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The Worst US Cities To Work In IT
bdcny7927 writes with an excerpt from CIO.com to inspire some caution before your next job switch: "IT workers have their choice of many great US cities for work and play (Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle), but what are the cities that you probably should avoid? Here's a very unscientific, highly subjective and unapologetically snarky list of our least favorite US tech job locales."
Okay, I don't really believe that. I just always wanted to see what that sentence looked like in print.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I've never seen one proper city that didn't feel like a very suffocating place, full of busy little bees who have no idea what it is to take the time to smell the roses. I could never live in one. Any ideas about which suburban or rural areas are good/bad to work in for IT jobs?
I wish I would be transferred to Alaska. The hunting and fishing is great. There is room to breath. A man can raise a family in a manner more suitable to the American ideal. The commutes cannot be any worse than the suburbs of any major US city.
Sign me up!
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
makes Detroit look like Paris.
Where until recently, your passwords were government property.
The list for people that don't like slideshows:
1. Detroit, Mich. - Jobs available: 449
2. Bentonville, Ark. - Jobs available: 81
3. Cleveland, Ohio - Jobs available: 211
4. Syracuse, N.Y. - Jobs available: 49
5. Tie: Boston, Mass., and San Francisco, Calif.
6. Anytown in Alaska - Jobs available: 24
7. Orlando, Fla. - Jobs available: 235
Where a BS in CS or CIT makes 9 bucks an hour and an illegal migrant housing framer makes 30.
THL phish sticks
Lots of bath houses and gay bars, plenty of well hung young studs, and of course, the geek compound. It's a linux version of heaven on earth.
I'd gladly take a position in Alaska. Wide open land with relatively few people. No overbearing State government that can't balance the budget, not much of an immigration problem up there either. Thanks to the oil revenues residents get checks from the State. About the only thing I would miss is being able to take the t-tops off on my Z28 even occasionally in the winter and pretty much all summer long.
If I had to name a State as worst State it would be California. Land of tax and spend with no fiscal restraint, holder of first county to declare bankruptcy and likely first State to go bankrupt. Of course the single biggest reason to avoid California for me is that about 3/4 of my firearms are unconstitutionally deemed illegal by the State.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
What a worthless list. What did anything they talked about have anything to do with IT?
Whale
I used to work for Compuware (Detroit based), but this was at the Montreal office and I never had to travel to the head office. Still, this is an example of an IT company that's based out of Detroit. They sell software and consulting, and I think they got started by providing IT consulting to GM.
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Okay considering the highly biased source, CIO feeds my PHB's delusions of grandeur and our waste bin, it is not surprising to see that DC missed the list. Personally I'd rather deal with Moose than the crime, both lobbyists and drug dealers or 115" of snow rather than the humidity in DC.
I wouldn't mind working in Alaska - lots of fresh seafood, cheap real estate, small town feel - if I can be sure my job is secure. Just like working in IT in some small midwest town, there aren't many options for switching jobs if you need to switch. How many large companies are hiring if you're an Oracle DBA in Alaska?
That's the beauty of Silicon Valley. I can work at a company for a few years and move to another, similarly-sized company at a higher position without much hesitation or worry. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of small companies looking at hiring IT folks. That kind of job security is what makes California much more appealing than a smaller city.
As an IT professional in Orlando #7 on the list, I can say there are plenty of IT jobs here, just maybe not at this very moment. Housing is cheap, temp is HOT HOT, and the pay scale for IT who knows their shit is high. That's why I moved here a few years ago, to get paid what I'm worth and spend less to live. Viva la Florida!
I love that San Francisco made the list -- I was just thinking last night about how I love everything about San Francisco except for the idea of living there. I'll take the Oakland hills any day and twice on Tuesday.
I'm starting to wonder about California overall. The entire state is slowly sliding downhill (and not in a earthquake-into-the-ocean sense) thanks largely to the proposition system where any shitheaded idea can be made law by a simple majority vote -- I mean, if you ever need evidence that direct democracy is a terrible idea, look no further than CA.
Institutionalized gay bashing? Check. Costly mandates we have no way to pay for? Check. And then there's my personal favorite, a short-sighted effort to limit property taxes whose only real effect is to hurt younger people just starting out and drive the schools into the shitter? You know it.
I mean, maybe having worked with users for all these years, it's a little more obvious to me that people are (by and large) stupid assholes, but I feel there's enough evidence to convince any reasonable person at this point. Which is why we still have the proposition, I suppose.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Ok, so I have lived and worked in IT in Orlando for the past 10 years and on top of it all, I work from home. Trust me on this, there is nothing that beast working out by the pool in January in T-shirt and shorts and a cold one.
