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Where the Highest Paying Tech Jobs Are
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Aug 02, 2006 08:17 PM
from the show-me-the-money dept.
from the show-me-the-money dept.
prostoalex writes "Where would you look for a high-paying tech job? If your answer is Silicon Valley or Research Triangle, Forbes magazine suggests some other destinations. When you take the cost of living and consider the net pay adjusted for that cost, places like Montgomery, Ala., Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Fort Smith, Ark. suddenly seem quite attractive."
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Backslash: Places Rated, Skeptically 125 comments
Readers left more than 500 comments on yesterday's post suggesting that, after accounting for local price differences, the best-paid tech jobs aren't in Silicon Valley or other areas well known for computer jobs, but rather in smaller cities around the country. Quality of life is overall more important than salary, though, and it isn't an easy thing to measure. Several readers pointed to reasons why the most expensive places to live get to be so expensive, and why (for those who can afford to live there in the first place) locations like Silicon Valley are often worth their premiums. Read on for some of the most interesting comments from the discussion in today's Backslash summary.
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What about... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about... (Score:4, Insightful)
I missed out (Score:4, Funny)
The defective kid rate is 3%. The normal defective kid rate is 1.5%. Not good, but not hopeless either.
You can keep property in the family this way. You already know the in-laws. There are fewer screwy traditions to deal with, since you already share some grandparents. In general, bad surprises are unlikely.
Cost of living in AL is CHEAP! (Score:5, Informative)
Huntsville is a very high tech city, it has the 2nd largest research center in the US.
Brick houses (new) for under $100 a square foot. A brand new 4 bedroom, 3 bath 2500 square foot brick rambler on 1/3 of an acre in a new neighborhood for $240K. And it's not ramshackle construction.
Overall, AL has the lowest taxes in the US. Good schools, thanks to NASA and the rocket scientists at the Redstone Arsenal.
Insurance is a fraction of what I used to pay. Property taxes are less than 1/2 what I used to pay in a top 10 city for a house half that size. Electricity is cheap, thanks to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Gas is about the same as anywhere else, but there's no commute! No traffic! No crime! Do you know why there's no crime? Most of these people go to church! They have morals! It's not like NY City or Chicago, where you have to have Police on every street corner to keep the peace.
On top of all this, I'm making more than I was in the big city! It is 3 hours to Atlanta, 5 hours to the Gulf Coast. 90 minutes to Nashville, Birmingham, or Chattanooga. 3 hours to Memphis. It's 4 hours to the Smoky Mountains.
Winters are really mild, summers can get hot, but aren't as bad as Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, or Florida. It's not as humid as Florida or the other neighboring states. It's not as dry, or as hot, or as polluted as Southern California or Phoenix.
The only bad thing... no Pro sports of any type unless you like the Atlanta teams.
Huntsville, AL (Score:5, Informative)
Read what the AC said in this post. I'd write everything he said but I'm lazy. I'm an engineer, I work on Redstone Arsenal here in Huntsville, AL. Housing is cheap. Taxes are cheap. Utilities are cheap. While I was in college (I went to UAH [uah.edu]) I was paying $350 a month for a 1-bedroom apartment. My wife and I just purchased a brand new brick home for $80 a square foot. Other homes in town, new, brick are going for $51 by reputable builders. My utilities bill is averaging $150 a month, including getting the lawn started (lots of water) and kids. Summers are freaking hot, being from Wisconsin, but the air conditioning is good and the house is well-insulated. Get a DirecTV so you can watch "real" sports
Huntsville has more PhD's per square mile than anywhere in the world, except Silcon Valley. Second biggest research park in the US, fourth in the world. Tons of R&D goes on here, both NASA and all aspects of Defense, biotech, etc. Benefits for most companies that I've seen are exceptional and educations (masters, PhD's) are admired. Most companies will put you through school if you want them.
Re:Huntsville, AL (Score:5, Interesting)
quality of life. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of course will take that and run off spouting racism,bigotry, or whatnot. The simple fact is that at the end of the day many aspire to nothing more than being away from it all. Stand alone housing and visual separation from the "business world - read: minimarts/gas stations/grocery stores" is key to the happiness of many. Sure we want them to still be convienent and a short hop in the car isn't an impediment.
I'm even moving further out simply because where I bought has changed so much in 9 years that its no longer the area I desired to live in. Lots of good people are here but the little businesses have creeped down the road to where its no longer "open".
