<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>dexwiz</author><text>Moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area, and tech comes in two forms: IT departments at major industrial firms (manufacturing, chemical, pharma, etc), or companies that are eventually bought by West Coast companies. The pay cap is much lower. Becoming a millionaire through stocks and wages is harder, but you will still be in the top 10% of earners overall.&lt;p&gt;If you want to live in a mansion, the Midwest makes this dream obtainable. Buy a 6 bedroom, lake (reservoir) side, 4k sqr ft home for less than a million. Of if you want an acre of lawn, but not live too far in the country.&lt;p&gt;What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white). (EDIT: This gets more pronounced the more rural you are. Cities tend to be more accepting. What you will find is that rural areas have more relative sway on thought compared to the West Coast.) Towns outside of major metropolitan areas are dying as most major industries that supported that last two generations have left. Drugs are a huge issue, but its not as obvious because the floor for homelessness is so much lower. The only major infrastructure and building projects that get approved are sports stadiums, because idiots in local government rather have sports teams than functioning schools.&lt;p&gt;What the Midwest does have is solid engineering and research universities, that graduate thousands of STEM oriented students a year. Unfortunately there are often over an hour from the nearest 250k+ city. I went to one, and I think less than 25% of my friends stayed in state. The brain drain is real.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities</title><url>https://www.purpose.jobs/blog/hiring-tech-jobs-has-increased-in-midwestern-cities</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>goodells</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m surprised not to see Madison, WI on this list.  Our tech sector has been strong and growing for several decades - locally we have Epic Systems, Exact Sciences, Promega Corporation, Thermo Fisher Scientific, several large insurance companies like American Family Insurance, Sentry Insurance.  It might be easy to miss the agglomeration of these companies in one area because some of them are technically in different municipalities than the City of Madison.  But it&amp;#x27;s a great area, and most of the big players here have been spared or even strengthened by the unique circumstances of the pandemic.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Hiring for tech jobs has increased more than 100% in these Midwestern cities</title><url>https://www.purpose.jobs/blog/hiring-tech-jobs-has-increased-in-midwestern-cities</url></story>