And climate, well.. for 9 months of the year, the climate is perfect, warm and not humid. For three months, July-September, it's hot and humid and that is also the peak of hurricane season. But I prefer 95F and an occasional hurricane over months of waist deep snow and below zero . Hacking ice of the windshield before freezing on my way to work is way too overrated!
Not to mention that I can see each shuttle and rocket launch from my living room!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
The Low Country:
22 Jobs on Dice, an undereducated populace, and as the birth place of hellfire and damnation, a polite familiarity with the Nether Regions.
A place the only The Fallen One can love.
If we're talking sexy IT companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Sun, then you won't find much outside cites in California.
But say, Houston, has (had, when I lived there) lots of good IT jobs, obviously serving the oil industry. But they were still great jobs.
I wish they'd enlightened us as to some of their 'subjective' reasons for their choices. The Northwest Arkansas metro area (Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville & Rogers) regularly makes the top ten of 'best places to live' lists. It's not New York, if that's your thing, but then they listed Boston & SF, too, so WTF?
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Out of the 68 open positions on Dice for New Orleans, a significant percentage of them aren't even IT at all (engineering). Add in the crime problem, government corruption, terrible streets, and high'ish cost of living, and I'd think it would come in at #1 on the list.
Insert witty
...the worst cities are those with no jobs. The best cities are the ones with jobs. If you want to pay your bills, you go where the jobs are.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
doesn't include Troy, NY? Or Urbana, IL? Or Waco, TX?
Or how about Washington, DC? Hint: IT guys are low on the totem pole, and politicians, lobbyists, and AOL execs let you know it.
And San Francisco is a BAD place to work? Sounds like these guys sampled the local flora. Hint: if it really did suck, real estate prices would be as in Detroit or Cleveland. And if traffic really is the issue, what about Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles?
FWIW, Cleveland and Pittsburgh aren't THAT bad. And yes, I do mean it. It's been 40 years since the Cuyahoga burned, and it's actually kinda nice now. As is the Erie waterfront.
Orlando has:
1) Huge Tech Park near University of Central Florida, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, NASA.
2) Thriving and growing downtown
3) Plummeting real estate prices
4) Beaches 45 minutes away, probably the highest concentration of theme parks in the world, tons of activities and night life.
5) Great shopping
6) Growing affluent upper middle class
Let me summarize: Tons of tech jobs, tons of things to do, CHEAP cost of living
. . . these stories will be definitely much more amusing. C'mon . .. let's hear 'em, from our overseas folks:
Lack of titty-bars in Riyadh? Being offered a rat for dinner in Beijing, and being told that it is a "big mouse"? Water cooling your CPUs with raw sewage, which comes from the same source as the drinking water?
There MUST be some really god-awful places on this planet for IT work, that makes Detroit and their Ohio pals pale in comparison.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I live and work in San Francisco and quite frankly I love it. I've never experienced any of the issues the article claims plague our city (I'm not sure what iJacking is, but my eye sockets are just fine).
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I live here, and I've got a friend who works for SourceForge ... I'm not sure in what capacity, though. There's definitely a demand for people with technical skills. There's also ample opportunities for infrastructure development if you're interested in the hardware side of things. The state is working pretty hard to improve broadband access (http://www.newsminer.com/news/2009/jun/21/fairbanks-representative-hopes-highlight-lack-alas/ and http://www.newsminer.com/news/2009/mar/16/internet-companies-hope-stimulus-boon-bush/).
San Fran is close enough to San Jose.
Did I miss it? When did the "top ten" list get watered down to "top seven"? Too lazy to dig up three more crappy towns?
This is all you need to know, math guys: Syracuse holds the title for the U.S. city (pop: 50,000+) with the highest average annual snowfall (115 inches), besting even Anchorage, Alaska (114 inches). It also has a bit of a problem with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) due to all that snow and not a lot of sunshine. It's called the Salt City: A good thing, since there's all that snow and ice on the roads.
Available IT jobs in Syracuse (as posted on June 18 on Dice.com): 49
I'm tired of seeing people endlessly trash Upstate because of what they read about the winter. What the summary doesn't tell you about the 115 inches of snow is that you rarely have more than 10 inches on the ground at a time; the weather trends for this area lately have seen snow coming primarily on the leading edge of warm fronts in the winter. The result of this is of course you'll shovel your driveway on Monday and then put on sunglasses and a very light coat by Wednesday. In reality every winter in Upstate New York has been near-record warmth for the past several years, and after the short winter season (only about 3 months in reality) the rest of the year is temperate.
That said, the economy of Upstate New York does leave something to be desired; but that can be said for many other parts of the country as well.
But I might be brought to disembowel the next person who reads about Upstate New York and then trashes it over weather that they have not experienced for themselves.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Having worked for 4 different tech companies in Cleveland, I'll speak up for it. Cleveland does have a few things going for it if you're in the tech sector.
There's good higher education to hire from (CWRU (of which I'm an alum) and CSU (from which I've had a couple of excellent co-workers)), good cultural institutions (Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Museum of Art, Playhouse Square, The Cleveland Playhouse), good restaurants, affordable housing, decent enough public transportation, and bearable traffic. There's also a national park within about 30 or 40 minutes of downtown (Cuyahoga Valley National Park).
The tech sector is a little small, but it's fairly close-knit as a result of that. I don't think you need 6 degrees to get from anybody to anybody else. One or two is probably sufficient.
While the professional sports teams are perennially frustrating, that's not what I look for in a city. At the end of the day, a city is what you make of it. Cleveland comes with a lot of big city perks without a lot of big city hassles.
In this economy, any IT job is a good job.
Of everyone who was in my circle of friends working in the IT and computer industry in the mid-to-late 1990s, the only people who have jobs today are in middle management. Not one non-manager I knew back then and know today is working today in the tech industry.
I became an ex-pat, teaching English, translating documents, and helping with the Windows machines in an accounting office in Mexico. I would like to return, but there are just no jobs stateside where I want to live right now.
One friend saved enough money to semi-retire; he, right now, is living with his family to minimize expenses and off of savings. He's not really sure he even wants to return to the industry; the last job he had a couple of years ago left him really burnt out.
Another friend lost his job at a video game company in the late 1990s. He never got hired in the tech industry again, and is currently living off of a military disability pension, paying his debts and planning on returning to college.
These are my luckier friends. Two friends, who have families to raise, both very recently lost jobs in the tech industry and have no idea when they will get work again. One is living off of savings and is really scared when he will get a job again. Another didn't have as much savings, had to leave the apartment he was leasing, and is currently shacked up with a buddy who lets him sleep in the extra bedroom in exchange for computer help; his wife and kids are living with their family.
I am sure either one of these guys would accept a job in Cleveland or Alabama or anywhere else where the company is willing to pay them enough to support their family.
It's a really scary time to work in the tech industry. If you have a job, and it pays enough to support your family, thank the lucky stars you're still working. Not everyone is as lucky as you right now.
Worst. Article. Ever.
Timothy, wake up and post something other than a Dice.com ad.
Hey, wait, I thought it was H-Commerce? It's iJacking now? Or is this an East Coast versus West Coast Marketing Gang thing?
We'll throw "might get mauled by a moose" for free!
With the exception of Columbia, Greenville, and if you like Banks, Charlotte. The rest of the 2 states have virtually no IT opportunities unless you like being a 24/7 on-call IT admin for small firms with no money, no technological understanding, and will be satified with $35K anually... Short of about 50 companies, if you've been rejected by them, or rejected them, you really have no chances...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Washington D.C. The entire metropolitan area is one big mess. I have to plan my WEEKEND trips to the grocery store with severe traffic in mind. The area/weather/people are nice enough. However, with the addition of the commute times, I am basically holding down another part-time job just to get to work and back. I work 10-12 hour days just to avoid sitting in that mess for 3-4 hours a day.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
I did not really have much negative feeling for Wal-Mart until I worked in Bentonville for two to three weeks at the Wal-Mart IT HQ.
Between the IT sweatshop like conditions inside the building and all pervasive Wal-Mart "culture" in the rest of the town, it made
me never want to spend time in a Wal-Mart store let alone any more time in Bentonville. Imagine if you will when you go to buy
anything at a grocery store the only choices you have are Wal-Mart grocery stores! If Wal-Mart does not carry what you want
then you are just SOL.
Unless you are door to door trying to sell software IT is pretty much behind closed doors, in fact, a good percent of it dont require to be physically at the work offices. Now, if you talk about living in those cities (as in the time you are out of work or going to it, no matter doing what) or trying to get a new job (based on numbers of offers in Dice.com) the list worth something... but is not what the title say.
