The Glade 4.0

So, I need a jerb. It was stolen by dewbacks. (Timetravelers) Where I live now sucks. I liked San Antonio when I was stationed there, and there was a decent amount of IT jobs there before. Maybe Austin? Though I heard it started to get expensive to live there. I'd like to find somewhere I can kind of settle so my son (3) doesn't have to change schools a bunch, but I can have decent job opportunities and not want to kill myself. Anyone have any ideas?

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I know nothing about IT and where you should be going. I will wish you good luck.

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Raell Kromwell

I live between Austin and San Antonio. I can't speak for the real estate market in SA, but Austin's housing prices have been rising for a few years and it is still going strong. On the flip side, there seems to be a lot of incoming growth for Austin, especially in the tech market. There are supposed to be some big name companies expanding to Austin soon, though their names elude me. Oracle maybe? Yeah they're supposed to be building a big campus here soon.

BTW, Austin traffic sucks.

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Microsoft, near Redmond Washington. A few years there and your resume is built. The people I've known who have worked there for them have generally had good things to say and some have moved on to extremely lucrative careers elsewhere.

Yes, they are the big bad monolith, but that just makes them one of the more secure places to put in time earning money.

The Northwest is a great place to be and I'm thinking of moving upstate here to get away from the mess in central California.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Florida. We're growing pretty rapidly in terms of tech jobs. Low cost of living (depending on where you go), ridiculously cheap housing (but going up the last few years), no state tax, no snow. Palm trees, beaches.

What part of the IT field are you in? I run IT at a great up-and-coming 130-employee company that's been around a while but has the culture of a startup (catered lunches, massage therapist on staff, lego building area, etc...). Consistently ranks in the top X lists of places to work in the county and state, and we ranked nationally for Best Places To Work For Millenials last year.

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I'm not sure that placing in the rankings for "Best Places to Work for Millenials" is any sort of selling point.

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Oh, come on, now. That ranking probably values some commendable things. I can get behind trying to promote a work/life balance or whatever, for instance.

On the other hand, being rated as a Best Place to Work for Millennials probably means that more millennials end up working there. So, yeah, I can see your point.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I won't disagree with this, except to say that you need to be prepared to spend a LOT of money on basic living expenses (housing in particular), and spend a lot of time in traffic. This place is rapidly turning into silicon valley in that regard.

I bought my condo in 2003 for $150,000. It's current market value is somewhere north of $400k right now. This would be great if I wanted to sell. I don't. Instead I pay property taxes on it.

Which brings up another strong negative. Extremely high taxes with very little to show for it. No mass transit, terrible highway infrastructure, etc...

There is one other benefit though.

This is morning commute. (My way of avoiding the traffic grind).









Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

What do you think of the Pixel?

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Holy shitsnacks!

I've only had it for a day and a half. So far, it's awesome. Especially the camera.

Let's not hijack this thread though. I'll start something over in tech once I've had a chance to give it a thorough eval.

If you have a specific question, PM me, or start a thread in tech and I'll answer as best I can.

Done and done.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Chattanooga's great. Nicely situated with a burgeoning tech industry (we actually have some of the fastest internet in the country, 1GB for $60/mo.).

Northeast corridor Boston to Baltimore and burbs, never a low demand for IT.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yeah, but the cost of living is insane, the taxes are crazy, infrastructure is falling apart, and the housing prices are about as bad as the west coast. And then there's the crime (especially in the DC/MD area). The job market for sysadmins and developers IS great, though, but not having a security clearance can make finding an IT job a lot tougher depending on where you want to live...

Plenty of surburban areas in a lot of the places are affordable and packed with jobs you don't even need to commute into a city for, or if you do its a few days a week and the rest are remote days.

Like anywhere it's finding a company that works for you with that kind of stuff. I used to work remotely for Pfizer for 3 days out of the week (and they were only a 20 min commute and nowhere near the city - they are Collegeville, I live in Trooper if you want to see the distance). Dow is on that same campus, SEI is nearby, Iron Mountain, and a bunch of others and that's just within 3 miles.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Come on, don't you know that any city without 800 food trucks all serving locally-grown organic food may as well be the same as living in the middle ages?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Most of the IT opportunity around Dayton these days is defense-related, so a clearance is a pretty big boon if you want to look around here. There's also some healthcare IT options if you have some knowledge in that area.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah, in areas with a lot of cleared work a clearance can be worth 25k/year vs a job that doesn't require it...

I don't think the premium is quite as high in Dayton since the cost of living is pretty low. But yeah, there's a definite bump.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Contractors like people with clearances because its cheaper than getting a brand-new clearance from scratch.

When you leave a given agency, your clearance there is supposed to be inactivated, but this is not an adverse action. When you start a new job, they should request a new clearance. Even though your old clearance is inactive, that history will appear when they look at you for the new one, and "doesn't work here any more" is not an adverse reason for the removal of the old one. That makes it much easier to adjudicate the new clearance since not nearly as much re-investigation needs to be done. The less time between leaving the old position and obtaining the new one the better, since a recent already-completed background check minimizes additional work and speeds things up.

Getting a clearance can still be huge *** pain either because OPM is involved or because of screw-ups or confusion in the process (if you have multiple investigations open from different positions you applied for that's a common cause), but if you've had one in the past and no adverse information it helps a lot, and makes your employer happy.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And God forbid you need to do a polygraph and a financial disclosure...ugh.

Phoenix has a boatload of IT jobs and is fairly inexpensive as far as cost of living. Sure we have three really hot months in the summer, but if our winter dips into the 50s for a high we're freezing.

Utah has a massively booming tech industry, and the cost of living here is extremely cheap.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Coming across this late...



I live not far from Elmo in PA, and can vouch for the number of big companies around. I currently commute 90 min to 2 hours each way to central NJ, but that's just because my company closed the PA site, and I work from home 2-3 days/week. There are also a decent number of defense contractors around here, and some federal IT positions open where my bf works in Philly (check usajobs.gov), if you have/can get a clearance. Cost of living varies based on where you live and what you want. I'm in Lansdale, which is NW of the city and on the commuter rail line in a decent school district.

I bought my house in part because it was affordable based on one salary. Weather is ok in SW Pennsylvania, and you're within a few hours of DC, Baltimore, and NY if you like options for things to do.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

Lockheed is in KoP for example and KoP itslef is jam packed with IT related doodads and thingamajigs.

I started a new gig today with Ecolane which is in the same small campus as an old automotive company that I worked for part of that is now software based. Down the road is a huge area which used to be the central IT hub for Wyeth.


Ser, you're in lansdale! We should go out drinking or something or come to my bonfire. Hell I'm right down Valley Forge Rd.

Woop woop!

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville