be the kernel of something - most notably Atlanta's long-standing problems with segregation and resistance to public transit.)
> Atlanta seems to still be finding its identity. All the industries are nascent, it always seems just on the cusp of a big transformation. I have a theory about cities, that property values are largely constrained by geography as the first and practically only factor, and Atlanta has no geographical limitations that jack up prices. As a result, property has always been comparatively cheap.
I've observed similar things about Dallas.
Property values are going up here a little, but Dallas is still a really cheap place to live compared to any major coastal city or even hilly places like Austin, and the recent growth in property values is largely because a surprisingly large number of companies have all decided to relocate here in a very short span of time, and the housing industry hasn't caught up yet. I expect this trend won't last: eventually there will be enough new housing built in exurbs like Frisco and Prosper (and small towns like Celina being turned into exurbs) that it'll counterbalance the influx of new residents.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I feel like SF and NY have the same thing going on. NY has the Boroughs, SF has distinct neighborhoods that have their own feel. That said, I could travel through all of Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead in a given day (in fact, have bicycled through all of them in the span of a couple hours). Eating, dining, or visiting friends in any of these doesn't feel any more distant than a trip on one of the other Metros. Frankly, I don't want or think Atlanta should have "one identitiy". It's a melting pot, and I hope it stays that way.
I've lived in Atlanta for nine years and it seems like the message is "be nice." Really. Certainly there are exceptions, but there is an ambient friendliness here that is missing in other large cities.
how's the tech scene in atl? i live a little south of the border (with fl) and i'm considering a move. i've lived in NYC and it was great so i'm inclined to move back there but atl has piqued my interest lately.
Cost of living is very low if you are careful where you live although that is starting to change.
Traffic is starting to be a problem...if we could get rail out 20,85,75, and further north on 400 it would bring a huge geography into play and really take off. So far it hasn't.
Seattle — "infrastructure"
We build the infrastructure for the "start ups" in SF to use the "money" from NYC.
We began by selling mining equipment and travel to the SF startups that ventured to the Alaska Gold Rush.
We grew up building the airplanes and ships for the expanding US military (Boeing & Lockheed Shipbuilding).
We built the supply chains that run the global economy (Amazon, Costco, Expeditors Intl, UPS, Paccar)
We built the software infrastructure for the computer revolution (Microsoft).
We built the infrastructure for the cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP, F5, etc.)
We built the infrastructure for video games (Nintendo, Steam, Xbox)
We're building the infrastructure for AI/ML (All the major players are setting up their AI/ML hubs in Seattle)
I mostly agree, though the whole Cambridge bit was a bit overdone IMHO. NYC seems to be slowly changing though, finance and money seem to be losing prestige a bit in favor of tech. Ten years ago there was "a" NY Tech Meetup. Now there are many dozens if not hundreds, it certainly feels you could attend one every day. I feel I walk around and see a lot more people these days whom I say to myself "they are definitely in tech" whereas 10 years ago or so that would rarely happen.
I started spending some time in Chicago, and I guess I am still trying to figure out what its trying to say- so far all I have is "a less intense NYC."
> finance and money seem to be losing prestige a bit in favor of tech.
Money will never lose its prestige in NYC. Tech is now where the money is going so I guess the prestige will naturally increase.
> I feel I walk around and see a lot more people these days whom I say to myself "they are definitely in tech" whereas 10 years ago or so that would rarely happen.
What? I worked all throughout the 2000s in tech in NYC. We've always been here.
The second largest tech industry in the world is in NYC after silicon valley. And it's been that way for a long time.
Did you work in tech, or at a bank, or some other firm where tech was subservient to the business? I am not saying tech was never there- I worked in the 2000s in NYC as well- but now go around the flatiron area, you see all these people in jeans and a digital ocean (or whatever) t-shirt and glasses, and they just scream "I just left my startup's office." It was harder to pick them out when they were forced to wear a button down tucked into slacks.
It was definitely more prestigious to say you worked at GS vs Google 10 years ago, I am not so sure that's the case anymore. Everyone's experience is different I guess.
I think you have a point here with Chicago. It may because no single industry dominates the economy like in Silicon Valley (tech), NYC (finance), LA (entertainment) or Cambridge (education). To me, the caricatures described in the post are largely extensions of these industries and those who are drawn to them.
Oh no I didn't mean to imply that in a negative way at all. Its like NY, but way cheaper. My friend bought a nice 2BR condo in a building with a doorman and a pool and balcony on the 30th something floor for 300k. A different friend of mine is spending every other week there for work (we both moved to the same company HQ'ed there), considered buying a crashpad 800 sqft 1BR in "the loop" aka right downtown for a bit over 200k. These are prime locations where you can walk or bike to work. A few stops out on the red line to the north and you can get a lakefront (with a view) 1000sq ft 1BR for <200k as per my trulia search a moment ago.
