The Worst US Cities To Work In IT 538
bdcny7927 writes with an excerpt from CIO.com to inspire some caution before your next job switch: "IT workers have their choice of many great US cities for work and play (Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle), but what are the cities that you probably should avoid? Here's a very unscientific, highly subjective and unapologetically snarky list of our least favorite US tech job locales."
Re:No way (Score:5, Interesting)
The mistake this article makes it the classic one of assuming that IT folks (a) all want the same sort of things from life and (b) need to live within commuting distance of work. In reality, we cover the spectrum pretty well from TINKs to nuclear family members to shit-crazy Unibomber types to living in our mothers' basements.
My fondest hope is to eventually work myself to a point where I can telecommute regularly and just live within an hour or two of a significant airport (aka, I need to be valuable enough to get away with this).
Re:The complete list (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it funny that Boston is on both the best and worst list.
What kind of list of worst cities (Score:2, Interesting)
doesn't include Troy, NY? Or Urbana, IL? Or Waco, TX?
Or how about Washington, DC? Hint: IT guys are low on the totem pole, and politicians, lobbyists, and AOL execs let you know it.
And San Francisco is a BAD place to work? Sounds like these guys sampled the local flora. Hint: if it really did suck, real estate prices would be as in Detroit or Cleveland. And if traffic really is the issue, what about Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles?
FWIW, Cleveland and Pittsburgh aren't THAT bad. And yes, I do mean it. It's been 40 years since the Cuyahoga burned, and it's actually kinda nice now. As is the Erie waterfront.
Upstate New York Isn't That Bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is all you need to know, math guys: Syracuse holds the title for the U.S. city (pop: 50,000+) with the highest average annual snowfall (115 inches), besting even Anchorage, Alaska (114 inches). It also has a bit of a problem with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) due to all that snow and not a lot of sunshine. It's called the Salt City: A good thing, since there's all that snow and ice on the roads.
Available IT jobs in Syracuse (as posted on June 18 on Dice.com): 49
I'm tired of seeing people endlessly trash Upstate because of what they read about the winter. What the summary doesn't tell you about the 115 inches of snow is that you rarely have more than 10 inches on the ground at a time; the weather trends for this area lately have seen snow coming primarily on the leading edge of warm fronts in the winter. The result of this is of course you'll shovel your driveway on Monday and then put on sunglasses and a very light coat by Wednesday. In reality every winter in Upstate New York has been near-record warmth for the past several years, and after the short winter season (only about 3 months in reality) the rest of the year is temperate.
That said, the economy of Upstate New York does leave something to be desired; but that can be said for many other parts of the country as well.
But I might be brought to disembowel the next person who reads about Upstate New York and then trashes it over weather that they have not experienced for themselves.
Missing (Score:5, Interesting)
Washington D.C. The entire metropolitan area is one big mess. I have to plan my WEEKEND trips to the grocery store with severe traffic in mind. The area/weather/people are nice enough. However, with the addition of the commute times, I am basically holding down another part-time job just to get to work and back. I work 10-12 hour days just to avoid sitting in that mess for 3-4 hours a day.
Re:The complete list (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps the implication is that a city needs to have the occasional professional sports championship in order to be a good place to live, but that if it racks up too many championships, it becomes unlivable again. I have far less trouble with this assertion than I do with understanding why professional sports matter at all vis-a-vis the quality of a work location.
Market (Score:1, Interesting)
Just a thought, but maybe the overall market is adjusting to which jobs are really worth what again. I think there's a limit to how much an office typist is really worth once you realize you are in a global economy, And that's all IT is for the most part, just this century's office typist. The dotbomb years are in the past, and high wages now are just inertia as the market gets flooded with millions more keyboard commandos a year. Sure, there will be keyboard work, but is it really always going to be worth more than 10x what a skilled tradesman can get, doing practical infrastructure building and maintenance? If you ask me, a good framer or electrician or even a well seasoned assembly line tech or whatever is worth a lot more than an AJAX webpage builder where the money is going to come from "ad revenue" some magical way. The cat is out of the bag, the bulk of the internet using public is going to eventually just default to blocking ads, fullstop.