They must have missed this, extolling the virtues of Cleveland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY
no comment
Just a thought, but maybe the overall market is adjusting to which jobs are really worth what again. I think there's a limit to how much an office typist is really worth once you realize you are in a global economy, And that's all IT is for the most part, just this century's office typist. The dotbomb years are in the past, and high wages now are just inertia as the market gets flooded with millions more keyboard commandos a year. Sure, there will be keyboard work, but is it really always going to be worth more than 10x what a skilled tradesman can get, doing practical infrastructure building and maintenance? If you ask me, a good framer or electrician or even a well seasoned assembly line tech or whatever is worth a lot more than an AJAX webpage builder where the money is going to come from "ad revenue" some magical way. The cat is out of the bag, the bulk of the internet using public is going to eventually just default to blocking ads, fullstop.
There's real work, then busywork, my guess is the real work will take increasing importance as the economy rearranges itself during these rather unusual times. Ten guys sitting around an expensive office making a hundred grand apiece watching each other's powerpoint slides and deciding on when the next meeting is going to be, then going to sit around and play video games mostly while staring at server logs on the side is not sustainable forever, not at any high payrate anyway. It was when the skillset was new, and not many could do it and the VC money was flowing like rain during a typhoon..but today?
C'mon, you'r not foolin' anyone.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
That was true during the pipeline construction era, but it's far closer to 55-45 male/female now. Funny how a rush of 50,000 male construction workers will skew the demographics of a state with a population of fewer than 300,000 (in the '70s) people.
The I4 corridor is inconsistant. There are places where the pay is good, and places where it is bad. I work along
that cooridor and have for the last 20 years. Maybe you aren't looking hard enough.
Take my governor with you.
Yes because someone in IT is likely to have a problem with identify theft and care about sports. Please give me a break.
My personal worst list:
I agree with Bentonville. Wal-Mart has to outsource development because it's such a crappy place to work and then you have to live in podunkville, AR, for the privilege of working in a crap shop. Their turn over is high and even the really good people I know who have worked there hated it.
Even with the economy in the toilet there are too many good opportunities out there to be stuck in a dreary job.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Its going to get Bangalored anyway...
I don't live there anymore, but, after Seattle, it was my favorite residence. Obviously, these jokers are basing their analysis on unflattering pictures, rather than driving through these towns. Just about everywhere you look as you drive on I-90, or 480, through Cleveland from one side to another, they're building. I'm including the suburbs because - and it's one of the great things about the area - getting around takes just a few minutes. The insurance company Progressive is huge in the area. I like my job in NYC, now, but I'd go back to Cleveland if I found something comparable.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
I've worked in IT in the Orlando/Central Florida area since 1996. It's not that bad. It's not some perfect Utopia, but nor is it one of the worst places to work.
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
The tourists aren't that bad, unless you are hanging out in the tourist areas. Which you aren't going to do after your first month here.
In all, there's more good than bad.
Houston has WAY more of an thriving IT market than Dallas considering most every oil company there is has a headquarters here..Dallas has EDS..TI and a few others but there is no comparison
Thats how they plowed into being the world's number one low-price retailer. They move a half trillion of product a year and know where most of it is any anytime to the single item. I not interested in business IT, but I have to admire their results. (Maybe they should have used some of that dough to hire style consultants like a Martha Stewart.)
This list of cities has nothing to do with IT what so ever. The only thing connected to IT with any of the cities is the number of dice.com jobs available in the citiy which doesn't seem like a very decent way to judge the number of IT jobs in a city or even how "friendly" the city is to IT.
And how does anything relating to national sports teams have anything to do with making a city worst for IT? He brings this up twice out of ten cities!
What makes a city bad for IT? Low income, lack of jobs, no or minimal education systems seem more important then a freaking sports team member leaving to a different city dammit! How about more real details lie "xyz company moved over seas taking with it 30% of the jobs" or "annually only 2% of local jobs are related to IT".
After reading TFA which brings a tie between Boston and LA as awful places to work, the link right below this article entitled "Where the IT Jobs Are: 10 American Cities" lists BOTH Boston and LA.....
Just for reference, the article from this thread is from June 18th or so while the second article praising cities for IT jobs is from May1st.
Although the original article mentions both places as a heaven for IT geeks, it also warns against the quality of life in the areas....or maybe I'm just trying to find the silver lining?
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
W.... what? Boston may be "full of itself" in regards to sports, but I had landed a sysadmin job before I even graduated late last year, after only a month of job searching. Even my brother landed a sysadmin job a week after being laid off. If you're intelligent enough to compete with the many local tech school grads and like working in IT, Boston is where you want to go.
