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Cloud Programming Stats United States IT

Move Over, Silicon Valley: St. Louis, Atlanta, Small Cities Gaining Tech Jobs (dice.com) 72

Posted by EditorDavid from the where-to-geek dept.
Slashdot reader SpaceForceCommander shared Dice's new annual report on America's tech industry salaries based on a survey of over 12,800 "technologists": Columbus and St. Louis enjoyed double-digit year-over-year growth in salaries (14.2 percent and 13.6 percent, respectively), and other cities such as Denver [7 percent] and Atlanta [10 percent] also experienced an ideal mix of growth and high salaries. These up-and-comers benefitted from the presence of key employers such as Amazon and IBM; in addition, a lower cost of living and plentiful amenities have made them increasingly attractive to technologists, even those coming from well-established tech hubs such as Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley remains a world of high salaries — but the cost of living in the Bay Area remains extraordinarily high, which chews into that higher-than-average paycheck. And that's before we factor in issues such as grinding commutes. In Seattle, New York City (also known as "Silicon Alley"), and other well-established tech hubs, costs are similarly high, which only makes up-and-coming tech hubs more potentially attractive to technologists.
Silicon Valley is still #1 on Dice's ranking of average annual salaries (at $123,826), followed by Seattle, San Diego, Boston, Baltimore, Portland, Denver, and then New York. (And while St. Louis ranks #9, Columbus is #17.)

But the average annual tech-industry salary rose just 1.3 percent last year, according to the survey, with Dice arguing that what made salaries vary was supply and demand. They then ranked the highest-paying skills, starting with Apache Kafka (with average reported salaries of $134,557), followed by HANA (High performance ANalytic Appliance), Cloudera, and MapReduce: Newer skills don't necessarily draw higher salaries; with many older skills, the number of proficient technologists is relatively low, which means employers are willing to pay more in order to secure their services. (That's a key reason why the handful of technologists who still know their way around an ancient mainframe can score six-figure salaries from companies that haven't given up decades-old hardware....) In the case of programming languages such as Swift, which enjoyed significant year-over-year growth and high salaries, a large number of technologists might have mastered it — but the market is huge and white-hot, ensuring that compensation will only rise.
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Move Over, Silicon Valley: St. Louis, Atlanta, Small Cities Gaining Tech Jobs More

Move Over, Silicon Valley: St. Louis, Atlanta, Small Cities Gaining Tech Jobs

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  • Silicon Valley (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @05:42PM (#59679978)
    How many of these people could work from home. and why don't their employers allow them to?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The control a "campus" network setting gives the owners over their staff?
      The office, the meetings, cafeteria, tracking of all on site computer networks, the setting of politics .. all herd the workers around a set locations with ID tracking.
      Who arrives early, puts in the hours... who has a colleague cover for them.
      Re "could work from home"... thats just a union meeting waiting to happen.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 )
        Re "could work from home"... thats just a union meeting waiting to happen OK, then residents of the Bay Area shouldn't be complaining about traffic. There's zero reason for someone who writes software for a living to have to drive to an office five days a week.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          The brand owner wants that expert "someone who writes software" at work for a few reasons.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            Many of which probably have more to do with the psychology of management than they do with accomplishing work objectives or maintaining security.

        • Re "could work from home"... thats just a union meeting waiting to happen OK, then residents of the Bay Area shouldn't be complaining about traffic. There's zero reason for someone who writes software for a living to have to drive to an office five days a week.

          Anything that relates to the defense industry will have you working in secure areas.

    • and then we can pay East St. Louis wages

    • Itâ(TM)s just a matter of rearranging the work schedule a bit.

      Hereâ(TM)s my personal ideal: 2-3 days out of [T, W, Th] in the office (concentrate all meetings during this time). Everyone gets the option to remotely for the remainder, with general availability during the core workday hours on M and/or F.

      Living in a low-cost area and flying in for the on-site days of the week becomes a real possibility.

      I live in the Bay Area and endure a hellish, stressful, time-consuming commute that takes me away

      • At a certain large SV company, Slack / IM are explicitly configured to *not* retain history, because it could be subpoenaed. Itâ(TM)s one way said company works hard to hobble itself.

