Detroit Is Going Bankrupt, But Its Tech Community Is Going Strong

FUD. This is total nonsense. I've lived in and around Detroit for the greater part of my life. I've even lived in the Bay Area for a couple years. There have been tremendous strides to turn this city around even in the last 5 years. I don't live in the city now, but I do work downtown every day in the Ren Cen. Even in the last year alone, I've noticed things pick up in the downtown area. I'm glad you took your cranky hatred elsewhere.

I've only been in Detroit proper a few times, but this all comports with the general impression of a complete hellhole.

Hard to image a tech community "thriving" when basic city services and personal safety are so lacking.

No one can "fix" Detroit because no one can even discuss the reasons why Detroit is Detroit. It's not Democrats (Seattle and the Bay Area are fine). It's not big companies (there do happen to be auto plants in other areas). It has to do with the great unmentionable taboos of modern American society.

To state why Detroit is Detroit is like saying that "Stalin was a dictator" in 1970s Russia[1]. It doesn't matter that the leaders[2] of the society acknowledged that as fact, or even that everyone knew that it was true on some level. You yourself can't state the truth about why Detroit is Detroit. Like in the 1970s USSR, you won't be shot, you will just probably lose your job and/or be forced into a public apology.

[1] http://www.volokh.com/2010/04/30/on-a-bus-in-kiev/

  I remember very little about my childhood in the Soviet 
  Union; I was only seven when I left. But one memory I have 
  is being on a bus with one of my parents, and asking 
  something about a conversation we had had at home, in which 
  Stalin and possibly Lenin were mentioned as examples of 
  dictators. My parent took me off the bus at the next stop, 
  even though it wasn’t the place we were originally going...

  What’s more, this is so even though most people, including 
  most Communists, knew that Stalin was of course a dictator. 
  The government itself had acknowledged as much. Even Lenin 
  was widely understood to have been a dictator in the sense 
  of someone who didn’t govern through democratic means.

  But it’s not the sort of thing that you’d want to say in 
  public, or even to your friends in private. Sssh! — people 
  might hear! Those who hear might draw deeper inferences 
  about what else you might believe. This might get back to 
  the place you work. You might be fired, or blacklisted. By 
  the 1970s, you probably didn’t have to worry much about 
  being shot, or being sent to Siberia; these were not the 
  1930s. But lost jobs, ruined careers — sure. And a forced 
  public apology: well, of course, that might help a bit.

  Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community 
  is naive about the fact that African-American young men are 
  disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, 
  that they are disproportionately both victims and 
  perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that 
  fact, although black folks do interpret the reasons for 
  that in a historical context.

  We understand that some of the violence that takes place in 
  poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of 
  a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty 
  and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be 
  traced to a very difficult history.

  And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds 
  to the frustration. And the fact that a lot of African-
  American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse 
  is given, well, there are these statistics out there that 
  show that African-American boys are more violent -- using 
  that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently 
  causes pain.

  I think the African-American community is also not naive in 
  understanding that statistically somebody like Trayvon 
  Martin was probably statistically more likely to be shot by 
  a peer than he was by somebody else.

I can really only think of one good reason to pick another Midwest city over Chicago: tech culture. Many of these startups here in Chicago seem to lack strong technical co-founders.

A significant minority of startups in Chicago just feel like a grind to get an exit and as a developer you're basically given the minimal amount of resources and asked to work the maximum amount of time achieve that goal. All the while some dude (it's usually a dude) is breathing down your neck asking you why isn't their vaguely specified, poorly thought-out product done yet- "Shouldn't this just be a simple 'if' statement?" (An 'if' statement! Of course! Thanks for being my muse, boss.)

You see a lot of entrepreneurs here who come from big consulting groups that don't really "get" tech and barely even grasp startups. They're kinda like tourists - they know there's a ton of opportunity in the sector, they're willing to take the risk to capitalize on it, but there's no real passion for technology. If it all goes bust they'll just go back to their old job at Accenture or wherever and use their brief foray as an entrepreneur as a feather in their cap as they climb the corporate ladder.

The effect of all this is that it tends to drive more technically-minded entrepreneurs or more hardcore dedicated biz types to take their businesses outside the city to places like SF, Austin and NYC. It also prevents us from drawing in people from Wisconsin and Michigan. What we're left with are a bunch of suits trying to bro-it-up with a startup until they finally surrender the last of their adolescence and go back to working for someone else.

and...Whew, rant over. That's the only reason I can think of why you'd do something in Detroit instead of Chicago.

I think the biggest appeal of Detroit right now is that the people going there are trying to be a part of something bigger. They're trying to revitalize and reinvent a once great city. And it's working. Detroit is a hell of a lot nicer now than it was 5 years ago.

You might think that the tech sector can't do enough to turn the city around, but I disagree. This isn't just a collection of random startups. There are tech giants like Microsoft, Twitter, Google, and Amazon who are already in the area or looking to be. Quicken Loans (Intuit) is the biggest tech employer downtown and Dan Gilbert is doing everything he can to make the city more amenable to other tech companies.

And the auto industry? That's still there. It'll never be the blue collar manufacturing boomtown it was, but all the auto companies will continue hiring engineers. Both auto and software.

>> It's definitely possible that Midwest professionals would like the choice of staying in the Midwest, but how likely is it they'll pick Detroit over Chicago?

Forget about Chicago - why would anyone pick Detroit over, nearby Ann Arbor?

I lived in Chicago area for almost a decade and was happy to leave. But I'd live there again in a heartbeat compared to Detroit.

NYC always had the finance industry, which conveniently happened to boom like crazy from the 1980's-2000's.

Detroit hasn't had 'strong leadership' for a while though. Mostly people that care about using public funds to prop up their friends/family with jobs.

They also had some of the problems with slow or non-existent emergency services, even much later than the '70s. As one cultural outgrowth of that, Public Enemy's "911 Is A Joke" was written in 1990 about poor emergency response.

You're making a common mistake. Detroit has 700,000 people. Metro Detroit has an additional 3.5 million.

I don't have the stats but there's a much larger number of young professionals within easy commuting distance of downtown Detroit.

Manchester has improved dramatically since the Thatcher years but they still have a ton of cash issues.