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What Cities Want Your IT Skills?
itwbennett writes "Are you a SQL expert? Check out apartments in Jacksonville, Florida. Oracle more your speed? Head down to Dallas, Texas. Looking for a job that uses your Windows skills? Send some resumes to Providence, R.I. Blogger Kevin Fogarty looks at the top skills in demand in the fastest-growing US IT job markets and finds that different cities want different kinds of techies." This reminds me of the recent book Who's Your City? Considering how many people of all stripes live in any large city, and how much migration goes on for work, school, or other reason (I'm thinking of a few I've lived in, like Austin, Seattle, and Philadelphia), it amazes me how strong are the differences in social atmosphere between cities.
For some folks with families to feed... it is.
Ask 1,000,000 Mexicans in the US illegally if you doubt this.
...your security clearance.
Oh what's that? You've actually touched a keyboard in the past? That's nice, too.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What I learned from this list, is all anyone cares about is Project Managers. So, who's actually going to do all the real work?
Looks like it's time to get my PMP cert
and DC costs alot to live there vs other areas.
Not to mention the opposite: Young people with few ties to a given geographical area. Why not experience new places and get paid more at the same time?
There are a lot of rich people in Birmingham
A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses
Look over there!...A dry ice factory
A good place to get some thinking done
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Just the fact it lumps together C, C++ and C# in the same category is the fucking proof the author has no clue about software development...
I hate this place.
I'd say the same thing about Jacksonville, FL. I can't say anything about your SQL prospects here but I do have a nice little gig as a java coder. /bragging
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
There are lots of cities looking for people of all stripes. Buffalo, NY for instance is looking for IT people of all stripes with a fairly robust number of smaller companies. Look outside of the places you might expect and there may be a surprising amount of opportunity in the second tier cities like Buffalo.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Lumping C, C++, C# jobs together seems a bit useless.
Dude. Move an hour north. Huntsville is nothing but tech jobs. I have a great job, and get near weekly inquires from recruiters about whether I'd like a different one. In a pinch you could commute here, though it'd be a bit of a dozy.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The only IT skill that deserved a link (probably to explain what is it to typical site users) was Linux?
Sadly it is. I'm in the bay area because of my job, and I'd rather be somewhere that had a better ratio of single women to single men.
Or for people who are actually passionate about their careers.
For example, right now, I care very little about where I live, other than that I have fast Internet, and either I get freedom to choose the tools I want, or I get tools I actually enjoy using. For example, suppose I was given the choice between web development jobs in Ruby on Rails, Node.js, ASP.NET, or Oracle ADF. I might try the ASP.NET job out of curiosity, but there is no fucking way I'm doing Oracle ADF 8 hours a day. In fact, pretty much anything related to Oracle is already a code smell.
I mean, I don't care what the nightlife is (I don't drink), I don't much care about where I sleep (requirements are clean, safe, good Internet), and the other things I care about are likely to be just about anywhere -- a martial arts program, interesting women... Money is rarely a factor.
But the work is what I'm actually doing with my life. (Or, at the moment, school, but I've worked before, and I take the same approach to internships.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Anywhere in NY outside of NYC. I moved from the Mohawk Valley to Rochester just to find any IT job, and now I'm a highly paid consultant at $33k/yr
I have been spending the last few months hopping hotels between columbus, cincinnati, and cleveland. There is real growth in this area if you can get in with a good corporation that is *in* with the ohio government and corporate network. The only way to describe myself now is as a total engineering whore. GIS database? Biogas? Solar projects? Urban Streetscapes? Got groundwater contaminated with Fracking Brine? Whatever pays baby. Never really spent any time in ohio before January. It was pretty cool rolling into Columbus this morning and hearing on the news what I heard in the office yesterday..... Now I automatically scope out the safe room when I enter any building in case a giant tornado rolls through. Ice room. Safest place in the hotel.....
The city that gets me the job?
Oracle + C# is actually pretty fun.
At my Oracle place we weren't permitted to use P/SQL. I used a python-esque syntax to have these insanely complex 5-page plus queries, but the catch was they were filled with CTE (common table expressions). I didn't have to give Oracle any hints - it just found them and optimized away 99.99% of the query and executed blazing fast but I could do totally dynamic sorting/searching.
Combine that with C# and stay the hell away from Toad, and you're home free. Just write your own Query tool and did I mention stay the hell away from Toad?
Hey. IT guy. Bad cable or something on the server in the crawlspace. Get that, will you?
This summary reminds me of every dumb phone I've ever received from incompetent I.T. recruiters, as they mindlessly read off buzzwords...
Recruiter: Do you have "JEE"?
Me: Yeah.
Recruiter: Do you have "Java"?
Me: That's included in the previou... oh, nevermind. Yeah.
Recruiter: Do you have "Oracle"?
Me: Yeah.
Recruiter: Do you have "SQL"?
Me: That's part of...... yeah.
Recruiter: Do you have "agile"?
Me: Oh fuck my life...
Slashdot has categories for everything else. As I write this, there are, at least, two articles that are career related. And why not? Careers are an important of "news for nerds, stuff that matters."
It is interesting to see so much Oracle demand, but Oracle encompasses many areas now. The database, financials, etc. At one time if they listed Oracle, it meant they wanted either someone who was good at PL/SQL, maybe Oracle Forms, or as an Oracle DBA. But now that isn't the case any more. For example, around this area (Greater Toronto Area), if they ask about Oracle, they are talking more often than not about Oracle Financial applications. But the ads only list 'Oracle' as a requirement (HR people without a clue as to what they are asking for). But there are a ton of other Oracle apps. So the one number for Oracle they give in this survey is misleading.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Moving to a city with zero income tax and a relatively low cost-of-living, but plenty of stuff to eat, do and see. 20 Schrute bucks if you can guess which city and state ;)
At this point, I'd need to spend $80-100k per year to pay in sales tax in an average state what I'm paying right now in income tax. Fuck income tax.
Of course they're desperate: Yahoo is a shithole.
Oracle + C# is actually pretty fun.
I suppose it could be, given a sufficient level of abstraction, but I think when you get to the point I'd want, your code is also reasonably portable to other databases, in which case, why are you bothering with Oracle?
At my Oracle place we weren't permitted to use P/SQL.
So... no triggers? At all? How'd you do autoincrements?
Ok, I guess I'm nitpicking, maybe. I definitely agree with that policy, although it also knocks out another big reason people would want to use Oracle in the first place.
I used a python-esque syntax to have these insanely complex 5-page plus queries, but the catch was they were filled with CTE (common table expressions). I didn't have to give Oracle any hints - it just found them and optimized away 99.99% of the query and executed blazing fast but I could do totally dynamic sorting/searching.
That's kind of cool. Not as cool as maybe not generating that crap in the first place, but I won't deny Oracle has a pretty powerful optimizer.
Still, wouldn't be my first choice. I'd much prefer to start with something like DataMapper -- I get to use Ruby, I get to write Ruby pretty much all the time, I almost never have to touch SQL, yet it's usually fairly intelligent with its queries.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
They actually listed jobs for Detroit? Does anyone still live there? I thought it was the new "Escape from New York."
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
The problem i seem to be having is that whenever someone wants a Java Developer there seems to be a common set of additional requirements along with that(Hibernate, Struts, JBoss, WebSphere, WebLogic) and with C++ there also seems to be a common set of requirements for that too..(ASP.net, C#, IIS, VB.net, Visual Studio 2003,2005,2008, Microsoft SQL Server). Oh yeah and don't forget about MFC...even Microsoft has abandoned it, yet companies still want to use it. I haven't used Visual Studio*.* is years and because of it - you are not qualified.
Other things i see scattered around involve Tuxedo, clearcase and so forth. I had never heard of those before. I had to go look it up to see what they even were. Tuxedo is COBOL(YIKES). Clearcase? I just use Subversion, Git or CVS or something. It seems that being in a small shop that uses tools that just get the job done, usually using software that is open source and 100% free, has now made me undesirable to software managers who want everything under the sun or who want experience with older technologies.
...I'm checking them out... I've got it figured out. Talking Heads, 'Cities' - great song! Although I always heard 'thinking' as 'drinking' in the last line you cited.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
And how much of this "demand" is actually "HAALP! Some consultant built us a massive Sharepoint-based solution, and it does not fucking work!"?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Fixed that for you
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Instead you expect HR to make a hash of it.
Translation: to many in the English speaking world "#" is a hash. I've never heard anyone call it "sea hash" though no matter how much of a dope they are.
Although I live in the region listed as having the lowest salaries for IT, I think it's worth noting that I also live in a state with no income tax and a very appealing income to cost-of-living ratio. I was recently researching a job position in Chicago, and spent some time determining how my salary would need to change in order to maintain the same standard of living I have in east TN. Long story short, I hit the salary ceiling for the job in question before reaching an income offering the comforts I have now.
Is this a troll or do I just have a substantially different outlook on life?
...and all the other people who argue that *nix admins are super-rare? Look at those Unix and Linux numbers in the article. Read them and weep.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
CapTech (my employer) is actively seeking top-tier Java developers, .NET developers, architects, sharepoint experts, etc. We have offices in Richmond VA, Charlotte, Philly, and DC. We only hire the best of the best - if you're qualified, check us out at http://www.captechconsulting.com./ The current job listings are here: http://www.captechconsulting.com/careers/jobs.
Good luck!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
AC's got a point, but people live in different circumstances in different parts of their lives.
When I graduated college, my Dad said, "Go to where you can get a job." Well, it was 2002 and there was another tech slump, so I was applying to jobs as a recent graduate with much more qualified applicants in the pool. So I decided to move where I wanted to live. It took me a while, but I found good work as a network admin.
Plus a job isn't a life. That's the point the AC is making. You can find work anywhere. I'm serious. You just need the skills people want. My skill set is broad and not very deep (except for in CS/IT) so I can work in a lot of sectors. Life is way more than a job. And people that focus too much on their career lose balance and miss out on living life.
As a bonus for choosing my city before my job: I started my family after having a solid job in a place I wanted to live.
Browse at 1. You'll thank me later.
Is it just me?
If you're still watching this (doubtful I know since you're AC, but it can't hurt), and you actually want to get out of Birmingham, message me. Lots of good stuff going on here in the great white (OK, rarely white, mostly hot) northern tip of AL.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Sorry, budget for half a body. IT guy is still up.