  • Very good news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @05:46PM (#59679992)

    This is very good news. Our nation's wealth being concentrated in the North East and West Coast has created problems both for those regions and for many other regions that have been left out. This spreading out of the tech industry will hopefully take the heat off the hubs and improve the lots of those communities that have been neglected by our 21st century growth.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gatkinso ( 15975 )

      Maybe if the federal government moved assets away from DC that would help.

    • It takes more than "some tech jobs" to make a city attractive to career Programmers, say. If I relocate somewhere, I want options if that position disappears, doesn't work out, or whatever. I want to be able to get another job WITHOUT moving again.

      None of the cities mentioned are anywhere on my list of places I'd be the slightest bit interested in living. Even Atlanta, while in a decent location more or less, isn't an option due to having the worst traffic in the southeast US.

      Don't even get me started on th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        That's all fine but other people have other priorities in their lives. How about the couple who wants to buy a home and start a family which is not at all an unusual scenario. The Valley is an extremely difficult place to do that in due to cost unless you're top tier talent. For at least some of these people moving to one of these massively cheaper areas would be a no-brainer. Sure, they would loose out on some of things you detail but they'd be able to achieve primary life goals without massive financial s

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This spreading out of the tech industry will hopefully take the heat off the hubs

      Except that's not what's happening.

      The hubs are still the hubs. You won't see innovation coming from pissant backwaters. A few programmers in Atlanta doesn't make them Palo Alto.

      What you're seeing is this: 1) Normal companies need programmers too. For in-house development work. No they won't be releasing the next Tinder clone. 2) Supply and demand. No one wants to live in these crappy areas. Hence the increases in p

      • And the next Tinder clone is that innovation you're referring to? Well that's fucking hilarious.

        There's plenty of innovation coming out of everywhere in the country while the coastal cities are busy churning out that next Tinder clone, or Facebook-alike, or .

        You want innovation? How about Square for example who completely reinvented the payment processing system and made it possible for small businesses to finally move away from cash... founded in St. Louis. There are plenty of other examples but I'm not go

  • Good for workers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @06:06PM (#59680026) Journal
    All the years of exams, work and study... the loans, getting that academic scholarship ... only to end up surrounded by trash in CA..
    Walking around in the waste, trash filled streets... the parked RV..
    The tax rate and the crime rate.
    Th cost of housing.. More CA taxes..

    To escape all that with your education and move to a much better part of the USA...
    Clean streets, low crime, less waste and trash, less to pay in rent.. a great new job and less tax..
    Finally your "learning to code" education feels like its something better.

    • California still has the best weather. That both commands a premium and attracts the homeless. This sword has two edges.

      California also has some of the most liberal governments. This both attracts free thinkers and also the homeless...

      I'm going to go look at a place with room to work on our bus to RV conversion tomorrow. It's got a pole barn, even. I'm digging the weather up here in Humboldt county so far. Nice and cool. With a barn to get out of the rain it could be ideal.

      • You're still in a state where having a crack in your windshield is a criminal misdemeanor and arrying a knife for defense is a felony.

        • You can carry a knife if you carry it openly. It is a shame about the lack of respect for the second amendment though.

      • You know, people say that about the weather in California. And I get that. Except that your state in on fire, like every year. personally I've spent time in some very nice tropical climates that are warm and sunny year round. To me, if that's just how it is year round, it isn't special. To me, I really like having season and each one having their own ups and downs. Makes life much more interesting and makes you appreciate great weather more.

  • Newer skills don't necessarily draw higher salaries; with many older skills, the number of proficient technologists is relatively low, which means employers are willing to pay more in order to secure their services.

    That is, good salaries for as little time as the company will tolerate, while they surround you with H-1B's for you to "mentor", or more specifically, commodify yourself with.

