Dallas IT job market

Iristheangel

bluejellorabbit wrote: »

The cost of living in California is obscene. That's one reason, I'm sure. Who wants to pay $3000/month in rent? Even if you're making a lot, the market could take a turn, you could be unemployed, and finding part-time work at Starbucks isn't going to cover your bills. I suppose Atlanta has spoiled me in that way because I can find a fairly nice one bdrm here for around $600-$700.

But also, I think the key words, as DPG said, are "highly skilled". Most of the job openings companies can't fill aren't positions for CCNA's with a couple years experience. They want CCIE's or RHCA's with 10+ years in the field. Maybe they really need those people, or maybe their wish list is overly ambitious. Couldn't say.

I didn't pay anywhere near $3000 when I had a 1 bedroom. I used to pay about $700 in Long Beach, $1000 in Pasadena, and $800 in Anaheim Hell, even when I started going for 2 bedrooms, it was still an average of $1400~. I guess if you live right on the beach in a fancy place on the west side, you'll have to drop $3000 but I'm ok with a nice apartment without being right on the beach. Currently, I'm in a two-story 4 bedroom/3 bath with 2000 sq feet in Pasadena for $2600 a month in a nice area. This is actually the biggest and most expensive place I've lived at but we wanted the room so we could have our own offices at home and room for the baby. Not everywhere in California is unaffordable.

As far as "highly skilled," I've got clients who can't even find true CCNA-level folks when they get down to an interview. There's a lot of people in the market looking for a job with CCNAs but not all of them really have a CCNA-level knowledge if you catch my drift. Problem is there's a lot of paper certs on the market who can't even spell BGP but they have 3x CCNPs? Yeah.... Kind of sad. My former employer was interviewing for over a year to fill my spot and couldn't even find a strong CCNA. Lot of interviews - sure - but a very dry talent pool. I know they ended up filling the position with someone who didn't have a lot of experience but ended up getting 6-figures anyways with full benefits because she did have the technical skill.

bluejellorabbit

Iristheangel wrote: »

I didn't pay anywhere near $3000 when I had a 1 bedroom. I used to pay about $700 in Long Beach, $1000 in Pasadena, and $800 in Anaheim Hell, even when I started going for 2 bedrooms, it was still an average of $1400~. I guess if you live right on the beach in a fancy place on the west side, you'll have to drop $3000 but I'm ok with a nice apartment without being right on the beach. Currently, I'm in a two-story 4 bedroom/3 bath with 2000 sq feet in Pasadena for $2600 a month in a nice area. This is actually the biggest and most expensive place I've lived at but we wanted the room so we could have our own offices at home and room for the baby. Not everywhere in California is unaffordable.

As far as "highly skilled," I've got clients who can't even find true CCNA-level folks when they get down to an interview. There's a lot of people in the market looking for a job with CCNAs but not all of them really have a CCNA-level knowledge if you catch my drift. Problem is there's a lot of paper certs on the market who can't even spell BGP but they have 3x CCNPs? Yeah.... Kind of sad. My former employer was interviewing for over a year to fill my spot and couldn't even find a strong CCNA. Lot of interviews - sure - but a very dry talent pool. I know they ended up filling the position with someone who didn't have a lot of experience but ended up getting 6-figures anyways with full benefits because she did have the technical skill.

That sounds more reasonable than anything I've heard. Every time I hear a cost of living story about California, it usually sounds fairly frightening. As far as job go around Atlanta, most positions I see advertised are senior level. Not too much in the way of entry level and 1-2 years experience around here.

That's a shame about the CCNA's not having a good knowledge foundation. I've heard CCNA used to be a lot easier, so maybe they're just old school people and way out of practice. In any case, as soon as I finish mine, I hope I can find some work that allows me to keep the skills fresh.

Iristheangel

bluejellorabbit wrote: »

That sounds more reasonable than anything I've heard. Every time I hear a cost of living story about California, it usually sounds fairly frightening. As far as job go around Atlanta, most positions I see advertised are senior level. Not too much in the way of entry level and 1-2 years experience around here.

