Twin Cities?

The day is coming, but I haven’t yet sworn off Facebook. But I have stopped revealing, if not my innermost secrets, then my subsurface preferences, by no longer clicking through on those goofy little “quizzes” that cull all sorts of tidbits out of you. With the promise that they’ll let you know what female 1950’s sit-com star you are. (Lucille Ball. Would rather it have been Betty White…) What famous painting. (Mona Lisa. Whatever.) What your ideal state is. (Hawaii. Not! I actually like crappy weather.)

Since I’m no longer filling out these little thingies, I have even more time so waste coursing around looking at other useless stuff.

Among the useless stuff I love are articles about where you live.

I especially, and quite snobbily, enjoy those that rate Boston or Massachusetts as the best x ever.

These tend to reinforce my perceptions about how wonderful my hometown and home state are. Sure, we tend to rank low in some categories. But they tend to be categories (religiosity) that I could give too hoots about. Or where low rankings translate into what to me is a positive (religiosity).

One that I stumbled on the other day wasn’t so much of the great place to live variety, as it was a listing of which cities yours is the most like. And it was based on not things like weather or education or affluence. But on job mix.

The cities Boston most resembles are New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Hartford, Bridgeport, Austin and and LA. For the most part, other than Bridgeport, there’s nothing surprising here. These are all, other than Bridgeport, cities that I like. Cities that  I mostly could almost even see myself living in. That said, Boston is nothing like New York Chicago or LA. Let alone Bridgeport. When I’ve made comparisons, it’s been along the lines of Boston is like Seattle, Boston is like San Francisco. Maybe because they’re cities of comparable size – and have hills and techies – I’ve felt quite a bit at home in both those places. I don’t know Austin– it’s on the bucket list – but maybe the college town/tech-ness would remind me of home. LA? Not so much.

Still, job mix isn’t a bad proxy it seems.

And what are the job mix commonalities?

For New York, they’re clinical trial administrators (at least 3.7x normal), medical secretaries (3.6 times normal),and ABA therapists (3.7x normal) –  yeah, I knew it wasn’t American Bar Association or American Basketball Association therapists, though god knows the lawyers could use some therapy. Turns out it’s Applied Behavior Analysis.

Anyway, the medical overlaps aren’t surprising. We’ve got a ton of hospitals and bio-techs; so does NY (although I thought their bio-techs were more or less in New Jersey).

But ABA therapists. What’s up with that?

For Chicago, the jobs we have in common are dog walkers (3.2x normal), directors of analytics (2.6x normal), and school nurses (2.6x normal). Directors of analytics I love. Forget hog butcher of the world, Chicago is a knowledge worker kind of town. Lots of brainiacs. And dog walker and school nurse? Just plain sweet and charming commonalities. Especially the dog walkers…

In common with San Francisco, Boston has a lot of scientists (4.5x normal), research associates (4.1x normal), and clinical trial administrators (4x normal).

I loved the sheer nerd tech-ness of the Austin common jobs: product marketing managers (3.5x normal)  - no wonder I’m at home in my home town: I’m in good company, Ruby on Rails developers (3.4x normal), and customer success managers (2.9x normal). Who even knew that ‘customer success manager’ is enough of a thing that there’s a whole profession around it?

The article also threw in comparisons to a less populated area and a place that voted for Trump. Our less populated twin city is college-town Charlottesville, Virginia, which, like Boston, has demand for more than its share of substitute teachers (4.4x normal), research associates (4.1x normal), and research scientists (4x normal), These last two make sense, but what makes a location have such wildly greater demand for substitute teachers? Better contracts for teachers that let them actually take time off? Or a lot of teachers calling in sick? Hmmmm.

Our Voted for Trump pair-wise is Dallas, on of the least Boston-like places I’ve ever spent time in. But we both have a lot of demand for support engineers (2.4x normal), assistant vice presidents (2.2x normal), and client services managers (2.1x normal). Is a client services manager sort of like a customer success manager? Could it be? Should it be? As for AVPs, AVP of what? (Or does this title only exist in banks?)

The fun part of this article is that it’s interactive, and you can plug in your city of interest and get back some fun info. (Or is it just me that finds this interesting, now that I’ve sworn off those prying surveys that grab personal data on whether I’d rather do the cha-cha or the Dougie?)

So, quite naturally, I plugged Worcester in.

Not surprisingly, Worcester is most like Providence, Springfield (Mass), New Haven, and Hartford: all old New England cities.It’s also like Buffalo, and Allentown, Boston (huh?) and Philadelphia. And, oddly enough, Worester’s a lot like Kansas City.

What Worcester has in common with Providence are residential counselors (at least 7.1x normal), recovery specialists (6.7x normal), and substitute teachers (6.1x normal). Which in a dreary sense seems just about right. The Kansas City connections are medical office workers (3x normal), claims representatives (2.5x normal), and patient transporters (2.5x normal).

Pick a random metro, pick any metro, random or not. If you can access this page – NY Times is gated – you, too, can have fun finding out what your cities of choice are twins with, jobs-wise.

How I do love wasting time on the web, especially now that I’ve thrown aside the urge to take part in those nosy, personal info-hoovering surveys. Being interested in what’s like Worcester isn’t much of a give away. (By the way, the real answer is: ain’t nothing like Worcester.)