Where the Highest Paying Tech Jobs Are

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."

cost of living.

[oyenstikker]

Taking into account cost of living, try India.

See how many correspond with 'Best places to live'

[mergy]

'Best Places to Live' according to Money Mag/Rag

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/200 6/top100/index.html [cnn.com]

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

Gotta love RTP (Research Triangle)

[RichMeatyTaste]

Unemployment in the Raleigh/Durham area is sub 4% (statewide is sub 5). Forget the pharm and biotech companies; we have Cisco, Symantec, Red Hat, Microsoft, GFI, and countless others. There are constantly tons of houses for sale because some many "northerners" (of which I am one, an Ohio transplant from last year) are moving down here, and cost of living is more than fair.

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.

My views on Idaho Falls and Alabama in general

[Tink2000]

As someone who lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho, I strongly advise against it unless you think man-made falls are cool and love a few of the Temple at night, and like the idea of living in a city that has nothing around it for miles except scenery, where the tallest building is nine stories tall and it's a hotel.

I lived there for a year and pretty much loathed every moment of it. Of course, I came there from Atlanta, Georgia, so ... it was a bit of culture shock for me.

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.

"...and Fort Worth, Ark..."

[DreadfulGrape]

Without having RTFA I can tell you that's probably Fort Smith, Arkansas (or Fort Worth, Texas, though that seems less likely).

Re:Not attractive

[DeltaHat]

I did a stint in that hellhole. Montgomery Alabama is hell on earth. Period. The only reason the adjusted income for tech jobs there is so high is due to the incredibly depressed state of the city. Also, the Air Force is the only real consumer of tech there, so you have almost no choice but to work for the military. Take that for what its worth to you. The government bureaucracy is hip deep and most systems are antiquated at best. Avoid it like the plague.

Re:See how many correspond with 'Best places to li

[Hazelrah]

I live in the Columbia/Ellicott City area, and I can tell you that it is not really a great place to live, so I do think the list is credible to me. The cost of living is extremely high - there are a ton of government workers and government contractors, so yes there a lot of tech jobs that pay more money than other areas of the country. I should know; I work in one. There are a lot of service based industries to serve all those people too - restaurants, strip malls, and every chain store you can imagine. But the extra salary does not begin to make up for the high cost of living - restaurants cost 10-20 more for a dinner for two, grocerries cost 20-50 me more than they did when I lived in PA. Taxes are a big pay killer - about 5% higher here than in PA for local taxes and let's not forget that my bigger salary is taxed high by the federal government too. Homes in Columbia/Ellicott City are out of reach for young professionals starting out in life. Oh and depite the rich service based industry I previously mentioned, restaurants are still packed, stores are always crowded, and the roads are clogged. The Federal government's Base Realignment and Closure will bring 20 some thousand new families to the area in the next few years, but Howard County (the county where Columbia/Ellicott City is) will not approve the necassary permits for new housing to accomdate the influx. It's a bit of a mess and it's not going to be get any better. The city may have ben hot 10 years ago, but is on the decline as far as quality of life goes. There are too many people chasing too few resources.

Re:See how many correspond with 'Best places to li

[ptbarnett]

Also, it doesn't make sense that Richardson TX would draw less than half the salary of Plano TX.

The numbers in the GP posting are population, not salary.

Cost of living in AL is CHEAP!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can laugh about Alabama. I did, until I came down for a job interview. Huntsville, AL is a great place. Because of the research park, there are people from all over the country. NASA and the Army's Redstone Arsenal have need for 30K to 50K high tech jobs.
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

[everphilski]

Huntsville is a northern city transplanted in the south.

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:What about...

[tylernt]

...after factoring in the personal cost of having to live in Alabama or Idaho?

Yup, that's right. Stay right where you're at. We Idahoans don't want any more Californians here anyway, thank you very much... our quiet state is rapidly turning into Little California.

Re:cost of living.

[runcible]

What is it with people and Costa Rica?

If you don't do too much research, it looks good, but the truth is it's got some pretty serious problems -- they are in dire need of tax reform, they have some nice corruption issues in their executive ( couple of presidents arrested for corruption in the past five years or so ). Plus they have a big drug transshipment thing going, and domestic production is quite the cottage industry as well -- if they don't do anything effective about it, they're gonna be another Columbia.

Plus, the high tech sector is *electronics manufacturing*, mostly microprocessors...and it's only there because chip fab is so hellishly toxic, and what the hell, it's the third world...

Oh *and* IIRC if you want good Internet connectivity ( if you work on the wire, it's more of a need than a want ), you're pretty much stuck in San Jose -- so tack a couple of active volcanoes and a growing crack problem onto the list.

Interesting time indeed.

Re:What about...

[gwhenning]

As a Californian who moved to Idaho, I would agree. Housing in my area has shot up about 50% in the three years since we've moved here and they're still building hundreds of new homes each year catering to the waves of immigrants into the state.

