Goodbye Virginia! (Richmond, Lynchburg, Madison: house, job market, transfer)

[badger74]

Wait until you see the housing prices in Portland if that's where you go ($600k for anything nice in the city). And nobody sends their kids to the city schools (add $10K per year per kid). But the advertising world is certainly much larger there. Some top firms.

[Wi_Girl]

Good for you! I cant wait to say Goodbye VA and Hampton Roads...just three more years to get through school!!! Even my husband who grew up here is whole life is tired of the crappy school systems, the outrageous cost of living, and the crime.

[j1n]

Originally Posted by badger74

Wait until you see the housing prices in Portland if that's where you go ($600k for anything nice in the city). And nobody sends their kids to the city schools (add $10K per year per kid). But the advertising world is certainly much larger there. Some top firms.

"Nice" is relative. Single family homes in Portland metro currently start at $69,900 and go up from there. If he's a single guy and can handle less square footage than a family of 4 would need, he can get a decentplaceunder $100k.

[SCBeaches]

Originally Posted by Jerry_Williams

Well,
Right now it seems like I have four places to go. While most employers in Lynchburg found me too dumb and worthless to employ, it seems that in other parts of the world people actually think I have a little something to offer. I know that Lynchburg offers many fantastic job opportunities in the social sector for $8.00/houer with no benefits, call me snobby and everything else, but that was not what I had in mind when I went to college. (Student loans do not come cheep).

Right now I it seems that I can choose between animation studio Jam Media in Dublin, Ireland, advertising agency 52 LTD in Portland, OR, GJP Advertising + Design in Toronto, Canada and Studio Liddell, Manchester, UK.

I have been offered jobs at the two North American companies and one of the oversees businesses are flying me over for another interview. (A friend of me works at the other company and he claimed as late as yesterday that they were very impressed with me after the interview.)

So, I do not know EXACTLY were I am heading….but I sure as heck am getting out of central Virginia.

I've never been to Lynchburg but it doesn't sound like I've missed much. However, I am envious of what lies ahead of you! I would definitely look seriously at the positions in UK and Ireland! Do it while you're young. I love travel and go overseas every chance I get, but to have the opportunity to live there would be awesome! You might get homesick and you might not like it there after all, but hey, at least you would have tried it. I tell all young people to GO FOR IT while you can so you don't end up sitting in a rocking chair someday talking about what might have been!

Best of luck to you in your future endeavors.

[Mr_Jonas]

Jerry...PLEASE TAKE ME WITH YOU :-)
Ok, just kidding. One day I hope to make it out of Lynchburg as well. Lynchburg has brought a new definition to crappy.

[badger74]

He said he moved to L to be closer to his wife's family etc. I work in real estate and am very familiar with Portland as my best friend from college lives there and we go there several times a year. You don't get anything for $100K except maybe a studio condo in an old building. A decent home that would cost $200K in L will run $600k in any good area of Portland. By decent I mean 2,000 sf with some nice details and in good shape in the city--not a fixer. If you want to live way out in the burbs you might find something nice for $400k. Remember, P has some pretty sketchy areas too.

[Dr.Jim]

Jerry -
By looking at the companys you are considering,....it appears to me that you might have education in advertising or design?
If this is true,...why would you ever, ever expect to make much of a living in VA? It has no markets (short of Nova and MAYBE Richmond) that would support much in that type of business. Sure,....maybe in a little, bitty 3 person agency or mom/pop production house making local car dealer flyers or spots,.......but otherwise...you should know better. To be successful in those industries, you should be in a major market.

If you are not directly in those professions, then please disregard the above.
And regarding all your other 'critiques' of the area: to each their own! (I am personally not familiar with Lburg at all) Best of luck to you though. Sincerely!