There's real work, then busywork, my guess is the real work will take increasing importance as the economy rearranges itself during these rather unusual times. Ten guys sitting around an expensive office making a hundred grand apiece watching each other's powerpoint slides and deciding on when the next meeting is going to be, then going to sit around and play video games mostly while staring at server logs on the side is not sustainable forever, not at any high payrate anyway. It was when the skillset was new, and not many could do it and the VC money was flowing like rain during a typhoon..but today?
Walmart has among the most advance retail IT (Score:4, Interesting)
With a grain of salt... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just for reference, the article from this thread is from June 18th or so while the second article praising cities for IT jobs is from May1st.
Although the original article mentions both places as a heaven for IT geeks, it also warns against the quality of life in the areas....or maybe I'm just trying to find the silver lining?
Re:Gary Indiana (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much. There's nothing quite like that thick yellow smog that hangs in the air over Gary, or that lovely smell of sulfer and despair that reminds you "Yep, this is Hell. Enjoy your visit from the safety of the highway or the train, and thank your lucky stars you don't have to get out."
"Detroit" proper certainly sucks, but it's never really had an IT infrastructure to start out with. Outside of Compuware, high-tech jobs just don't exist there. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that those 440+ IT jobs in "Detroit" are postings from Livonia or Novi, which is about the same as equating a job posting in Simi Valley with one in Compton.
I worked IT for a Community College that serves Detroit. By far the most dysfunctional IT organization I've ever seen. After getting hired, the first thing my boss told me was "I can't believe they hired you, you're not related to anybody here." Dozens of redundant administrators with no real job function other than drawing a paycheck, a single, insanely flaky DNS and AD server (located downtown) serving 5 remote sites that would wipe out connectivity across all campuses when it went down. I finally started SSH tunneling all of my traffic to my home connection so I could at least keep myself entertained. One of my favorite moments was when one of the network administrators was on site and I showed him what I was doing. His first question: "What's SSH?" By that time, I wasn't even remotely surprised. I was slightly surprised when I saw that job posted internally after the same admin moved to a different role. Starting salary: 65k. A junior admin with no skills whatsoever pulling down that kind of money. God only knows what his bosses made...
I was finally "indefinitely laid off" (no one ever got fired, downsized, rightsized, or had their position eliminated. You were simply placed on indefinite lay off. I heard of people getting called back to their jobs 5+ years after they got laid off) by the "Senior Associate Vice president of human resources", and yes, there were associate VP's of HR, VP's of HR, and a President of HR. If you were in the HR department, you were some form of Vice president. Or you were a secretary who was assumed to be boning and or related to his or her associated vice president. I had two weeks vacation and was told that I had a signing bonus from the union contract (Yep. Union IT. The union was equally incompetent) coming to me upon my "lay off." I was paid 8 hours vacation (the payroll system was never, ever right. They said I had 8 hours, they paid me 8, and sent me to one of the dozens of voicemail boxes that never got checked.) and told that the bonus didn't really apply to me due to a quirk in the rules.
So I walked away with a day's pay instead of a month's, and I framed the letter. I use it as a reminder of how crappy an organization can really be.
Re:Urban jungles (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you live somewhere that requires you to have a car? What a crazy idea. I live in one of the larger cities in N. America and get around on foot or bicycle. It's at my pace. I live life at my pace - smelling the roses, or not. 5.30pm, minutes after finishing work... I'm sailing and chilling on one of the biggest lakes in the world.
I've just got back from five months in Australia. In many ways, Melbourne is very similar to Toronto. I lived 45 km away from the city centre in SE suburbs. Never again. What a horrible way to live. Everything we wanted to do was 30 minutes min., probably 60 minutes drive away, on a highway. Talk about rushing around, not smelling the roses, and not actually doing anything. I loved my time in Australia, but I will never live in suburbia again. Out of the city is incredibly boring, and a dreadful lifestyle.
Each to their own. Some people like it. I don't. I'm looking forward to moving to Europe's second biggest city later this year...