Salaries are lower than NYC, but not that much. A dev on hacker news should be able to comfortably afford not only to live on his own but to own a place on a single income.
It still has good parks, museums and restaurants, but they are in my experience far less pretentious, and with a few exceptions (ahem Alinea), much easier to get into. There are clubs, there is art, but its all just a bit more muted.
A lot of people love NY for the extremes and the "OMG only in NYC" stuff but I find Chicago to be a cleaner toned down version that doesn't take itself too seriously like NYC often does.
Yep, Chicago’s discount over cities of similar stature is pretty staggering. And if you want to live the same frugal lifestyle you would in SF (roommates + hour commute on public transit) you could spend $600 on housing and potentially burn less than $15k/year. That would be some incredible progress towards savings goals or financial independence at a Chicago tech worker’s salary.
Lol. “Omg only in NYC” is the trap that has kept me there this long.
I suppose my network is pretty strong at this point, so finding work as a freelance dev has been quite nice as a result. Though my network led me to Chicago, so i shouldn’t think my ability to find work isn’t constrained to nyc only.
I'm in New Orleans. Our cities form of status is totally who you know. Money is not as big of adeal. A billionaire has less clout than the owner of a operation that designs Mardi Gras floats or the bartender that is the lead of the Krewe of Elvi.
I think that is what you would call "Soul" possibly.
After travelling to a bunch of other cities and seeing unfettered capitalism destroy communities, neighborhoods, housing markets, livability, and peoples lives..it's a pretty refreshing place to be.
On the flip side our economy is absolutely terrible.
It's exactly the "laissez les bon temps rouler" mentality in NOLA that keeps it from becoming a booming tech incubator (for the reasons in the article), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's nowhere else like the Crescent city, and I hope it stays that way.
Although you're more likely to overhear discussions about last night's debauchery than the next billion-dollar startup, you'll never be able to relax in Cambridge, Mass. like you will in New Orleans. I think the idea that a high-intensity environment is inherently better than a more laid-back one is exactly what leads to the "work till you burn out" mentality in places like SV.
Unfettered capitalism has been doing a number on the rental market here lately, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.
That being said, if you got a critical mass of young techies down here that loved the culture, why not? It’s not that much dirtier or more dangerous than SF
This is really what I feel to some degree. The place you live at matters a lot. But even with 32 I haven't found mine yet. I feel I'm much closer (not in kilometers but in closeness to how I want to be as a person) but still some way to go. And this is really tiring, because moving to another town, making new friends, learning the local work network, learning the cultural nuances that nobody seems to notice until you fail applying one, getting used to a new apartment where the toilet seat is slightly higher and the shower water is "just right" with another setting you don't know yet. It takes a lot from one's life and happiness, and I slowly start to wonder at which point I might reach "good enough" and just stick to it.
I recently moved to Washington (eastern side) and out here it is more about what you can do yourself...do you own a excavator? did you build your own house? do you homestead? how much of your food do you produce yourself? can you rebuild your truck/tractor? etc.
You can call it 'ambition' all you want. It's really experience and wisdom that leads to less fool-hardy 'ambition'. That's why I left NYC for smaller cities and rural areas. The wisdom of having dealt with the money changers looking to capitalize on gleamy eye'd fools having just landed in said city. Play your stocks and equity games with the next generation and keep chiming on about your perverse culture's 'ambition' requirements. I know a modern-day usurer playing PR games when I see one.
This is all so clearly just thinly veiled, hopefully manipulative, status-signaling.
For the incoming replies that inevitably address their imaginary audience instead of engaging me in good faith: here's my offer to you, a sharpened stick for you to sit on.
This essay makes me incredibly sad. Many of our cities sending some of the most interesting or inspiring messages are becoming off-limits to future generations due to high housing costs.
I used to think the message in Dallas was "get rich". The city had almost no flavor to it and seemed all about the money. Having leaved here for a few years, I think the message is "work together". The economy is amazing and the opportunities here seem to encourage cooperation
Also Dallas resident. I would agree that "work together" is a message here, but would add to it, "work together, play together". Dallas is all about the social life. Not in the way LA is with "A-list" or "who you know", but simply just doing things with friends. All the time.
I'd also say the message to me is "work hard, play hard, and keep a work life balance". People in Dallas get shit done, but they aren't going to work for more than 40-50 hours/week. I'd say another 10-20 hours per week is spent on hobbies, with friends or not, then the rest of ones' free time is social. Whether it be family or friends or both. Perhaps that is why people usually say "people are so nice here".