And before you complain about real estate prices there, do bear in mind that you don't have to suffer through tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and the last major hurricane we had was a gust of wind compared to what Floridians routinely deal with.
Sure, it is not a direct contradiction, but do they like it or hate it?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It's probably too early for most publications to bash on New Orleans again. Wait for a giant hurricane to take out a different city first.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Burlington, Vermont is really horrible. Cost of living is ridiculously high and the tech industry pays you about half of what your worth.
Food and Real Estate are soooo expensive.
$100 worth of food will last you half way through the week, possibly through the week if you budget well and hit the sales. Mind you, this is for one person. (I am not overweight by any means, very in-shape and eat less than most).
While I sympathize and hear these stories a lot, I find they are usually due to a lack of professional development. There are kids out of school or self taught that can do almost any entry level IT position in a given role whether that role is service tech, admin, engineer, researcher, or even crazy turtleneck sporting visionary. And kids out of school are DELIGHTED to make salaries middle aged folk raising kids couldn't live off of. On top of this, the days of the IT gold rush are long over, and frankly anyone who expected that too be a long term prospect was just misguided. IT is an industry where to even keep your job you have to have a certain level of professional development, but without significant development efforts you will probably eventually not be able to make the type of stable living you need eventually. This is just part of being in IT, just like teachers have to put up with bratty kids all day.
... Redmond, WA.
Yeah, mark this as flamebait. But sometimes its not about how many jobs are available, its about the quality of the work. I don't see anything attractive about a career that involves having to clean up after the 800 pound gorilla.
Have gnu, will travel.
Stop complaining and buy yourself a hammer
That would require taking personal responsibility for your life instead of blaming all your problems on OMG Teh Illegal Immigrants!
It's a great place to work without a whole lot of jobs (the ones we have, though, are pretty skewed to IT). I like how that just falls through the cracks for both of those lists.
I've gotten plenty of big time offers though from companies in those states on the top ten "good places", and I've turned them down every time to stay here. The air and water's cleaner, there's more parks and recreation than most places I've been, the extensive mass transit system saves me a bundle in auto costs, the property costs are way lower, and I've just kept getting jobs here that pay better than the average rate. Nowhere else really has ever come close, at least not for me.
As for those spots on the worst list, with the exception of Boston and SF, I've replied to recruiters while laughing out loud at my effort to remain serious and not snide. When I say "If I know anyone who might be interested, I'll definitely send them on to you", in the back of my head, I'm thinking about any co-worker who's ever really pissed me off over the years.
For every real job, there's often half a dozen or more recruiters vying to place a candidate, and putting their own, somewhat re-worded, posting in Dice, Monster, and other places. So the numbers can be very inflated. OTOH, maybe this will make employers panic and decide they need to start hiring now to get the good people before they are all re-employed (they know the good people will get jobs sooner ... it's kind of like seeing prices moving back up and everyone hurries to buy while they are still kind of low).
One issue to remember with recruiters is this. They often don't tell you who their client (the employer) is. And most employers have policies brought forth from the legal department to never hire a candidate when two or more recruiters submit the same one. You could be shut out of a job and you (and even the recruiters) never know why, because of how the recruiters behave.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
(First, I must acknowledge the authors of TFA started it off by saying it was "snarky and unscientific". Noting that...)
How could Boston make this list? It is a serious hotspot for technology. There are numerous smaller tech specific schools, as well as the MIT factor (assuming that four hundred yards across the Charles is still considered "Boston" from the article's point of view). There are numerous financial companies that are always hiring for IT, or at least hiring from other Boston based consulting firms. Then there's Big Pharma. If you consider Boston to be "within the 495 belt", you have a huge number of opportunities. If you consider Boston to JUST be Boston proper, then the traffic is a non-issue, as you should be taking public transport anyway.
The traffic...I'm not going to say it is great, but it doesn't make the Forbes 12 Worst. However, it does make number eight on Jalopnic's list in 2008. That being said, there are alternatives to driving your car to most city locations.
Regarding the sports championships that were brought up...that's just stupid. As somebody already said, they list SF because of the LACK of championships, but list Boston because there are too many. Silly. If you are into sports, you will find a very educated (although biased) fan base for every major sport (excluding NASCAR). I could go on regarding the sports situation, but I'm pretty sure anyone that cares about sports is already aware of the mark Boston has made on the sports world in the past decade.
History. Someone complained that the town felt "old". Really? The city with the first university on this continent, the first battles of the Revolutionary war, the longest continuously run restaurants in the country, the first public park in the country, some of the oldest churches in the country, the oldest surviving naval vessel in the country, the first post office, the oldest professional sports venue(Fenway) in the country, and the first underground rail system in the country? That city came across as old? We prefer to view it as historic.
