
Ask HN: Best city for a career in tech in Texas? Austin, Dallas, or other? - DGAP
EDIT: I&#x27;m specifically asking as someone starting out in Product looking for career advancement and exciting products, not solely startups however.
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csa
You will most likely find more finance-oriented tech jobs in Dallas. Other
than that, Austin will have a much wider range of options.

That said, your career will likely be extremely limited by your inability to
communicate clearly (based on your extremely vague initial question and your
only-slightly-better edit[1]). I suggest you hack this issue ASAP and take it
seriously -- it's not that difficult, and it will make a huge difference.

[1] I realize that this is the interwebs and all, and there are many
opportunities to clarify vague initial comments (e.g., your edit), but people
really value and appreciate people who ask good questions from the start.

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DGAP
That's a fair point. Since you've given me the opportunity to clarify via your
own response, I'll provide some more details: I'm interested in product
management as a long term goal. I find Austin to be a more enjoyable city to
live in than Dallas, but Dallas seems to have more career opportunity. Will I
be limiting myself by living in Austin?

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csa
I will defer to other people's judgments on your clarified question -- I am
extremely biased towards Austin (I have lived there before and have very fond
memories of the city).

I will, however, reframe the question and provide a related answer. Visit each
place, and figure out which one you enjoy spending time in. Specifically,
which place has people you really like to spend time with. As I suggested
above, I'm an Austin fan, and it's not even close. YMMV.

Once you've narrowed down a place, then you can focus on a job. "Project
management" is a very broad category, so finding something that fits it
shouldn't be that difficult.

That said, if you're implying something (e.g., you want to be a PM for BigCorp
or BigBank with job attributes X, Y, and Z), then maybe the place will matter.
Personally, I think that's at best premature optimization or at worst the
wrong focus.

Best of luck... please keep us updated.

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hkarthik
Question is very vague. Are you looking for a career in "Product" as in
Product Management? If so, you are asking the wrong question.

Best way to get into Product Management is to move into it after doing
something else (e.g. engineering, support, operations, etc). Find a company
working on products you love, get a job there, and convince the product
leadership you know how to make something better.

The best way to go about that is to be location independent. Go where the
products you love are.

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dudul
I always see a lot of job postings for Austin. Plus, the city is supposed to
be really nice.

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mrits
It's horrible. People are literally dying here. Stay away

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shiftpgdn
I know you're being sarcastic but if you own your home wouldn't you want as
many people as possible to move in? It'll drive up your property price.

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amerkhalid
And property taxes. Unless you are selling your home anytime soon, higher home
prices don't really benefit you in any meaningful ways.

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zer00eyz
Two questions:

What role... EE, IT, sys admin, web dev (front/back end)

What kind of company (start up, established etc)

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DGAP
I'm specifically asking as someone starting out in Product looking for career
advancement and exciting products, not solely startups however.

