Intelligence Density and the Creative Class 185
Doofus writes "The Atlantic has an interesting review of some open-sourced work by Rob Pitingolo about the comparative educational attainment levels of various metropolitan areas. While people are now capable of being far more mobile than in generations past, many people remain within 100 miles or so of where they were born. For the technology-partition of the creative class, this is less likely to be the case, in my personal experience. Do we technical people put interesting work and the concentration of human educational capital ahead of other considerations when deciding on a move? Or is it more complicated? Is it more about the fact that the creative jobs are where the creative people are?"
it's more complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
qualifications lead to less choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why would you have to move? This isn't 1910. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you pay $20,000 for each worker in India and $50,000 for each worker in America, it simply makes sense to outsource.
Type of degree (Score:1, Interesting)
There is going to be more people with degrees per square mile where there are many artsy people, San Fransisco for example. Arts grads get paid less and therefore will probably be more confined, perhaps to coffee shops. ;)
Computer engineering and programmers get very good pay and large offices, like at Google. They are going to more spread out, like in Silicon Valley.
I work for a small northern Canada tech company with people with engineering, math, commerce and science degrees, in a small office of about 10 people. Around the office in my city (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada) has a lot of high school graduate diamond mine workers, oil workers, and engineering companies working for all of our industries and many arts grads without jobs (no surprise). I think measuring people with degrees per square mile is a good idea because our industry workers without degrees are barely in town and few are often living here for long. I think that it makes for innacurate findings.
BTW, sorry for any rambling, bad spelling or grammar, little sleep, apartment burnt down, etc.
Geeks (Score:5, Interesting)
As Willie Sutton would say (Score:1, Interesting)
You go where the money is.
Some jobs have opportunities just about everywhere, nursing is a good example, so you can stay in your local area. (I am aware of hiring freezes by hospitals because of an abundance of nurses, but it would be rare to not find a nursing job within 100 miles of where you live.) Other jobs are spread out more. How many professional athletes and professional team managers reside within 100 miles of where they grew up? You have to go where the money is.
Re:qualifications lead to less choice (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if you need to be physically near the people that you work with.
I once telephone-interviewed with a video game developer halfway across the United States. I was turned down because they don't telecommute, and they don't telecommute in part because of console makers' home office bans (example [warioworld.com]).
Re:Creative class? Please join the real world (Score:4, Interesting)
I get what you're saying, but I assume that the OP was using 'creative class' according to the Florida definition [wikipedia.org]. That most members of Florida's creative class are white men is true, but it's a descriptive condition, not a prescriptive one. I'm not saying that's not a problem, just that it's the case.
Career-driven people (Score:3, Interesting)
I've only moved for a job once, and that had a lot more to do with the recession than anything else, and hopefully, I'll never do it again. I think the real division here is between people for whom their career is their supreme consideration and those for whom it is not. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass about "career" beyond making sure that my needs are met with a little left over for some luxuries. I do pretty well: I've worked as an independent contractor for the last several years, so it varies from year to year, but I usually gross somewhere in the low six digits. My career-driven counterparts tend to make about 20% more than me, which is not enough for me to disrupt the rest of my life, and I'm not sure what would be. If I wasn't putting a kid through college, I'd probably work a lot less.
I used to be career-driven. Over the course of the last twenty years, I discovered that how happy or unhappy I was at any given time had next to nothing to do with how much money I was making -- as long as I was making enough to avoid privation -- and very little to do with what I was doing at work. It's not like it's going to be any great comfort to have my peak earnings and my job references on my epitaph.
Re:it's more complicated (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of measuring human capital or college degree holders as a function of population, he measures it as a function of land area -- that is, as college degree holders per square mile.
So, high density urban areas have a higher density of $EDUCATIONAL_ATTAINMENT. Well, blow me down. I'd bet that if you looked at the density per square mile of the people that don't have an eighth grade education, the chart would be virtually the same.
Seems to me that degrees per capita would be a much more useful metric.
Re:Why would you have to move? This isn't 1910. (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, I've come to actually appreciate Indian tech support recently.
Why?
1) It's not the same as it was 5+ years ago. The people answering the phone can speak passable English (better than someone from Atlanta, anyway).
2)They're polite. Maybe we just have good vendors, but I've been very satisfied once I get ahold of someone.
Yeah, there's bad support. But you'll get that anywhere.
Re:it's more complicated (Score:4, Interesting)
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg did not complete their University degrees. They are all smarter and more worldly from than you and many of the rest of us who spent four years in the ivory tower.
Wow, it's interesting that you use three really unsavoury examples of pathological behaviour whose only uniting characteristic is that they achieved wealth via technology. They are none of them near the pinnacle of brilliance, insight, ethics or morality or even the advancement of knowledge.
Honestly, is this were the only alternative, I'd choose the Ivory Tower. It might reduce my impact on humanity but, given these shining examples of leadership, I'd consider that a good thing. What genuinely thoughtful and perceptive person would want that kind of legacy on their head?
Re:it's more complicated (Score:2, Interesting)
You laugh, but low population density has a lot of advantages (lower cost of living, lower crime rates, the ability to actually get to know most of the people in town...), and those of us who prefer our own cooking often don't give a fig about the restaurants near where we live. Personally, I only go to restaurants when I'm too far away from home to get there at mealtimes. I've never been to most of the restaurants near my house. I have NEVER had restaurant food that I thought was as good as homemade.
I consider the ideal size of a city to be just barely large enough to support a reasonable range of the kinds of local businesses that you need to visit with any frequency (hardware store, grocery, that sort of thing), so you don't keep constantly finding yourself having to drive to another (larger) city for things. So, somewhere around 5-10 thousand people, give or take. Preferably with both woods and Amish farms in the immediate vicinity.