

Hot IT jobs: Why location matters - moocow01
http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21165/hot-it-jobs-why-location-matters

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rickmb
The same applies to the rest of the world. However, the article seems to omit
one important factor: career opportunities.

Cities with high salaries and high cost of living also offer plenty of
opportunities in case the job doesn't work out, the company goes belly up
etcerera. Anyone with desirable skills and a bit of a local network can get a
new job there within a few weeks, if not days. In most places with a low cost
of living however, things are very different.

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matthewowen
I don't understand why you'd move to some backwater purely for a 'cost-of-
living' benefit.

I think articles like this are pretty pointless. The reason for living in a
bit city is that it is a big city - it is a cultural choice. Where you live
has so much impact on what you can do, so much impact on your overall
happiness, that it probably ought to be the first thing you decide - all else
should follow from that.

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doug4hn
I recently moved from a metro area to the rural countryside and I really hate
it. Miss those conveniences, nearby places to go hang out, social interaction,
user group meetings/meetups, and conferences. Never felt more lonely when I
moved out of the big city. Friends help some.

Getting out late at night is a pain (even in midsize cities). Places close too
early and too many road blocks.

There's also (in some places) this "conservative, religious mentality" and
risk avoidance (no fun) that's awful. At times, I feel like I'm working among
18th/19th century Amish or fundamentalists that think only witches/warlocks
use computers! Thinking about moving out of there before I'm burned at the
stake! ;)

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estreeper
Doesn't it seem like this analysis is done completely incorrectly? You can't
directly compare two indices together that are based on different magnitudes
(cost of living vs. salary).

If average cost of living in absolute dollars is $30,000 and average salary is
$100,000, living in San Francisco nets you ($100,000 * 1.36) - ($30,000 *
1.63) = $87,100. Living in Pueblo nets you ($100,000 * 0.76) - ($30,000 *
0.88) = $49,600.

I'm afraid this will spark an unnecessary mass-exodus to Pueblo.

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josephlord
Housing is the main variable cost so if you want lots of it (large family
house in nice area) it will make sense to prioritise the cost adjusted salary.
If you are single and happy to live cheap then the highest unadjusted salary
should allow you to save bucket loads of money.

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aristidb
Here's the thing: I think salary alone is a better indicator than salary
adjusted by cost of living.

The reason is that there is also quality of life, which is hard to measure. I
think that in the absence of a dedicated measure for quality of life, rent
levels are a relatively reasonable proxy, and those are one of the biggest
factors in the cost of living.

So, as indicators go Salary&Cost of Living&Quality of Living > Salary alone >
Salary&Cost of Living.

(Obviously this logic also doesn't necessarily hold across continents, or even
in a market as fragmented as Europe, because people rarely move between
different countries in Europe, whereas people move between states all the time
in the US.)

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krschultz
My girlfriend and I just moved into the middle of Manhattan from the suburbs,
and I simply don't buy these numbers.

First off, what exactly does 'cost of living' mean? My old apartment was $1400
a month in rent, and we put at least $300 a month towards gas, insurance, and
maintenance for each of 2 cars. (excluding depreciation or car payments, we
owned both cars outright). So a minimum of $2000 in car & apartment costs. We
had a 3 bedroom condo with 2 and a half bathrooms - for 2 people. We had
almost half of the place entirely empty, but it was hard to find anything
smaller of the same quality. Crappy apartments were $1000, so it didn't really
make sense to move.

Now we are paying $2500 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment. It is really nice,
in a doorman building, with a rooftop patio on the 20th floor with big city
views, a nice kitchen, family room, eating area, walk in closets, etc. On a
per square foot basis, it is probably 3x as much. But we sold the two cars, so
we are really only about $500 a month higher than before. And instead of
having 15-20 minute commutes in the car, we both can walk a couple of blocks
to work.

Then there are a few more wrinkles. The old apartment was all electric, and my
utilities were from $100 in the summer to $250 in the winter. This apartment
has steam heat and chilled water cooling included in the rent. I no longer
have to pay for water. I'm paying less for TV & Internet than before.
Groceries are a little more expensive, but Fresh Direct delivers to my door
and costs about 10-15% more than the suburbs at most.

