Ask HN: Anyone else not feel very connected with the local tech scene?

I was in a similar spot. Studied Math/Stats, and my friends were not in tech. I've made some now, but still don't have many really good friends in tech. It seems studying CS can be a real group activity, where you work together on assignments/apps/job prep. I missed out on that - just finished a job search & prep that was completely solo after working on apps completely solo.

Going to local meetups helps but it's probably leaving you unsatisfied due to the low frequency. Some suggestions that worked for me:

  - Keep an eye out for local tech companies you want to work for or just like: some might host open houses, or sponsor hackathons. You may hear about this through Meetup.com but not always
  - I'm betting Chicago has a Slack dev group. I'm in the Slack dev group for where I am now and where I'm going to move, and it's a good way to stay connected, ask questions, and absorb discussion that you want but aren't getting in your day-to-day
  - If you have any interest in volunteering, look for things like Ladies Learning Code and the like going on in your area. Usually the mentors there who want to help young kids are established in the industry. You can go, help younger generations with what you know, with an added benefit of getting to know other mentors, who may help you down the line.

This is a phase in your life that will pass once you start working in the field. I know it may feel hard right now, but hopefully this piece of advice helps (which I found true for me, and I hear from others in the industry): your "outsider"-ness can be spun into a benefit. You see the tech world through different eyes, you come unhinged without biases. And, being fresh and without experience, you will be hungrier, more persistent, and more willing to learn something new than somebody who has roots and comfort zones.

Once you pass through this phase and "make it", don't forget to give back when called upon; you will now be "that" person in this network comprised of non-tech people, in a world that is ubiquitous with tech.

I feel the same way. Don't know any software engineers or developers outside of work, rarely meet anyone in the field outside of the odd meetup (and usually not even then) and come from a family who work in other industries.

However, I suspect it might be a location/culture thing more than anything personal. I mean, over here in London it seems like most people in the tech industry don't really care for it as a passion or hobby, but just treat programming like a 9-5 job without any extra side projects going on outside of that.

Maybe that's the case in Chicago where you are too. Maybe most of the companies there are filled with people who at the end of the day just don't care about tech as much as Silicon Valley folk do. Maybe for them it's just a 9-5 deal like it is for many folk here. There's nothing unusual about that.

Kind of similar here. My parents were in tech and engineering before USSR collapsed, and then moved on to other fields. I never made any permanent friends during school or university, and in the end the only tech people i know were the ones i worked with, and usually the "know" kind of ended with the job.

I am somewhat confused by what do you mean by "feeling connected", however. What do you expect to give or receive from that connection?

Personally, i struggle to imagine a meaningful "shop talk" between two programmers that isn't job related. There is just literally nothing to talk about.

I am in a weird position in that I run the only dev shop in Key West. So while we have connection to other developers there are only about 15 of us for a 200 mile radius.

Before that I worked remote for seven years so literally my entire network consist of 15 guys in Key West and a bunch of people in Austin and the valley. Sometime it can feel isolating, but their are trade-offs like living in a Caribbean paradise.

Similar here, although there are no decent meetups where I am. I was the only one amongst my group of friends that caught the programming bug early on, and only one of two in my whole year group I think that went on to do software dev.

In hindsight it sucks a bit not being able to bounce things off friends, but you're normally/hopefully going to have colleagues for that. I guess the most dangerous situation is having no friends in IT, and working as the sole IT person somewhere... you may not get exposed to new ideas or best practices etc. Easily the most I've learned (in terms of useful things that I otherwise might have missed) is from pair-programming (can be frustrating too). Otherwise I think it's pretty healthy hanging out with non-IT people out of hours.

Of course. Wordpress/node.js/php + no-ambition is all the rage. I visit once a year to see if things have changed (they haven't for several years).

It sounds like you could get more integrated into a startup hub — good news, there's definitely one in Chicago [1][2]. Meetups and coworking spaces are a big part. You also might check out 1871 [3] to find startup people in Chicago.

[1]: https://angel.co/chicago

[2]: https://www.meetup.com/cities/us/il/chicago/tech/

[3]: https://1871.com