As for your "pay and arm and a leg to massively pollute". Yeah, whatever. Three dollar, heck even 5 dollar a gallon gas isn't going to change my behaviour and I doubt that it will change that of others who live where I do. Cars are far better today than ever and that simpleton slight of yours is just silly. If I want massive pollution I will go to the big city with its public transportation because even there in the land of so called "enlightened" thinking a great many of them seem to not use that very public transportation they deem "good for others". I can go see the trash piled in alleys and cigarette butts lining the sidewalk. Oh yeah, massively pollute. Cities have no ground to stand on.
Re:quality of life. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now about cities. Don't think of a city as a cesspool of garbage (I lived in NY for awhile, I know it can be). Think of a city as giving citizens better energy eficiency per person. For instance, when you heat your house, even if it's well insulated, heat will leak out. Multiply that by the number of people on your block and you get quite a bit of wasted heat per person. Now imagine an apartment building, which differs from a house in that when heat escapes it doesn't all go to waste, much of it will drift up into the upper levels, providing more heat to the unit above, allowing persons on upper levels to turn down their furnace.
The amount of energy you or I waste per person may be minimal, but when you think about how all that adds up the argument that living in less populated areas is more eco-friendly becomes less plausable. We might *feel* closer to the earth with nobody else around, but we increase our impact.
Re:Huntsville, AL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Entirely (Score:4, Insightful)
It matters if you kids go to the same school, and they start trying to push ID. Or ban alcohol sales on Sunday. Or prohibit just about anything else they find 'unethical.'
Re:Huntsville, AL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cost of living in AL is CHEAP! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cost of living in AL is CHEAP! (Score:5, Funny)
Damn. I knew there was some reason not to move there after all. Thanks for pointing that out.
Re:Cost of living in AL is CHEAP! (Score:5, Informative)
$4k/month would be difficult to survive comfortably on in NYC or San Francisco where taxes eat a good $1250-$1500, rent starts at $1000+ (for your own place in a dive), and utilities/regular bills would take another $200-300 (again in your own place). A decent cheap lunch is $7-10 or so in Manhatten. A beer is usually starts at $5.
$4k/month doesn't go very far in a large US city (LA, DC, Chicago) where taxes are a hair lower (say $1000-$1250 you can rent places for $750 and up (these won't be nice but they will be ok) and bills are again $250+/-50. Decent lunch is $6-10 depending on how adventurous you are. Beers in a nice place are $4-5.
$4k/month is a kings ransom in a the rural west or south (if you can find a job). Taxes will still eat $1000 or so, but there you can rent a nice 1 bedroom for under $500, a good cheap lunch will run $5-$6 and beers top out at $3.
$4k a month would be a very good salary for a young professional there. Asr as fun money goes you'd have more than you would making $6k in one of the bigger cities, but there won't be as many young people in the smaller areas (because they weren't smart enough to look at cost of living when they got that job offer for $5k/mo.
Re:What about... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about... (Score:4, Informative)
That being said, I enjoy the ~$80/mo home utility bills (That's all total water, sewage, electric and gas.), ~$2.75/gal gasoline, 5% sales tax, skiing (water in the summer, snow in the winter although since I took out 3 of 4 ligaments in my leg last season I like that one less.), hiking, and boating.
If only they would raise the takes to fund a fence to keep the rest of you out.
Re:What about... (Score:3, Interesting)
cost of living. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:cost of living. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:cost of living. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's possible to have a very high standard of living for less money in these countries. And if your material needs are not great, you can live incredibly cheaply, save up a bunch of money and retire early.
The other thing is that, depending on how you work it, you might not be taking a cut in pay at all. All many of us need is to be at the one end of a wire. These countries have internet infrastructure, at least in the bigger towns and cities. Last time I was in Mexico, I met two people that were living there and making a living this way. One was a daytrader (remember those?) and the other had a web development company he had basically started in the U.S. When he moved to Mexico, his clients hardly noticed. He's making even more money now because he's found a lot of local talented designers and coders that work for lower pay, but he's still getting paid the same. And because he pays at the upper end of the prevailing local wage, his workers love him.
Moreover, he told me that because he lives in Mexico, he's much less likely to have to go to a day long meeting to discuss what exact shade of green should be used to maximize the branding of a particular website. Clients are less likely to fly him in to discuss trivial shit. Or they fly out to him because it's an excuse to visit Mexico.