That's a shame about the CCNA's not having a good knowledge foundation. I've heard CCNA used to be a lot easier, so maybe they're just old school people and way out of practice. In any case, as soon as I finish mine, I hope I can find some work that allows me to keep the skills fresh.

Yeah, check out Padmapper.com if you ever want to see a good place for aggregated listings. It's not so bad... it's all where you live. Northern California in like San Francisco is worse. There's a huge housing crisis in SF but funny enough, if you head out of the city, you can still find some decently affordable housing. My spouse and I were eyeing south San Jose for awhile since there were houses there that were 3-4 bedroom houses under $750,000 but in reality, there is some personal stuff preventing me from moving up there so we *might* end up going to Portland in a couple years instead.

As far as the CCNAs, heh... it's nothing to do with how easy they used to be and everything to do with the study materials they used to pass and lying about general experience in their resume. We had a guy recently interview with us with 15 years of experience in various network engineer positions at companies all across SoCal and the guy couldn't respond with a single routing protocol when we asked him "What's your favorite routing protocol and why?" I mean... spitting out RIPv1 would have been preferable to not being able to come up with a single on in this case. Also had no idea what IPSec was.... Kid you not. Interviewing people makes me sad.

joelsfood

And instant hire and raise if they answer Open/R?

Iristheangel

joelsfood wrote: »

And instant hire and raise if they answer Open/R?

Bwhahaha... probably would earn them some nerd points if they had experience with it

bluejellorabbit

Iristheangel wrote: »

We had a guy recently interview with us with 15 years of experience in various network engineer positions at companies all across SoCal and the guy couldn't respond with a single routing protocol when we asked him "What's your favorite routing protocol and why?" I mean... spitting out RIPv1 would have been preferable to not being able to come up with a single on in this case. Also had no idea what IPSec was.... Kid you not. Interviewing people makes me sad.

I can't quite wrap my head around that. That's like those stories you hear about kids making it all the way through middle and high school, passing, and somehow still not knowing how to read.

I'm currently studying ICND2 with CBT Nuggets and Jeremy Cioara and he's been going over EIGRP and OSPF, which are really the only two routing protocols at the moment I know much about about. But I can already say I like the idea of EIGRP better simply because I like the idea of distance vector more than link state for expandability. I'm anxious to learn about BGP in CCNP when I get there as I have a fascination with large routers and perhaps some misplaced allure toward the inner workings of large service providers.

I really don't know **** in the big scope of things right now. I'm older and moving careers to IT, but even I think I could come up with a semi-intelligent answer to the routing protocol question. How can someone work 15 years and not be able to name one? My troubleshooting brain now desperately wants an answer to this.

fmitawaps

If I were asked that routing protocol question, I would say OSPF because it doesn't have the limitations of EIGRP (cisco proprietary), or RIP (limited to 15 hops, ok for small companies but not large networks that need more).

Iristheangel

Yeah.... It's sad some of the interviews and candidates I've seen:
- (I didn't interview, just was there for the collapse) Guy who listed "Master of BGP" on his resume and was brought on as a contractor... Contract was ended less than a week later when he struggled with how to add a subnet to BGP for 4 hours....
- Network engineer with 5+ years of experience who couldn't explain anything more about STP than what the letters stood for. Literally watched him say "STP... hmmm... Spanning.... tree.... protocol...." for like 2 minutes while he scrambled to figure out what it was.
- Someone who recently had passed the CCNP Switch exam less than 2 weeks prior who couldn't explain the difference between RSTP and MST, didn't know what DCHP Snooping or private VLANs were....
- A bazillion CCNA/CCNP candidates who couldn't do the "packet walk" (you draw a two computers with a router and two switches between them and ask the candidate to verbalize how host A talks to host
- Lots of "CCIE Written" candidates who didn't even know what an OSPF LSA was... Sorry, the CCIE Written isn't a cakewalk. If you don't know CCNP-level topics and you have a very recent CCIE written, I'm inclined to believe you've cheated
- A guy who bragged about how he once stumped a CCIE but he couldn't answer a single technical question I gave him....


And the list goes on... Yeah....

fmitawaps

STP = the interconnected switches look at the MAC addresses of the ports connecting the switches. The lowest MAC address is blocked from transmitting, thereby preventing switching loops from occurring and bogging down the network. I just wrote this down without google searching it.

