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Where the Highest Paying Tech Jobs Are
prostoalex writes "Where would you look for a high-paying tech job? If your answer is Silicon Valley or Research Triangle, Forbes magazine suggests some other destinations. When you take the cost of living and consider the net pay adjusted for that cost, places like Montgomery, Ala., Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Fort Smith, Ark. suddenly seem quite attractive."
Taking into account cost of living, try India.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
'Best Places to Live' according to Money Mag/Rag
0 6/top100/index.html
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/20
1 Fort Collins, CO 128,000
2 Naperville, IL 141,600
3 Sugar Land, TX 75,800
4 Columbia/Ellicott City, MD 159,200
5 Cary, NC 106,400
6 Overland Park, KS 164,800
7 Scottsdale, AZ 226,000
8 Boise, ID 193,200
9 Fairfield, CT 57,800
10 Eden Prairie, MN 60,600
11 Plano, TX 250,100
12 Eagan, MN 63,700
13 Olathe, KS 112,100
14 West Bloomfield , MI 65,000
15 Richardson, TX 99,200
16 Gilbert, AZ 178,100
17 Parsippany-Troy Hills, NJ 51,600
18 Santa Clarita, CA 172,500
19 Carrollton, TX 124,700
20 Henderson, NV 232,100
21 Bellevue, WA 117,100
22 Newton, MA 83,200
23 Sandy, UT 89,700
24 Westminster, CO 105,100
25 Ann Arbor, MI 113,300
Unemployment in the Raleigh/Durham area is sub 4% (statewide is sub 5). Forget the pharm and biotech companies; we have Cisco, Symantec, Red Hat, Microsoft, GFI, and countless others. There are constantly tons of houses for sale because some many "northerners" (of which I am one, an Ohio transplant from last year) are moving down here, and cost of living is more than fair.
There are tons of tech jobs of every kind out there, especially programming positions. My wife is a teacher and the market for her is evening better than it is for me (as a network engineer/admin type).
I love Ohio, and I bleed scarlet and grey, but there is just no comparison between RTP and any major area in Ohio)
And for you elitest types (I keed!), RDP is home to the second highest percentage of PHD's (per capita) outside of Silicon Valley.
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
As someone who lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho, I strongly advise against it unless you think man-made falls are cool and love a few of the Temple at night, and like the idea of living in a city that has nothing around it for miles except scenery, where the tallest building is nine stories tall and it's a hotel.
... it was a bit of culture shock for me.
I lived there for a year and pretty much loathed every moment of it. Of course, I came there from Atlanta, Georgia, so
If you're going to live in Montgomery, you might as well consider Huntsville as well. Although it might be slightly harder to get a job there as everyone has some sort of technical background for the most part, it's a fairly agreeable city and not at all representative of the rest of Alabama.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
Without having RTFA I can tell you that's probably Fort Smith, Arkansas (or Fort Worth, Texas, though that seems less likely).
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
I did a stint in that hellhole. Montgomery Alabama is hell on earth. Period. The only reason the adjusted income for tech jobs there is so high is due to the incredibly depressed state of the city. Also, the Air Force is the only real consumer of tech there, so you have almost no choice but to work for the military. Take that for what its worth to you. The government bureaucracy is hip deep and most systems are antiquated at best. Avoid it like the plague.
I live in the Columbia/Ellicott City area, and I can tell you that it is not really a great place to live, so I do think the list is credible to me. The cost of living is extremely high - there are a ton of government workers and government contractors, so yes there a lot of tech jobs that pay more money than other areas of the country. I should know; I work in one. There are a lot of service based industries to serve all those people too - restaurants, strip malls, and every chain store you can imagine. But the extra salary does not begin to make up for the high cost of living - restaurants cost 10-20 more for a dinner for two, grocerries cost 20-50 me more than they did when I lived in PA. Taxes are a big pay killer - about 5% higher here than in PA for local taxes and let's not forget that my bigger salary is taxed high by the federal government too. Homes in Columbia/Ellicott City are out of reach for young professionals starting out in life. Oh and depite the rich service based industry I previously mentioned, restaurants are still packed, stores are always crowded, and the roads are clogged. The Federal government's Base Realignment and Closure will bring 20 some thousand new families to the area in the next few years, but Howard County (the county where Columbia/Ellicott City is) will not approve the necassary permits for new housing to accomdate the influx. It's a bit of a mess and it's not going to be get any better. The city may have ben hot 10 years ago, but is on the decline as far as quality of life goes. There are too many people chasing too few resources.
