7 ms·

It's really not easy to uproot and move from an economically depressed area to an active metropolis. I've done it (Athens, GA to San Francisco in late 2012) and

It's really not easy to uproot and move from an economically depressed area to an active metropolis. I've done it (Athens, GA to San Francisco in late 2012) and it was incredibly expensive and involved a large amount of personal credit use, cash assistance from family, and time. It was a huge stretch at the time for me to move across the country and break into a new industry, and I did it as a single man, willing and able to sleep on couches and occasionally a cheap hotel room (which left me going to the next job interview itching with flea bites). I spent a lot of days scrambling to figure out where I was sleeping that night while I navigated the terribly tight housing market in San Francisco. I would have never been able to do that with any sort of family. If you are coming from a town where $28,000 is a really good salary for a job and your rent (as a single person with roommates) might be $250-$300 a month, how on earth do you save up enough to get two months rent in SF or even Oakland? Especially considering how little savings most families have in America, and that's when you haven't been laid off. When you have certain highly fungible skills moving around is relatively easy. Now that I'm a programmer I can theoretically get a job in pretty much any American city I choose, and probably negotiate a starting/moving bonus so I'm not out-of-pocket for any costs associated with moving. That's true for all of my former coworkers and a lot of my friends out here in California, so I think it's easy to forget how abnormal that is.

hack_mmmm 9y ago
"Now that I'm a programmer I can theoretically get a job in pretty much any American city I choose, and probably negotiate a starting/moving bonus" Try getting a job in Athens Georgia with equal or greater salary than you are earning now in SF
- hack_mmmm 9y ago
  It's not easy outside Bay Area Bubbles or concentrated zones to find the programming jobs that you really would like and grow in.
- sidlls 9y ago
  I don't know where those downvotes are coming from: you're very much on the money, here. There is a major set of blinders techies in the big centers have with respect to how good the market is...anywhere else. It might be easy to walk across the street and land another $120k/year (low for SF, but still respectable enough especially for a single person) job in one of these markets and be doing something a bit more interesting than simple CRUD, but not elsewhere. The fact is most technology jobs outside these hotspots pay poorly (usually not more than a small premium over other professions in the area) and are just not common anyway. They also are much closer to "grunt worker on the line" than "build your resume by being able to work with lots of technologies". A typical software developer job isn't at a software company in these places. It's in the IT Department as a low-class cost-center line item, working on basic CRUD with little or no say in the infrastructure or even product development, or else a fixed specification project in which you're more or less tinkering around the edges of a pre-existing system.
- jboggan 9y ago
  Oh I agree, I couldn't get anywhere near the salary, but if I wanted to find a programming job back home in Athens I could swing it. I would probably have to learn COBOL though, no joke. And I'm in Santa Monica now, and my salary has been $0 for the last several months! Will finally be able to run payroll for myself next month though so that's exciting.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Not true. You can probably get a job most anyplace that actually has employers who need programmers, but you'll find starting bonus and moving expenses are limited to major tech areas and employers. Where I live there's a university that employs a lot of tech folks, and several private tech companies, but nobody pays for relocation, and salaries are $50K - $100K or maybe a little more at the very top end. A good real-estate agent makes way more money than a programmer in many areas of the US.
  - sien 9y ago
    Not to mention a good accountant, good lawyer, decent optometrist, decent dentist, decent doctor. Not only do lots of those jobs pay better than tech jobs in most places you can also live more easily in cheap, nice places where a nice house can be had for less than 300K. And their jobs are much, much harder to offshore. It's interesting how there is this great push to get people to code, pushed by politicians who are almost all lawyers. You don't see a push for more lawyers or doctors to drop costs. They don't import H1Bs. Try getting a medical or legal licence from another country.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
hack_mmmm 9y ago
"Now that I'm a programmer I can theoretically get a job in pretty much any American city I choose, and probably negotiate a starting/moving bonus" Try getting a job in Athens Georgia with equal or greater salary than you are earning now in SF
nostrademons 9y ago
What I don't understand is why people don't use the time they have in the low cost-of-living area to develop the skills (via the Internet) that would make them attractive to employers in big cities? That was my approach - I lived at home with my parents after graduation, basically did nothing but program (both for work and after work), and after 3 years Google came knocking and paid for my move out to Silicon Valley. This is fairly common among tech companies, or even any sort of wealthy corporation - if they want someone remote and the person is willing to relocate, they'll pay for the move. I have several friends here with similar stories - they're from even more economically depressed areas (Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Cleveland, etc.), but spent their free time coding, and then Google came calling. Honest question here - what's going through peoples' heads when they decide that reading Breitbart or watching TV is a better use of their time than developing the skills that will make them desirable to those evil corporations that are making all the money?
- jodrellblank 9y ago
  Google employs ~70k people (https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-time-google-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti...) That puts you as 70k in 300M ~= the top 0.025% of people. Can tens of millions make their future plans "become smart and capable enough to be in the top 0.025% within 3 years"?
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    That assumes an ordered ranking of people and of employers, a premise I reject. Google is one of several thousand employers that are both hiring and pay reasonably well. Most of the other ones will also fly you out and pay for relocation if they want you. At the same time I was interviewing with Google, there was even a 3-person startup that was willing to fly me out to SF to interview, except that I didn't really care about their business. If you don't get into Google, there's still Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Stripe, AirBnB, Square, Twitter, Netflix, Tesla, Lyft, Dropbox, Cisco, Intel, Juniper, NVidia, EBay, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Ericsson, JP Morgan Chase, and many other companies. Most of those are perfectly acceptable employers; they may not have the prestige of Google, but you can make a good living and possibly even end up wealthier than at Google.