[12buttons]

Originally Posted by Dr.Jim

Jerry -
By looking at the companys you are considering,....it appears to me that you might have education in advertising or design?
If this is true,...why would you ever, ever expect to make much of a living in VA? It has no markets (short of Nova and MAYBE Richmond) that would support much in that type of business. Sure,....maybe in a little, bitty 3 person agency or mom/pop production house making local car dealer flyers or spots,.......but otherwise...you should know better. To be successful in those industries, you should be in a major market.

If you are not directly in those professions, then please disregard the above.
And regarding all your other 'critiques' of the area: to each their own! (I am personally not familiar with Lburg at all) Best of luck to you though. Sincerely!

That was my thinking too - advertising outside major metros is very provincial and paranoid..so it was a bad choice overall...we got the smae cold shoulder when we tried to get work in Buffalo - we were seen as a threat, not an asset....locals don't trust outsiders - even in business!


Richmond has a killer ad agency or did at one time..12b

[vanyali]

Dublin would be great. You're in a neat place that is still affordable and livable (not like London) and can take weekend trips to EUROPE for God's sake. That's awesome.

My husband just spent a few months trying to get work in the Netherlands. They didn't want us (his recruiter actually stopped talking to us once we mentioned I wanted work too, imagine that) so now we're moving to DC. It's not Europe, but at least it's not Lynchburg.

Good luck wherever you land.

[Jerry_Williams]

Thanks for everyone’s input, thoughts and best luck wishes.
I wish I had time to reply to each and every one of you but as I know you will understand I have things to wrap up and other things to plan for.

To house prices in the Portland area does not scare me. I have not really made much money in Lynchburg so it is not as if I could take advantage of the house prices here.

I moved to central Virginia to be closer to my wife’s family. I was always quite skeptical about the move as I could not phantom how I was to make a living here. My wife’s family more or less thought I was absolutely crazy. Because “Lynchburg had so much to offer” and “You should at least try, you will get very surprised”…. Honestly, I never believed them for a second. They just wanted their daughter to live close to them no matter what. So if they had to lie “a bit. My wife got more or less physically sick from their pressure of her moving closer to her parents. For her sake I figured I might give it a shot. I was hoping I could get some kind of computer job as I have spent plenty of time in front of both Mac’s and PC’s. One job I had our system manager was very sick so I used to cover for him a lot, even tough I was supposed to design, not reinstall servers and stuff. (So I did both…). Or maybe some paper pushing administrative job.... That did not happen. There are some local mom and pop advertising agencies in Lynchburg. They usually wanted me to do work for them pro-bono to see what I was worth……and apparently I was not worth a whole lot. (or they just wanted to get some free stuff out of me…no a god fearing, church going, morally upstanding citizen of Lynchburg would NEVER do that, would he…)

Someone mentioned “Northern speed” or something like that. I do not know how much Lynchburg represents the rest of the south east. My experiences here have taught me that in Lynchburg people rather hire the relatives of friends more then anything. Being born and raised in Lynchburg is much better then any university degree. As one guy told me “We like the way we do things around here, son. We don’t need no Yankees showing up trying to be smart”.

I really have to do some serious thinking about moving oversees. I might be better prepared them others to live in the British Isles (or the Isles as my relatives wants me to say….more on that later). My dad was in the air force and was twice stationed in England, so I spent a good chunk of my child hood in England. I did not attend American schools there and while I do not see my self as very “English” at all, I still prefer “soccer” and rugby over US style Football, I understand cricket with no problems (OK, it is still really boring), I love tea and scones with clotted cream, jam and butter…but now I really, really do not like marmite. OK, this is all rather superficial and the England of my childhood is hardly the England of today, in the same way that the US of my childhood is far from the US I live in as an adult. I do not mean this as a social analysis but rather that the way we view things as a child is different than those we see as an adult.

Also, my mother’s parents emigrated from Ireland. She was born in the US but her three older brothers were all born in Cork. When we lived in England we went and visited her uncles and aunts quite a bit. (They told me not to say The British Isles…the Republic of Ireland is not British so I should say The Isles….)


Anyhow, I still hope Badger74's visions of Lynchburg will one day be true.