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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."
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.
What a worthless list. What did anything they talked about have anything to do with IT?
Whale
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.
My reaction has always been that any place that needs to advertise that it is a good place to work/live/start a business is probably a horrible place to work/live/start a business
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.
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
I find it funny that Boston is on both the best and worst list.
I recently was in Boston for the first time on business. I thought it was a great city as there was plenty of good food and night life as well as viable mass transit. Unfortunately there were the downsides too. I thought the city was "old" and "dirtier" than what I am accustomed to in Minneapolis and I definitely didn't feel terribly safe wandering around by myself at night. Would I live there compared to Minneapolis? Probably not but do I see why it's on both the best and the worst, yes.
...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
Yes, but I won't tell at the risk of turning it into
California's problem is not all the "tax and spend liberals", it's that it has the most boneheaded system of government ever devised. It's Constitution is huge and unwieldy, and can be changed by a simple majority vote. Its government can't do anything like raise taxes or cut spending to balance the budget because the referendum system blocks them from doing anything that's unpopular with 51% of the voters.
California is a great study in why populist democracy is a lousy way to run a huge and complex state.
The other point to note is that in my experience (in Rochester, NY), upstate New York actually knows how to handle snow. The roads are clear and safe to drive 99% of the time, with plows deployed the moment snow starts sticking. Contrast with, say, D.C. or Seattle (both of which I've experienced) which regularly run out of salt, fail to plow many streets for up to a week, etc. And of course, the drivers in D.C. and Seattle don't know how to deal with snow/ice: at the first flake, ancient reptilian instincts cause them to drive straight into trees, jersey barriers, other cars, etc.
So yes, there's more snow, but it's not an additional inconvenience, as long as you don't mind the cold in the first place.
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Pffft. If people cared the facts, we'd have little to talk about here and action movies would be 10 minutes long.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
As a commuter who rides the train that feeds Fenway, I can say that's a major detriment. Nothing like 30 minutes in a packed train with sweaty drunk fans to end your day in the office 2-3 times a week.
Canadian winters are what make the summers so enjoyable! If you don't get at least two weeks below -40, you don't savor the two week of summer as much as you should.
Yea, I don't believe that, sorry. Unless you were getting utterly raped on rent. Housing in ATL is retardedly overpriced. I hope the bubble bursts another 10 times. 920k for a house in brookhaven, when I pay 580 in rent literally right down the street is stupid. You'll never recover your costs anywhere near the city. Renting is cheaper right now...in every scenario I calculated.
And buying is a gamble unlike renting. You are not guaranteed anything once you buy. I've seen areas like Duluth go from being nice suburbs to overrun with outward moving inner-city trash. Your foundation may split, you could have a water-runoff problem, or a thousand other issues like termites. What guarantee are you referring to?
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