
Technology: It's Where the Jobs Are - zen53
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2008/tc20080623_533491.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech
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timr
What they don't tell you: the cities with the tech jobs are disproportionately
expensive.

For example, cost of living in San Francisco is anywhere from 60-100% higher
than most other parts of the US. Same goes for New York, Seattle and Boston.
Even Boulder is fairly expensive.

Jobs in San Francisco, in particular, are not cost-effective. Sure, you get
paid more, but the differential is rarely enough to make up for the increase
in the cost of living. A $100k job in San Francisco (where rent on a one-
bedroom apartment is easily $1500/month) is roughly equivalent to a $60k job
in Seattle.

That said, San Francisco is gorgeous. It's probably worth a hit to your
earning power to live there...at least while you're young and single.

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notauser
No kidding. A lawyer two years out of school will earn $128k in London,
compared to an engineer two years out who will be on closer to $80k.

With rent running at $2k+ a month for a double room in a shared house the
difference is pretty significant.

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timr
Is that really the rent for _shared_ housing in London? Yikes. Even Paris
isn't that bad....

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notauser
A nice one in the center of the city, yes. Not so nice, or not so central, and
it can go down as low as $1k/mo.

The most expensive one I looked at was 350gbp for a room ($700/week - $3k a
month) but that place had it's own pool, which is pretty rare in London :)

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dmix
If your developing web applications its completely possible to be self-taught
and produce high quality applications.

I was always into technology and was doing PHP + MySQL professionally before I
left high school. I still decided to go to college for business. So I learn a
lot of valuable business insight I would of normally overlooked.

The one thing I regret is that I didn't have the chance to be surrounded by
intelligent tech-savvy people; instead its mostly just kids who belong in
high-school who will fit well into their boring corporate jobs.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
On the other hand, if people go into the profession solely because the pay
prospects are good then there will be a huge influx of mediocre developers.
That's no good for anybody.

What's killing me right now is the geographical bias of the whole thing. I'm
in St. Louis currently and the job market seems pretty stagnant. What jobs are
available tend to be with the megacorporates like A.G. Edwards, CitiGroup, and
MasterCard. There are a minority of consulting gigs available.

SliceHost is the one major exception I know of for St. Louis.

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tialys
Ha! And they told me I'd never make a career out of spending all my time on a
computer.

This makes me glad I picked Computer Science!

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ryanb
I graduated with a BS in Finance a year ago and have been working as a
financial analyst with a Fortune 500 company this past year. The pay is
certainly good but the work is totally unfulfilling for me. The one positive
takeaway is that I've learned a bit about the inner workings of Corporate
America.

Can anyone offer any advice on making the leap to becoming a web developer
(with a background in a different field)? I've coded as a hobby since before I
was a teenager (I'm 22), and I've worked on a number of freelance web projects
as of late. I figure the best way to go is to build up a strong portfolio of
my own projects before applying for a gig that I want at a web company. I
would also consider searching out a junior position in order to gain
experience.

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izaidi
Quickly building up a portfolio and applying for gigs worked well for me. One
thing I noticed was that small companies and startups are impressed if you've
built one or two cool apps whereas larger companies are more interested in the
size and breadth of your portfolio; after creating one fairly complex site I
was able to get offers as the lead designer or developer at tons of startups,
but I couldn't get hired as even a junior developer at more established firms
-- the usual response was "Can you show us what else you've done?" and I had
nothing to show them.

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rockstar9
They are using surveys from 2006 to predict future of 2008?

