technical jobs in the US

hey all,

seeing as both my wife and i are losing our jobs here shortly, we dont really have a strong connection to southern californina (LA). so, we were considering the possibility of relocating to another part of the country. we really dont care where, but we just want a change and to get out of LA.

so, the question is; in your opinion, where are good places around the country that have computer-type technical jobs, in affordable, safe areas, and where the land isnt fully developed so you dont feel like you are in a concrete jungle? (wow... does that even exist?)

i have heard that some areas like austin, texas or seatle, washington are nice. any places in oregon or maybe other coastal states? i know i wont make the same salary moving outside of LA, but then again, the cost of living is usually less once you leave LA anyway. (if i was offered the same, however, i wouldnt pass it up )

thanks in advance for your thought and input.

 

Search the job market....and that'll tell you where the most 'technical' jobs are.

I live over here in Lancaster county, PA. Which, if you've heard, is Amish country. (laugh). So yeah, there's farmland here, cows, and things. Maybe that's too country? It's a happy medium (I guess) from city life and actual boonies. I live in a subberb to Lancaster city and we're about 1-1.5 hour drive to Philly. One hour to Harrisburg and 30 minutes or less to Maryland. A few hours to the shore....

I can't complain. It's nice here. Winters are mild. No real threats of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, etc.

But, I can't comment on how the job market is. Since your from LA (the FAST LANE) .....you'd probably be BORED to death out this way.

 

Denver, CO and Salt Lake City, UT are decent. What specific technical areas are you in?

 

Well, not sure what exactly you do. Anyway, due to BRAC all of military medical education is going to San Antonio, Tx. by 2012. Not sure about contracts established, but the military always looks to contractors to do the work on military installations. There will be ALOT of opportunity for many sectors of work. Child care is probably the biggest....there will be ~7000 students at any time on campus and then the support staff that goes with that. There is SO much opportunity available....you just have to see if there is a niche you can fill.

hth

 

x2 on Denver

Definitely hit those job finder sites hard. I like indeed.com. Also, if you can, see how bad the recession has hit the city you're looking at. I know a couple guys, one in Kansas City and one in Wichita. The one in KC is an engineer and lost his job a few months ago and applies for jobs a couple times a week as soon as they are available. The problem is 1500+ other people apply for the job at the same time. The guy in Wichita has the same problem. Tons of people in those cities are out of work.

Good luck man.

 

i always here about the DC/Northern VA area being good for jobs. Thats where im going in Jan.

 

well, ya... i can do that to find where the technical jobs are, but i am looking to you guys to find out what areas are good to live as well. you guys are the best resource for that and i value your opinions since you would be speaking from experience.

 

programming, scripting, tools, pipelines, processes, game production (obviously), configuration management (build farms/systems), source control management (Perforce, etc...), help desk, development director (manager), the list goes on....

 

try las vegas

 

well... we are tired of the "fast lane" we were never really into anyway.

i would love to live in a more country area, but still have some access to somea larger city.

 

Do you want to stay on the west coast?
Where I live, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hires a lot of contractors, SAIC, being one of the biggest. They are standing up a huge infrastructure (I have a friend who is an engineer with them). They are always looking for people according to him. And this is up in little ol VT. Also SAIC is a major contractor with DOD & support out of DC to all National Guard networks fwiw.

Plus there is always Boston, live in Concord, commute down I93 into Beantown.

What career field is your wife interested in pursuing?

oh btw, It is freaking cold here, and snowy too.

 

dallas and surrounding cities, plano, frisco, Mckinney
austin
houston,tx

virginia is not bad either, i lived in the hampton roads area for a year.

maybe look into getting a job on a military base. I just started working on base here and its pretty decent.

 

RTP here in NC is a real hot spot for techie jobs. I work for Verizon and interview people periodically - lots of folks from Nortel (not so good of a choice right now), IBM, SAS (although they never want to leave), Cisco, Tekelec, Lenovo and others. Cost of living would be WAY lower than where you are, weather is nice and most everything is green.

Coming from South Texas one of the things I still haven't quite adjusted to is you can be driving through the center of the metro area (over a million people) on I-40 and aside from the other cars being there you'd have no idea you were even in a city. Trees everywhere, buildings are set back into hills, etc. Now that I know where most things are located I can sit back and enjoy feeling like I'm driving through the middle of nowhere with 50 of my friends in their cars.

 

I know AMD is building some billion dollar chip fab place north of Albany, ny.

 

Boeing is opening a plant in charlesston , SC and greenville SC is a nice place to live. we are half way between Charlotte and Atlanta, about 2 hours both way. There are a few computer companies around here and several health care insurance company are hiring. Met life, united health, Ahold, Verizon has a call center, GHS where i work for is looking for a database cordnatior. https://ghs.igreentree.com/CSS_External/CSSPage_JobDetail.ASP?T=20091120193438&

 

Houston has a lot of goood tech jobs...plus we haven't been hit as hard as everywhere else economy wise...plus the outer suburbs are pretty nice...the only thing that really sucks is the humidity and the traffic...

 

Melbourne, FL

2nd highest concentration of engineers in one city in the US (2nd to Silicon Valley). The night life reflects this.

Plenty of Unix/Altix/SysAd work to be found. If you're ex military or eligible for a clearance, all the better. SAIC, Honeywell, Lockheed, DRS, BAE, GD, L3, Nothrop, Harris all represented here. Orlando reflects the same and more.

Hope you like water! Fishing, diving, surfing (haha well maybe) is all decent here. Check out Dice, you'll see what I mean.

 

This was gonna be my suggestion...Raleigh is sometimes called the Silicon Valley of the east coast.