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. :)

Try Charlotte NC

[alshithead]

Charlotte is a great area. You have to search a little bit for jobs because the VLB's (very large banks) are outsourcing to India but I got my current gig because of that fact. The customers don't like dealing with people who don't speak English as their primary language or people who's accents are mostly indecipherable so I get to help them migrate to a new version of an application they consider very important to their business. It's a well paying contract position, which is new to me having worked 8 years for my previous employer in DC and 10 years for my employer before that. It's kind of cool being able to be focused on one main task instead of wearing way too many hats on a daily basis because of the historical knowledge I had gained over the years. The job market looks really good here for the future. Big banking isn't going to suddenly go away from Charlotte and there is starting to be signicant bleed over from the Raleigh area in other IT centric businesses. Other Charlotte benefits are good schools, real estate where you can get twice the house for half the price of the DC metro area, people who are mostly civilized (unlike the uptight pricks in the larger metro areas to the north), and almost none of the crappy winter weather of the north but still get the change of seasons. The mountains are an hour to the west and the beach is a few hours to the east. There are plenty of larger city type recreational opportunities in Charlotte while a lot of the negatives of major metro areas are absent. Crime isn't too bad and despite locals' complaints the traffic isn't nearly as bad as the DC or areas further north. You also have all of the rural type recreational activities failrly close to civilization. Life is good here. Don't screw it up for me. ;)

Re:What about...

[mantar]

:-) Agreed. I was born in Twin Falls and last time I was back home I couldn't believe the cost of housing. It's the same way here in Reno, too.

Re:cost of living.

[Ohreally_factor]

I'm not totally up on the ins and outs of this, but, with a few exceptions, travel to Cuba is illegal for U.S. citizens. I know a lot of people who manage to travel there just the same, usually routing through Cancun. If anybody tries this, make sure not to have your passport stamped! You cold face a hefty fine if caught!

Re:I live in Fort Collins

[mgabrys_sf]

HALF HOUR DRIVE FROM FT. COLINS?

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.

Re:Cost of living in AL is CHEAP!

[nelsonal]

There are very wide differences between locales in the US (which was the real point of this article).

$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:Huntsville, AL

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention the fact that Huntsville is heavily religious, conservative and their entire engineering industry is government funded defense.

I'm a software engineer living in Huntsville, and I'm an atheist. I've lived in several other places, and I haven't noticed the religious influence in Huntsville being any more overbearing here than anywhere else. We have our share of bars, strip clubs, and other fun activities for us sinners.

You're right that most of the engineering jobs are DoD funded, but there are still others that are pure commercial. Everyone's favorite VoIP Linux application Asterisk [asterisk.org] is developed in Huntsville at Digium [digium.com]. I'll see Mark Spencer [wikipedia.org] around town fairly often.

If you're interested in the number of engineering companies in Huntsville, check out this link here [huntsvillealabamausa.com].

As with anything, your choice of location is going to be a compromise. Is Huntsville as cool/fun as San Francisco? No. But, my mortgage on a 2200 sq. ft. house is less than $1K a month, and I have a 12 minute commute to the office.

Re:My views on Idaho Falls and Alabama in general

[weiserfireman]

Idaho native, born near Idaho Falls, have relatives in Idaho Falls. I like Idaho Falls, but most of you wouldn't. Yes, the falls are artificial. Built for recreation and to increase tourism. The town is bordered by a large desert to the north and west, farmland to the east and south. The desert to the north is home to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. Home to a lot of Nuclear Power Research. At one time, had around 200 nuclear reactors there. That is still the largest employer, and it is a 60 mile commute on two lane highway. They do have buses for commuting though. If you are into outdoor activities, hunting, fishing, camping, skiing, snowmobiling, you might really like it. If you are into nightlife, clubs, movies, bars, you will hate it. The town is over 50% LDS (mormon).

Re:quality of life.

[admiralh]

"Leeching off of the city dwellers" means that the extra infrastructure costs of urban sprawl are typically shared across the entire population (in the form of income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, higher insurance rates, and higher utility costs), rather than assigned directly to the people that choose to "get away from it all" and live out in the sprawl.

Essentially, the "sprawlers" are subsidized by the people who stay in the cities or existing suburbs.

The sad fact is that urban sprawl is unsustainable. Not only are we covering up prime farmland with McMansions, but the energy cost is unsustainable, especially considering the dual problems of Peak Oil and Global Warming.

Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" would be an excellent first step in your education.

Re:Gotta love RTP (Research Triangle)

[DerekLyons]

And for you elitest types (I keed!), RDP is home to the second highest percentage of PHD's (per capita) outside of Silicon Valley.

And sadly, because of this, the Triangle is following Charlotte and Atlanta in becoming Just Another Metropolis - it's Southern identity and charm lost forever. My sister, who lived in Durham from 1982 to 2002, said she didn't realize how bad it had gotten - till they moved to Irvine (CA.) and found the differences less than expected.
 
Even worse - my beloved Triad (I am a native)[1] seems to be going down the same path.

[1] NC can be a little confusing as it has both the Triangle (Raliegh/Durham/Chapel Hill) and the Triad (Winston-Salem/Greensboro/High Point).

Re:quality of life.

[CRWeaks23]

Oh yeah, massively pollute. Cities have no ground to stand on.

Your opinions on where you want to live and how much you mind paying for gas are fine, they are your opinions. However, saying that "Cities have no ground to stand on" is somewhat ignorant. Read this when you're bored, titled "NYC is the Greenest City in America." At least read the bold line from the passage below...

http://www.walkablestreets.com/manhattan.htm [walkablestreets.com]

An Excerpt:

Most Americans, including most New Yorkers, think of New York City as an ecological nightmare, a wasteland of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams, but in comparison with the rest of America it's a model of environmental responsibility. By the most significant measures, New York is the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities in the world. The most devastating damage humans have done to the environment has arisen from the heedless burning of fossil fuels, a category in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric. The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn't matched since the mid-nineteen-twenties, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That's ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use.