Tech jobs coming to Phoenix? (home, buy, universities)

[PhoenixSomeday]

I came here from Silicon Valley. I grew up there, but like hell am I going to pay 4-5x the housing costs for the same wood and stucco I can get here, only to have cooler summers. Pass kthx. Decent pay can be found here, but it's generally not going to be a small company, or a company that isn't headquartered here. It also seems that, as elsewhere, once you hit senior level, the opportunities are growing on trees left and right. I think the smaller and local companies have a problem putting out higher pay here because of the phenomenally cheap cost of living (especially for such a populated area), but that's just a wild guess.

A recruiter told me recently that 5 years is considered the standard for senior level. I'm not sure what world he's living in, but that's definitely not been my experience with getting to know people and with job listings. Generally speaking anyway, of course it'll depend on the individual.

Originally Posted by KurtAZ

Well...you also have to remember that Management is a WHOLE DIFFERENT skill set then engineering. You have to know what your people are doing and understand it but your technical skills take a hit. As a manager, you are in meetings, planning sessions, budget controls...you are looking at projects from a whole different perspective than an Engineer does. Most of the front line people I know have 0 desire to move into management...particularly because when RIFs come around, management usually gets hit hard.

100% exactly why I have no interest in management and lead positions. I want to be up to my ears in code all day, everyday (while still being able to see the forest despite the trees). I have no interest in flipping issues around in Jira, drawing up charts for people to follow, assigning tasks to people, sitting in meetings, etc. What do a bunch of developers with no manager do? Still get a product out and make money. What do a bunch of software company managers do without developers and without development skills? Right. Granted, things can be better in some ways with the right manager (i.e. not 95% of the managers out there right now), but it's not essential and no one is going to lament no having one. They can keep asking me, but it's not going to happen.

[KurtAZ]

Originally Posted by PhoenixSomeday

100% exactly why I have no interest in management and lead positions. I want to be up to my ears in code all day, everyday (while still being able to see the forest despite the trees). I have no interest in flipping issues around in Jira, drawing up charts for people to follow, assigning tasks to people, sitting in meetings, etc. What do a bunch of developers with no manager do? Still get a product out and make money. What do a bunch of software company managers do without developers and without development skills? Right. Granted, things can be better in some ways with the right manager (i.e. not 95% of the managers out there right now), but it's not essential and no one is going to lament no having one. They can keep asking me, but it's not going to happen.

2 words...Gantt Charts.

[veritased]

Originally Posted by ShampooBanana

Not so. Intel actually does chip design along with the fabrication, and many of the workers that are employed there start at $75k-80k+ annually for new grads from top engineering schools (I have at least 3 friends from U of Illinois who are computer science or electrical engineering grads who ended up here working for Intel in Chandler). ON Semiconductor pays pretty well also and is based here. Motorola is gone but Honeywell remains and many of those are good aerospace engineering and manufacturing jobs that pay very well.

As for the initial post, GPEC (Greater Phoenix Economic Council) and the State are doing exactly what you're calling for. I saw a stat posted up by GPEC and CBRE that said that tech jobs in just downtown Phoenix alone have increased something like 350-400% in the past 5 years. That's pretty amazing. One of GPEC's core initiatives right now is to basically convince California tech companies to relocate operations here, and it's been working. Here a great report they put together for tech attraction: https://www.gpec.org/wp-content/uplo...y-CBREGPEC.pdf

Well that's a good start. But imo chip design of processors and sensors is sort of yesteryears businesses.
Tomorrow is about robotics, automation, autonomous operation, AI, ML, etc... some of which uses sensors and processors, but really these are just treated as commodity pieces of gum by those doing the innovation. I exaggerate, but not by much.

[KurtAZ]

Originally Posted by veritased

Well that's a good start. But imo chip design of processors and sensors is sort of yesteryears businesses.
Tomorrow is about robotics, automation, autonomous operation, AI, ML, etc... some of which uses sensors and processors, but really these are just treated as commodity pieces of gum by those doing the innovation. I exaggerate, but not by much.

I get your point but without those updated/improved processors...tech pretty much dies. If we were still running on 1996 era Pentium chips...all the innovations you are talking about wouldn't be possible.

There are some incubators in DT Phoenix...there are coding jobs...no where near the availability in Silicon Valley, Seattle or Austin but...we're getting there. ASU has been making some interesting strides on the Polytech campus and there is growing interest by Silicon Valley remote workers to relocate here and commute to San Jose on short plane flights. Probably not the greenest of ideas but...if there is enough interest maybe the companies they work for would invest in satellite offices.

