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its really hard. I imagine company hiring practices (their growing dependence on recruiting firms) also doesnt help. For instance, the best way to go to a new

its really hard. I imagine company hiring practices (their growing dependence on recruiting firms) also doesnt help. For instance, the best way to go to a new geography would be to land a job there prior to moving there. Even in data science, supposedly hot job market, I wanted to get a job in san francisco or seattle, but I was living in philadelphia. you hear stories about people graduating from cali universities and companies jumping through windows to get to them, but even though I graduated with a masters in CIS from Upenn ... crickets. I think because most of them recruit through agencies which filter by geography. I had to reach out aggressively to the recruiters themselves, and bypass a lot of the blockers, which took 2 years. Had I not done that, my talent didn't mean as much as where I was. Now, imagine a small towner trying to do the opposite, get a job after they make a move to say, one of the urban centers. most people dont have a lot of savings to begin with, and what would last them 6 months where they are would be depleted very quickly in one of the larger cities. even getting an apartment is harder, you dont have a job? reject. its not impossible, its just really difficult.

gerdesj 8y ago
I'm really trying hard to get inside your head! There is definitely an "Americanism" here somewhere, which you take for granted but I have to tease out. I will probably get it all a bit wrong (despite having a fair few US relos) but I will do my best.
- haskellandchill 8y ago
  Try being poor.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    On top of being from a very different culture and trying not to say anything or have any mannerisms that may give the recruiter the impression that you're a back woods hick.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      The tech industry as a whole has a really severe class problem. There is a really terrible negative attitude towards the poor and the rural. We as an industry focus a lot on race and gender (and not in that order), but the real taboo subject that makes everyone uncomfortable is talking about what it's like to be poor. It's especially bad here on HN where often the conversation devolves into people telling me that I'm wrong about my childhood where I grew up poor...or how poor people are a blight on society. The single topic that I find in my career people insist on secrecy is about poverty. I continue to be open about it so that others are willing to talk about it to someone, because otherwise you just can't.
      - busterarm 8y ago
        Also, if you ask me what it was like growing up poor in NYC in the 80s, I'm going to give you a very evasive and superficial answer, because it's better than talking about dozens of my childhood friends who are now dead or worse. You're not prepared to talk about it and honestly neither am I.
        agoodthrowaway 8y ago
        I grew up poor in PA. People who have never been poor are not prepared to hear about it. My wife doesn’t even want to hear about it. She’ll roll her eyes when I talk about it. The fact is that people can’t relate to an empty refrigerator or to not having money to buy a gallon of milk. Poverty is soul crushing. I have had a very successful and influential engineering career but I can look back at single decisions I made that could have sent me the other direction. It’s easy for people to say that the decision I made was obvious but it absolutely wasn’t at the time. I took huge risk being the first in my family to go to a prestigious University and double major in physics and mathematics in the early 90s(I was no prodigy); let alone go to graduate school. One decision different and I’d be driving trucks in West Virginia.
        jwhitlark 8y ago
        I think this thread overestimates how much people care. Social and virtue signaling mean people have to be sympathetic when it's brought up, but I don't think most people actually care. Anyone who struggles wants their struggles to mean something, but the world doesn't care.
octorian 8y ago
I feel like recruiters filtering by geography is a big issue at times. When I lived in Florida, I felt like I was invisible to potential employers. There were a handful of local options that didn't bite, and remote options never paid any attention to me. The moment I relocated to Silicon Valley, I began getting bombarded by recruiters. At my current job, I have a co-worker who told me that his classmates would often fake a Silicon Valley address (and stomach travel expenses for interviews), and it made a huge difference in the rate of companies contacting them back. Of course most people who live in those dead towns aren't necessarily like us, and may not have degrees or experience in demanded fields. So I'm not sure our stories are applicable to the conversation.
- sytse 8y ago
  I think changing your LinkedIn location to San Francisco Bay area and explaining during the first call you intent to move there when you've found a job is acceptable to most companies. BTW we hire in 90% of the world at GitLab
  - ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
    I believe you that this is true for GitLab but I’d also imagine many companies getting somewhat pissed off about that disclosure on the first call. Interesting idea though, I may try it in the future just to see what happens.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    On the contrary, I've seen and heard of a lot of companies that will not hire if you're not in the same city. They specifically say that you need to be in the city for interviews. They get too many applicants fishing for positions when there is no guarantee that the applicant is actually committed to moving.
    - sytse 8y ago
      I can see that colocated companies would require you to fly in for interviews. Maybe some are open to grouping the interviews on the same day.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 8y ago
It’s a small industry driven by relationships. Half the recruiters probably think UPenn is some community college. For a 40 something industrial worker? Forget it. You’re talking about a grind of temp jobs and shit pay.
phil248 8y ago
Yes, it is difficult to uproot your family, take a huge risk, and relocate to a place with better employment and educational opportunities. Just ask the tens of million of immigrants in this country who have done exactly that. In a sense, it's unfair that native-born Americans are forced to compete with people from all over the world who are highly motivated and have an extremely high tolerance for risk. But it's also what has actually made this country great.
- atonse 8y ago
  I'd upvote this 10 times if I could. Unless you're an immigrant yourself, it's hard to imagine how big of a deal it is to just uproot your family and go to a different country and start over, often from scratch with no real networks to build from.
  - vfulco2 8y ago
    One of the greatest stories I ever heard was of my wife's grandfather. He was a Sikh Indian with a hugely prominent position running a 1,000 man unit in the Indian army. Because of weird US immigration laws in the 1970s and his family relations, if his sons wanted to move to the US for a better life, he had to go first. He gave up everything and "restarted" his career as a stockroom boy at a Buster Brown shoe store in NYC, later talking his way into an interview with the CEO of Met Life where he spent the rest of his career. In the interim, he pulled his son from India who became a successful accountant and consultant. I always looked at him with such admiration and said, "now there is the story of a hero". The Sikhs are an incredible people generally. Disclosure: I am 3rd gen Italian-American.
  - haskellandchill 8y ago
    It is the only thing harder than being a poor rural American. I agree.
    - Fjolsvith 8y ago
      Being poor in rural America is a choice.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
It's not just the job market. It's hard to move to a new city and leave your friends, and often family, behind. Not to mention the lifestyle change, from rural to city, which will often entail giving up hobbies and pastimes.
brownbat 8y ago
I was struck by the family that moved back in the article. They had a good job in the new location. What they didn't have was extended family or a community. The pure financial impact of extended family childcare can easily eat away a step up in earnings for those with young children. Then the intangibles of not getting them to know your parents or the close friends you grew up with, those don't even have an exact market substitute. Frequent travel I guess? It's not easy. From the econ perspective I can't help but think that greater labor mobility would make things so much better, but as a new parent it's becoming obvious these are not trivial behaviors to shift at all.