When people visiting ask me what I do on the weekends here in Dallas, my response is, patio drinking with friends or traveling. Dallas, being centrally located and having two major airports, is a great place to be able to take off for the weekend for a fairly low price anywhere in the country. For as much as I'd be paying for rent in NYC, I can pay for a mortgage and travel to a different city almost every weekend. Although I usually average twice a month. And the friends you spend time with while you are in Dallas are very open to traveling with you as well.
I've now traveled to almost every major city in the U.S. in two years time, some cities multiple times, and I think for somebody in their mid-20's to mid-30's, this is a great place to be. During this time in ones career, you can get industry experience in a field and then go start your start up or just move up once you know a thing or two.
Detroit, I have no idea. A message of "it gets better?". Most residents right now are either those who were affected by the riots and carry a deep seated fear and hatred of the city, people who grew up in the city during the recession and have basically hit rock bottom multiple times, immigrants who moved to neighboring cities and have started a slight culture there, or idealistic youngsters that think they can change things.
I fit into the last category and I have no idea what this area wants out of you.
I live in the burbs, but whenever I'm down in Detroit, what I really get is something like "get out more" or "try something new". This could just be my age talking, I'm in my 20s and that's a calling I think people in general get around this time, but I honestly do feel like Detroit encourages me to step out of my comfort zone.
Going through a period of personal reflection right now. Have read the OP essay easily a dozen times over the last 5-6 years. Somehow I read it again yesterday and by chance, here it is today, HN front page.
I'm a traditionally educated engineer (comp eng degree from big 10 midwestern school) who was what I'd call medium ambitious. I knew I didn't want to end up somewhere in some small backwater in suburban Chicago (where I'm from) doing IT for a bank. I always wanted to make great products and sell them for money.
Silicon Valley has changed a lot in the 7 years I've lived here. It's crazy how much venture capital is getting raised today. It seems like almost every week, there's yet another record broken in VC. Instacart just raised 400 million dollars recently. And now Justin Kan's Atrium is doing $10 million on a story and it seems practically every day another self-driving car startup is doing a nine-figure raise.
Looking back, pg is right. For as much as SV claims to be about technology/innovation, it's really all driven by the fastest route to economic power. The place has become noticeably more driven by business guys, "growth hacking", virality, etc. than actual product innovation. Maybe it's for the best, as a lot of innovation is actually in distribution (not just product). But it does make me wonder, what's next for this place?
The big question I'm trying to figure out for myself is, do I want to play the big-money startup game or be a small business owner? The distinction is getting sharper each day. I never really wanted to be a billionaire but realistically, "having a big effect on the world" is absolutely how things are measured here, and if you aren't trying to dent the universe, you're basically viewed as a zero here.
It's interesting what guys like tom preson-werner have done. He could probably be a famous brand-name VC (has the resume and connections for it) but instead, he's doing a second company in language learning. I really respect that he wants to build good stuff, even if it doesn't mean raising a bazillion dollars. I'm not surprised the company isn't HQ'd here.
EDIT: It's also interesting how just "doing something big" impresses SV, even if you don't succeed. Examples: Slava (rethinkdb), Dalton Caldwell (several failed startups, now partner at YC), Adora Cheung (also partner at YC after Homejoy crashed and burned), etc. They seem to respect ambition perhaps even more than building a solid business or company. It's really bizarre.
This is exactly what I thought out of college. "I'm a product engineer! I can work from anywhere. I'm going to move back to my hometown and turn the rust belt economy around with a billion dollar startup!"
As it turns out, I didn't have the talent to start such a business by myself (and based on my knowledge of startup history, no one does).
And that's why this essay nails it.
In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.
YOU may be a self motivated person, regardless of environment. But your founder may not be. Your first ten employees may not be. Your investors and vendors and strategic partners may not be.
When any of these stakeholders hang out with their friends in the rust belt, they hear depressing stories. They start to look at success like it's impossible, and they come back to work the next day less energized and less motivated.
Or maybe they've got a good circle of friends, but not an ambitious circle of friends. They love their friends, so they stay out with them a little later, sleep a little less, end up a little less productive the next day and leave work earlier to go meet them. Same thing goes for a family, but with the added responsibility.
This isn't to say that friends are bad or families will hold you back. In my experience, good friendships and a loving, functional family are better than any business success.
The point is that your environment will affect your ambitions - even if you never needed help feeling ambitious. At some point or another you'll need help for something, and if your city doesn't drive ambition in that direction, you'll have to work that much harder to motivate the help you need.