Re:Come on, Detroit isn't that bad. (Score:1, Interesting)
IT job opportunities are awesome, and unless you want to buy a house Inside the perimeter, renting is cheap if you shop around. I pay $580 in Brookhaven per month. Unless you plan on gaining more than 1000 dollars a month in interest off your house, even a modest 140k is a waste of money (and you'll be well outside the city limits)
Yep, I'm having a good time saving a thousand dollars per month month while co-workers shell out 1500+ for a mortgage they probably won't see a thousand dollar a month return on. I have no idea why this country is so fixated on purchasing a house.
Big market bias (Score:4, Interesting)
Bottom 7 list: small/mid-market and rust belt cities. Way to dig deep, CIO.
Sure, Cleveland has it down side, but compared to the 'top 10 cities for IT jobs' that they also have a slideshow for, the place is WAY cheaper to live in, and if you're smart you're not living in the city anyway, when a nice clean house in the nice clean burbs is dirt cheap. Plus if you get overworked and have a heart attack, head over to the Cleveland Clinic; they'll patch you up real good.
So people from SoCal, how's LA to work IT in, what with the crappy traffic and screwy government?
Re:Southern Utah.... (Score:1, Interesting)
In my experience, IT pay sucks throughout the state of Utah, even in Salt Lake. Not sure why that is, but it kept me from settling there, even though I really like the city: Any city will start to suck if you're broke all the time.
Salt Lake City was actually ranked by Forbes as the #1 place to work in the U.S., mainly BECAUSE of the IT jobs. The low cost of living in Utah easily offsets any lower pay you raise.
Re:Highly subjective is right. (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude, it's a 2/3 majority, not a 3/4 majority. And far from "not listening to the People", the initiatives system makes California one of the most responsive to the will of the People. Which is exactly why they're in so much trouble.
People: We demand that $2B from the general fund be set aside for the education of small puppies.
Government: OK. That means that uncommitted revenue drops by $2B. We'll have to cut teacher's salaries by 14%.
People: Idiots! Why do you hate children? We demand that teacher's salaries be increased 5%, not cut.
Government: Okay, but we'll have to cut housing assistance.
People: Why do you hate the poor? You may not cut housing assistance.
Government: We'll raise taxes, then.
People: We demand that all tax increases be approved by 2/3 of the state senate.
Government: You do know that means taxes will never go up again, and that you're allowing a tiny, intransigent minority to run the state off a cliff, right?
People: Why don't you respect the will of the People?
Prop. 13 has butchered California. Prop. 13 was a conservative brainchild. Congratulations, bozo. You and yours just wrecked 1/5th of the the economy. But I suppose you think your state will be so much better once the schools shut down and Prudential is buying ad space on El Capitan.
Re:Highly subjective is right. (Score:1, Interesting)
Alaska also has the most corrupt government in the whole damned country. Its governor winds up being investigated by the state legislature for abusing her power. Its senators wind up on trial for taking kickbacks, its congresscritters wind up on trial for taking kickbacks...I'm sensing a theme.
Also, without all the free oil money, Alaska would have the high taxes that you fear so very much. Enjoy your nonexistent roads, education, and police in whatever tax-free haven state you eventually settle in.
Re:Urban jungles (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in a rural area though and here's why: I decided that I want a few things out of where I live:
I bought a small house in New Hampshire and work in IT for a manufacturer, the pays not the best, the jobs not the best, but I'm satisfied with both of those and I get to live in the home I wanted for relatively cheap money. I'm walking distance (half mile) from my local down town which certainly isn't as happening as any city to be sure, but there are some restaurants and small shops. My house is surrounded by trees, I have a large back yard with a patio where I can have bonfires and cookouts. It's got a guest room where friends can visit and spend the night and if I really want to catch a show in the city, it's a little over an hours drive to Boston...
By comparison a friend of mine, same age, same vocation, lives outside of Boston makes about 20K more a year than I do, but his condo was close to THREE times what I paid for my house (nevermind the condo fees and taxes), and it's smaller than my college apartment. Even though he's paying city prices, he's not walking distance from anything, had has his car broken into a number of times sitting in the lot outside his condo, and for what?
My company has a division in LA and they've tried to get me to move out there a number of times, the cost of living increase isn't worth what I'd be sacrificing... I've lived in the city, and I've lived in rural areas... there is a lot of middle ground, the key is figuring out what is truly important to you and finding the middle ground that suites your needs.
