> There are plenty FAANG engineers minted from the top Midwestern schools - think CMU and other state schools - even if they rank behind the top schools on the coasts.

CMU is a private school, ranked number 1 in CS, and is not in a Midwestern state! That said, there are lots of top CS programs in the Midwest.

CMU is on the wrong side of the Appalachian mountains to best East Coast. Pittsburg has much more in common with neighboring Ohio than it does with Philadelphia. Its regularly included in the Rust Belt which is a subset of the Midwest.

It’s certainly not East Coast, but it’s very North East - the rust belt spans well beyond the Midwest. Even culturally Pittsburgh feels like it has more in common with, say, Buffalo or other North Eastern rust belt cities than Wisconsin or Minnesota.

Exactly. I think Pittsburgh has more in common with non-NYC New York than with Ohio. It feels much more like a non-Boston/NYC Northeastern city than like e.g. Columbus or Indianapolis.

I'm from Pittsburgh, my partner is from New Jersey. We argue about this (in a playful way) all the time; Pittsburgh is east coast, to me. Ohio is midwest. She counters with "a seven hour drive to the water is not on the coast."

I used to follow your Rust work and had no idea you are yinzer! Mineo’s or Aiello’s? :)

Fun fact: Carol, my co-author on the Rust book, is too, and still lives there!

I worked for Pizza Outlet/Vocelli's for seven years, so, I have some bias, haha! One of the locations I was at competed with Mineo's, so... not saying that Vocelli's is the best, but it has a special place in my heart anyway.

It's Pittsburgh, not Pittsburg.

The "is Pittsburgh midwestern?" debate is irrelevant since the article does not mention Pennsylvania. Also, increasing tech hiring by 100% in Pennsylvania would be really hard since the state also has Philadelphia and because Pittsburgh's tech scene has been strong for years.

Granting that there is a lot of fuzziness in all of these definitions, Buffalo and even Rochester can be included in "Rust Belt" but are not Midwestern.

Yeah, I meant to say CMU is a private school unlike the other leading Midwestern schools which are generally public. Pittsburgh is pretty far from the east coast, so it being in Pennsylvania doesn't really make it a 'coastal school' in my eyes, so I'll continue to lump it in with its geographic neighbors, though perhaps 'Rust belt' region is more accurate than Midwest for what I'm trying to b describe.

What ranking puts CMU at 1 in CS? Just curious because I usually see it behind a couple coastal schools.

It’s currently tied for 1 with their other usual suspects in US News [1]. Of course these rankings are all a bit arbitrary, game-able, and should be taken skeptically :)

[1] https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch...

Thank you for the link! Ah yes graduate education makes a lot of sense, CMU's computational linguistics department publishes incredible stuff and of course their ML stuff is the cutting edge, too.

It's in Pittsburg which is a Midwestern city. Even if the state has some coast.