Considering Boston is one of the cities in this country with the longest and most influencial histories and is also a long standing technology innovator, I would think there would be some understanding as to why there might be a level of pride.
To bring home the point, you will notice that the author of TFA gave the number of job postings available for every other city on the list, except Boston and SF. That is because Boston (I don't know about SF) is still a power house in the tech world. The author complained about traffic and his home town teams losing too many sporting events to Boston's teams. Which is about as snarky and unscientific as you can get...
Bottom 7 list: small/mid-market and rust belt cities. Way to dig deep, CIO.
Sure, Cleveland has it down side, but compared to the 'top 10 cities for IT jobs' that they also have a slideshow for, the place is WAY cheaper to live in, and if you're smart you're not living in the city anyway, when a nice clean house in the nice clean burbs is dirt cheap. Plus if you get overworked and have a heart attack, head over to the Cleveland Clinic; they'll patch you up real good.
So people from SoCal, how's LA to work IT in, what with the crappy traffic and screwy government?
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Ironically, I'm at a coffee shop with free Internet access and the executive bean counter who cut my job is three tables away having lunch.
If you have a job right now, count your lucky stars. I was the best in my group of contractors and my boss was shocked and dismayed when word came down to lay me off, too. There was a lot of talk of bringing me on full time. Then the hiring freeze hit - three months later I'm out of a job.
I just had to move out of my apartment. No Internet access (except at a cafe). Unemployment is currently the only thing keeping me afloat. My saving are draining fast. Fortunately my parent's home is empty and I can move into it while they're in Florida. But I can't stay there too long.
One recruiter I recently spoke to told me, "We don't get applicants from Oklahoma. That's very unusual." Yeah, my current location is working against me, too. Fantastic.
Here's the skinny:
1) Companies are pretty much only looking for local candidates.
2) Companies are not paying for travel expenses for non-local candidates. Would you spend $500 on the conjecture you might be hired for the position that five or six people are actually being interviewed for?
3) I'm being forced to write local addresses for those areas where I do want a position. Fortunately I have family spread out all over the US and can use their addresses.
4) If you're even slightly skittish that you may lose your job, START LOOKING NOW!
You're working? Shut your mouth, Keep your head down low, become more valuable but don't take risks. Even then....you're not guaranteed you'll be working next month.
Good luck.
Living there, I can say Northwest Arkansas is not that bad. And there's a difference between a funnel cloud and a tornado, but getting back on topic, besides Walmart there's a few other large companies based here that hire a decent number of IT people such as Tyson and JB Hunt.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
what about the cities that list tech jobs as: 0 ?
Defective Logic
They sarcastically slam Boston, but then list it as one of the 10 cities where "all the IT jobs are". So make up your mind already.
And as someone living in Boston, screw you and your list :-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
They seem to be hung up on sports. WTF? Are there really a lot of IT folks who give a damn about that nonsense? To the point that it affects where they'd want to live?!
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
There are some pretty bad places - it appears to work in the U.S. But what about Canada? I'm sure there's some Canadians out there - How about anywhere in Southern Alberta (south of Calgary)?
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
The guy said:
not much of an immigration problem up there either
That's a more socially acceptable form of actual bigotry and racism. I just gave him a little taste of his own ignorance.
The pictures of urban Cleveland are depressing, primarily because nobody works there. Unemployment is high, and it's not Silicon Valley by any means.
HOWEVER, there is not much skilled competition for the few reasonable (non-helpdesk) IT jobs that exist. Despite the unemployment, quite a few people are relocated INTO Cleveland from other parts of the country. Housing cost is dirt cheap, and the suburbs have plenty of new construction. Certain areas of Cleveland are virtual ghost towns, with rampant foreclosures and distressed real estate. But in the nicer suburbs, "for sale" signs are few and far between. Luxury cars and SUVs are everywhere.
Infrastructure is built for 2x the population that Cleveland actually has. Morning commute is the speed limit.
When companies migrate away from high cost areas, Cleveland should do pretty well. But it's going to be a rough ride for quite a while.
how your 0 and 16 foot ball team doing planing for a repeat?