How hard is that? I'm sure it can be made more complex if you want to sound all fancy about it.

I used to do a desktop support contract with this one jackass who was your typical small town idiot, he had been in trouble with the law and used drugs, I don't know how he ever got into IT. I actually caught him huffing cans of computer air spray duster once at work, but since the company had security rules in place and we couldn't have our cell phones in there, I couldn't take video to show the bosses. I told them and they found 3 empty cans in his desk drawer, but didn't fire him. He used to have 7 certifications listed on his linkedin profile. I called him out on it and threw him some questions from my low level training videos, he got every one wrong, sometimes in front of our supervisor. He eventually took the certs off his linkedin.

byron66

I know some people crack under pressure and sometimes I struggle when being put on the spot. But what I'm reading just sounds ridiculous.

rwmidl

Iristheangel wrote: »

I didn't pay anywhere near $3000 when I had a 1 bedroom. I used to pay about $700 in Long Beach, $1000 in Pasadena, and $800 in Anaheim Hell, even when I started going for 2 bedrooms, it was still an average of $1400~. I guess if you live right on the beach in a fancy place on the west side, you'll have to drop $3000 but I'm ok with a nice apartment without being right on the beach. Currently, I'm in a two-story 4 bedroom/3 bath with 2000 sq feet in Pasadena for $2600 a month in a nice area. This is actually the biggest and most expensive place I've lived at but we wanted the room so we could have our own offices at home and room for the baby. Not everywhere in California is unaffordable.

2001-2002 I was paying $1100/mo rent in Long Beach. Of course I was pulling about 55k/yr at the time so it was pricey for me.

ITSpectre

fmitawaps wrote: »

I used to do a desktop support contract with this one jackass who was your typical small town idiot, he had been in trouble with the law and used drugs, I don't know how he ever got into IT. I actually caught him huffing cans of computer air spray duster once at work, but since the company had security rules in place and we couldn't have our cell phones in there, I couldn't take video to show the bosses. I told them and they found 3 empty cans in his desk drawer, but didn't fire him.

I used to work with a guy that would go off on people for no reason because they asked him a question. he would put a customer on hold and then yelled at other people and even the manager. And nothing was done. He was one of these people that thought he knew everything and didnt want to listen to management. The last time I talked to my old co workers they told me he still worked there, but he almost got fired for calling a customer that called the desk a "nimrod idiot".

Iristheangel

rwmidl wrote: »

2001-2002 I was paying $1100/mo rent in Long Beach. Of course I was pulling about 55k/yr at the time so it was pricey for me.

I'm a bit too logical for my own good when it comes to apartment hunting. This is probably more info that you want to know but here goes:

It was 2003-2004 for me for Long Beach. I was on 6th and Orange across the street from that little diner and the shopping center-ish thing. It was a big 3-story apartment building with a terrace. Wasn't bad at all and having gated entry was nice but I was pulling in probably about $13/hr so it was pricey to me at $700 and I was commuting via the Blue line to the Gold line every day to my little job at Bank of America credit card services. I had too many crazy people approach me at midnight as I was walking home from the Blue line (Anyone who knows Long Beach knows that you can walk through 2 good neighborhoods then through 2 bad and so on...) that I finally ended up getting a 2 bed/2 bath with a buddy of mine down the street from work and Old Town in Pasadena for around $1400 a month that was pretty comparable to something like this but closer to Old Town: Beautiful Newly Renovated 2 Story Unit

There's some pretty good places around but I like value and saving my money where I can. To me, there are some things that I don't compromise on:
- Needs to be near a freeway so commuting is easier. After all, what's the point if you just added 30 minutes on side streets to get to a freeway where you have to drive for 15-60 minutes?
- Needs to be in a safe area. Don't need to die to save a buck.
- Needs to have enough space that I feel comfortable. I hate small crampy apartments
- Must have parking
- Must have washer/dryer or the hookups
- Needs more than one bathroom
- Needs more than one electrical circuit - Come on! How am I going to run a lab?
- Needs to have central AC/heating
- Must allow pets (Cat lady)
- Can't be in a crazy traffic center. Seriously, Santa Monica people, it must suck to have traffic just to go to the grocery store.