gerdesj 8y ago

I'm really trying hard to get inside your head! There is definitely an "Americanism" here somewhere, which you take for granted but I have to tease out. I will probably get it all a bit wrong (despite having a fair few US relos) but I will do my best.

haskellandchill 8y ago
Try being poor.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  On top of being from a very different culture and trying not to say anything or have any mannerisms that may give the recruiter the impression that you're a back woods hick.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    The tech industry as a whole has a really severe class problem. There is a really terrible negative attitude towards the poor and the rural. We as an industry focus a lot on race and gender (and not in that order), but the real taboo subject that makes everyone uncomfortable is talking about what it's like to be poor. It's especially bad here on HN where often the conversation devolves into people telling me that I'm wrong about my childhood where I grew up poor...or how poor people are a blight on society. The single topic that I find in my career people insist on secrecy is about poverty. I continue to be open about it so that others are willing to talk about it to someone, because otherwise you just can't.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      Also, if you ask me what it was like growing up poor in NYC in the 80s, I'm going to give you a very evasive and superficial answer, because it's better than talking about dozens of my childhood friends who are now dead or worse. You're not prepared to talk about it and honestly neither am I.
      - agoodthrowaway 8y ago
        I grew up poor in PA. People who have never been poor are not prepared to hear about it. My wife doesn’t even want to hear about it. She’ll roll her eyes when I talk about it. The fact is that people can’t relate to an empty refrigerator or to not having money to buy a gallon of milk. Poverty is soul crushing. I have had a very successful and influential engineering career but I can look back at single decisions I made that could have sent me the other direction. It’s easy for people to say that the decision I made was obvious but it absolutely wasn’t at the time. I took huge risk being the first in my family to go to a prestigious University and double major in physics and mathematics in the early 90s(I was no prodigy); let alone go to graduate school. One decision different and I’d be driving trucks in West Virginia.
        jwhitlark 8y ago
        I think this thread overestimates how much people care. Social and virtue signaling mean people have to be sympathetic when it's brought up, but I don't think most people actually care. Anyone who struggles wants their struggles to mean something, but the world doesn't care.