hack_mmmm 9y ago

"Now that I'm a programmer I can theoretically get a job in pretty much any American city I choose, and probably negotiate a starting/moving bonus" Try getting a job in Athens Georgia with equal or greater salary than you are earning now in SF

hack_mmmm 9y ago
It's not easy outside Bay Area Bubbles or concentrated zones to find the programming jobs that you really would like and grow in.
sidlls 9y ago
I don't know where those downvotes are coming from: you're very much on the money, here. There is a major set of blinders techies in the big centers have with respect to how good the market is...anywhere else. It might be easy to walk across the street and land another $120k/year (low for SF, but still respectable enough especially for a single person) job in one of these markets and be doing something a bit more interesting than simple CRUD, but not elsewhere. The fact is most technology jobs outside these hotspots pay poorly (usually not more than a small premium over other professions in the area) and are just not common anyway. They also are much closer to "grunt worker on the line" than "build your resume by being able to work with lots of technologies". A typical software developer job isn't at a software company in these places. It's in the IT Department as a low-class cost-center line item, working on basic CRUD with little or no say in the infrastructure or even product development, or else a fixed specification project in which you're more or less tinkering around the edges of a pre-existing system.
jboggan 9y ago
Oh I agree, I couldn't get anywhere near the salary, but if I wanted to find a programming job back home in Athens I could swing it. I would probably have to learn COBOL though, no joke. And I'm in Santa Monica now, and my salary has been $0 for the last several months! Will finally be able to run payroll for myself next month though so that's exciting.
ams6110 9y ago
Not true. You can probably get a job most anyplace that actually has employers who need programmers, but you'll find starting bonus and moving expenses are limited to major tech areas and employers. Where I live there's a university that employs a lot of tech folks, and several private tech companies, but nobody pays for relocation, and salaries are $50K - $100K or maybe a little more at the very top end. A good real-estate agent makes way more money than a programmer in many areas of the US.
- sien 9y ago
  Not to mention a good accountant, good lawyer, decent optometrist, decent dentist, decent doctor. Not only do lots of those jobs pay better than tech jobs in most places you can also live more easily in cheap, nice places where a nice house can be had for less than 300K. And their jobs are much, much harder to offshore. It's interesting how there is this great push to get people to code, pushed by politicians who are almost all lawyers. You don't see a push for more lawyers or doctors to drop costs. They don't import H1Bs. Try getting a medical or legal licence from another country.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

hack_mmmm 9y ago

nostrademons 9y ago

What I don't understand is why people don't use the time they have in the low cost-of-living area to develop the skills (via the Internet) that would make them attractive to employers in big cities? That was my approach - I lived at home with my parents after graduation, basically did nothing but program (both for work and after work), and after 3 years Google came knocking and paid for my move out to Silicon Valley. This is fairly common among tech companies, or even any sort of wealthy corporation - if they want someone remote and the person is willing to relocate, they'll pay for the move. I have several friends here with similar stories - they're from even more economically depressed areas (Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Cleveland, etc.), but spent their free time coding, and then Google came calling. Honest question here - what's going through peoples' heads when they decide that reading Breitbart or watching TV is a better use of their time than developing the skills that will make them desirable to those evil corporations that are making all the money?

jodrellblank 9y ago
Google employs ~70k people (https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-time-google-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti...) That puts you as 70k in 300M ~= the top 0.025% of people. Can tens of millions make their future plans "become smart and capable enough to be in the top 0.025% within 3 years"?
- nostrademons 9y ago
  That assumes an ordered ranking of people and of employers, a premise I reject. Google is one of several thousand employers that are both hiring and pay reasonably well. Most of the other ones will also fly you out and pay for relocation if they want you. At the same time I was interviewing with Google, there was even a 3-person startup that was willing to fly me out to SF to interview, except that I didn't really care about their business. If you don't get into Google, there's still Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Stripe, AirBnB, Square, Twitter, Netflix, Tesla, Lyft, Dropbox, Cisco, Intel, Juniper, NVidia, EBay, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Ericsson, JP Morgan Chase, and many other companies. Most of those are perfectly acceptable employers; they may not have the prestige of Google, but you can make a good living and possibly even end up wealthier than at Google.