Things to me that don't matter:
- Fancy stuff like pools, gym, underground parking, "Free (read: crap) internet," saunas, "feature" walls, etc. Having these things just drive up the cost of living and I don't find myself using them
- Living on the beach - This seems to be one that people are obsessed with. Again, I don't have time to go to the beach every day and I'm ok driving 30 minutes to get there on the weekend.
- Living in a party area. I'm in my 30s. I'm good ubering to a club on a random Saturday night if I feel the wild need but I don't need to live next to it.
- Living within 15 minutes of work if your work if flexible. This is a hard one for most people. Sometimes it works out that you get a job parked right next to your house. This was the case for me when I worked in Anaheim. Not so much when I started working in West LA. Instead, I found compromises like leaving earlier in the morning to avoid all traffic, getting my studying in early in the morning and then only having to battle traffic one way. By the time I got home, I had less studying to do. Ever since coming to Cisco tho, it was a little different because it's not a job that we work out of an office or anything. We visited clients when needed and had a sent list of them. The rest of the time, it was WFH. I just got a promotion though so it's going to be more WFH. I know a few folks on here that were able to swing WFH or 50/50 and that works out too. Who cares if you live further away if you're never going to an office or you only go in for 2 days a week?
- It shouldn't be decorated out of the 90s or full of mold but simpler is better. Paying $500 more a month for those prettier stones in your bathroom or nice marble counter tops for a place you'll never own always seemed silly to me.

rwmidl

Iristheangel wrote: »

I'm a bit too logical for my own good when it comes to apartment hunting. This is probably more info that you want to know but here goes:

It was 2003-2004 for me for Long Beach. I was on 6th and Orange across the street from that little diner and the shopping center-ish thing. It was a big 3-story apartment building with a terrace. Wasn't bad at all and having gated entry was nice but I was pulling in probably about $13/hr so it was pricey to me at $700 and I was commuting via the Blue line to the Gold line every day to my little job at Bank of America credit card services. I had too many crazy people approach me at midnight as I was walking home from the Blue line (Anyone who knows Long Beach knows that you can walk through 2 good neighborhoods then through 2 bad and so on...) that I finally ended up getting a 2 bed/2 bath with a buddy of mine down the street from work and Old Town in Pasadena for around $1400 a month that was pretty comparable to something like this but closer to Old Town: Beautiful Newly Renovated 2 Story Unit

There's some pretty good places around but I like value and saving my money where I can. To me, there are some things that I don't compromise on:
- Needs to be near a freeway so commuting is easier. After all, what's the point if you just added 30 minutes on side streets to get to a freeway where you have to drive for 15-60 minutes?
- Needs to be in a safe area. Don't need to die to save a buck.
- Needs to have enough space that I feel comfortable. I hate small crampy apartments
- Must have parking
- Must have washer/dryer or the hookups
- Needs more than one bathroom
- Needs more than one electrical circuit - Come on! How am I going to run a lab?
- Needs to have central AC/heating
- Must allow pets (Cat lady)
- Can't be in a crazy traffic center. Seriously, Santa Monica people, it must suck to have traffic just to go to the grocery store.

Things to me that don't matter:
- Fancy stuff like pools, gym, underground parking, "Free (read: crap) internet," saunas, "feature" walls, etc. Having these things just drive up the cost of living and I don't find myself using them
- Living on the beach - This seems to be one that people are obsessed with. Again, I don't have time to go to the beach every day and I'm ok driving 30 minutes to get there on the weekend.
- Living in a party area. I'm in my 30s. I'm good ubering to a club on a random Saturday night if I feel the wild need but I don't need to live next to it.
- Living within 15 minutes of work if your work if flexible. This is a hard one for most people. Sometimes it works out that you get a job parked right next to your house. This was the case for me when I worked in Anaheim. Not so much when I started working in West LA. Instead, I found compromises like leaving earlier in the morning to avoid all traffic, getting my studying in early in the morning and then only having to battle traffic one way. By the time I got home, I had less studying to do. Ever since coming to Cisco tho, it was a little different because it's not a job that we work out of an office or anything. We visited clients when needed and had a sent list of them. The rest of the time, it was WFH. I just got a promotion though so it's going to be more WFH. I know a few folks on here that were able to swing WFH or 50/50 and that works out too. Who cares if you live further away if you're never going to an office or you only go in for 2 days a week?
- It shouldn't be decorated out of the 90s or full of mold but simpler is better. Paying $500 more a month for those prettier stones in your bathroom or nice marble counter tops for a place you'll never own always seemed silly to me.