Time will tell.

[hikernut]

Originally Posted by veritased

Well that's a good start. But imo chip design of processors and sensors is sort of yesteryears businesses.
Tomorrow is about robotics, automation, autonomous operation, AI, ML, etc... some of which uses sensors and processors, but really these are just treated as commodity pieces of gum by those doing the innovation. I exaggerate, but not by much.

Being "in the business", I'll interject a few comments here...

Chips (generically referred to as 'hardware') have been commoditized for economic reasons. Development at that level is time consuming and expensive, so there needs to be a fairly large market in order to justify designing something new. However, a particular function can almost always be built to run much faster and with much less power in hardware.

As Kurt mentioned, advances in software have been enabled by better and faster hardware. If hardware development stalls then software stalling will not be far behind. Chip designers have been given faster and smaller transistors every couple of years, which enabled large improvements in performance with relatively incremental changes to designs. Today we are at a crossroads. Silicon is "hitting the wall", so what will happen? There are at least three possibilities. (1) We are "stuck" where we are at. (2) There is a new device that will replace the silicon transistor, as the transistor replaced vacuum tubes long ago. (3) New models of computing and/or designing hardware will be developed.

AI in particular will require #3. A synapse in the human brain fires at a rate of probably once a second to as much as 100 times a second (exact numbers are a matter of discussion). Given that, consider that even routine tasks like understanding spoken language or recognizing a person by their face was not achieved until billions of operations a second were possible in hardware. This shows how incredibly inefficient it is to run software on a generic processor. Sure, we have accomplished a lot with that model of computing, but it's scary to consider what an AI computing model could accomplish on the right hardware. Maybe we should not want to find out?!

[PhoenixSomeday]

Just like game consoles. Eventually you hit the point where the hardware has reached its limits and the software will just not get any better than that. At that point, you need new hardware. Continuous hardware R&D is important and necessary. One can't say no to having such jobs here; the design of such things is definitely a highly skilled job.

[newtoaz20172]

Originally Posted by PhoenixSomeday

I came here from Silicon Valley. I grew up there, but like hell am I going to pay 4-5x the housing costs for the same wood and stucco I can get here, only to have cooler summers. Pass kthx. Decent pay can be found here, but it's generally not going to be a small company, or a company that isn't headquartered here. It also seems that, as elsewhere, once you hit senior level, the opportunities are growing on trees left and right. I think the smaller and local companies have a problem putting out higher pay here because of the phenomenally cheap cost of living (especially for such a populated area), but that's just a wild guess.

Yep. I work in IT management and there is a great market here.

I also noticed Amazon/Lyft/Uber/Microsoft teasing a bit with jobs, trying the Phoenix market out. They're not fulling jumping into Phoenix, but do have tech jobs. I was suprised to see a Special Project Operations Team job from Uber posted in Phoenix. Those are their tougher jobs to get.

Big players like Google, Facebook and Apple are bay-centric still.

I'm not 100% sure if Phoenix will become like Denver or Austin, but its tech market is pretty good.

[Flavia84]

Seems like cybersecurity has been a prominent focus area in a number of tech related events in Phoenix as of late. Anyone who is in the tech business has an idea as to why? Could it be relatively low barrier to entry required for cybersecurity jobs?

[infocyde]

Comparing the Phoenix metro to Silicon Valley, Seattle, DC, and some other big metro areas is kind of unfair in one respect. Phoenix lacks the angel investors/financiers on a scale anywhere close to those other areas. Innovation tends to happen near the financing sources that support it's growth are located. The IT job market in Phoenix is growing despite that and a few other small handicaps. Good on Phoenix.

Also, if you telecommute for an out of state company, and you don't have to be in Phoenix, why are you? It's a big state and up North there is better weather and greenery. Trees and elk and deer and such. I guess if you are single hanging around Tempe and Scottsdale makes sense...or if a significant other needs a job that tends to exist in the Phoenix area more so than the rest of the state...that makes sense. Or if you have your head hovering above a monitor and keyboard 14 hours a day I guess it doesn't matter where you are at. But everyone else think outside the box and give Northern AZ a try!

[veritased]

Infocyde, I'll tell you why... the significant other will accept the move to AZ, but there must be a city nearby.
Flagstaff would not suffice to meet her conditions. So Scottsdale it was. Otherwise I would have gotten more remote.
Then again, I will need to fly more often it looks like coming up, so PHX proximity is good.