What's the job market like in your town?

I know this gets talked about occasionally here on TE, but it's been a while since I've seen a thread on the subject, so I figure we can use an update for 2018.

I'm on the networking side of things in Los Angeles. No shortage of jobs here, but as always cost of living and the traffic are killers. I'm lucky enough to live only 15 miles away from my job; morning commute takes around 30-45 minutes which is a breeze compared to a lot of my coworkers. One guy in the office lives 70 miles away and wakes up at 2AM (!) to take a Metrolink train into work by 6AM. His rent is dirt cheap though.

I'm in a rent-controlled building; but I already know if I ever had to move, I would straight up have to move out of state because I can't afford the average price on anything else around me.

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NOC-Ninja

4 network jobs in my town. All wants CCNP and top secret clearance. All are offering 100k plus.
I am mins away to my work and no traffic.

TechGromit

In my Town? Probably none. I live in a shore community where roughly 25 percent of the houses are summer houses. People come for the weekend to fish or take day trips to the nearby beach towns. There no industry here, not even anything bigger than a strip mall. I have to travel at least 30 minutes (25 miles) for any decent number of IT related jobs.

scaredoftests

DC metro area. Plenty of jobs.

shodown

+1 for DMV. Plenty of jobs. Not so many in voice as their use to be, but still much better than the rest of the country. I still get a lot of contractor work outside the DMV.

TechGromit

scaredoftests wrote: »

DC metro area. Plenty of jobs.

The question was what was the job market in your town, not area, the DMV are covers thousands of square miles. There plenty of work if I drive to Philadelphia or Northern New Jersey, but they are hardly in my "town".

Ertaz

In my town? 0. In the town I work in, a few entry level, low paying(even by midwestern standards) tech jobs. I drive in 25 miles/30 minutes just to get to that. I am lucky, I am compensated well for my location, but if I ever wanted to leave there's no place to land.

Rakurai

Well, if we go by town, nothing. I live on the outskirts with property that has a couple of acres.

If we go by area, plenty of DoD jobs as there are 5 military bases that I can easily get a job on.

As for cost of living, houses are ~$300k. Gas isn't crazy expensive like in California. My current (and max) commute for jobs would be 25 minutes, ~30-35 miles, but that is from south side to north side of the city.

EANx

TechGromit wrote: »

The question was what was the job market in your town, not area, the DMV are covers thousands of square miles. There plenty of work if I drive to Philadelphia or Northern New Jersey, but they are hardly in my "town".

Nothing wrong with replying based on a metro area. Otherwise you start to nit-pick on the definition of a town and the restriction of a small independent municipality that's surrounded by two major cities or that it doesn't count if you cross state-lines, even if it's three stops by metro.

ashernatanel

I didn't mean for town to be a specific or exclusive term. It could be town, city, metro area, village, commune, etc, lol. Just trying to get a sense of if I felt the wind blowing me out of Southern California, where should I aim to land. DMV area sounds hot, but cost of living is still high there too, no? Is it comparable to Los Angeles, or not as bad?

beads

Contacted for jobs and a few positions in Downtown Chicago with the suburbs taking a bit of a beating in comparison. Hardly call the market over heated with regard to jobs in security. I do see more and more cloud and infrastructure positions. A couple of years ago you would be hard pressed to find anything downtown but companies are killing themselves to hire millennials in downtown locations.

Like a breath of fresh air I am seeing more positions in outright rural areas in states like New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan, giving me hope for a less urban centric job market. Of course for years it was "y'all c'mon down to... Texas or the Carolina's.

- b/eads

scaredoftests

Los Angeles is more expensive than the DMV area...

Ertaz

beads wrote: »

Of course for years it was "y'all c'mon down to... Texas or the Carolina's.

- b/eads

Glad I didn't go Oil and Gas while it was hot...

LeBroke

DevOps.

Lots of jobs. Salaries are finally starting to get "acceptable" (90-110k CDN for a mid-level guy, starting salaries are still closer to 60-70).

Cray high cost of living compared to most places. Typical house in Vancouver proper is $2 million, if not more (that's a tear-down crapshack). Suburbs aren't much better.

On the upside, comparatively decent rents, even now ($1500 CDN is doable for a 1-bed, $2k is a pretty nice 1-bed) if you're in tech. Great public transit. Low taxes compared to NY and California (though much higher than Washington State, Oregon and Texas). Free* healthcare ($80/month nationalized insurance, but most employers pay this).

Lots of brain drain, most of it to Seattle, with some to San Francisco, so for those that stay, it's a seller's market.

A lot of people are unhappy because a company can advertise two identical positions, except one in the US will pay 120k USD, one in Vancouver will pay 80k Canadian.