Most of your requirements was what I was looking for at the time. Being fresh from the East Coast and moving to the West Coast was a big move for me (job transfer - it was a good experience and I'm glad I did it). I had been in the Bay Area for about a month prior to my move doing our corporate office move, and I got the chance to fly down the SoCal for the day to look for a place to live. Our office was in Long Beach, so (not knowing traffic) I though I could live in Irvine or Tustin and easily make the drive. It wasn't that far on the map. I was unable to locate anything so I flew back kind of depressed. When I transferred I was trying to find a place close to the office (our building was at the corner of Pine and Ocean Blvd. Plus I was wanting something that had a) washer and dryer b) refrigerator - can't believe the number of places that didn't provide a fridge c) parking. Everyone told me to avoid Long Beach due to the crime but I happened upon a place about 3 blocks from the office on Pine. Not sure how familiar you are with Pine but there is a movie theater and up above it is a 3-4 story apartment building. I got a top floor 1 bedroom unit with a spiral staircase going to a loft where I had my office. It was nice being able to walk to/from work every day.

Iristheangel

Yep, I know Pine The warning I got about Long Beach was it was decent until you get above 10th street. Then you GTFO :P

BTW, all this talk about living in SoCal reminds me of the "Judgmental Map" for LA: JUDGMENTAL MAPS : Photo

rwmidl

Iristheangel wrote: »

(Anyone who knows Long Beach knows that you can walk through 2 good neighborhoods then through 2 bad and so on...)

Ha! I was just having some dinner with some Aussies last night who are making their first trip to the States this September. They are hitting Disney and thinking of staying someplace close by in Anaheim. I warned them that in CA you can go from nice to bad in just a block. Then told them of my apartment, one side of the block was a trendy area full of restaurants, bars, etc. On the other side was a park that was always full of homeless people.

Then I proceeded to tell the story of my second week in the area, a friend drove me around and thought it would be funny to take the naive southern boy to Compton. We pulled up to a corner and she said to me "know what happened here?" No. "This is where Reginald Denny got beat down during the riots!". My look was probably priceless.

Experienced_ISN'T_old

kp10tang wrote: »

I am californian. Tired of LA housing price and bad corrupted public education system.
Thinking about moving to Dallas area.
Is there plenty of network engineer jobs?

Doesn't dallas have a LOT of TELECOM roots? I remember doing Verizon's big FTTP rollout back in the day (dark ages when compared to what's out there now and on steroids) so Verizon is one telecom that is investing billions there.

mistabrumley89

Maybe I should move.

tmtex

Experienced_ISN'T_old wrote: »

Doesn't dallas have a LOT of TELECOM roots? I remember doing Verizon's big FTTP rollout back in the day (dark ages when compared to what's out there now and on steroids) so Verizon is one telecom that is investing billions there.

Telecom corridor is dead. Cisco is still there but that's about it. Oh State Farm made a massive building

Iristheangel

Yep. Cisco is in Richardson along with some TAC and I think wireless folks.

joelsfood

Lots of datacenter work in Richardson

Experienced_ISN'T_old

Iristheangel wrote: »

@GSXR750K2 - Go for it. If you're in a place that's NOT going to achieve your goals, GTFO. Don't waste your time or your career sticking around where you're at. I diverged a bit on my posts above since Dallas isn't really *my* place of choice and got off the point I was leading to:

My advice to the OP more had to do with his previous started threads - not a personal preference to gobble up all the CA folks and keep them here I have this habit of clicking on a poster's history before responding so I get some context into what they're asking and why they're asking. While California does have a higher cost of living for sure and I can't speak to the school system locally except most states public school systems are pretty wack, based on his posts for the last few months it sounds like he's been struggling finding a good paying job in Los Angeles. I would completely understand if he were living in a more remote area but I've seen a HUGE desperate need for network engineers in the LA area. To me, that might indicate another issue in terms of resume, skill set, interview skills, experience, etc that preventing him from having employers banging down his door to throw money at him for a network engineer job. If that's the case and that's not resolved first, that probably won't change anything by moving across the country.

