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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."
...after factoring in the personal cost of having to live in Alabama or Idaho?
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?
In other third world countries where these tech jobs are being outsourced to, $USD400-$600/month is very high. I live in Manila, and the minimum wage is roughly less than $USD 6.00 daily. Those who work in outsourced tech-support call centers make $300 monthly and they're very happy about it. I had a short web-design stint making about $450 monthly and I was really really happy about it, to say the least. Single people here could live like kings on that.
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?
I dislike the high cost of living, traffic, unaffordability of houses etc. in places such as Silicon Valley. But there are lot more companies where one can work for with decent salary. One's chances of finding another job with close to maximum salary in one's field are lot higher there without having to move.
These are not just idle concerns. I have been asking many such questions to myself recently as I am not in high-tech area such as Silicon Valley. There are no easy answers to such questions. These become even more difficult once one has family, house etc. and has established roots in one place.
Osho
I once oversaw moving a firms's HQ and IT functions from Silicon Valley to San Antonio, TX because of the "math" some white collar genius put together like this Forbes nonsense. Sure, the "average" wage was one-half of what it was in Palo Alto, but because of the "quality" of local talent, we ended up hiring THREE TIMES as many staff to do the same amount of work. (For the math-challenged, that meant productivity sucked by 50%.) This wasn't just a drain on company resources, but on the few people who DID know their chops and had to hoist it in for the dullards. Those that made the move and saw the disaster had to in turn move completely out of the area to restore sanity to their careers. And the "icing on the cake" is that San Antonio is the only place I've stood hip deep in mud and had sand blow in my face. No thanky-thanky.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm quite sure it's hard to pronounce."
Denver?
Seriously, the problem with these communities is one of the major reasons the cost of living is so low is because the vast majority of jobs there pay very little. Sure, there might be some relatively high-paying tech jobs, but the problem is there are only 5 tech jobs in the whole city.
Some of the places on this list could be fairly okay for an educated, liberal, free-thinker type.
But a lot of those places are damn scary.
Also, it doesn't make sense that Richardson TX would draw less than half the salary of Plano TX.
I mean seriously, these are both actually the same place for anyone who would be living in that part of the Dallas metro area, and for that matter, so is Carrollton. There may be a factor related to commuting on I-35 as opposed to Central Expressway, but come on... these are all the same damn place.
Also, pointing out Gilbert Arizona as if it's really distinct from Phoenix is pretty stupid too.
$226 for Scottsdale AZ (yes, it's a separate township, but snobs like to point out that it's *Scottsdale* to avoid saying they live in Phoenix)... That is a joke. Scottsdale median home price is in the $250's still, and most of the housing that a mid-career professional would be happy with are well over the $million mark.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The biggest factor for me is to consider the possibility that if your job goes south (project ends, company folds, you don't like your boss), then you are stuck in the middle of nowhere. If you are relocating, you need to understand that at some point you will need to move again.
If you are used to an environment where you can lose your job today and have a new one by the end of the week, then you will be shocked when you spend 6 months unemployed.
Now don't get me wrong, I grew up in Idaho, but you need to realize that it is a complete backwater. =)
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
"I have no idea where the people here work if they can afford to shop at all the new places. But above all, there are only two kinds of buildings under construction here. Churches and banks. Where do these people work???"
:)
I live in Ft. Collins also. Try HP, Poudre Valley Hospital, Eastman Kodak, Anheuser-Busch, Agilent, Celestica and Colorado State University for starters. Within a half-hour drive or so your will find IBM, Ball Aerospace, NOAA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Lockheed Martin, and the University of Colorado to name a few. All this is in a town within an hour or two of some of the best skiing, hiking, camping, climbing and biking in the country and a very affordable cost of living. Oh and did I mention there are several great microbreweries right in town
Seriously, the only people I hear rag on Ft. Collins are the ones that have lived there their whole lives and don't realize how good they have it.
The article's selection of cities seems random at best. Huntsville by far has the largest tech industry base in the state, and is roughly the same cost of living as Montgomery. Growing up here, roughly 40-50% of the kids I knew had at least one parent in some form of engineering. The defense/aerospace industry is huge here, so there are plenty of SW Engineering opportunities.
This place sucks! The job market is bad and you're going to be pretty much stuck working for either the state government or the DoD if you can find someone that has the right connections to get you a job. If you don't have a secret clearance, your chances seriously go down. Tech here just ain't it. Most places in Texas have lower costs of living with larger populations and better job markets. That's why I plan to head there in 2008.
I've GOT to get out of this redneck filled, racist, little freaking town!
They are damn fine though.
The defective kid rate is 3%. The normal defective kid rate is 1.5%. Not good, but not hopeless either.
You can keep property in the family this way. You already know the in-laws. There are fewer screwy traditions to deal with, since you already share some grandparents. In general, bad surprises are unlikely.
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.
