We're all going to eventually be project managers soon as we continue to outsource everything. I'm speaking strickly from a corporate standpoint. I developed reporting applications until recently when it was transferred to IT. Now I manage projects relating to warranty cost reduction. go figure.
Houston is a good city with many good programming jobs but is it twice as good as, let's say, LA? Metro Salary Cost of Living Adjusted Salary Los Angeles $82,540 153 $ 53,948 Houston $89,530 87 $102,908 These are actually numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics so they should be good in general (except the salary for LA is the avg of 2 numbers, one of which has a whopping 14.6% error) http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_31084.htm#b15-0000 15-1031 Computer Software Engineers, Applications 17,800 $41.47 $41.50 $86,320 2.7 % http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_42044.htm#b15-0000 15-1031 Computer Software Engineers, Applications 11,970 $33.69 $36.98 $76,920 14.6 % The number for Houston shows a relative small number of jobs available (6,170). If you don't have jobs, it matters little if it pays more. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_26420.htm#b15-0000 15-1031 Computer Software Engineers, Applications 6,170 $38.44 $43.05 $89,530 4.3 % Another point I would argue against is the use of CPI in this article. Houston has a CPI of 87 compared to 153 for LA. http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=100000&city1=4480&city2=3360 LA-Long Beach Houston Overall 153 87.2 Food 112.3 93.9 Housing 227.7 68.3 Utilities 116 95.7 Transp 109 103.2 Health 118.8 106.5 Misc 106.8 96.3 The number for LA is weighted down because of housing cost, a little too much in my opinion. Housing affects standard of living for sure but to be fair you need to consider intangible factors, climate, culture life and others as well. If you make $87K in Houston now, would you take $97K to move to LA, or do you need $107K, $117K ...? I suspect many of us will take less than $153K.
You can't have affordable and competent in the same sentence with .Net.... you know that. lol. Seriously, I actually haven't worked in too many environments lately where .Net was used to any great extent. The last place I worked at, they used Delphi for the front end and Interbase for the back-end (talk about niche development).
The housing is what kills it for me in California. I had a plan to work out in Cali. on contracts, but actually live in the DFW area (I'd work 6 month contracts, then take some time off, and maybe make a visit to my house every so-often on a weekend). That all changed when I saw salaries in Cali. They are nowhere near adjusted for COI. The COI for Cali is about right. Consider, generally speaking, gas costs more there, you spend time sitting in traffic more making your gas costs even more, the average house costs 2-3 times as much, etc. and your salary isn't a ton more than it'll be here in the Texas area. You get an idea of why everybody is taking their equity from Cali and moving here. If I lived in California, it would have to be some place like San Diego. I'd despise a place like Los Angeles.
Hence the 'reasonably' qualifier. Maybe I should have used the qualifier twice. Delphi...ahem... ok. Was it in Colorado? My partner came from what I thought was the last Delphi shop.
$97? No way. You would be amazed. My sister's nondescript apt in Huntington Beach (and closer to the 405 fwy than the beach) just raised the rent on a 1 br to about $2k/mth. And it'll prob cost $500-1000 to register your car each year... I could keep going, but trust me, it's not easy to live in LA on less than $100k. We made considerably more while there and it felt like nothing.
Isn't this true of many jobs in Houston? Cost of living here is lower than the average, and salaries and higher than the average. I would think that Houston would compare favorably on this kind of analysis in most industries.
You've obviously never lived there. Cost of living in LA is more than double that of Houston. Housing & energy prices lead the way.
Miami near the bottom of the list for adjusted salary. Not surprised at all. I felt like I was only 1/2 a step above living the college life. Anyways, it's interesting to hear the perspectivies of how it is everywhere else. The Houston area sounds amazing if it's true (and you actually have a job, I suppose).
My parents are working out in Long Beach, CA right now. Their one bedroom apartment is $1400 a month. They are making about about 30% more than they were in Houston. Personally, I don't think it's worth it. Weather there is great but it's pretty good here for about 6-7 months out of the year. Plus it's home.
My wife used to work in Long Beach. One co-employee was in her car going to lunch and got robbed at a stop light by an armed thief who walked right up to her window. LB has some tough areas.
Long Beach cracks me up. It's a bunch of college kids, thugs, etc. running around at every corner, yet the average home price is something like $350-$450k, I think. I know a lady that lives out there whose home price has gone from $100k+ to around $800k and it's not much of a house.
The job market for .NET has really picked up in the last 1.5 years. I have about 8 years experience in development with a degree and I managed to get 2 competing offers in the fall. However, a lot of the companies I talked to weren't making very good offers. Continental had an exciting shop, but were only offering 70Kish and 10 days vacation. The offer I rejected from a division of Prudential wanted me to work 6+ months contract without a solid guarantee of what the full-time salary would be and when I could come on-board. They did have a nice benefits package with 19+ paid days off once you were full-time. Frankly, the thing that annoys me more than anything else is companies trying to stiff you with 10 vacation days when you've been working in the industry as long as I have. With the current state of the market where you have to change jobs to get a decent raise, it makes no sense to tie vacation benefits to tenure. There does seem to be a lack of good developers on the market though. The last company I worked for brought on 4-5 contract programmers while I was there and they ALL had serious flaws or issues. ($40-45$ / hour contract rate) The last guy claimed to be a .NET developer, but he had no clue about HTML. He had done all of his work through the .NET interface and didn't have the basic understanding of what he was working with. Two weeks later, he still had no clue - read a freaking book - you're supposed to be a knowledge worker! HTML is not rocket science! Then he left the contract, complaining about not having been given enough responsibility or a good project to work on. Heck, we were just trying to get some productive work out of him - we're supposed to entrust him with a lead role on a project? Anyway, given some of the people out there claming to be what they are not lugging around useless certs, I understand why some companies would try to throw money at the problem. Underpaying and getting a bad resource working on a critical project is about the worst mistake you could make as a manager.
OMG I think I worked w/ that dude. So I'm about to leave a job for family reasons (parents). The guy they just brought on 1.5 months ago has been working on a project (and it's high visibility stuff too). My friend tells me this guy has NO CLUE (datagrid what?) what he's doing and has been helping him out. Well the new guy gets the can my last week there. On the last day my boss literally begs me (after a whole day of persuasion) to stay and take on his project. My assumption is our client's main manager loves me and must have said some very good things to my boss. So my boss says 'at least do it for your friends who work here, we're still trying to establish a good repoire w/ them and it wouldn't be good if this project stays grounded.' I'm thinking to myself 'you personally interviewed and hired this dude who turns out to be a bust, and suddenly it's on me?' Long story short, I look through all his work and 5 minutes later delete everything and start from scratch. You can do the math: even at the low end of contract rates times 1.5 months, down the tube!
