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Moving is expensive, but if you have a lot of stuff, you could consider getting an inexpensive studio apartment and putting your stuff in storage somewhere short-term and only bringing what you can fit in your car with you (assuming you're single at least, and that the car won't be full of other people). Then when you get a job, get a bigger place and move the rest of your stuff out. Of course, you need to find a landlord who's okay with seeing a fat bank statement instead of a paystub.
There is a monetary cost, but there is also the cost of widening the gap on your resume which can become very difficult to overcome.
When companies were calling me, it was to interview for jobs in Oracle or MS SQL. In the end, I chose the job that had MS SQL. It was the highest offer for a $20k raise. I ended up not using the Oracle specific commands.
The employers weren't concerned about the flavor SQL. Since I didn't have a college degree or experience, they really grilled me on technical questions. It was like an oral exam.
For the relocation thing, I'd love to relocate but there's a few things to consider:
1. This isn't 1994, where if you had at STEM degree, you could basically walk into any job you wanted to have
2. Moving is expensive
3. Many companies don't consider out of area applicants because they think that the person is A. going to get homesick and leave at the earliest opportunity or B. ask for relocation assistance that the company is naturally not willing to provide
4. Many apartments now days will not rent to you unless you have a pay stub or some other evidence that you can pay your rent
5. Even if you have thousands of dollars saved up, it can be months, if not longer, before you find a job in your new city and that can burn through your savings extremely fast.
Again "just relocate!" is presenting a simple answer to a not so simple problem.
You are overanalyzing it. Get the job first, then relocate.
It's very common for employers to conduct the interviews by video or phone, nowadays. Here are a few people doing video or phone interview for jobs out of state.
I moved hundreds of miles for a job in Dallas. I didn't even see my boss's face until the first week of the job, because it was all done by phone.
If you don't want to relocate, then work by remote. All the work is done on the network shared drive, servers, and email anyway. That's a common arrangement. At my current and previous employers, we had people working in other states. Their boss was located in one office, but the employee was hundreds of miles away in a different state. These people aren't 10 year veterans either. We have people from entry level to 3-4 years of exp, mostly.
That's easy to say. When you're living in a small city with no opportunities, either unemployed or working some dead-end McJob, you're either coming out even or losing money, all while increasing your resume gap, and a move before a job may be necessary.
They never are "so cheap." Apart from legal costs, you cant get an H1B unless the position is paying the prevailing wage. If you think the wage being paid undercuts the prevailing wage, tell the DoL, they are pretty hot on that sort of fraud.
Bwahahahhaa
Oh thats funny.
Look this is how it works-"prevailing wage" is set at X, as inflation would otherwise increase that number, instead it stays at X as the H1-B's in the area start at that value, and by having the H1B's around the value doesnt go up as fast as it otherwise would.
Additionally "its all arguable" is great when you discuss prevailing wage, and you can cherry pick data.
You are right they could have skills that are applicable, but that doesn't mean that they do. I think today is very different than our parents generation. There is an abundance of people coming out with basic programming skills (I think the main skill gap is the experienced groups). I think the skill gap issue is always at the more advanced levels. People who had the skills may move on to another career (many programmers and technicians move into management roles), etc. Then there are people that have the skills that aren't willing to move for a job, etc. I've noticed the advanced positions are always the hardest to fill because the people with that skill set get to choose where they want to work.
Again, you're missing the point. There are people with basic skills. They may not be exactly what you want, but with a little coaching...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mizzourah2006
They are obviously finding people like that though. I was talking to a company about a position and they wanted experience developing exactly what I develop, but in a different context. They decided not to pursue me as a candidate despite the fact that I explained to them that the process is exactly the same. Oh well, but I'm guessing the hiring manager wouldn't have turned me down if he had no other options at all.
And that's the point we're trying to make. If there were more than enough jobs to go around, this would not be an issue.
Again, you're missing the point. There are people with basic skills. They may not be exactly what you want, but with a little coaching...
And that's the point we're trying to make. If there were more than enough jobs to go around, this would not be an issue.
So you are a VP of a company, you lose a director of a specific group, you have 3 other people on the team. None with any leadership experience, and the highest tenured person has 5 years of experience. You are looking for someone with leadership experience and 7-10 years of experience in that particular area.
Would you promote the internal with 5 years and no leadership experience? Would you bring in someone that has leadership experience, but has no experience in that particular area?
It's not as simple as coaching in experienced areas. Who coaches the director? As the VP over several areas do you have time to coach him?
Teach him about the area?
It's a lot easier to coach someone with basic skills in an entry level position, not in an advanced position. This is where the shortage I've noticed is.
So you are a VP of a company, you lose a director of a specific group, you have 3 other people on the team. None with any leadership experience, and the highest tenured person has 5 years of experience. You are looking for someone with leadership experience and 7-10 years of experience in that particular area.
Would you promote the internal with 5 years and no leadership experience? Would you bring in someone that has leadership experience, but has no experience in that particular area?
It's not as simple as coaching in experienced areas. Who coaches the director? As the VP over several areas do you have time to coach him?
Teach him about the area?
It's a lot easier to coach someone with basic skills in an entry level position, not in an advanced position. This is where the shortage I've noticed is.
Management level positions are a different beast and you are quite correct.
What I'm (and Ramber123) are talking about are your run of the mill engineering positions. What we are questioning is why do you 7 years of experience for a position where all you are doing is bug fixes on a company inventory system. It isn't exactly hard stuff.
HTH can one re-locate when they can't dump the house they're living in?
I tell my kids to RENT, its the only way to go. We own our home, there will always be a place to domicile so they won't end up on the streets, but don't get stuck with a 30-year mortgage in an extremely volatile real estate market that might not always pace your career moves. Rent the house, don't marry the damned thing
Depends where you live. Rent where I live is so overpriced, that you'll pretty much break even on renting vs buying if you live in the house for just a year. By two years, it would be cheaper. I wish I had purchased my current place. I intended it to be a temporary place so I rented, but I've been here four years now, and that's a lot of money that's been going the drain. My $1450 rent per month for my house would be a $700 mortgage payment (including property taxes!) if I had bought. I'm in the Dallas area, so the real estate market is so hot that I wouldn't worry about not being to sell my house if I needed to move.
I am in the same city, Dallas, as Hazergore. His company was definitely underpaying at $50k for experienced developers. The going rate is closer to $80-100k/yr for 4-5 years exp.
Dallas companies are offering $80-95k for experienced analysts, which are more like superusers than developers. They only need to know SQL, Excel, and some basic SAS commands. They don't need to know the alphabet soup of Java, Python, VB, C, etc.
Wow, really? That's more than I make (although I get to work from home so I'm ok with the lower pay), and I certainly know SQL (data manipulation/migration/processing with MySQL databases is one of my specialties), Excel, in addition to Java, Python, C/C++. The market is even better than I thought, I guess! I thought about leaving Dallas (too many people for my taste), but the more I hear from people about how much of a gold mine Dallas is for developers, the more I realize I'm making the right choice to stay here. I don't feel so bad for charging $100/hour for that one client I have, now.
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