Just do it, take off, travel a bit, see what you like, look for a job there or create one (or two). I did it a few years ago, just got tired of major urban living. Girlfriend came home in tears and told me she couldn't get gas for her car because of all the winos and crackheads hanging around the station near our house, they were harassing her. I said fuck it, we're moving! A month later or so we had sold off most of our junk-and that is all furniture and whatnot is is junk, easily replaceable. We stuck the stuff we really wanted to keep in a storage unit, then took off camping. Within a few weeks we had found a nice rural area we liked, not terribly wilderness, no way serious urban, an in between kind of place. Two weeks after that had a full time job. I kept my (still small) net work going the whole time hitting public libraries for access. Now, we're happy. Got plenty of space, nice little cozy house, whole comfy rural scene. Walk out on the porch see hummingbirds hitting the flowers, it's *nice* Lack for nothing. Trust your instincts, "go with the flow", look until it feels "right", settle in. Camping is cheap, gas is still affordable, just take off! if you wait for it to be perfect you'll never do it. Ya, less money, but less expenses, quality of life so much higher. Now the two or three times a year I am forced to go to "the big city" I can see how absolutely termite mound dismal it was, how dirty loud and stinky major urban areas are, and kick myself for waiting so long to make the move. That crap about big cities being "better" is consumerist bullshit. About the only thing "better" about big cities is how much you have to work to feed the pigs money habit as they suck your wallet dry. A traffic jam to me now is someone stopped next to the mail carrier to talk about something for a minute, big deal.
Make the move before millions more get the urge, the real estate bubble pop is right around the corner and all those exploiters/grifters pushing that get rich quick crap will be branching out looking for new areas to trash out with their greed. That and the morons running the foreign policy, they could screw the pooch and really bork stuff out in the middle east, better to get rural where life is more sustainable for the long haul and you can actually develop "neighbors" and local ties. Big cities can go to pure hell in one day as soon as anything gets turned off, electricty, water, food deliveries, etc. We got a well, a garden, and a generator and a firewood lot, screw it, let that other stuff back in town rot. Let them enjoy their "ambience". See if "starbucks" will support them.
Anyway, if you needed a nudge, take this as an official big NUDGE;) Good luck!
Good Morning Vietnam!
;)
Well that's the time here as I post this. Anyway, it's very interesting living in Ho Chi Min (rated the #12th best major city in the world to live in and the best in Asia)*. I've got to say that, in a country that has a per capita GDP less than a tenth that of the United States a dollar goes a long way.
The key is how to make it. If you can make it by working for a major foreign corporation here (read: oil company) and get a Western salary, you will live like a king. Unfortunately local opportunities to make that kind of money are otherwise almost nil. Even if you can speak Vietnamese you will find that even a very high salary here (doing a job like coding) in not much relative to the U.S. Also you may find yourself thought of being overqualified; I do very high end media and some people here told me they were afraid to contact me after seeing my CV because they thought I'd charge a fortune.
While you can make a good living here teaching English I doubt that would appeal to the skilled professionals that make up Slashdot's readers. No, the best job is one in which you can work "at the end of a wire", that is live here but work for some U.S. company via the internet. The internet infrastructure is just sufficient to do that (which is one reason why I can't live in Cambodia). Internet telephony here is good (at least from my location). If your job is portable so you don't have to physically see your clients more than once or twice a year then this might "work" for you!
By the way, the cost of living here is not going to be one-tenth that of the U.S. unless you live like a native. Instead if you insist on all the perks of the U.S. it's probably about half the U.S. cost of living (more if you want a car!). On the other hand, wealth is relative; compared to the natives you WILL be very rich and will be treated as such. That has its own perks.
* this recent study (which, to my travelled eyes cannot possibly be true) was based on a bunch of factors including how much (or little) the average person "impacted the environment". Since Vietnamese people are still very poor they don't impact the environment very much which led to a inflated score. Still Ho Chi Minh City has its charms; zero violent crime (it's a police state), pace of life (you can actually meet people and develop friendships), scale of the city (more like one giant neighborhood than a forest of skyscrapers). But act soon, things are changing fast and in 5 years it'll be unrecognizable. In that case you'll:
Miss Saigon.
Job A:
$50,000/year, $10,000 annual rent.
Job B:
$100,000/year, $40,000 annual rent.
Relative to the cost of rent, Job A is phenominal: You're making five times the cost of rent. Job B sucks: you're only earning 2.5 times rent. By this measure, job A is far and away the better option - by a factor of 2.
The thing is, once you've paid the varying rent, where do you spend the rest of your money? The decent spec new PC will be $2,000 in Rancho Santa Fe, Manhattan or BFI. The new $25,000 car will be $25,000 wherever you buy it. The big TV is the same price wherever. And, most important of all, the internet porn subscriptions run the same wherever you are too.
At that point, would you rather the job that's 5 times "cost of living" but only leaves you with $40,000 or the one that gives a sucky 2.5x but leaves you with $60,000 extra.
