Canadian moving to Chicago. (Burlington: 2013, insurance, condo)

[SuperScript]

As the title says, I'm a Canadian currently living in the greater Toronto area but my wife and son are American and we have decided that we wanted to move to Chicago since my wife will be closer to her family and we will have relatives to watch our baby when we work. I do have a number of questions however and I'm somewhat concerned:

- Currently I work as a Software Developer with almost 7 years of experience under my belt, I make a good living and have a stable comfortable career job. Living in the GTA has some good perks in this field since there are a lot of jobs. How is the Chicago area in comparison for development jobs?

- Along with the point above, my educational background is actually a 3-year diploma from a community college, not a university degree. Around where I live this is more than fine since here in Ontario college students of this field seem to have success finding jobs considering most of their program of study contains coop experience. I am however nervous about this if I move there since I heard community colleges in the States are not taken seriously and for this field, without a CompSci university degree it's going to be difficult finding a job. My question is, what are my chances with the 7 years of experience along with the 3-year diploma? Will my chances be as good as they are in the GTA?

- The Toronto area is definitely more expensive, but with a salary of 75k-85k you can live a comfortable life in a town near by like Burlington for example. I guess this sort of goes back to my career, what are my prospects of making that kind of money in Chicago? If not at the same range, does it even out with the living expenses?

I guess my main concern is job hunting, can someone please answer my questions if you know?

Thank you.

[HomeIsWhere...]

I'm not in the field myself, however, I do recall this from the Chicago c-d forum from August of 2012 through September 2013. Hopefully it will be of some help to you.

//www.city-data.com/forum/chica...ly-way-17.html

Best regards,

HomeIsWhere...

[chet everett]

Depending on the specific technologies / methodologies in which you are skilled, as well as the nature of businesses you may have worked for it could range from very easy to land a job that pays at least as well you currently make to something that is somewhat more difficult.

Lack of a degree can be a bit of a hindrance but if the seven years of expericne show a clear growth in responsibility / skill / mastery most potential employers will consider that as a "equivalent".

There are several core technologies that are important in a handful of important sectors -- trading technonology firms are big in Chicago, both with hard core / close to hardware languages like C/C++ still being important as well as higher level languages like Java frequently used for things that are not as "high frequency" oriented. The broad utilization of not just Java but server side web technologies are important to a huge range of firms involved in insurance / healthcare, financial services, e-commerce, and even various media related firms. The opportunities for folks with skills in both traditional database technologies as well as more advanced analytics / "big data" are quite extensive. There are also a large number of firms that exist in the space between "full blown custom supplication development" and "generic packaged software" that creates a pretty broad market for "third party app tweaking" in technologies from firms everyone has heard of (like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle) as well a whole less famous firms that made software for things like logistics or hospital management that runs on older versions of x86 OSs or IBM midrange platforms (or even less common hardware...).


I would start looking at online sources of job listings. Many of these are posted by "recruitment firms" that are really just reposting the stuff they find on the public sites of large employers so I would NOT get my hopes too high. Further many of these recruiters will not react well if you send them a resume that has an out of area address -- they want to get qualified candidates into firms FAST and generally don't want to deal with someone not ready to drive to interview on short notice.

That said if you use the information to tailor your resume and find good potential matches you may be able to develop a relationship with some of the better firms and once you are available for interviews / phone screenings such relationships can pay off...

As far as affordability there are a range of options in the whole Chicago region. If your household income is $80k or more you should be able to find a comfortable condo / townhouse around $250k or so. That will likely be in a nicer area with decent commute to the Loop. If you have sufficient savings to shop around $300k that ought to give some options for a single family detached home.
While Chicago region is probably not quite as expensive as Toronto it is still one of the more costly areas in the Midwest...

[Vasily]

Whether your lack of a degree matters depends on the company and the hiring manager. If you want to get into management, lack of a degree is likely to be a hindrance. If you want to get into management, you'd be better off getting a business or MIS degree than a comp sci degree. 75-85K USD is very possible for a good developer ... Those with highly specialized skills (i.e., only five people in the Chicago area know how to do X) can make far more than that.