Re:No way (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Come on, Detroit isn't that bad. (Score:1, Interesting)
I lived near Detroit for 10 years.
Yes, more coastline, but you can't go swimming until Memorial day.
Yes, more freshwater, which is accompanied by the Michigan state bird (AKA giant mosquitoes)
The fishing is good (if the "birds" don't bother you).
I will gladly give up leaves turning colors to avoid having the ground turn white (and all the fun that goes with it).
If I want to go snow skiing, I can go to the mountains with thousands of feet of vertical travel. In MI, you pay an arm and a leg for a manmade hill that is a few hundred feet high.
-The people are almost as racially biased and segregated as the south.
-Home values are still dropping because the population is.
-Yes, Detroit is the worst, but the rest of the state doesn't have much going for it except the outdoors - which is kind of the antithesis of IT.
I'm not done, but I'll stop now.
Syracuse isn't bad... (Score:1, Interesting)
I've lived all over Central New York, from Herkimer to Morrisville and now Pulaski. Syracuse is near the middle of this big triangle. I've seen it 40 degrees below zero (-75F with windchill) and I've seen more than 4 feet of snow dumped overnight. I've seen the high temperature for the entire month of February at -20F. But these extremes only happen once every few decades. In general, the temperature hovers in the 20's and you get light snow once or twice a week. Snowfall of more than 6 inches rarely happens more than once or twice a month and the ground rarely has more than a foot or two of snow on it for a week or more.
However, as a recent IT graduate trying to find a job in Syracuse or the surrounding area, I can tell you that there aren't many. Most of the openings are for senior or manager level. A lot of businesses also seek employees with experience with proprietary systems. Personally, I love living in this climate and I dread the summer (75 degrees is too hot for me). Upstate is a great place to live if you can get a decent job. $50,000 a year can go a long way when cheeseburgers are a buck and you can buy corn on the side of the road for 10 cents and ear. The only reason I'm looking to get out of here is because the government (which is almost entirely controlled by NYC) is crushing anything and everything they can. Hunting is great... but so regulated that deer run rampant and cause loads of automobile and property damage. Fishing is great... except that now you need to pay exorbitant amounts for fishing licenses. Snowmobiling is amazing... except now they have roadblocks, check points and speed limits. The Adirondack Park is a great place to visit at almost 10,000 square miles (compare to 3,472 sq. miles for Yellowstone or 1,189 sq. miles for Yosemite).
In short, Syracuse is a great place if you have the skills and don't mind big, overbearing government.
Re:Come on, Detroit isn't that bad. (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking as someone who moved from CA to MI, and who has also lived elsewhere in the country...
1) We've got more coastline than California - and it's fresh water.
---Yes, but I prefer cliffs and the ocean. Still, the MI coast is very nice. I wish that there were mountains here in MI, though. It's so incredibly flat, except for the UP, which is rather remote. In CA you have the ocean on one side, then some 2-4k foot tall mountains, than 2-3 hours to the east are 10-14k peaks. CA also has rain forests, and deserts. I miss the variety.
2) We've got 4 seasons (which is good or bad depending on your preference).
---Winter: Very few people go outside. Plans that involve any travel have a 1/5 chance of needing to be changed unless you are willing to drive on uncleared roads. Many drivers don't think that tailgating should be put on hold when the roads are icy, so there are major delays (okay, only around Detroit) due to countless accidents.
--Spring: Once it stops snowing, things are gray and muddy for 1-2 months before anything green appears. Then plants suddenly appear and they do it with a vengeance. I marvel at the explosion of plant life. The green part of spring lasts about 1-1.5 months before...
-Summer: People spend all their time in the sun and complain (in my town here) about how cold it is whenever the 90% humid air drops below 80 degrees F. Having been deprived of sunlight all winter, many people have an obsession with it now. An odd side effect that I see all across the mid-west is the popularity of tanning salons, and of the very dark tan worn for as much of the year as possible. It leads to a lot of 30 year old people looking 45 because of skin damage.
-Fall: 2-3 months of beautiful weather. My favorite time of the year here.
3) More second homes than any other state (most on the water).
