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To be honest I couldn't even finish reading your post. I'm a haole transplant with over 15 years experience in IT and currently living on Oahu. I would love to know where the demand for IT haoles exist on the Islands because I've been looking for a very long time. Getting an interview has been like winning the lottery! Everyone's situation is different, but all I have to say is: You'd better have some outstanding tech skills to offer because you are going to need to really impress a company willing to talk to, much less trust investing in a typical mainland tranplant Hawaii beach dreamer who might just get homesick and leave in two years.
Nevertheless, enjoy your extended vacation while spending through your saved cash like its attached to a fire hose! It goes fast, so be sure to set aside enough money for a flight home.
It sounds like you have 15 years of IT experience, could probably make a decent six figure income on the mainland, maybe in an area that does not have a high cost of living. But you're living in Hawaii, and can't find an IT job. Are you working some other job, living off your savings, or maybe retiring early? How long do you think you'll last in Hawaii if you can't find a decent job?
People do move to different places without having a new job set up. I've always thought that was too risky. You might not be able to find a decent job. Of course, even if you have a new job set up before the move, the working conditions might turn out to be horrific, a nasty surprise, so you have to look for another job in the new location, or hightail back to the old location, and return to your old job if your previous employer will accept you back, and you previous position hasn't already been filled by someone else. I've seen that happen many times at my company, where someone would resign, then come back after a week to a couple months. There are many rotten companies with rotten management, and often times you wouldn't discover that the new company is bad, until it is too late. That's a risk with changing jobs. Sometimes the new job is better, sometimes the new job is a horrendous mistake.
It sounds like you have 15 years of IT experience, could probably make a decent six figure income on the mainland, maybe in an area that does not have a high cost of living. But you're living in Hawaii, and can't find an IT job. Are you working some other job, living off your savings, or maybe retiring early? How long do you think you'll last in Hawaii if you can't find a decent job?
People do move to different places without having a new job set up. I've always thought that was too risky. You might not be able to find a decent job. Of course, even if you have a new job set up before the move, the working conditions might turn out to be horrific, a nasty surprise, so you have to look for another job in the new location, or hightail back to the old location, and return to your old job if your previous employer will accept you back, and you previous position hasn't already been filled by someone else. I've seen that happen many times at my company, where someone would resign, then come back after a week to a couple months. There are many rotten companies with rotten management, and often times you wouldn't discover that the new company is bad, until it is too late. That's a risk with changing jobs. Sometimes the new job is better, sometimes the new job is a horrendous mistake.
I gave up looking in I.T. My wife is employed with a decent paying job and I am now a minimum wage cashier. It still isn't enough money to live "well", so our time in this state will be limited. Trying to decide how long I can afford to stay away from my field.
Do they have IT jobs here in Hawaii? Seriously, I don't know if I would risk coming here if you don't have a job. If you currently have an IT job in CA, can you work remotely? My boyfriend is a UX/UI developer and he is working remote and earning his 6 figure income from his CA company. If you can do this, it will make moving easier. The rest of the stuff you are doing seems to be right on. But the job part is the major hurdle.
I gave up looking in I.T. My wife is employed with a decent paying job and I am now a minimum wage cashier. It still isn't enough money to live "well", so our time in this state will be limited. Trying to decide how long I can afford to stay away from my field.
Wow! That sounds like it could be a 'trainreck' looming in the future. Over two decades ago, I started making the transition from a low wage customer service job to IT work, working for a contracting company for about $10 an hour a little over two decades ago. Before the transistion, I was laid off from the low wage customer service job, then got a even lower wage customer service job, working in a 'sick' building for a year. Everyone was pretty much sick a lot and worked while they were sick. I was sick about 95% of the one year I worked for that lousy company. It was literally a sweat shop, doing telephone customer service work for an alarm monitoring company, working second and third shifts and virtually all holidays. The AC in that company's business office worked great, but our interior room had no ventilation, only about a dozen fans blowing around what was probably somewhat toxic air. The fans made so much noise, it was hard to hear on the telephone, which you used constantly during each shift. I put up with that lousy job before I got fed up with it and quit. I should have reported the company to the government for their 'sick' building, but I didn't.