Demand for developers is a lot higher, but there's also a lot of supply at the entry level, and median salary is about 75k. DevOps pays better IMO.

Regular IT job market is, from what I understand, pretty crap. Network guys get maybe 70-80k for seniors. Windows guys less.

Dojiscalper

Not much for IT here. There is always a job posted, but tons of competition. Pay is a tough problem here, IT pay is low if its a locally owned company. If its a position with a nationally owned company you get a much more reasonable pay expectation. The good news is there's plenty of opportunity to get cheap housing. Tons of condos and vacation homes at higher prices and you can get a home in a suburban style neighborhood way below the national average or there's tons of mobile homes all over at very low prices. After living in a big house in the Midwest I went the mobile home route and couldn't be happier.

With the low cost of living I had the opportunity to start my own business and jumped on it.

Pmorgan2

There's a healthy job market here in Sacramento, CA. There's a lot of state, university, and hospitals here that hire a lot. There's also a few larger industry offices like Amazon (distribution), Siemens, and Intel. The cost of living is a bit high. A 3 bedroom, 1600 sqft house runs over $350k here. I pay the premium to live in the city rather than deal with the moderate traffic.

For system administration, the pay seems to be under U.S. market value. Project Management jobs seemed to be over the average.

TechGromit

ashernatanel wrote: »

I didn't mean for town to be a specific or exclusive term. It could be town, city, metro area, village, commune, etc, lol.

That's not what you said.

A better question would be, "How is the IT employment opportunities in reasonable commuting distance from where you live?", "If not why don't you move?"

epcg

In my town the past 8 months I've seen 1 admin job, 1 OT manager job, 1 Unix job. So I drive 50 miles for a job. A little further is DOD jobs that I yet to get into. I got the experience but the clearance gets me. Im looking at an almost 2 hour drive if I want to move jobs. My current job they love me but I'm bored as corporate doesn't let us to much without fighting for it. So I may have to make that drive. Oh I interviewed for 1 of those jobs the pay was so bad I had no choice but to say no.

E Double U

There is no cybersecurity market in my beach town. All of those jobs (and there are plenty) are in Amsterdam which is where I commute to. I live about 34 miles from the office.

Nightflier101BL

My "town" has next to nothing for IT jobs. However, I live 40 miles outside the DC metro area. Almost everyone, IT and other, commute to the DC area for work, unless you want to make $12 working for the local government entities in my "town." This also contributes to the notoriously awful traffic in the area. Plenty of jobs closer to the city but a lot require a clearance. I don't have one and won't even bother with a job that requires/offers one. I've never had an issue finding work without it.

However, there are two main employers in my town, one is a hospital organization and the other is local government. I've worked for both of them (IT) and I hated it. I chose to commute into the city, where I doubled my income. You can live here dirt cheap compared to living closer in.

Seriously, tons of jobs in Loudoun, Reston/Herndon, Alexandria, Arlington, DC, etc. If you want to work in a NOC/SOC check out Loudoun County Pkwy, also known as "Data Center Alley"

Cost of living is higher in Los Angeles (or just Southern CA as a whole) compared to DMV, but it's close. I was seriously considering a move to Redlands CA a little while back but realized I'd never be able to live with the same comforts. But my town which is 40 miles out is considered a "bedroom community" and cost of living is super cheap.

minit

Very few IT jobs in southern NJ. Most are in Philly. Yuck. About an hour from Philly with traffic.

dhay13

My town? Probably the local school district where there are 2 people in the IT department. I did my internship there. There is a steel mill but their headquarters is a few towns away so their IT dept is probably there. So I would say 2 in my town. If I go about 25 miles away there are quite a few more and expand that to 50 miles and I start getting into the downtown Pittsburgh market, which opens things up more. There is an auditing firm about 15 miles from here that has a few security specialists folks on staff. I did make contact there but they are not hiring.

SweenMachine

beads wrote: »

Contacted for jobs and a few positions in Downtown Chicago with the suburbs taking a bit of a beating in comparison. Hardly call the market over heated with regard to jobs in security. I do see more and more cloud and infrastructure positions. A couple of years ago you would be hard pressed to find anything downtown but companies are killing themselves to hire millennials in downtown locations.

Like a breath of fresh air I am seeing more positions in outright rural areas in states like New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan, giving me hope for a less urban centric job market. Of course for years it was "y'all c'mon down to... Texas or the Carolina's.

- b/eads

The market for Service Desk, and various customer support IT roles is actually real warm in Chicago area right now. I think the higher end roles are not quite as hot; but I can tell you this, as a Service Desk manager and executive at an MSP, I'm finding talent is more difficult these days than even a year ago.

-scott