-I'm not surprised to hear this. Nearly everyone I know here has a house "up north"
4) We've don't get earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, termites, poisonous spiders/snakes.
-No termites, really? I think we do have latrodectus variolus (black widows). We do get flooding, both widespread and localized to a basement when the "sump pump" dies. I'd never even heard of such a thing before I moved here.
5) We do get the occasional tornado, but far less than most of the midwest.
-There are half a dozen tornado warnings here each summer, but only one tornado near town every 30 years.
6) Education: we've got plenty of geek-schools.
-Ann Arbor has a great school (and is a great town). In terms of high schools, I'm a bit less positive. My significant other taught some college classes here and found that a lot of students, even brilliant students, had never written a single research paper in high school. Students who were smart enough to go to any college but who didn't know their way around a bibliography or citation were wronged by their schools. We spoke to some high school teachers who said that the state curriculum dropped research papers when the No Child Left Behind Act appeared. A lot of high schools still teach research papers, but a lot don't, because it's no longer a required topic by the state. I think that's a mistake.
7) Manufacturing. Does anyone care? We can build anything here - tech included
-I wonder how hard it will be to retool factories that have been closed for years to accommodate new goods.
8) We've got an enormous set of technically capable people just waiting for companies to set up shop here.
-That's absolutely true.
Thinking MI makes me sad. I'm definitely an outsider (and in my oddly insular little area I've heard people from elsewhere referred to as Outsiders with a capital O), but I've found enough to like that I've got some affection for the state. I hope that the plans to revive the state with green industries work, but I worry that the decay of places like Detroit may not stop.
How about San Jose? (Score:1, Interesting)
Aren't the real estate prices in San Jose the same as San Francisco? Add to that a slightly drier heat than NorCal and a city which is not even a real city, but just a big suburb (at the moment), I'd say San Jose deserves to be there more than San Francisco. CIO.com is utterly clueless.
Re:Come on, Detroit isn't that bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Boston is one of the best places to visit.
Fixed that one. It's not affordable, and the weather and traffic suck. I don't care how great a city is--if a family of three can't afford a house with more than 1200 sq. feet and a fenced yard, it is automatically disqualified from the "best" places to live list, especially with bad weather and traffic.
Re:Come on, Detroit isn't that bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally, as an IT geek who isn't even making above the local average for my trade, can afford a single family 1,200 sq foot house with a fenced yard (and a garage) that is a mile away from a subway line.
If I was willing to live further outside the city it would be cheaper.
Of course I don't have a kid to support so if your talking about 1 person supporting a wife and kid and a house then you do have to move a bit further into the suburbs.
As for living in Boston itself, your right, that's really expensive, but then almost nobody lives "in" Boston because it is a commuter city. Its also very very small, most cities in the US have a land area that is equal to the entire Greater Boston Area.
Boston is expensive, but the pay is good. Also, housing prices are way down from where they were 5 years ago when the market was totally crazy.
Re:Highly subjective is right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Second that you felt the need to butcher Reagan's name.
In all fairness, I butcher Reagan's name whenever I can, mostly to counter the roving band of tards trying to name every building in DC after him. He was a mediocre president, not a saint.
Re:Come on, Detroit isn't that bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Coming from the north east, Vermont specifically I can understand the thought process behind considering $1500/month for 1000 sq ft to be a good deal.
Most people that live there have no idea how cheap housing is in the south west. Here in Scottsdale, AZ for instance I have a 2400sq ft house with a pool for $1200/month and I'm paying above the average right now! So yeah, gimme three months of the suck weather for 9 months of fantastic weather. I remember the ole saying from Vermont. 9 months of winter, 3 months of bad skiing.
Of course all this is combined with the fact that bandwidth is hella cheap here and Peoria even has a pilot program from broadband over powerlines. Of course fiber is available in a great number of homes here in the valley now as well which is even more fantastic.
I'll drive four hours to spend a weekend in San Diego on the beach rather than choose to live close to it where everything is expensive. Of course 4 hours also puts me in Rocky Point, Mexico which is a fun spot too, so any given weekend I can feel like I'm taking a vacation which is something I never felt living in Vermont.