Chicago is midwest in geography and climate only. Someone who grew up in a typical small midwest town would feel as out of place in Chicago as in San Francisco, New York, or Paris.

Chicago is a large city, and with having a large city some of the small town-isms just don't fly.

However, I do enjoy living in Chicago, and that I do consider it a huge difference from the coasts.

Probably the closest to the vibe the person is looking for would be the Google Waterloo office where I work, or the Pittsburgh office the other poster mentioned.

Google Chicago is almost all salespeople. Not much technology going on there.

It's true the sales people do out number us here in Chicago, but we do have O(100) engineers in the office. We are working on lots of cool stuff: Ads, Search, and Privacy to name a couple.

You guys need to help the CJUG get some more talks! It's been a while since Google has had a role in that.

And you guys have a super-cool and mildly famous engineering site lead!