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Are there any employed software developers who can comment on current prospects in NYC?
I moved down here when I was 18 from the northern NYC suburbs and am itching to move to NYC for a number of reasons. Mainly: Austin is really boring for single people post age 35-40-ish. As hip the place is, almost everyone gets married and moves to a subdivision and has kids by 35 ish. NYC is one of the few places where there's a substantial middle-age singles and/or child-free couples culture. I'm much more of an intellectual urban minimalist type.
However, all my research shows that jobs in NYC in C#/C++/Java don't pay much more than those in Austin. It's easy to get a $100,000/yr job in Austin but jobs in NYC don't appear to pay much more than that unless one is highly specialized in a financial area. Much of the work in Austin is "real tech" work, as Austin is a strong hub of Silicon Valley. In NYC, most work seems to be in social media, corporate IT, or finance. Is the corporate IT field mostly H-1B Indians? (I ask, as that tends to suppress wages and be a slaughterhouse type environment.)
The cost of living disparity is enormous of course. One calculator puts $100,000 in Austin as the equivalent of $187,000 in Brooklyn. (Not Manhattan!) Money isn't the end-all, but a factor. I'm definitely looking for a change of pace and scenery, regardless!
If anyone can make comments from their experience on the pay and market, it'd be appreciated.
Google, Yahoo, and Facebook all have engineering offices in NYC, there's also a smattering of startups. And there's Amazon (Audible) out in Newark if you wanted to do the reverse commute. Some of the finance software jobs are principal money-making work as opposed to support; these tend to pay considerably better. There are a lot of H-1Bs, both actual skillful people and the "programmer by the dozen" type you're referring to. There are jobs in NYC for a software engineer; you might even be able to get equivalent standard of living if you're willing to go into finance. I'm not going to post my salary, but I will say that if you're an experienced SW developer you can do considerably better than $100,000 outside finance, and some of the financial firms pay much better than that.
lol. NYC is one of the top tech hubs, you have no problem getting a job here if you're good. There's so many bad developers here so I can see why the averages are skewed. Even in web application / restful API development companies are willing to pay top dollar for a very good candidate. Take a look at 10gen and see if they are hiring.
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