octorian 8y ago

I feel like recruiters filtering by geography is a big issue at times. When I lived in Florida, I felt like I was invisible to potential employers. There were a handful of local options that didn't bite, and remote options never paid any attention to me. The moment I relocated to Silicon Valley, I began getting bombarded by recruiters. At my current job, I have a co-worker who told me that his classmates would often fake a Silicon Valley address (and stomach travel expenses for interviews), and it made a huge difference in the rate of companies contacting them back. Of course most people who live in those dead towns aren't necessarily like us, and may not have degrees or experience in demanded fields. So I'm not sure our stories are applicable to the conversation.

sytse 8y ago
I think changing your LinkedIn location to San Francisco Bay area and explaining during the first call you intent to move there when you've found a job is acceptable to most companies. BTW we hire in 90% of the world at GitLab
- ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
  I believe you that this is true for GitLab but I’d also imagine many companies getting somewhat pissed off about that disclosure on the first call. Interesting idea though, I may try it in the future just to see what happens.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  On the contrary, I've seen and heard of a lot of companies that will not hire if you're not in the same city. They specifically say that you need to be in the city for interviews. They get too many applicants fishing for positions when there is no guarantee that the applicant is actually committed to moving.
  - sytse 8y ago
    I can see that colocated companies would require you to fly in for interviews. Maybe some are open to grouping the interviews on the same day.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Spooky23 8y ago

It’s a small industry driven by relationships. Half the recruiters probably think UPenn is some community college. For a 40 something industrial worker? Forget it. You’re talking about a grind of temp jobs and shit pay.

phil248 8y ago

Yes, it is difficult to uproot your family, take a huge risk, and relocate to a place with better employment and educational opportunities. Just ask the tens of million of immigrants in this country who have done exactly that. In a sense, it's unfair that native-born Americans are forced to compete with people from all over the world who are highly motivated and have an extremely high tolerance for risk. But it's also what has actually made this country great.

atonse 8y ago
I'd upvote this 10 times if I could. Unless you're an immigrant yourself, it's hard to imagine how big of a deal it is to just uproot your family and go to a different country and start over, often from scratch with no real networks to build from.
- vfulco2 8y ago
  One of the greatest stories I ever heard was of my wife's grandfather. He was a Sikh Indian with a hugely prominent position running a 1,000 man unit in the Indian army. Because of weird US immigration laws in the 1970s and his family relations, if his sons wanted to move to the US for a better life, he had to go first. He gave up everything and "restarted" his career as a stockroom boy at a Buster Brown shoe store in NYC, later talking his way into an interview with the CEO of Met Life where he spent the rest of his career. In the interim, he pulled his son from India who became a successful accountant and consultant. I always looked at him with such admiration and said, "now there is the story of a hero". The Sikhs are an incredible people generally. Disclosure: I am 3rd gen Italian-American.
- haskellandchill 8y ago
  It is the only thing harder than being a poor rural American. I agree.
  - Fjolsvith 8y ago
    Being poor in rural America is a choice.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

It's not just the job market. It's hard to move to a new city and leave your friends, and often family, behind. Not to mention the lifestyle change, from rural to city, which will often entail giving up hobbies and pastimes.

brownbat 8y ago

I was struck by the family that moved back in the article. They had a good job in the new location. What they didn't have was extended family or a community. The pure financial impact of extended family childcare can easily eat away a step up in earnings for those with young children. Then the intangibles of not getting them to know your parents or the close friends you grew up with, those don't even have an exact market substitute. Frequent travel I guess? It's not easy. From the econ perspective I can't help but think that greater labor mobility would make things so much better, but as a new parent it's becoming obvious these are not trivial behaviors to shift at all.