By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — September 8, 2026

I once sat in a job interview in Wisconsin and told a man I built a database system in GW-BASIC.

He looked at me and said he didn’t think GW-BASIC had a database.

I told him it didn’t.

I built one.

He laughed.

At the time, I thought he didn’t believe me. Years later, I realized something worse.

He didn’t know what he was looking at.

And that, right there, tells you everything you need to know about how hiring works in large parts of this country.

Chicago Had It Right (Mostly)

Let’s get something straight.

Chicago is not perfect. Anybody who tells you that has never tried to park on the North Side or deal with City Hall on a bad day.

But when it came to work—real work—Chicago had one thing going for it that a lot of other places didn’t.

If you could do the job, you could get the job.

Not always. Not universally. Connections mattered. They always do.

But there was a baseline understanding:

You need the work done.
You find someone who can do it.
You hire them.

Simple.

Functional.

Sane.

Then You Leave the City

You go a few states over, and suddenly you’re not in a job market anymore.

You’re in a casting call.

The role is already filled.

They just haven’t told you yet.

So they bring you in. They ask questions. They nod. They write things down like it matters. And the whole time, they’re comparing you to someone they already decided to hire.

Maybe it’s a cousin.
Maybe it’s a friend.
Maybe it’s someone who’s been waiting in line for the promotion.

And you?

You’re data.

You’re there so they can say they “looked.”

The Midwest Shuffle

There was a saying floating around back then.

If you wanted a job in certain parts of the Midwest, you had two options:

Be so good they couldn’t ignore you.

Or be connected to the people doing the hiring.

Not know them.

Be connected to them.

That’s not a hiring system.

That’s a family tree.

And if you weren’t on the tree, you weren’t getting picked.

Texas, Where Everything Moves—Except the Hiring

Then you get down to Texas, and they’ll tell you something different.

“It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”

And they’re not wrong.

Because down there, the technology shifts so fast that what you built last year might not matter this year. Systems get replaced, upgraded, rebranded, and sold again before anyone finishes reading the manual.

So what survives?

Not the work.

The network.

You don’t need to prove you can build something that lasts.

You need to prove you know the people who decide what gets built next.

Meanwhile, Back in Reality

Here’s the part nobody likes to say out loud.

A lot of people doing the hiring don’t recognize real skill when it’s sitting across the table from them.

Not because they’re bad people.

Because they’ve been trained to look for the wrong things.

They look for:

  • credentials
  • familiar tools
  • the “right” background

They do not look for:

  • problem-solving
  • adaptability
  • someone who can build something from nothing

So when you tell them you built a database system in a language that wasn’t supposed to have one?

They laugh.

Because it doesn’t fit the checklist.

The Joke’s Not Funny

Here’s the truth.

The system says it’s about merit.

It isn’t.

It’s about:

  • who you know
  • what boxes you check
  • whether you look like what they expected to see

And if you don’t?

You can walk in with the exact skill they claim they want…

…and walk right back out again.

Chicago, for All Its Problems

You know what Chicago understood?

Work is not theoretical.

You don’t care where the solution came from.

You care that it works.

And if the guy sitting across from you says he built something that solves your problem, the correct response isn’t to laugh.

It’s to ask:

“How fast can you start?”

That’s not nostalgia.

That’s common sense.

And for a country that keeps talking about productivity, efficiency, and innovation…

…it’s amazing how rare common sense has become.

If you read this and it matters, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

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