I've lived all over Central New York, from Herkimer to Morrisville and now Pulaski. Syracuse is near the middle of this big triangle. I've seen it 40 degrees below zero (-75F with windchill) and I've seen more than 4 feet of snow dumped overnight. I've seen the high temperature for the entire month of February at -20F. But these extremes only happen once every few decades. In general, the temperature hovers in the 20's and you get light snow once or twice a week. Snowfall of more than 6 inches rarely happens more than once or twice a month and the ground rarely has more than a foot or two of snow on it for a week or more.
However, as a recent IT graduate trying to find a job in Syracuse or the surrounding area, I can tell you that there aren't many. Most of the openings are for senior or manager level. A lot of businesses also seek employees with experience with proprietary systems. Personally, I love living in this climate and I dread the summer (75 degrees is too hot for me). Upstate is a great place to live if you can get a decent job. $50,000 a year can go a long way when cheeseburgers are a buck and you can buy corn on the side of the road for 10 cents and ear. The only reason I'm looking to get out of here is because the government (which is almost entirely controlled by NYC) is crushing anything and everything they can. Hunting is great... but so regulated that deer run rampant and cause loads of automobile and property damage. Fishing is great... except that now you need to pay exorbitant amounts for fishing licenses. Snowmobiling is amazing... except now they have roadblocks, check points and speed limits. The Adirondack Park is a great place to visit at almost 10,000 square miles (compare to 3,472 sq. miles for Yellowstone or 1,189 sq. miles for Yosemite).
In short, Syracuse is a great place if you have the skills and don't mind big, overbearing government.
North Platte, NE is a railroad town and the UP pays good.
All they need to do is start out 0-10 for a new record! =D
I'm actually not all that into football (guess why), but I'm a huge hockey fan. I was disappointed that the Wings lost the Cup to the Penguins this season. It was a good season though, so I can't really complain.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
All they needed to do... apparently they already broke the streak. Shows how much I watch them play. And how much I pay attention to the dates on news articles I search for on Google. :)
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
Okay, yea, I'm totally uninformed with football. The season doesn't start til Sept so they didn't end the streak yet. I'm going to stop posting about sports I don't watch now.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
Ageism is a live a well. That in addition to H1-b visas make for a dismal job market for those over 40.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Arkansas or anyplace in Arkansas was not mentioned in the 10 worst nor in the article describing where the IT jobs are. What does this imply?
Is the state of Arkansas even a blip on the IT map?
Aren't the real estate prices in San Jose the same as San Francisco? Add to that a slightly drier heat than NorCal and a city which is not even a real city, but just a big suburb (at the moment), I'd say San Jose deserves to be there more than San Francisco. CIO.com is utterly clueless.
I guess the location explains the utter uselessness of Comupuware software.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
I hear they're petitioning the NFL to lengthen the season so they can get more games in, since otherwise they have no way to out-do themselves.
The enemies of Democracy are
What's so subjective about "Detroit, Arkansas and Cleveland suck"? Pretty good list, if you ask me. I could think of worse places than Orlando, though. No State income tax is nice.
That's great that you can afford it. However, many of us live in cities where there is a significant financial premium that needs to be paid in order to live in a car-free environment. Those who can't afford $300k+ USD for a loft are relegated to living in the suburbs.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
and you guys beat our team but we got 1 game
When I was planning to move here to Denver, I had countless people on forums tell me how annoying it is that it's sunny all the time, how you have to practically ration your water, and other tales of woe. Only had one come right out and say that the residents don't want other people moving here (particularly Californians who drive up property values).
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
But we have Hollywood. That is +50% culture and +1 happy citizen.
Living currently in Chicago, and seeing that nearly half of Chicago's population appears to be from Michigan, I'm not convinced Michigan is the great state everyone makes it out to be. All I see is a mass exodus into the city and a bunch of people pointing to somewhere on their hands, telling me how great the state they don't live in is.
What was the name of that city a few years ago where the IT guy went ape-shit because his web server was displaying the default CentOS page... Turtleton? That would probably be the worst place to work in for IT.
Ah, here it is: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/
Way too crowded. Commuting is a full time job with the stress level of combat aircraft flying. I suspect the Metro has saved many people from stress related illnesses and deaths.
Way too much poverty and crime way too close to everything else. Not knocking those directly affected, but it warps the brains of others. I did research at NIH. I had to travel across town to the VA hospital, through a very nasty part of town. I had no problems with the locals, but I did get accosted by one of DC's finest in a Metro station. He wanted to know when was the last time I sold heroin. No apology when he found out the truth.
Way too expensive. Way way way. You could draw a series of concentric circles around DC by mapping how much the price of specific items is inflated. Buying stuff downtown is like buying it in an airport. If you're lucky you'll land a job that gives cost of living pay and other perks to offset the costs. I got an additional 70% on top of my NIH salary for cost of living, per diem, free Metro tickets, etc. But don't expect that for a regular IT job outside federal service.