The numbers in the GP posting are population, not salary.
You can laugh about Alabama. I did, until I came down for a job interview. Huntsville, AL is a great place. Because of the research park, there are people from all over the country. NASA and the Army's Redstone Arsenal have need for 30K to 50K high tech jobs.
Huntsville is a very high tech city, it has the 2nd largest research center in the US.
Brick houses (new) for under $100 a square foot. A brand new 4 bedroom, 3 bath 2500 square foot brick rambler on 1/3 of an acre in a new neighborhood for $240K. And it's not ramshackle construction.
Overall, AL has the lowest taxes in the US. Good schools, thanks to NASA and the rocket scientists at the Redstone Arsenal.
Insurance is a fraction of what I used to pay. Property taxes are less than 1/2 what I used to pay in a top 10 city for a house half that size. Electricity is cheap, thanks to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Gas is about the same as anywhere else, but there's no commute! No traffic! No crime! Do you know why there's no crime? Most of these people go to church! They have morals! It's not like NY City or Chicago, where you have to have Police on every street corner to keep the peace.
On top of all this, I'm making more than I was in the big city! It is 3 hours to Atlanta, 5 hours to the Gulf Coast. 90 minutes to Nashville, Birmingham, or Chattanooga. 3 hours to Memphis. It's 4 hours to the Smoky Mountains.
Winters are really mild, summers can get hot, but aren't as bad as Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, or Florida. It's not as humid as Florida or the other neighboring states. It's not as dry, or as hot, or as polluted as Southern California or Phoenix.
The only bad thing... no Pro sports of any type unless you like the Atlanta teams.
Huntsville is a northern city transplanted in the south.
:)
Read what the AC said in this post. I'd write everything he said but I'm lazy. I'm an engineer, I work on Redstone Arsenal here in Huntsville, AL. Housing is cheap. Taxes are cheap. Utilities are cheap. While I was in college (I went to UAH) I was paying $350 a month for a 1-bedroom apartment. My wife and I just purchased a brand new brick home for $80 a square foot. Other homes in town, new, brick are going for $51 by reputable builders. My utilities bill is averaging $150 a month, including getting the lawn started (lots of water) and kids. Summers are freaking hot, being from Wisconsin, but the air conditioning is good and the house is well-insulated. Get a DirecTV so you can watch "real" sports
Huntsville has more PhD's per square mile than anywhere in the world, except Silcon Valley. Second biggest research park in the US, fourth in the world. Tons of R&D goes on here, both NASA and all aspects of Defense, biotech, etc. Benefits for most companies that I've seen are exceptional and educations (masters, PhD's) are admired. Most companies will put you through school if you want them.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
As a Californian who moved to Idaho, I would agree. Housing in my area has shot up about 50% in the three years since we've moved here and they're still building hundreds of new homes each year catering to the waves of immigrants into the state.
:)
That being said, I enjoy the ~$80/mo home utility bills (That's all total water, sewage, electric and gas.), ~$2.75/gal gasoline, 5% sales tax, skiing (water in the summer, snow in the winter although since I took out 3 of 4 ligaments in my leg last season I like that one less.), hiking, and boating.
If only they would raise the takes to fund a fence to keep the rest of you out.