Anyway, if you can work at the end of a wire, seriously consider some of the developing nations. I can't guarantee that you'll prosper, but I can guarantee you'll have a very interesting time.
I'm in Vietnam (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that's the time here as I post this. Anyway, it's very interesting living in Ho Chi Min (rated the #12th best major city in the world to live in and the best in Asia)*. I've got to say that, in a country that has a per capita GDP less than a tenth that of the United States a dollar goes a long way.
The key is how to make it. If you can make it by working for a major foreign corporation here (read: oil company) and get a Western salary, you will live like a king. Unfortunately local opportunities to make that kind of money are otherwise almost nil. Even if you can speak Vietnamese you will find that even a very high salary here (doing a job like coding) in not much relative to the U.S. Also you may find yourself thought of being overqualified; I do very high end media and some people here told me they were afraid to contact me after seeing my CV because they thought I'd charge a fortune.
While you can make a good living here teaching English I doubt that would appeal to the skilled professionals that make up Slashdot's readers. No, the best job is one in which you can work "at the end of a wire", that is live here but work for some U.S. company via the internet. The internet infrastructure is just sufficient to do that (which is one reason why I can't live in Cambodia). Internet telephony here is good (at least from my location). If your job is portable so you don't have to physically see your clients more than once or twice a year then this might "work" for you!
By the way, the cost of living here is not going to be one-tenth that of the U.S. unless you live like a native. Instead if you insist on all the perks of the U.S. it's probably about half the U.S. cost of living (more if you want a car!). On the other hand, wealth is relative; compared to the natives you WILL be very rich and will be treated as such. That has its own perks.
* this recent study (which, to my travelled eyes cannot possibly be true) was based on a bunch of factors including how much (or little) the average person "impacted the environment". Since Vietnamese people are still very poor they don't impact the environment very much which led to a inflated score. Still Ho Chi Minh City has its charms; zero violent crime (it's a police state), pace of life (you can actually meet people and develop friendships), scale of the city (more like one giant neighborhood than a forest of skyscrapers). But act soon, things are changing fast and in 5 years it'll be unrecognizable. In that case you'll:
Miss Saigon.
Re:cost of living. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:cost of living. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been to Costa Rica, and your brother is full of crap.
Or else he just wants to keep you away and keep the girls to himself.
See how many correspond with 'Best places to live' (Score:4, Informative)
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/20
1 Fort Collins, CO 128,000
2 Naperville, IL 141,600
3 Sugar Land, TX 75,800
4 Columbia/Ellicott City, MD 159,200
5 Cary, NC 106,400
6 Overland Park, KS 164,800
7 Scottsdale, AZ 226,000
8 Boise, ID 193,200
9 Fairfield, CT 57,800
10 Eden Prairie, MN 60,600
11 Plano, TX 250,100
12 Eagan, MN 63,700
13 Olathe, KS 112,100
14 West Bloomfield , MI 65,000
15 Richardson, TX 99,200
16 Gilbert, AZ 178,100
17 Parsippany-Troy Hills, NJ 51,600
18 Santa Clarita, CA 172,500
19 Carrollton, TX 124,700
20 Henderson, NV 232,100
21 Bellevue, WA 117,100
22 Newton, MA 83,200
23 Sandy, UT 89,700
24 Westminster, CO 105,100
25 Ann Arbor, MI 113,300
Re:See how many correspond with 'Best places to li (Score:3, Insightful)
But a lot of those places are damn scary.
Also, it doesn't make sense that Richardson TX would draw less than half the salary of Plano TX.
I mean seriously, thes
Re:See how many correspond with 'Best places to li (Score:3, Informative)
The numbers in the GP posting are population, not salary.
Or 'Best public schools in America'? (Score:3, Interesting)
Apropros a previous poster who wanted to dis 'Bama & Idaho, how many correspond with the best public schools in America [msn.com]?
Re:I live in Fort Collins (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, the problem with these communities is one of the major reasons the cost of living is so low is because the vast majority of jobs there pay very little. Sure, there might be some relatively high-paying tech jobs, but the problem is there are only 5 tech jobs in the whole city.
Re:I live in Fort Collins (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I live in Fort Collins (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Ft. Collins also. T
Re:I live in Fort Collins (Score:4, Informative)
In a Testerrosa perhaps! You're right on the Wyoming border for shit's-sake!
You're describing Jobs in Boulder and Greeley was more than an hour north of there - and Ft. Colins is another hour north of Greeley. Please stop yanking people's chains!
