Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Career?

JordoCrouse writes "There has been an uproar in Salt Lake City, Utah over the comments of the new Iomega CEO, Bruce Albertson. Albertson attacked Utah's very annoying and confusing liquor laws as a reason why Utah has had a serious problem attracting engineers and other technology oriented folk, despite the low cost of living, high quality of firms, and access to excellent education. I didn't grow up here, but I went to college in Salt Lake City, so I was used to the various quirks of the local laws, but I am wondering: Do issues like liquor laws and social life really affect where engineers and programmers want to work? Does Mr. Albertson have a point, or was he just frustrated that he couldn't atract any good prospects?"

Comments

Of course

[Suydam]

Of course "social life" plays into everyone's decisions about career.

You do, however, have to take a broad definition of the term "social life". For a 22 year old programmer, social life = bars, nightclubs, etc....or it equals hiking, biking and camping availability. For a 35 year old single worker, it probably equals the same thing..but for a married, 35 year old father of two, "social life" is really churches, youth football leagues and PTO meetings.

Whoever you are though, quality of life (which, to a large part, is defined by extra-curricular social interactions) plays a large role in a career selection.

I personally wouldn't dream of relocating to Utah

[MaggieL]

...but the liquor laws are only emblematic of a larger problem: my perception that the church/state lines are even blurrier there than elsewhere.

I'm certain that LDS folks would not approve of how I live my life, and I'm not confident of their ability to keep their noses out of it.

Not just liquor laws

[coyote-san]

It's not just the liquor laws that keep a lot of people far away from Utah. It's the mindset of a state that is appointed a 40-year-old virgin as porn queen. And they think WE don't have a social life!

A virgin Mormon porn czar?? [Are they kidding?!]

SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- Utah's new porn czar is an acknowledged virgin who rarely watches R-rated movies and has prosecuted a scant five pornography cases in her 15-year legal career. But Paula Houston asserts she knows smut when she sees it.

Utah - a state that regularly appoints teetotallers to its alcohol-regulatory board - is the nation's pioneer in creating an "obscenity and pornography complaints ombudsman."

Besides her experience as a city prosecutor, Houston, 40, unabashedly brings the values of her Mormon faith to an assignment that will include viewing XXX-rated movies, pornographic Internet sites and sexually explicit magazines. Houston's lack of personal sexual experience disqualifies her in the minds of some from passing judgment on just what constitutes pornography. Others say moral judgments are best made by those who are above reproach. For Houston, such arguments are entirely beside the point.

"My personal life is irrelevant," says Houston. [What personal life?]

From an article by Kevin Cantera & Michael Vigh, Salt Lake Tribune, 2/11/01

P.S., the "lameness filter" is a piece of crap! Just because Netscape inserts leading whitespace in copied material is no reason to reject comments!

Re:Not just Salt Lake

[Nidhogg]

My friend I think you place too much faith in our local legislature.

Indiana has had a law (ever since I can remember) that no alcohol of any sort will be sold from a store on Sunday.

BUT (and this is the part that kills me) a few years they modified that law to where you could go to a restaurant and buy it to drink while you're sitting there.

So in effect you can't buy it, take it home and drink safely. No no. If you want to drink on Sunday you have to go OUT and do it then drive home.

Way to support those drunk driving laws guys. Thanks buckets.

To stay on topic though.. I think it has a mild effect but not to the point this guy says. If the job has sufficient compensations (in your opinion) then these annoyances can be overcome.

Whatever

[Auckerman]

In other news, the CEO of Iomega, the company that makes those unreliable drives that are warrentied till "the end of their life", bitched today that he could not get drunk while bribing senators to save his companies ass.

A True Story

[Bonker]

My wife used to work at a Walmart here in the Texas panhandle. For several months, she did the overnight shift.

Now, the way Texas's blue laws work, you cannot buy alcohol period after 2 A.M. After 12 A.M. you can only buy from a bar, and after 9 P.M. you cannot buy from liquor stores. This means no hard alcohol for mixers after 9 and 24 stores like Walmart and Albertsons have to refuse alcohol purchases after midnight and until noon on Sundays. This *really* makes sense in a state where the biggest pastime is sitting around the tube watching football all day sunday with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other.

As you can imagine, the Mrs. got some very angry customers who couldn't buy alcohol when they wanted to.

One day, a former Texas Representitive walked into the store at 4 A.M. Sunday morning. He picked up several bottles of wine, and a couple nice cases of beer. He was getting ready for an all day family get together, see?

So when my wife told him that no, he could *not* buy the booze, he slapped himself on the forehead and said, "I just had to sign on that renewal bill, didn't I?"

Most legislation is passed by people who aren't even paying attention to what they're doing.

Um.

[rbruels]

As we like to say here at CU, the engineers may only take up 10% of the population, but we drink 50% of the beer.

In my opinion, sure, things like alcohol laws and access to social activities (both of which are in short or just nasty supply in Utah) are very important to where I'd move for a job. When I'm done coding some large project for Iomega, I'm going to want to go out and ingest one or eight strong drinks to forget the workplace for a little while. Not only that, but these laws are indictive of other things such as the lines between church and state (and let's face it, when your state is definitely Mormon in the majority, these lines will be very blurred), government control, fellow citizen's attitudes, et cetera.

Know what I'd recommend? Head east about six hours to the beautiful state of Colorado. We are the microbrew capital of America (i.e., no "Captain Bastard's"-brand beer like in Utah -- no kidding), have an exponentially increasing tech corridor within short drives to the mountains, and dammit, it's FUN out here (also, per the concerns of this person, it's GREAT here. ;)

Utah is great to an extent, and I'll certainly head out there once a year to go backpacking, but living there? Nah. Iomega, move your operations out here and you'll get your engineers. We are also one of the more laid-back states, that's for sure. Stay out of Colorado Springs (home of Focus on the Family, which otherwise tarnishes a great city and my former hometown) and your religious, social, and living views won't matter much more than an iota, neither will anyone else's.

Ryan