  • Cost of livong (Score:3)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @06:19PM (#59680056) Homepage Journal
    Not adjusting for cost of living makes the numbers irrelevant. It is like not adjusting for inflation. So while New York has the highest cost of living with a salary of around 100k, Seattle equivalent salary is more like 125K and Dallas is 139k, and Silicon Valley is somewhere in between.

    • Silicon Valley is somewhere in between.

      If you're a programmer in Silicon Valley, you should be making between $150k - $250k.

  • Columbus (Score:3)

    by Shadow99_1 ( 86250 ) <theshadow99@gmai l . com> on Saturday February 01, 2020 @06:24PM (#59680068)

    Figuring they mean 'Columbus Ohio', then I used to live there. Columbus has a lot of banks and insurance companies which make their homes there. It was big on COBOL and SQL when I was there ~20 years ago. However 'cheap' it was not. I rented an apartment with a buddy of mine and it was ~2k/month which was 50% of our combined income at the time. Anything cheaper was considered 'low income housing' and you had to make under some very low values to qualify. Compared to some places that was probably 'cheap', but it was quite expensive when I wasn't making over 100k/year.

    Where I live now (~200 miles away from Columbus) I make way less than 50k/year, but even with the rise of housing costs over the last 20 years renting an apartment is less than 1k/month. Heck I could buy a house for ~1.2k/month. So cost of living is much lower. However, my disposable income is also considerably lower.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      What? I lived in Columbus, OH from 2009 to 2013. And you'd find plenty of 2 bedroom apartments under $1000/month. I was living around king and kenny. Even around the german village you'd find houses (ok pretty bad ones) for rent below $1500. And you did not need anything special to qualify.

      There were condo's opening on high street a bit north of high street and lane that were selling under $120K.

      • If I recall correctly I left in 2001 to move back closer to my family (well and the buddy I'd been renting with got addicted to drugs and ran off). I'd initially lived in Reynoldsburg in... '96? I think that's right. Then a few months in Canal Winchester. Beofre going elsewhere in Reyboldsburg. Those however were with larger groups (4-5 people) and I'm not sure how much rent was. In 2000 me and my buddy at the time decided to go in together on a new place with fewer people and that was in Galloway, though w

    • I live in Columbus Now, and I have since 2002 and work in Tech. Housing in Columbus is weird. For the most part its very good, cheap and affordable. But there are some areas of the city where it's stupidly expensive for one reason or another. Some area's it's because it's near campus and landlords know that a bunch of college students will share the place so a 2-3K rent divided between 4-10 students is something most of the students will be fine with. Other areas like German village, Clintonville, or a

  • Never understood Living in Sillycon Valley (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jarwulf ( 530523 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @06:24PM (#59680072)
    Never understood why people line up by the millions to cram themselves into cardboard boxes on the feces covered streets of the Bay Area. By almost every objective metric from the insane politics to the cost of living it sucks. You'd think internet jobs would be the last place you'd have to put up with working onsite but some people are cultists I guess. I suppose theres something to be said about face to face meetings but its not like many of these tech guys have much in the way of social skills anyway. So why not work offsite or better yet start your business somewhere other than just one stinkhole.
    • The Bay Area is a great place to live. Cost of living is high, but so are the salaries. Weather and culture are great, lots of wonderful people (both locals and people from all over who come here). Politics are politics - don't feel insane at all and are progressive. I've not had feces issues. Glad other cities are doing better too, it's good to have options.

    • " You'd think internet jobs would be the last place you'd have to put up with working onsite"

        It's easier to have control of your workforce when their bodies are physically present.

  • Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DigitalisAkujin ( 846133 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @08:32PM (#59680282) Homepage

    Totally depends but really I don't want to live in the "fly over" states not because of the people or the culture although that is part of it. The main reason is that honestly the weather sucks. Heck I'm in Philadelphia and don't even like it here. Seasonal depression is a thing.

    My gf and I both want to live in Southern California and not in LA but in just the general area for the weather. I'm already dropping 1900 a month on a 2 bedroom apartment with a roof balcony and off-street parking just to be within 1.5 miles of my office. But.... I could easily be living in the burbs around here and get a whole house for about 1500. Socal prices aren't too far off from that. I've seen decent 2 bedrooms for like 2400.

