Slashdot Mirror
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."
Plus you get paid to live there by the Federal government. Of course, night life is somewhat limited and then there's always the Sarah Palin thing.
The mistake this article makes it the classic one of assuming that IT folks (a) all want the same sort of things from life and (b) need to live within commuting distance of work. In reality, we cover the spectrum pretty well from TINKs to nuclear family members to shit-crazy Unibomber types to living in our mothers' basements.
My fondest hope is to eventually work myself to a point where I can telecommute regularly and just live within an hour or two of a significant airport (aka, I need to be valuable enough to get away with this).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I find it funny that Boston is on both the best and worst list.
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.
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.
Pretty much. There's nothing quite like that thick yellow smog that hangs in the air over Gary, or that lovely smell of sulfer and despair that reminds you "Yep, this is Hell. Enjoy your visit from the safety of the highway or the train, and thank your lucky stars you don't have to get out."
"Detroit" proper certainly sucks, but it's never really had an IT infrastructure to start out with. Outside of Compuware, high-tech jobs just don't exist there. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that those 440+ IT jobs in "Detroit" are postings from Livonia or Novi, which is about the same as equating a job posting in Simi Valley with one in Compton.
I worked IT for a Community College that serves Detroit. By far the most dysfunctional IT organization I've ever seen. After getting hired, the first thing my boss told me was "I can't believe they hired you, you're not related to anybody here." Dozens of redundant administrators with no real job function other than drawing a paycheck, a single, insanely flaky DNS and AD server (located downtown) serving 5 remote sites that would wipe out connectivity across all campuses when it went down. I finally started SSH tunneling all of my traffic to my home connection so I could at least keep myself entertained. One of my favorite moments was when one of the network administrators was on site and I showed him what I was doing. His first question: "What's SSH?" By that time, I wasn't even remotely surprised. I was slightly surprised when I saw that job posted internally after the same admin moved to a different role. Starting salary: 65k. A junior admin with no skills whatsoever pulling down that kind of money. God only knows what his bosses made...
I was finally "indefinitely laid off" (no one ever got fired, downsized, rightsized, or had their position eliminated. You were simply placed on indefinite lay off. I heard of people getting called back to their jobs 5+ years after they got laid off) by the "Senior Associate Vice president of human resources", and yes, there were associate VP's of HR, VP's of HR, and a President of HR. If you were in the HR department, you were some form of Vice president. Or you were a secretary who was assumed to be boning and or related to his or her associated vice president. I had two weeks vacation and was told that I had a signing bonus from the union contract (Yep. Union IT. The union was equally incompetent) coming to me upon my "lay off." I was paid 8 hours vacation (the payroll system was never, ever right. They said I had 8 hours, they paid me 8, and sent me to one of the dozens of voicemail boxes that never got checked.) and told that the bonus didn't really apply to me due to a quirk in the rules.
So I walked away with a day's pay instead of a month's, and I framed the letter. I use it as a reminder of how crappy an organization can really be.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Why would you live somewhere that requires you to have a car? What a crazy idea. I live in one of the larger cities in N. America and get around on foot or bicycle. It's at my pace. I live life at my pace - smelling the roses, or not. 5.30pm, minutes after finishing work... I'm sailing and chilling on one of the biggest lakes in the world.
I've just got back from five months in Australia. In many ways, Melbourne is very similar to Toronto. I lived 45 km away from the city centre in SE suburbs. Never again. What a horrible way to live. Everything we wanted to do was 30 minutes min., probably 60 minutes drive away, on a highway. Talk about rushing around, not smelling the roses, and not actually doing anything. I loved my time in Australia, but I will never live in suburbia again. Out of the city is incredibly boring, and a dreadful lifestyle.
Each to their own. Some people like it. I don't. I'm looking forward to moving to Europe's second biggest city later this year...
Dude, it's a 2/3 majority, not a 3/4 majority. And far from "not listening to the People", the initiatives system makes California one of the most responsive to the will of the People. Which is exactly why they're in so much trouble.
People: We demand that $2B from the general fund be set aside for the education of small puppies.
Government: OK. That means that uncommitted revenue drops by $2B. We'll have to cut teacher's salaries by 14%.
People: Idiots! Why do you hate children? We demand that teacher's salaries be increased 5%, not cut.
Government: Okay, but we'll have to cut housing assistance.
People: Why do you hate the poor? You may not cut housing assistance.
Government: We'll raise taxes, then.
People: We demand that all tax increases be approved by 2/3 of the state senate.
Government: You do know that means taxes will never go up again, and that you're allowing a tiny, intransigent minority to run the state off a cliff, right?
People: Why don't you respect the will of the People?
Prop. 13 has butchered California. Prop. 13 was a conservative brainchild. Congratulations, bozo. You and yours just wrecked 1/5th of the the economy. But I suppose you think your state will be so much better once the schools shut down and Prudential is buying ad space on El Capitan.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I live in a rural area though and here's why: I decided that I want a few things out of where I live:
I bought a small house in New Hampshire and work in IT for a manufacturer, the pays not the best, the jobs not the best, but I'm satisfied with both of those and I get to live in the home I wanted for relatively cheap money. I'm walking distance (half mile) from my local down town which certainly isn't as happening as any city to be sure, but there are some restaurants and small shops. My house is surrounded by trees, I have a large back yard with a patio where I can have bonfires and cookouts. It's got a guest room where friends can visit and spend the night and if I really want to catch a show in the city, it's a little over an hours drive to Boston...
By comparison a friend of mine, same age, same vocation, lives outside of Boston makes about 20K more a year than I do, but his condo was close to THREE times what I paid for my house (nevermind the condo fees and taxes), and it's smaller than my college apartment. Even though he's paying city prices, he's not walking distance from anything, had has his car broken into a number of times sitting in the lot outside his condo, and for what?
My company has a division in LA and they've tried to get me to move out there a number of times, the cost of living increase isn't worth what I'd be sacrificing... I've lived in the city, and I've lived in rural areas... there is a lot of middle ground, the key is figuring out what is truly important to you and finding the middle ground that suites your needs.
Collector's Edition