Next, on the simple level, let's look at that cost of living. Assuming you get on, buy and pay a mortgage off, in 20 years time the place with the poor salary relative to cost of living will leave you with a $500,000-$1,000,000 home vs. the $200,000-$250,000 place in the "better" area. Now, aged 40, you can up and move to the cheap place, selling your home, buying one of the nicest places in the cheap area and having a nice large nest egg lfet over to let you get to retire early. My in-laws have just done exactly that and apparently a lot of people in Texas are getting seriously pissed at all the Californians coming in, buying huge homes after selling up smaller places in CA and pushing up the Texan cost of living for people who're still paid no more.
And, finally, there's a reason rent and property are so expensive in some areas. Go to California and look out of the window. Rumor has it that other parts of the world have a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder. Land is expensive in California because you never shovel snow, you rarely deal with crazy humidity, you rarely have the insane heat of Arizona, you rarely get mosquitos the size of Volkswagens and you can sit on the beach on New Year's Day. In short, supply and demand means that when there's a crazy price, there's generally a great reason for it.
So, yes, some areas have high costs of living and lower salaries in relation to that cost. But I.T. is famous for the fact that we out earn most other professions and, once you get past earning about three times cost of average rent, everything else is gravy. Sure, you reach that point faster elsewhere - but once you do reach it (and you do in I.T.), you keep going even further when the numbers are bigger.
I've watched a lot of friends leave California because they're in other fields and it's just too expensive to live here if you don't earn well. But once you get to the kind of salaries I.T. tends to pay, the cost of rent becomes a relatively minimal part of the total cost of living a great life.
Wait a moment, what am I saying?
The more people realize this, the more they'll be encouraged to move here, the more demand for the same supply of housing and the more I have to pay.
Iowa is the shiznit. It's the coolest place ever. I'm in California and it's awful here. We have to walk up hill both ways and the hills are steeper here (the land's scrunched up by our daily earthquakes). And hot? Like you wouldn't believe. Don't believe that stuff about coastal areas being cooler - it's hell here. No one should ever move here because, high salaries or not, life's too expensive. Iowa's the place. Des Moines is just super awesome. Off you go!
If you want to know where high paying jobs are go to Alberta, Canada it's insane!
McDonald's workers are getting $15/hour, signing bonuses and $100 extra pay if you show up for all your shifts that week.
Housing is a bit of a problem, there's a booming business finding old homes, ripping them off their foundation and dragging them to Calgary.
Calgary is sprawling outward at an incredible rate, it's bigger in area than NY city.
It's all from oil, tar sands that is, Canada exports oil since we make more than we use. The US gets about 10% of its oil from Canada and that will probably increase due to the US public's of growing concern about "foreign oil".
People are going there by the thousands every day, it's crazy!
One problem with cost of living arguments is that many items nowadays are priced nationally, not locally. If I want a brand new MacBook Pro, for example, its going to cost the same whether I live in New York City or Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. Same for HDTV sets, and many other things that we geeks like to buy at a much higher rate than the "typical" family whose needs are used to figure cost of living.
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.
The quality of life than many Americans does not require public transportation. In fact I would be a good number actually see public transportation as a sign of where NOT to live.
Some of course will take that and run off spouting racism,bigotry, or whatnot. The simple fact is that at the end of the day many aspire to nothing more than being away from it all. Stand alone housing and visual separation from the "business world - read: minimarts/gas stations/grocery stores" is key to the happiness of many. Sure we want them to still be convienent and a short hop in the car isn't an impediment.
I'm even moving further out simply because where I bought has changed so much in 9 years that its no longer the area I desired to live in. Lots of good people are here but the little businesses have creeped down the road to where its no longer "open".
As for your "pay and arm and a leg to massively pollute". Yeah, whatever. Three dollar, heck even 5 dollar a gallon gas isn't going to change my behaviour and I doubt that it will change that of others who live where I do. Cars are far better today than ever and that simpleton slight of yours is just silly. If I want massive pollution I will go to the big city with its public transportation because even there in the land of so called "enlightened" thinking a great many of them seem to not use that very public transportation they deem "good for others". I can go see the trash piled in alleys and cigarette butts lining the sidewalk. Oh yeah, massively pollute. Cities have no ground to stand on.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think a lot of people have been missing something here. If you work in I/T in Silicon Valley, your wages may be lower, but you also have a low switching cost. On the other hand, if you work in Montanta in I/T your wages may be higher, but there is also a higher switching cost. Example: If you get layed off in Montana, it will take longer to find another job in the I/T field, and if you get laid off in the Silicon Valley, it won't take you as long. This is basic economies of agglomeration. So while it may seem wages are higher/lower in one area or another, what is really happening is that firms in Montana have to pay more because of the high switching cost associated with finding a new job in the field. More than likely the person will end up having to move and/or spend some time unemployed.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. -Elliot Carver
Who cares what your neighbors believe?
It matters if you kids go to the same school, and they start trying to push ID. Or ban alcohol sales on Sunday. Or prohibit just about anything else they find 'unethical.'