There is, however, a surprising number of Government tech jobs, but they don't pay well. There's a big base (Joint Base Lewis-McChord) with a bunch of contract

There is, however, a surprising number of Government tech jobs, but they don't pay well. There's a big base (Joint Base Lewis-McChord) with a bunch of contracting jobs, and Tacoma has a small amount of tech jobs. Nowhere near the level of even Seattle though. I know from experience - I live in Tacoma with no real desire or ability to commute to Seattle daily (at least for a couple more years). I also am not willing to work in Olympia for less than 75k (and even then the job would have to be pretty interesting), but most of the jobs are .NET C# type things, which I don't currently have experience with, and the ones that are left pay more like 55-60k,