I have been posting a lot on leaving Chicago. My main potential destination has been Texas.
We are starting to see a better, more robust startup scene here in Chicago, although I feel the startup and Ruby scenes here are still a bit too Groupon-centric. I have always been a bit skeptical about startups. There seems to be a lot of circular reasoning about startups. People at startups tell themselves that they are sooo much better and smarter than bigger companies because they are more flexible and innovative because we are startups which means we are innovative and flexible because we are startups which means we are…….etc, etc. That may be true, but that doesn’t mean their product and/or execution are any good.
The point is that since things are changing, a lot of people think I am crazy for wanting to leave just when things might be starting to get good.
But I think I have hit upon part of the reason.
I went to Moo of I, down in Urbana-Champaign. I have kept in touch with about a dozen people from Moo of I. There are a lot of Moo of I alumni here in Chicago, but the few that I still talk to have all left Illinois. Most are in other states. One is in Jordan. He is Korean, so I am not too clear why he is in Jordan.
Amongst the people that I have gotten to know/became friends with over the past ten years, a lot of them are from other states. A few are from other countries.
So I think part of the reason I want to leave is that sometimes I feel like the whole world is moving, and I am standing still.
I have noticed that people from New York and California seem to have a hard time getting it in their heads that those locations are not on my radar. If you put a New Yorker, a Californian and a Texan in a room together, would they notice?
In the past I have thought about going to North Dakota for a job. I have no idea if there is a need for software developers in North Dakota, or if my options would be oil rigs or nothing.
On my way home from work I got stuck at an intersection for about 10 minutes because there was some sort of “bike parade”. There were hundreds of people on bikes going down the street. They passed by the Belmont el station right when I got off. They turned left onto Clark, so I was kind of stuck. For about 10 minutes. As were the cars. As were all the other pedestrians.
Yesterday Rahm Emmanuel was inaugurated as mayor. A lot of people think that having a new mayor will revitalize our city. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I hope things get better around here, but I don’t know if it will be enough to get me to stay.