The biggest increase in cost is going out to bars & restaurants, but that is a
totally discretionary expense.

Overall, I would say a conservative estimate is that our cost of living went
up a total of $1000 a month. We needed a combined extra $20,000 salary to pay
for that. Our raise was multiple times that amount.

~~~
nhebb
Of course cost of living estimates are just for singles and couples without
children. Add a kid or two and the cost of living differences will become more
pronounced.

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dasil003
This is an interesting tertiary consideration. But primarily you should be
considering lifestyle and career development opportunities in your destination
city (which one to weigh more heavily depends on the individual).

If you move to an industry backwater just for a relative cost-of-living
benefit it could be disastrous to long-term skill development or general
happiness where you live.

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CookWithMe
I think in most places you are earning enough to live comfortably. Far more
important to overall happiness than $10k more or less is whether you enjoy
your job, get along with the colleagues and have friends and a cool
environment outside of your workplace.

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ltcoleman
I really enjoyed this article because it explains why it is so hard for me to
consider leaving my home state of Arkansas. The cost of living is very nice
here and with a developer salary, one can live very well.

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mcdowall
I was quite surprised by the low variance for cities like NY and SF, the
variance here in the UK for London is significantly greater.

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petercooper
Some interesting analysis! It's a shame they didn't take differences in income
taxes into account in the indexes, but hopefully the growth of remote working
will make all of this less important over time and we can all live wherever we
like.

~~~
aantix
I would have liked to see that analysis as well..

Still waiting on the "killer app" for remote programming to make it
widespread. Tmux and Vim isn't it..

~~~
kabdib
My opinion: There is no killer app for remote programming.

Working remotely is a _skill_. It is very different from working in an office
environment, and requires that you compensate for your lack of physical
presence with proper behavior and strategy.

Remote, you can often get lots of uninterrupted work done, but sometimes this
can be a danger, because interruptions often imply that you're a "go-to"
person. You also miss out on a lot of the social stuff, which (because we're
primates, get used to it) turns out to be important for reviews and who-gets-
to-work-on-what decisions.

Tools help, but they are a nearly insignificant part of the story once you're
beyond the simple capacity to check in code.

~~~
aantix
I probably should have been more specific; I'm interested in remote pair
programming. As it stands now, we end up using Mac's built in screen sharing
app but this has a less-than-stellar responsiveness that's typically needed
when two people are going back and forth making changes to the code..

I've written up my thoughts on what is needed (
<https://gist.github.com/1999816> ). TL;DR - a lightweight protocol to share
buffer updates, tab changes, opening files, etc.

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dsr_
Interesting graph technique, wherein the first 100% appears to have been
elided from the X axis.

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confluence
This kind of feels like the difference between the nations of Extremistan
(extreme variance in outcome) and Mediocristan (normal distribution in
outcome) from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan".

For example those with the largest adjusted incomes probably live in the
safest areas where one can get comfortably wealthy over a long period of time.
However, they probably forgo the option at huge wins by shirking the cost/risk
of getting a tech startup lottery ticket.

Same thing occurs with those who go into med/law/normal engineering. They
essentially shoot themselves in the head to take themselves off the lottery
list and put themselves on the steady, safe and slow wealth generation list.

Those in extremistan pay a greater entry fee in terms of risk vs. reward to
play the finance/startup lottery and have a small shot at winning really big.
In turn, risk adjusted their salaries are pitiful when adjusted for risk/cost
of living - but somewhat decent if you factor in the value of the lottery
ticket.

~~~
cageface
This is another instance in which an average doesn't really tell you much
because, as usual, you have more information. If you play this high risk game
the average doesn't mean anything to you because eventually you do learn the
value of that success bit.

The smart approach here is to take a cold hard look at your skills and ideas
and only pursue this if you can persuade yourself you're good enough to beat
the odds.