I lived in Colorado off and on since 1984, and the tech jobs there were always in a state of downward flux. It only took a few companies to flood a ton of skilled workers into the marketplace - followed by a continual influx of people into the state from places in CA which would drive up the cost of living to levels akin to Seattle. Between 1994 and 1996, the same identical apartment that I rented came on the market 2 years later at 225% what I rented it for.
Pay levels did NOT increase to meet those cost of living increases. And housing? The whole of the southern suburbs of Denver went through the ROOF in housing costs. But hey - getting Quark, Echostar (and the markers of the Dish Network wasn't a small enterprise) would only give up more than 35k if you pulled on all molars. Most of Echostar's jobs were manning the call centers anyway. Real high-dollar work there. AB? Um most of their tech work is at HQ which is 876 miles east of you in St. Louis. IBM - always downsizing, Storage Tech - on the rocks, HP - oh there's a stable one of those, Kodak - another stable one of those - NOAA - no shortage of govt jobs in the fields of science, and the application time is so short too for high-end research. Aerospace is ok now that we're killing people again, but these aren't standard IT jobs unless you're ready to check stress-dynamics on dynamic peak loads within an airframe right after you finish that firewall you're putting on that intranetwork hub.
The biggest downfall of any midwestern tech market is that once the company runs through a round of cutbacks you're going to be hard-pressed to find someone else to pick up the slack. I know plenty of suckers hurting after Sprint ditched them in the middle of bumfuck Kansas with no other options for work elsewhere.
Gotta love RTP (Research Triangle) (Score:5, Informative)
There are tons of tech jobs of every kind out there, especially programming positions. My wife is a teacher and the market for her is evening better than it is for me (as a network engineer/admin type).
I love Ohio, and I bleed scarlet and grey, but there is just no comparison between RTP and any major area in Ohio)
And for you elitest types (I keed!), RDP is home to the second highest percentage of PHD's (per capita) outside of Silicon Valley.
Outsourcing (Score:5, Interesting)
My views on Idaho Falls and Alabama in general (Score:5, Informative)
I lived there for a year and pretty much loathed every moment of it. Of course, I came there from Atlanta, Georgia, so
If you're going to live in Montgomery, you might as well consider Huntsville as well. Although it might be slightly harder to get a job there as everyone has some sort of technical background for the most part, it's a fairly agreeable city and not at all representative of the rest of Alabama.
Re:My views on Idaho Falls and Alabama in general (Score:5, Interesting)
Huntsville can be an odd place sometimes; mixing rocket scientists and rednecks has interesting results.
Highest paying yes, but highest growth?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I dislike the high cost of living, traffic, unaffordability of houses etc. in places such as Silicon Valley. But there are lot more companies where one can work for with decent salary. One's chances of finding another job with close to maximum salary in one's field are lot higher there without having to move.
These are not just idle concerns. I have been asking many such questions to myself recently as I am not in high-tech area such as Silicon Valley. There are no easy answers to such questions. These become even more difficult once one has family, house etc. and has established roots in one place.
Osho
Collateral Damage (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Collateral Damage (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, MAYBE the cream of the crop is better (and I say Maybe), but are you going to be hiring Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison or Scott McNealey (or Bill Hewlett, RIP)?
Stanford was a great producer of educated people, but educated people don't necessarily equate to talent on the job. And the gold rush of the late 90s brought a lot of VERY untalented people out of the woodwork and into silicon valley.
The average silicon valley wonk is far below the talent of what you can find in middle America if you just conduct a reasonable candidate search. And the average wonk in silicon valley is paid 40% more.
My experience? I used to interview and hire people across the country for a MAJOR silicon valley-headquartered company. Hiring in Silicon Valley was the hardest spot I had to hire in - not because there wasn't some talent there, but because there were so many wanna-bes who job hop to rack up their salary and hide their deficiencies.
Re:Collateral Damage (Score:4, Insightful)
This just tell's me that your firm doesn't know how to hire people. There are plenty of talented people in Texas. Heck, there are plenty of talented homegrown people in the Litte Rock, AR area. If your company can't find them, don't blame the area. I personnally believe this applies to all of the US. There are plenty of trainable college grads in most major US cities. If you think the talent/gurus are much better in a tech hot spot, then you are willing to pay a premium for equal talent not better talent. I'd think that most businesses that move to area's where the cost of living is lower end up hiring more people not to do the same amount of work. They hire more people because its cheaper and can get more done if the organization is properly run.
