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by fengb
1450 days ago
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Mostly anecdotal opinion as a Chicagoan — Our tech scene has been largely driven by fintech and a few unicorns. And our unicorns tend to be much more bust than boom — Groupon being the highest profile one. Not sure if it's correlation or causation, but VC investment tends to be more conservative, and the ones I do hear about are mostly fintech. On top of which, Chicago wasn't all that tech friendly. Pay has been rather stagnant, and promotions above senior engineer didn't exist before Covid/remote stretched everything out. The exception to comp has been prop trading firms, which make oodles of money but... trader culture dominates over eng. |
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The presumption, except in high-frequency trading, is that the talented people go to the coasts (which is bullshit, because I've spent a lot of time on the coasts, and it's all socioeconomic) and so a certain fratty culture dominates.
If WFH is permanent, it could be one of the best things for Chicago in a long time. It really is a great place to live--if you can find a good company. I also didn't find the weather to be that bad. April-November is a slightly cooler (nicer, in summer) version of the same thing we have on the east coast, and the winter tends to be mostly fine with only an occasional -20 cold blast.
In my view, Chicago's biggest negative is its 1-2 hour drive radius. The city's beautiful. Northern Illinois, not as much. Starved Rock is nice, and the Indiana Dunes are alright, but most of the cool stuff in the Midwest is 3-5+ hours away. The flat landscape also suffers due to billboards and powerlines; the topography makes the city itself so much more more compelling, but it means the outlying areas get really ugly--because if there's any garbage within a mile radius, you're going to see it. On the other hand, it has one of the cheapest and most connected airports in the world, so that might make up for it.