@OP - How are you doing in terms of job response? Interviews? Recruiter and HR callbacks?

Recruiters and hiring managers play so many communications games and by that I Am talking "soft comms" not the hard core stuff we deal with. Simple email responses or picking up and taking phone calls when an applicant wants an update are two of the small things recruiters are absolutely atrocious at.

zackmax

bro i'd move to bangalore, india. they will treat you like royalty and pay you like $200k.
great weather, beaches, everything. i like their parties as well. just have to be careful about pollution and safety.

dmoore44

Iristheangel wrote: »

Yep, I know Pine The warning I got about Long Beach was it was decent until you get above 10th street. Then you GTFO :P

BTW, all this talk about living in SoCal reminds me of the "Judgmental Map" for LA: JUDGMENTAL MAPS : Photo

I grew up on California Ave on the block just south of 59th... I can remember a few drug busts way back when in the early 90s.

tedjames

Texas? I resemble that remark! Seriously, despite its flaws (and there are many), Austin's a pretty good place to live. Cost of living is high, but if you're not concerned with buying an overpriced condo downtown or living in Westlake Hills or Lakeway, you can still get a decent, affordable house. And despite the usual redneckery and good ol' boyisms, Austin's a nice, family friendly city. It's definitely not the same Austin I moved to back in 1992, though. There is lots of IT/security work in both Austin and San Antonio. There's a lot of work in security and not enough qualified personnel to do it. That said, Austin's FULL! We're overflowing with people!

omi2123

I currently live in Oklahoma City & working for Dell as an Enterprise Pro Support Plus Engineer. Me & my wife are planning on making a move to Dallas in 3 years. Reason for that is, I want to finish my CCIE & RHCSA before moving down there. My question is, will I be able to land a job starting 6 figures a year in DFW area with Cisco & Red Hat Experience as well as Dell Datacenter products knowledge? Besides all the certs I have, currently I'm working on CCNA Service Provider & will start CCNA Security right after that.

Can someone who lives & work in DFW area, please provide their 2 cents & any useful info you may add. Thank you in advance.

mactex

I have been a TE lurker for a while; but thought I would chime in here as I am a Storage Engineer for a Telecom here in Richardson. DFW is booming; mostly due to the exodus from California, although there are a some from up north in general. Quite a few medium to large size companies are/have moved here or have a decent size footprint here. With the boom; the housing market is hot with folks coming from Cali and dropping cash on a bigger house for half (or lower) of the cost of what they had out there. Because of this, housing prices have increase by about 30% in the last two years. I don't see this slowing down any time soon as the metroplex is sprawling out with new construction all the time. 80-100k here is very comfortable living. There is no state income tax and less gov intervention in your life. If you move here; they will issue you an AR-15 with your welcome package. Seriously though; do a search on indeed in Plano or Richardson with whatever your flavor of IT; and you will see the demand. Hope this helps.

JDMurray

Verizon is all over Texas in Richardson, Irving, West Lake, etc. Get on the Verizon Careers page and see if there's any positions offered in TX that interest you.

slinuxuzer

In talking with our data center SME at my company recently, he told me that Dallas is the fastest growing data center market in the US. Lots of co-lo investments due to Dallas being in the middle of the country and on independent power grid that doesn't overlap the California or Virginia zones. Also, I saw a statistic recently that said Texas accounts for 50% of job growth nation wide.

tmtex

RagingWire is building a DC down the street from me in Garland TX. Not that it matters Cisco is down a few miles more from that. Facebook is building or has a few over in Fort Worth. Amazon is also big here. I guess this is why I am asked weekly if I want to sell my house.