Intriguing (Score:3, Insightful)
Sad as it is, the expensive places to live are often expensive for a reason - people want to live there.
Re:Intriguing (Score:3, Funny)
Oh come on... We are nerds... We buy everything online and don't need to go out to buy stuff... As long as we can get borad band we'll be fine...
We
Move to Idaho... and Get Stuck There (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are used to an environment where you can lose your job today and have a new one by the end of the week, then you will be shocked when you spend 6 months unemployed.
Now don't get me wrong, I grew up in Idaho, but you need to realize that it is a complete backwater. =)
Montgomery? (Score:3, Insightful)
Take it from some that lives in Montgomery... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've GOT to get out of this redneck filled, racist, little freaking town!
What Is "Cost Of Living"? (Score:5, Insightful)
$50,000/year, $10,000 annual rent.
Job B:
$100,000/year, $40,000 annual rent.
Relative to the cost of rent, Job A is phenominal: You're making five times the cost of rent. Job B sucks: you're only earning 2.5 times rent. By this measure, job A is far and away the better option - by a factor of 2.
The thing is, once you've paid the varying rent, where do you spend the rest of your money? The decent spec new PC will be $2,000 in Rancho Santa Fe, Manhattan or BFI. The new $25,000 car will be $25,000 wherever you buy it. The big TV is the same price wherever. And, most important of all, the internet porn subscriptions run the same wherever you are too.
At that point, would you rather the job that's 5 times "cost of living" but only leaves you with $40,000 or the one that gives a sucky 2.5x but leaves you with $60,000 extra.
Next, on the simple level, let's look at that cost of living. Assuming you get on, buy and pay a mortgage off, in 20 years time the place with the poor salary relative to cost of living will leave you with a $500,000-$1,000,000 home vs. the $200,000-$250,000 place in the "better" area. Now, aged 40, you can up and move to the cheap place, selling your home, buying one of the nicest places in the cheap area and having a nice large nest egg lfet over to let you get to retire early. My in-laws have just done exactly that and apparently a lot of people in Texas are getting seriously pissed at all the Californians coming in, buying huge homes after selling up smaller places in CA and pushing up the Texan cost of living for people who're still paid no more.
And, finally, there's a reason rent and property are so expensive in some areas. Go to California and look out of the window. Rumor has it that other parts of the world have a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder. Land is expensive in California because you never shovel snow, you rarely deal with crazy humidity, you rarely have the insane heat of Arizona, you rarely get mosquitos the size of Volkswagens and you can sit on the beach on New Year's Day. In short, supply and demand means that when there's a crazy price, there's generally a great reason for it.
So, yes, some areas have high costs of living and lower salaries in relation to that cost. But I.T. is famous for the fact that we out earn most other professions and, once you get past earning about three times cost of average rent, everything else is gravy. Sure, you reach that point faster elsewhere - but once you do reach it (and you do in I.T.), you keep going even further when the numbers are bigger.
I've watched a lot of friends leave California because they're in other fields and it's just too expensive to live here if you don't earn well. But once you get to the kind of salaries I.T. tends to pay, the cost of rent becomes a relatively minimal part of the total cost of living a great life.
Supply and demand (Score:4, Funny)
The more people realize this, the more they'll be encouraged to move here, the more demand for the same supply of housing and the more I have to pay.
Iowa is the shiznit. It's the coolest place ever. I'm in California and it's awful here. We have to walk up hill both ways and the hills are steeper here (the land's scrunched up by our daily earthquakes). And hot? Like you wouldn't believe. Don't believe that stuff about coastal areas being cooler - it's hell here. No one should ever move here because, high salaries or not, life's too expensive. Iowa's the place. Des Moines is just super awesome. Off you go!
Go to Alberta (Score:5, Interesting)
McDonald's workers are getting $15/hour, signing bonuses and $100 extra pay if you show up for all your shifts that week.
Housing is a bit of a problem, there's a booming business finding old homes, ripping them off their foundation and dragging them to Calgary.
Calgary is sprawling outward at an incredible rate, it's bigger in area than NY city.
It's all from oil, tar sands that is, Canada exports oil since we make more than we use. The US gets about 10% of its oil from Canada and that will probably increase due to the US public's of growing concern about "foreign oil".
People are going there by the thousands every day, it's crazy!
cost of living vs. MacBook Pro (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:None here... (Score:3, Funny)
Just do it (Score:3, Insightful)