I'll have to agree with many others that there are lots of other (unmentioned) locations in the U.S. I work for a small company in the EDA industry. Probably 90% of the other companies in our industry are located in the Bay Area. We have often found it a big selling point when recruiting that we offer competitive salaries to those companies, but in areas (Pittsburgh, PA and Phoenix, AZ) where that money is worth A LOT more.
Both of the areas we are located in have good schools to recruit from, and are decent sized cities with everything for good quality of life. Phoenix especially has a huge high tech community already. You just have to put up with 100 degrees in the summer, but its beautiful in february.
As a technical type who allowed himself to be pushed into the management arena, and dove back out as quickly as possible.... Good Luck!
As I think a couple of other posters mentioned, even at the best companies its very difficult to keep a level head, and resist the pressures from upper management and marketing/sales.
As far as what I want:
- Assuming you do a good job in the planning phase and listen to your employees and make a schedule (don't laugh, it happens occasionally). The real trick is.....
6 months later when your boss wants to do another round of 'strategic planning'... Don't let them change all the plans again unless there is a good reason! It is very frustrating to constantly have the moving target goal as a developer. This is not to say that plans can't change, they always have to, but include your employees in the 'redesign' phase as well as the 'design' phase. I've seen plenty of good managers fall apart here when good plans had to get changed at the last minute
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I'll have to agree with many others that there are lots of other (unmentioned) locations in the U.S. I work for a small company in the EDA industry. Probably 90% of the other companies in our industry are located in the Bay Area. We have often found it a big selling point when recruiting that we offer competitive salaries to those companies, but in areas (Pittsburgh, PA and Phoenix, AZ) where that money is worth A LOT more.
Both of the areas we are located in have good schools to recruit from, and are decent sized cities with everything for good quality of life. Phoenix especially has a huge high tech community already. You just have to put up with 100 degrees in the summer, but its beautiful in february.
As a technical type who allowed himself to be pushed into the management arena, and dove back out as quickly as possible.... Good Luck!
As I think a couple of other posters mentioned, even at the best companies its very difficult to keep a level head, and resist the pressures from upper management and marketing/sales.
As far as what I want:
- Assuming you do a good job in the planning phase and listen to your employees and make a schedule (don't laugh, it happens occasionally). The real trick is.....
6 months later when your boss wants to do another round of 'strategic planning'... Don't let them change all the plans again unless there is a good reason! It is very frustrating to constantly have the moving target goal as a developer. This is not to say that plans can't change, they always have to, but include your employees in the 'redesign' phase as well as the 'design' phase. I've seen plenty of good managers fall apart here when good plans had to get changed at the last minute
Anyway, good luck.