That was referring to Pool / Lyft Line.

As others said, Sidecar was technically the first to the "ridesharing" model

Thanks for the correction!

This.

Compounded by the fact that most companies don't hire PMs until they're more mature (aka more able to pay higher compensations), the methodology is pretty broken.

My anecdata having worked in Seattle and Chicago now:

Chicago's 'tech scene' is mostly either trading or tech applied in an incremental way to an existing business model, eg Groupon. The trading firms do pay quite well, but you'll be in an extreme niche and likely have limited insight into how you could ever leave, given you've not been building products/programming so much as coding performance improvements. The few "hard tech" companies I've seen come from Chicago are either a generation old at this point (eg Motorola) or have gone under (eg TempoIQ).

The other fact of Chicago is, most of the tech talent here is here for reasons beyond having the best job ever. When I moved back, just about no one could believe that I didn't have a family/significant other/etc reason to move back beyond the job itself. When you have a market like that, employers have some buying power with the talent that does need to stay here. There's simply so few alternatives to the situation, given there's also little appetite for significantly striking out on your own, compared to the coast.

Edit: I'll also say the appetite for go big or go home company growth is limited here. Can't tell you the last time I saw a "shoot for the moon" idea originate in Chicago. There are pros/cons to that, admittedly.

Having done the same (Seattle then Chicago) trading is big here, and pays well, but can be less than rewarding if you like building products.

That being said, I think there are plenty of interesting tech companies here if you dig a bit. For example, CleverSafe (https://www.cleversafe.com/), Signal (http://www.signal.co/), and BrainTree (https://www.braintreepayments.com/) are larger ones with real engineering challenges.

And, if you are interested in a smaller Chicago company doing interesting things, feel free to check out Earshot (http://earshotinc.com/careers) - we are hiring. </plug>

Even if Earshot isn't right for you feel free to connect with me if you are interested in the Chicago startup scene.

This conforms to a somewhat surreal experience I had talking to an internal recruiter in Chicago a few months ago.

"Oh, you already have offers on the table in NYC and Boston, with no family here? Yeah, I understand why you wouldn't be interested in Chicago"

Same here. I actually thought I had damaged the backcover clips when disassembling to retrieve a wayward nanosim to microsim adapter. Didn't realize it was the bulging battery until the random reboots finally forced me to buy a battery on the aftermarket.

The one downside I've noticed is that even with my "OEM" replacement battery (who really knows with these things), charging a lowish battery via a high amperage USB still takes significantly (multiples) longer than my iPhone 5 or 6.

Why not? This isn't necessarily all they're doing with their time and (assumed) talent.

As with many things, there may be more than meets the eye. I'm sure these guys are putting together a lot more functionality that is not visible/ready yet.