The aforementioned firefighting skills are probably needed.

But, they can’t afford me!

And the roughly 200,000 others in the county have found a few more reasons than those three.

My barber seems contented too.

Kinda hard on the Esquire there, Ian.
He has elected to return to Erie after draining on outta here for a while.

I read the article; he looks well connected and off to a promising career, despite the overabundance of attornies we possess here.

And you say there is nothing here for you, but we could certainly use the firefighting skills you possess. But that is another story.

What caught my attention is the two sentences selected by you and uttered by Wachter, the Attorney, the Yuppie, the Yong Erie Professional everyone glamorizes.

Let us look again at what he said; with a more charitable interpretation.

The first sentence is actually two concepts:
1)It is often said that Erie is experiencing a brain drain
2)due to a lack of opportunity

With respect to the above captioned matter, the second sentence: I challenge the validity of that conclusion,
could apply to the first half of sentence one, and your assertion be a reasonable response.
If brain drain were denied, it would be hereby ordered, adjudged, and decreed lunacy, pursuant to inexplicable forces.

However, the statement could also apply to the second half of sentence one.
NOW, instead of challenging the validity of brain drain, Wachter would be challenging the validity of opportunity (or lack of opportunity).

Indeed, it could also be a challenge to lack of opportunity being the cause of brain drain (not whether brain drain exists). There is a difference.

His conclusion to challenge beliefs is definite.
WHAT he is challenging is less clear, in the sentence and in the entire article.

The written word does that, and allows anyone to call a phrase, concept, thought, or idea, bizarre or brilliant, depending on how it is written and received.

Wachter, unlike many of his contemporaries, has landed on his feet and returned to the community that bore another attorney to the planet. Life is good for him compared to, say, a Steris purchasing agent, or Hammermill maintenance guy.

Far be it from me to defend any attorney in any situation, but this gentleman has actually done what Global Erie is seeking to encourage; he came back.

His vision has been corrected by being elsewhere for a time. He sees his hometown through a different filtered lense.

He is also,fortunately, reasonably connected.
Small guess…..worked for Tom Ridge…Tom Ridge has an attorney brother here in town…Tim wants to be an attorney…probably coincidence, eh?
Things work out that way sometimes.

I will give Tim the benefit of the doubt and read his second sentence as a conclusion on opportunbity being challenged, not brain drain alone.

This conclusion by me is presented here Pro Bono, and everyone knows, you get what you pay for.

Come to Erie Ian.
There is no fee.
And, sadly, we got no money for you.

More free concepts:
When a person assists a criminal in breaking the law before the criminal gets arrested, we call him an accomplice.

When a person assists a criminal in breaking the law after the criminal gets arrested, we call him a defense lawyer.

I think Tim is referring to the boomerang effect which is very prominent and not well measured. What happens is entry level professionals leave Erie because there aren’t enough entry level opportunities, but return to find great opportunties once they have crossed the 5+ years experience marker often in larger metropolitan areas. The wage gap often discussed on blogs doesn’t apply to these individuals on a cookie cutter basis - i.e. people with the right skills can land jobs with Erie companies at rates on par and above rates in other metropolitan areas. This is because companies here often struggle to fill top professional jobs requiring specialized skills as some non-natives are put off by the area’s innaccurate image. This leaves the door very opened when former Erie residents have upped their value and seek to come back.

Making this arrangement more complicated is that you won’t find many of these opportunities posted on Monster.com or in the Erie Times News. The reality is that many companies won’t waste the advertising money to post specialized jobs because they will get quite a hodgepodge of resumes and not much of what they are seeking. Instead, they put the word out through their professional contacts and keep their ears open at the Country Clubs, The Erie Club, Manufacturer’s Association meetings, and the Yacht Clubs. Inevitably somebody often knows somebody who left and is looking to come back or would consider coming back. This goes on everywhere, but since Erie is a smaller city, the lack of transparency makes the situation look worse than it is.

I left and came back and I know a ton of other people who did the same. Actually I think if we surveyed professionals in the area, there would likely be a statistically significant cluster of people who left for college or an entry level opportunity, gained 5-10 years work experience, and returned to Erie to make a significant move up. I am not saying everyone could do this, we need to expand our size to truly accomodate such a volume, but a lot of people definitely do this.