[vmexkids]

As a life long Chicagoan born and raised here. If I had the choice, I would stay in Toronto. The schools here are terrible and our town in nicknamed "Chiraq"
Everything is expensive

[MPowering1]

You might want to use Linkedin as a resource, as well. Join some groups in your industry, particularly any that may be specific to Chicago. Start some discussions, see if you can ask I.T. recruiters in Chicago what their thoughts are, etc. If you can start developing some relationships now, it might be helpful. And regardless of what field a person is in, make sure your resume is polished and accomplishment-oriented, rather than task-oriented.

[SuperScript]

Great responses guys, I appreciate it.

Originally Posted by chet everett

Depending on the specific technologies / methodologies in which you are skilled, as well as the nature of businesses you may have worked for it could range from very easy to land a job that pays at least as well you currently make to something that is somewhat more difficult.

Lack of a degree can be a bit of a hindrance but if the seven years of expericne show a clear growth in responsibility / skill / mastery most potential employers will consider that as a "equivalent".

There are several core technologies that are important in a handful of important sectors -- trading technonology firms are big in Chicago, both with hard core / close to hardware languages like C/C++ still being important as well as higher level languages like Java frequently used for things that are not as "high frequency" oriented. The broad utilization of not just Java but server side web technologies are important to a huge range of firms involved in insurance / healthcare, financial services, e-commerce, and even various media related firms. The opportunities for folks with skills in both traditional database technologies as well as more advanced analytics / "big data" are quite extensive. There are also a large number of firms that exist in the space between "full blown custom supplication development" and "generic packaged software" that creates a pretty broad market for "third party app tweaking" in technologies from firms everyone has heard of (like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle) as well a whole less famous firms that made software for things like logistics or hospital management that runs on older versions of x86 OSs or IBM midrange platforms (or even less common hardware...).


I would start looking at online sources of job listings. Many of these are posted by "recruitment firms" that are really just reposting the stuff they find on the public sites of large employers so I would NOT get my hopes too high. Further many of these recruiters will not react well if you send them a resume that has an out of area address -- they want to get qualified candidates into firms FAST and generally don't want to deal with someone not ready to drive to interview on short notice.

That said if you use the information to tailor your resume and find good potential matches you may be able to develop a relationship with some of the better firms and once you are available for interviews / phone screenings such relationships can pay off...

As far as affordability there are a range of options in the whole Chicago region. If your household income is $80k or more you should be able to find a comfortable condo / townhouse around $250k or so. That will likely be in a nicer area with decent commute to the Loop. If you have sufficient savings to shop around $300k that ought to give some options for a single family detached home.
While Chicago region is probably not quite as expensive as Toronto it is still one of the more costly areas in the Midwest...

Although I do consider myself to be a diverse type developer and a quick learner since I do it as a hobby outside of work and have a lot of passion for it, my actual relevant work experience in the field is mostly Microsoft related technology (C#/VB.NET/VBScript, ASP.NET, SQL Server, WPF/WinForms, etc). I also don't have specialized experience in a specific area, for example my current job is in the travel industry but my previous jobs were unrelated, so I'm not sure what to think of that.

I did search for jobs in the Chicago area based on my most relevant skills, and there was a good number of positions out there but most seem to ask for a degree minimum. This is why I'm mostly concerned about that.

Originally Posted by MPowering1

You might want to use Linkedin as a resource, as well. Join some groups in your industry, particularly any that may be specific to Chicago. Start some discussions, see if you can ask I.T. recruiters in Chicago what their thoughts are, etc. If you can start developing some relationships now, it might be helpful. And regardless of what field a person is in, make sure your resume is polished and accomplishment-oriented, rather than task-oriented.

I already have a very solid Linkedin page and get contacted by recruiters on regular basis. I will see if I can develop some relationships with recruiters from that area, that's a great idea.

Originally Posted by Vasily

Whether your lack of a degree matters depends on the company and the hiring manager. If you want to get into management, lack of a degree is likely to be a hindrance. If you want to get into management, you'd be better off getting a business or MIS degree than a comp sci degree. 75-85K USD is very possible for a good developer ... Those with highly specialized skills (i.e., only five people in the Chicago area know how to do X) can make far more than that.

I'm not really interested in management, I love what I do too much to want to change it, though I know that the older you get the more likely you will get discriminated against for younger developers, by then I hope I have something of my own lined up but that's a whole separate topic.

[linicx]

I would not move before I had a job. Other than politics and traffic, and some other minor differences you probably won't notice much difference between the two cities.

Welcome Home!