Thinking about moving to Houston after graduating college...info on job prospects and other topics? (credit)

[bmexman]

I'm a California born-and-bred boy in college in California right now. I'm thinking about moving to Texas, specifically Houston, after I graduate in two years because I've been reading that's where the jobs are. I know it's a ways fom now but I'm kinda planning ahead. I chose Houston for its diversity, its coastal location, and the fact that I have some family here so that will help me get started.

My cousin told me that if I was a engineering major, I could find a job in Houston easily. I'm going to get a degree in political science. What are job prospects for me like in Houston with that degree?

What should I adjust to when moving to Houston from Southern California? I already know about the humidity and the social conservatism (this is just from things I've read.....I've never actually been to Houston before). Are there any other things I should prepare for/be surprised at/etc?

Opinions from ex-Californians would be GREAT!!!

[jfre81]

Whatever you do, your job prospects are just as good if not better than in SoCal.

As far as politics go - it's more progressive here than it gets credit. Think of this less as moving to Texas and more as moving into a large city with a wide range of views. There's Tom DeLay and then there's Sheila Jackson Lee. Three of the seven US Representatives who have all or part of their districts in Harris County are Democrats. The City Controller of Houston (second to the mayor) is openly lesbian and is a candidate to be the next mayor. Barack Obama won Harris County by a narrow margin, and that's with the solid red suburbs and rural areas mixed in. And then you have some really weird people on the ground level (i.e. not in government) whose beliefs transcend partisanship and might be "liberal" one way and "conservative" the other. Actually, they're not weird; I consider them normal and I'm in their ranks.

Houston has some common physical characteristics with LA - it's big and it's not easy to get around without a car. The outer sprawl of the city is, shall we say, lacking in aesthetic quality. You've got good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods, and ones that are somewhere in between going one way or the other. The freeways dominate, but the layout makes a lot more sense to me than in LA. The flaws are in the execution more than anything, like onramps putting people onto a lane where people are already backing up to exit ahead.

There are no shortage of Californians. Some of them post here. I'm local, but I meet people from everywhere. You don't need to fake a stupid accent. You might go to the grocery store and be in front of someone who speaks with the typical Texas drawl, and you're just as likely to be standing in front of someone who speaks Vietnamese. Things are not as pretentious as they can be in California, or even in other cities of Texas. We're not looked at as "cool" or "hip." There's just about anything you could think of to do (well, you might have to go where there are mountains to climb mountains, but there are two airports with service to Denver.) The challenge is you've got to look for it. Odds are it's here though.

[chris_ut]

The job market in Houston has softened quite a bit since last year and they are expecting a loss of 68k jobs this year I believe. A Poli Sci degree won't do much for you in a town built around Energy, Medical and Engineering. Also we aren't really "coastal" like California, more like a swamp next to a really big lake.