Microsoft is a major employer of technical talent in the Seattle area even though you didn't see that in your anecdotal experience. Microsoft employs just about 101,000 people worldwide. About 43,000 are in the Seattle area. Yes, not all of them are technical staff. Companies need to employ more than just developers, testers, and admins to operate properly. (Duh?)

Amazon has more employees at about 110,000. It has about 15,000 in Seattle. Those are mostly highly paid engineers, managers and programmers. It's hiring like crazy.

Boeing has about 170,000 employees. About 81,000 are employed in Washington state.

T-Mobile has about 4,800 employees at its local headquarters.

AT&T near Seattle manages operations in the Western US and performs engineering and testing. It has 4,592 employees in Washington.

Adobe's Seattle office employs about 500 people, focusing on product development and operations.

F5 employs over 1200 workers in Washington state.

The Seattle area hosts Google's third-largest engineering center. It has about 1000 employees.

You are simply wrong about the speed of internet connections and the government. Areas in the north has access to Verizon fiber. Other areas have access to high speed internet from Comcast. As for the government, they're working with private companies to establish citywide fiber. People aren't electing "anti-Internet candidates", whatever the hell those are.

So yes, Seattle IS a significant tech hub.

Fighting increases to the minimum wage. A higher minimum wage would increase wages for both the people at the low end and those immediately above the low end. Republicans don't like that.

Fighting government stimulus which provide jobs. Fighting stimulus creates a surplus of workers. More workers means more people looking for work. Businesses don't need to offer good pay to find workers. Republicans like that.

Fighting unemployment payments, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, and housing assistance. All that money eventually enters and supports jobs in local economies. That increases the demand for workers. That also increases salaries. Republicans hate that.

Fighting against sick or vacation days. Keeping people at work means that employers don't need to hire as many workers as companies in other countries. That creates lower demand for workers. That keeps salaries down. Republicans like that.

Yes. When developer salaries rise to match the salaries to those in medicine, then the field will get flooded with all types of people looking to do development work. This will include women. That's economics 101: supply and demand.

Getting too old to have kids, and dating a guy who has two, so I'm good. :^)

I for one am glad that his ex-wife insisted. :^D

I have a cat. He's pretty super.

I'll be sure to tell baldass_newbie that he needs to reverse his vasectomy so that I can have teh babiez! ;^)

Congratulations!

*waves banner*

I think the beta is pretty and the functionality of journals couldn't possibly be worse than it is now, so I'm hopeful.

Wondered who that guy was in some of my friends' G+ circles. And now I know. :^)

God fucking damn, you salty cocksucker. You made me log in with this fucking account for the first motherfucking time in 5 years just be-goddamn-cause I needed to really show the fuck how I felt about your cunt-smelling post, you fucking shit.