I would start in the city where I grew up and currently live. Giving back to your local community is important. Especially if you have a new trade or know something that is currently not there.
Biggest plus points:
- No car required. Everything could be bikeable
- Your network is already there
- It's probably cheaper then moving to a 'big' city.
If you are looking for money, and money only. Go to the default startup hotspots and cities. But if you are looking to find personal happiness, I'd say doing that in a place that's more quiet and less competitive would be much more rewarding.
There’s another response to this supporting staying where you grow up. I’m not against this in any way, but leaving your home community has value as well.
I left where I grew up in rural suburban Ohio and followed my girlfriend to a college 500 miles from home. Beyond her, I knew no one else (and we quickly broke up).
I then moved east to Boston after graduating. Once again, knew no one. I had no financial support from family, no couches to sleep on, just quite literally me and my dog.
I built a life there, which was my own. It was tough, had some bad roommates at times, was in debt and poor, but quickly learned all the things I needed to be self sufficient (sans the food gathering) in this life. I met the woman who would later become my wife, started a career, made great friends, and eventually moved to LA.
My wife grew up in NH, went to school in Boston, and her “moving away” was when we went to LA. It was an important growth moment for her, and she’s been able to learn things about herself she couldn’t with her support structure in Boston.
So, moving away has tons of challenges. But, in a lot of ways, it’s like joining a startup. You end up wearing a lot of hats because there’s no one else to wear them for you. You quickly learn you can tackle problems in front of you better than you realized, and you gain confidence that will serve you throughout your life.
You made a valid point here that I didn't express in my original comment. I'm not saying traveling is bad. I basically wanted to state that starting a career doesn't necessarily have to be in a Tech Hotspot. It can be a smaller community as well. Where tech skills can be much more of value.
I agree. As someone who did the "follow the jobs around the country" thing (in the US), moving somewhere without friends or family is very difficult. Some people make it work, some people never do. If you need to move to a city, there's probably a city nearby that has jobs in your field. Any city with 100k-200k people or more will have tech jobs available, they'll just be at the IT department of a non-tech company. My first job was on the information security team of distribution company, for example. It was still a tech job and I still got to work with some cool technologies. Added bonus: the job was so laid back that I had tons of time to work on personal enrichment projects that both helped the company and gave me skills that furthered my own career (learning coding to automate some repetitive tasks, for example).
After that I got greedy and started chasing tech jobs around the country and was miserable. I got a remote work job for a big tech company and moved back to my old city where I had friends and family and the CoL was below national average and I've never been happier.
It's not advice for everyone, but I think it's advice that's under-expressed on HN and other SV-centric forums.
With a CS degree: SF or Seattle or wherever I could find a FAANG/MS type highly regarded big tech company to recruit me to, since the entry level market is soft among startups and a lot of non-tech BigCos seem to be a path to stagnation (based on my experience interviewing candidates from such backgrounds).
Software developer without a CS degree: best chance of being hired is probably at a startup or agency. I’d go somewhere with a startup scene but lower CoL than SF or NY. Probably Seattle or Austin.
Other fields: follow the jobs. To break into publishing, New York. Film, LA. Anything that’s not specific to an industry (say, marketing), I’d probably find somewhere with moderate CoL that’s undergoing an economic boom. Then consider moving somewhere with higher CoL but also higher salaries once you’re established - since if you can save the same percentage of your salary you’ll save more total dollars and reach financial targets faster.
Biggest plus points:
- No car required. Everything could be bikeable
- Your network is already there
- It's probably cheaper then moving to a 'big' city.
If you are looking for money, and money only. Go to the default startup hotspots and cities. But if you are looking to find personal happiness, I'd say doing that in a place that's more quiet and less competitive would be much more rewarding.