After that, I did the low wage IT work for a contracting company. It was a little higher wages than the customer service job, but not much higher. I was doing help desk work for a company that employed about 300 people, most of them were contractors. After 7 months, all the contractors were laid off, including myself. That company then went bankrupt 2 months later. A friend of mine, who I met at that company was a company employee and worked those two extra months, until the company dissolved. He got into a situation where he could get hired by another company doing IT work, and accepted a job not doing IT work for several years. After his break from IT work, he could never get back into doing IT work, so he was essentially shut out of doing IT work.
I met my future wife and was married when I was doing customer service work for a previous company, before the company with a 'sick' building, until I was laid off from that company, just before I was vested for a pension, probably to save the company from paying a pension in the future. My wife worked for a very good company doing IT work for good wages, but she hated doing the IT, and only did the IT career for the money. The people my wife worked with at her company also made good wages. I compared myself to those people who made good wages, and I knew I could become like them, working in IT for good wages, but I was holding myself back, severely limiting my potential.
After I got laid off from the low wage IT contracting job, I went back to school at a community college to obtain a two year Computer Network degree, which I completed in a little over one year. Going back to college for an IT education was the best way to transistion into working an IT for a good company, for high wages. My friend, who got shut out of doing IT work should have gone back to college for an IT education, but he didn't, and the last I heard, he was still shut out of IT two decades later.
So when the money runs out, or you have to leave Hawaii, think about going back to college for an IT education. Over time, the technology in IT keeps changing, so what you learn will be much different than you learned a decade ago, if you went to college in the past. Going back to college could allow you to make that transistion back into doing IT work, instead of being shut out. I went back to college at age 40. I was the oldest student in my classes, and in the minority of older students at the college.
It took me about 15 years to break the $100K barrier, and I've been working in IT for 20 years now. My wife and I lived off of my IT wages for the past two decades, even though I still save a lot from my income. We saved all of my wife's income for 20 years, until she retired early, and started collecting her pension. I have a couple years left to work before I start collecting my pension, although I could afford to take a reduced pension, and retire today.
You need to look at your long term financial goals, and don't sell yourself short of your potential, which I did before I transistioned to a high income IT job. In retirement, we could live off just our two pensions and not collect social security or our retirement savings accounts. If we add the social security income, and withdraws from the savings, our retirement will be about the same cash flow from the two high income IT jobs, without having to work! Plus, we have no debt. So, that's financial freedom, which you might be sacrificing, living in Hawaii, working severely below your potential. Be careful, if you don't save enough money, you might end up retiring in abject poverty.
Wow! That sounds like it could be a 'trainreck' looming in the future.
...
You need to look at your long term financial goals, and don't sell yourself short of your potential, which I did before I transistioned to a high income IT job. Be careful, if you don't save enough money, you might end up retiring in abject poverty.
Yes, and this is why our time is limited here. Each day we're on the Island is a day we're borrowing from our retirement future. I'm extremely disappointed in the I.T. job market in Hawaii; and unless a miracle happens where I somehow find an I.T. Department (or even a job recruiter) willing to talk to me, we will be moving back in 2018. I will then have to find a way to explain my long absence from I.T. and hope I won't be shut out permenantly like you mentioned. Or perhaps faced with starting over in my 40s in a tech sector thats easy to transition into thru some training (I already have a CS degree.)
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd find ZERO interest in my I.T. skills on this Island. Its a cautionary tale and after what I've been thru, I would never recommend anyone move here without an employment contract in hand for anyone expecting to work.
We will survive financially, but it has hurt our future for sure.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd find ZERO interest in my I.T. skills on this Island.
Before moving here - where did you think all this IT work would be? After public sector (federal, state and county government - schools, etc) and a few places like Hawaiian Airlines, HECO, Hawaiian Telcom, and the banks - there isn't much IT. So, the few IT jobs are scarce.
I could never move anywhere without having a job waiting for me. Of course, job offers have been driving forces in my 4 relocations in the past 5yrs. Just waiting out the hiring freeze for my new job to start.
Oceanus, a quick search on indeed.com and I can see that there are about 200 IT related jobs in Oahu. Many of these positions have been open for 30+ days.
Why do you think that is? (hint: Not because they don't have qualified candidates)
Are they trying to find brown people? is that it? cause if that's why, then I'll definitely get it.
Quote:
You forgot the key words - "Up to"
I could probably push it to 100k with my level of experience & communication/manipulation skills.
lolz
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