    The food is better than say middle America but it kinda depends. It ain't no NYC or LA but Philly has basically everything except weirdly.... good BBQ.

    All of us in the tech industry could easily be living on the beach somewhere and getting our jobs done. It's honestly just better for your health to not live in a place where you want to sit inside all winter. Sometimes I think I should just sublet an apartment in Hawaii for a month in the winter.

    With my gf and I both in the tech industry clearing 6 figures the 1900 a month is really not a big deal. We literally got an AirBnB in Tokyo for a month in the summer for 2k just cause we wanted to experience almost living there and yea that's on top of paying the rent at our place in Philly.

    I honestly laugh at these recruiters emailing me trying to get me to work on-site in like Kansas or something. These jobs never offer enough to move out there. Think about it like this. Yea housing could be less but internet costs more, good cell phone service also costs more, wear and tear on a car plus gas is also an expense, and for it to be worth my while you need to pay moving costs. Otherwise I need to work for you for a year before I actually see any profit from lowering housing costs. And with my life style where I travel a lot .... living there is actually a huge net negative cause flying costs more when you're coming from the middle of no where.

    And weirdly I'm actually an introvert that grew up in a quiet suburb so I actually really enjoy being in a rural area..... but not too rural.

    Also as far as raising a family....... the education in fly over states, I'm sorry to say, is complete garbage. People just have different values. In the USA the best school districts are in the suburbs of the big cities where you have a good mix of upper middle class liberals and conservatives. Plus networking wise those places are probably better for the social aspect for your kid's futures. They will generally make life long friends in school so where they go has a huge impact on how their life will turn out.

    • Youâ(TM)re doing yourself a disservice by discounting Kansas out of hand. Your ideal mixed liberal/conservative suburbia with great schools is a perfect description of Johnson county, the economic and tech center of the state.

      I grew up in South Jersey and had the same preconceptions about the area before I met my Kansas native wife. I was shocked at how much not different things are there compared to my suburban NJ life. Average commute is less than 20 minutes, $70 gigabit Google Fiber is plentiful, av

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Ryn ( 9728 )
        Higher humidity in summer, piles of snow in winter. Kansas "economic" experiments. As soon as you leave the burbs it's redneck country.

  • Should we make a meme or a tag already?
    "Move Over, Silicon Valley: XXX Gaining Tech Jobs"

    Somehow Silicon Valley is still as desirable and (therefore) pricey as in the nineties.

    • Yep, this shit come up every couple of years, and yet, the VC's are here, the money is here, and the engineers are here. That isn't going to change. Hasn't for several waves of tech over about 7 decades now.

  • low pay (Score:2)

    by drwho ( 4190 )

    These seem to be lower than what I would expect. Are these entry-level people? I know people in Seattle who are making $200k+. I am not at that level, but far above the numbers I see on these surveys, and I don't live in one of the high-cost areas mentioned.

  • I was born and raised in St. Louis. Lived there about 40 years before I moved away to accept a new tech job in the Metro DC area.

    I've got to say though? When I hear it's improving as a place to work in I.T. - I question that claim.

    One of the reasons I finally left was the frustration in finding and keeping a good tech job there. A long time ago, McDonnell Douglas was one of St. Louis's big employers, but then Boeing came in and bought them out. Ever since, they gradually scaled back their campus - leaving

  • The Melbourne/Palm Bay/Cocoa area of Florida is not listed. I can tell you that there is a lot of tech jobs in that area. You have large facilities for Northrup Gurman, Space X, Blue Origin, Rockwell Collins, Thales, and it is the headquarters for L3Harris. My company will pay me a 10,000 bonus for recruiting someone. Cost of living is cheap with a nice home running about 250,000 but you can find a condo or a fixer-upper for under 100,000 and some decent homes in the 150,000 range. I left out NASA as an emp

  • At this point in time, it would be insane for a company to try to start up in Silicon Valley. Or for anybody to try to live there.

      The ultra-greed that lead to the area's super sky high rents will ultimately be it's undoing. :\

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