Way too rude. Whether in the grocery store, at the gas station, in the mall, or anywhere, people are so self absorbed that they'll block your path and not move, or plow right through you, as if you aren't even there. For every apology I heard there, I saw 20 faces with eyes staring ahead and refusing to acknowledge others so strenuously that they didn't even blink as they sailed by.
Worst, those who IT serves tend to be so much more full of themselves than elsewhere that they treat any kind of support staff as second class denizens with horrible disfiguring contagious diseases. Within IT staffs (staves?) things seemed pretty peachy (I wasn't one, but I hung with them, and my wife was one of them). But the ungrateful goobs that munged their inbox by not deleting or archiving anything seemed to delight in trying to blame the IT people as well as trying to make it clear who was servant and who was served.
Up sides: Metro (yeah, they had an accident. Check their incident per million passenger mile figures). Bethesda restaurants: more different nationalities and cultures represented in food in venues large and small. Always spendy, usually worth it, often more interesting and real atmosphere (as opposed to contrived) than most anywhere else.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I also work from home and live in Tampa. Don't really understand why they put Orlando on the list, it seems the writer doesn't like warm/sunny weather.
Every time I met with co-workers outside the state, or go to a conference, people ask me what the heck I'm doing outside of FL and express a wish to work here too. The weather is great, and yes we have hurricanes but at least you get a fair warning.
- sigs are for wimps.
What's wrong with Troy, NY?
[Serious question.]
I'm working in IT in Alaska, and it's super badass. There is very little competition, and lots of idiots, so if you know your stuff you're good to go.
The inclusion of San Francisco was stupid. IT jobs are relatively plentiful and if you work in IT, you will afford to live in San Francisco. Moreover, who says you have to live in San Francisco to work there? There are plenty of commute possibilities. Live elsewhere in the peninsula, East Bay (Berkeley, Oakland, etc), Marin County, etc.. Yes, life is expensive, but also very cool. The reverse is also possible (some people who live in San Francisco work in east bay, etc).
It's just mind numbing how could one possibly put San Francisco on the same list with those truly depressing rust-belt cities.
Not sure if someone's already done this, but here are some good and bad reasons to consider working here in "The City."
Pros:
Cons
Overall, I think that NYC is a great place to be and work in, and is especially a very good place to live if you're young and child-less. I wouldn't completely recommend it for families, but it's definitely do-able. (Children born and raised in NYC are of a different breed, though. The environment here can really make a difference, like anywhere else.)
The things that make Boston amazing can be experienced by traveling there 4 times over the different seasons for a week each, except the universities.
Having lived in 14 different states, I've determined that climate is important to me. I want 4 seasons, but winter needs to be a few weeks only. No earthquakes, had enough of them in Arkansas and Tokyo. No hurricanes, had enough of them in Houston and Miami. Had enough taxes in DC and enough "Midwest boredom" in Fargo, Omaha, Minneapolis, Had enough southern bible thumping in Montgomery, Little Rock, Raleigh. Enough dust in Lubbock. Lubbock is, by far, the worst place I've lived.
Austin and Atlanta are fantastic places, but water rationing in Austin sucks. Atlanta has a higher cost of living beyond the state income tax differential. I don't know why - inefficient government in GA, I guess.
California is a wonderful place **to visit**. I've noticed that parts of my family that live their become "odd" after a year. Seattle and Washington state look amazing, but my politics don't really fit with theirs. I believe in true, proven science, not touchy feeling BS.
Lived and worked here all my life... It sucks.
The weather sucks, the traffic sucks (especially when the weather particularly sucks), the business culture is truly and utterly insane (particularly the financial and trading industries that are so strong here), sales taxes are higher than anywhere in the nation (and there are taxes specifically on sodas - including diet sodas - and bottled water, and you need a license to do something as simple as wheel-around a hot-dog cart), apartments and owned housing is expensive almost anywhere within 45 min. of downtown (and where the exceptions exist, you wouldn't want to live there if you're white and/or earning a middle-class-or-higher income). Oh, and you can't own handguns (in abject spite of the Heller decision) and long-guns must be registered with the city and are subject to a variety of asinine rules that make a supposed "assault weapon" out of even many kinds of shotguns and rifles.
And if you think our state governor is corrupt, try Chicago's Mayor Daley - he's even worse, but better at hiding his crimes.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?