Charlotte is a great area. You have to search a little bit for jobs because the VLB's (very large banks) are outsourcing to India but I got my current gig because of that fact. The customers don't like dealing with people who don't speak English as their primary language or people who's accents are mostly indecipherable so I get to help them migrate to a new version of an application they consider very important to their business. It's a well paying contract position, which is new to me having worked 8 years for my previous employer in DC and 10 years for my employer before that. It's kind of cool being able to be focused on one main task instead of wearing way too many hats on a daily basis because of the historical knowledge I had gained over the years. The job market looks really good here for the future. Big banking isn't going to suddenly go away from Charlotte and there is starting to be signicant bleed over from the Raleigh area in other IT centric businesses. Other Charlotte benefits are good schools, real estate where you can get twice the house for half the price of the DC metro area, people who are mostly civilized (unlike the uptight pricks in the larger metro areas to the north), and almost none of the crappy winter weather of the north but still get the change of seasons. The mountains are an hour to the west and the beach is a few hours to the east. There are plenty of larger city type recreational opportunities in Charlotte while a lot of the negatives of major metro areas are absent. Crime isn't too bad and despite locals' complaints the traffic isn't nearly as bad as the DC or areas further north. You also have all of the rural type recreational activities failrly close to civilization. Life is good here. Don't screw it up for me. ;)
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
:-) Agreed. I was born in Twin Falls and last time I was back home I couldn't believe the cost of housing. It's the same way here in Reno, too.
# man tar
HALF HOUR DRIVE FROM FT. COLINS?
In a Testerrosa perhaps! You're right on the Wyoming border for shit's-sake!
You're describing Jobs in Boulder and Greeley was more than an hour north of there - and Ft. Colins is another hour north of Greeley. Please stop yanking people's chains!
I lived in Colorado off and on since 1984, and the tech jobs there were always in a state of downward flux. It only took a few companies to flood a ton of skilled workers into the marketplace - followed by a continual influx of people into the state from places in CA which would drive up the cost of living to levels akin to Seattle. Between 1994 and 1996, the same identical apartment that I rented came on the market 2 years later at 225% what I rented it for.
Pay levels did NOT increase to meet those cost of living increases. And housing? The whole of the southern suburbs of Denver went through the ROOF in housing costs. But hey - getting Quark, Echostar (and the markers of the Dish Network wasn't a small enterprise) would only give up more than 35k if you pulled on all molars. Most of Echostar's jobs were manning the call centers anyway. Real high-dollar work there. AB? Um most of their tech work is at HQ which is 876 miles east of you in St. Louis. IBM - always downsizing, Storage Tech - on the rocks, HP - oh there's a stable one of those, Kodak - another stable one of those - NOAA - no shortage of govt jobs in the fields of science, and the application time is so short too for high-end research. Aerospace is ok now that we're killing people again, but these aren't standard IT jobs unless you're ready to check stress-dynamics on dynamic peak loads within an airframe right after you finish that firewall you're putting on that intranetwork hub.
The biggest downfall of any midwestern tech market is that once the company runs through a round of cutbacks you're going to be hard-pressed to find someone else to pick up the slack. I know plenty of suckers hurting after Sprint ditched them in the middle of bumfuck Kansas with no other options for work elsewhere.
"Leeching off of the city dwellers" means that the extra infrastructure costs of urban sprawl are typically shared across the entire population (in the form of income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, higher insurance rates, and higher utility costs), rather than assigned directly to the people that choose to "get away from it all" and live out in the sprawl.
Essentially, the "sprawlers" are subsidized by the people who stay in the cities or existing suburbs.
The sad fact is that urban sprawl is unsustainable. Not only are we covering up prime farmland with McMansions, but the energy cost is unsustainable, especially considering the dual problems of Peak Oil and Global Warming.
Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" would be an excellent first step in your education.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Your opinions on where you want to live and how much you mind paying for gas are fine, they are your opinions. However, saying that "Cities have no ground to stand on" is somewhat ignorant. Read this when you're bored, titled "NYC is the Greenest City in America." At least read the bold line from the passage below...
http://www.walkablestreets.com/manhattan.htm
An Excerpt: