4 ms·

There's no strong public transit in DC either. There's the Metro, which occasionally kills people due to terrible maintenance, but it's only really useful for

There's no strong public transit in DC either. There's the Metro, which occasionally kills people due to terrible maintenance, but it's only really useful for DC proper. There's not many tech jobs in DC, they're all outside in northern VA or southern MD, quite some distance from downtown DC. And those places are not well-served by Metro at all; basically there's some giant park-and-ride centers where commuters can drive in, park ($$$) and ride ($$$) the subway to their job in downtown DC. This isn't useful at all to people who actually work out in the suburbs in places like Reston VA (near the airport) or Manassas VA or Laurel MD, which are popular places for tech companies. From what I've seen on my visits to San Diego, I'd say the situations are pretty comparable actually. Terrible, terrible traffic, and terrible public transit outside the city center, and all the tech companies are nowhere near the metro center. On top of all that, the other problem in the DC area is that almost all the tech jobs are defense-related, so if you're not interested in that industry (or in working on projects that drag on and on for years and basically never get anywhere, and definitely aren't anywhere near the cutting edge of technology), DC is not the place for you.

logfromblammo 10y ago
Seeing firsthand what adjacency to a large military base does, I wouldn't want to be young tech talent near Coronado or Camp Pendleton, either. Defense jobs are terrible, soul-crushing nightmares that nevertheless pay you enough that it isn't really worth running back through the tech hiring gauntlet, which somehow manages to be worse. My soul is already nearly squashed flat, but it's not too late for you to save yourselves, if you can learn from my mistakes. Leave the defense jobs for the folks who have aged out of the military.
- amyjess 10y ago
  > Defense jobs are terrible, soul-crushing nightmares > My soul is already nearly squashed flat Can you elaborate? What, exactly, was soul-crushing? I worked for a small defense contractor from January 2015 to March 2016, and it didn't feel soul-crushing to me. In fact, I liked the fact that we were mostly forbidden from working overtime. Mind you, I don't miss the timekeeping policies one iota (including how we handled snow days), but it was tolerable...
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    It has its ups and downs. The general lack of overtime is nice, and from what I've seen of it the work pace is pretty lax and it's not hard to keep your job. The problem with it is that it seems to be a big make-work jobs program for engineers. Defense projects these days just seem to drag on forever and rarely bear any fruit. It's not like working in the commercial sector where your work has a decent chance of actually going into mass production and being used by lots of people a year or two after you build it. Of course, there's places in the commercial world like this too (mainly at really giant corporations), but it's less likely. Also, a lot of defense contracting jobs seem to be "butts in seats" jobs; you're just paid to occupy a seat and be available to do some ill-defined work, with no clear management.
    - amyjess 10y ago
      To be fair, my company was a little unconventional. We made NLP systems for defense clients, and as such we were working on interesting problems and had some real scientists on our payroll. I actually felt kinda out of place because I came from a systems and platform background and wound up being immersed in academic CS stuff and computational linguistics, while also being surrounded by experts on the subject with lots of experience, when I've never been good at the academic side. As much as I liked working at that company, I'm glad I'm now doing NMS engineering at a telecom instead, because what I'm doing now actually matches my skillset. Personally, though, I've never cared that much about working on something that's fulfilling in and of itself. As long as I'm getting paid enough to fund my life, the hours are good, the work environment isn't abusive (I learned that lesson from a startup), and I'm doing something I'm actually competent at, I'm content. If I want to work on something that tickles my fancy, that's what personal projects are for.
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        Grishnakh got it done in one. I agree with every last sentence, down to the punctuation. No, wait. Make that down to the kerning. I'll also add that some places are not just warming chairs with asses, but intentionally gaming the numbers and incurring mountains of technical debt in an apparent effort to suck more money out of the government customer than they were originally willing to pay, which is usually an insane amount to begin with. It's hard to see the line between make-work scheme and outright fraud, but think I was probably on the wrong side of it for roughly two years. I didn't care much for the territorial pissing and office-level politics there, either. The only reason I stayed at that place so long was because I was so sick of job-hunting and interviewing that I couldn't bring myself to do it more than once or twice a week. In the end, I settled for an opening at the same company that had laid me off with three days notice and no severance two years before, which was what forced me to go to the crap job in the first place.

logfromblammo 10y ago

Seeing firsthand what adjacency to a large military base does, I wouldn't want to be young tech talent near Coronado or Camp Pendleton, either. Defense jobs are terrible, soul-crushing nightmares that nevertheless pay you enough that it isn't really worth running back through the tech hiring gauntlet, which somehow manages to be worse. My soul is already nearly squashed flat, but it's not too late for you to save yourselves, if you can learn from my mistakes. Leave the defense jobs for the folks who have aged out of the military.

amyjess 10y ago
> Defense jobs are terrible, soul-crushing nightmares > My soul is already nearly squashed flat Can you elaborate? What, exactly, was soul-crushing? I worked for a small defense contractor from January 2015 to March 2016, and it didn't feel soul-crushing to me. In fact, I liked the fact that we were mostly forbidden from working overtime. Mind you, I don't miss the timekeeping policies one iota (including how we handled snow days), but it was tolerable...
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  It has its ups and downs. The general lack of overtime is nice, and from what I've seen of it the work pace is pretty lax and it's not hard to keep your job. The problem with it is that it seems to be a big make-work jobs program for engineers. Defense projects these days just seem to drag on forever and rarely bear any fruit. It's not like working in the commercial sector where your work has a decent chance of actually going into mass production and being used by lots of people a year or two after you build it. Of course, there's places in the commercial world like this too (mainly at really giant corporations), but it's less likely. Also, a lot of defense contracting jobs seem to be "butts in seats" jobs; you're just paid to occupy a seat and be available to do some ill-defined work, with no clear management.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    To be fair, my company was a little unconventional. We made NLP systems for defense clients, and as such we were working on interesting problems and had some real scientists on our payroll. I actually felt kinda out of place because I came from a systems and platform background and wound up being immersed in academic CS stuff and computational linguistics, while also being surrounded by experts on the subject with lots of experience, when I've never been good at the academic side. As much as I liked working at that company, I'm glad I'm now doing NMS engineering at a telecom instead, because what I'm doing now actually matches my skillset. Personally, though, I've never cared that much about working on something that's fulfilling in and of itself. As long as I'm getting paid enough to fund my life, the hours are good, the work environment isn't abusive (I learned that lesson from a startup), and I'm doing something I'm actually competent at, I'm content. If I want to work on something that tickles my fancy, that's what personal projects are for.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      Grishnakh got it done in one. I agree with every last sentence, down to the punctuation. No, wait. Make that down to the kerning. I'll also add that some places are not just warming chairs with asses, but intentionally gaming the numbers and incurring mountains of technical debt in an apparent effort to suck more money out of the government customer than they were originally willing to pay, which is usually an insane amount to begin with. It's hard to see the line between make-work scheme and outright fraud, but think I was probably on the wrong side of it for roughly two years. I didn't care much for the territorial pissing and office-level politics there, either. The only reason I stayed at that place so long was because I was so sick of job-hunting and interviewing that I couldn't bring myself to do it more than once or twice a week. In the end, I settled for an opening at the same company that had laid me off with three days notice and no severance two years before, which was what forced me to go to the crap job in the first place.