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The whole "find a job and live near it" doesn't fly. I don't know what the average job tenure is these days, but it's not long. Especially in tech, people change jobs frequently.
Find a house that's convenient to the area that you think has the most available jobs for your line of work. If you're in tech, find something near RTP, or even better between RTP and DT Raleigh. Cary didn't grow to 160k population for no reason.
This isn't 1960, people don't get a job and stay there their entire career.
Last week we were in Raleigh exploring the area to see if we want to live there. In Cary, we randomly stopped in a realtor's office who was nice enough to oblige us with answers to our questions. He said he couldn't tell us where shouldn't live (meaning, due to crime) but he later said to think of the city as a Pac-Man, with Pac-Man's mouth facing east, and if he were us, we should avoid that area in Pac-Man's mouth. In my mind's eye, I'm thinking of Raleigh as a clock face and he's saying he would avoid the areas between 2 and 4 o'clock. But he didn't say why these areas should be avoided. He suggested we go on crime mapping sites to see for ourselves. I did that, and frankly, there's crime all over. Does anyone know what areas of the city he was referring to?
Also, coming from Delaware and it's heinous traffic, I found it very easy to get around Raleigh, with no trip taking more than 20 minutes. I admit though, this was mid-day so traffic was light, and also the colleges were out for summer. I have a terrible commute now where I live. On a good day it's 35 minutes to work, and 45 minutes home, to go 27 miles. The curse of living in an small oblong state is that there aren't many go arounds to avoid crashes and closed roads. So I live and breathe by Waze and other local traffic websites and facebook groups. Does Raleigh have anything similar?
EDIT: Sorry - I should have been more clear. The normal drive time I am used to. What makes it heinous is when there is an accident bad enough that forces a roadway to close, which happens at least once or twice a week, it severely clogs the other roads, doubling or tripling the commute time. I don't know what it is about this area, but we have frequent rollover crashes and trucks that roll over and spill their loads (like penny blanks, car engines, bees - I wish I was making this up).
RE: Traffic. Moved from MA in 2017, I have yet to see anything approaching "traffic" like they have in MA/Boston.
Yes I am sure it is worse here now than it was 10 years ago. But compared to anything between DC and Boston, traffic doesn't really exist by comparison. I work from home, so I don't deal with it, but I have been late leaving for a flight out of RDU and still made it with time to spare during rush hour here. Missing your window in "any of the I-95" cities during rush hour means you missed your flight.
As for the Pac-Man location thing; I can't speak from too much personal experience, but I had a Spectrum Tech tell me when I moved here (he was saying how nice the neighborhood was, to which I said "all of the Triangle I have been to seems really nice!") "ya, not all of it is, there are two zip codes the guys in my office will do anything we can to avoid doing service calls in; parts of 604 and all of 610"
604 and 610 are between 2 and 5 o'clock on the Raleigh clock face....which seems to sound similar to what the agent told you.
The whole "find a job and live near it" doesn't fly. I don't know what the average job tenure is these days, but it's not long. Especially in tech, people change jobs frequently.
Find a house that's convenient to the area that you think has the most available jobs for your line of work. If you're in tech, find something near RTP, or even better between RTP and DT Raleigh. Cary didn't grow to 160k population for no reason.
This isn't 1960, people don't get a job and stay there their entire career.
Spot on m378.
I too am in IT and since graduation in '05 from College, the longest I have stayed in any job is 3 years.
And all the while people would tell me "that looks bad on a resume, changing jobs like that".
Sure hasn't curtailed the interest I get from Recruiters and Headhunters.
Yeah, takes me about 30-35 minutes to commute 18 miles so I don't see that being too bad, either. (Wake Forest to East Raleigh.) That same drive took me 20-25 minutes 10 years ago when I started this job - it keeps getting worse as the growth outpaces the roadwork, and it takes me a little longer each year to get through each intersection/bottleneck.
To the OP, if you are working I would suggest living as close to work as possible. Whatever your commute time will be in year 1, it'll keep getting worse as time goes on.
As far as the PAC-MAN thing, I understand what they are saying and I would not want to live in those areas, either.
That being said, it would be pretty obvious to find that out if you visited here and looked at some homes/drove around the area.
Agree 100% with the traffic. My family use to could take 540 anytime of day and hit minimal traffic a decade ago. Not so anymore. It gets all backed up by 4pm now. To the OP, just bear in mind we are growing rapidly, so an easy commute now will get longer and longer as we grow.
East Raleigh has an "off" vibe. Its not as bad as Eastern Durham, but it's also not great. The general area is from Capital and 540 down to Eastern Downtown Raleigh. I still go there occasionally to get compost from the Raleigh Yard Waste center, or if the wife and I have a hankering for olive garden.
I too am in IT and since graduation in '05 from College, the longest I have stayed in any job is 3 years.
And all the while people would tell me "that looks bad on a resume, changing jobs like that".
Sure hasn't curtailed the interest I get from Recruiters and Headhunters.
Just to give a different perspective, I've worked at 4 companies in 30 years in tech (not IT, but embedded networking software), with the shortest span being 5 years and the longest being 12. Both the shortest and longest were situations where divisions were being shut down and I moved on. I did get some offers over the years to leverage more pay, but was always extremely well paid overall, and never felt like I needed to jump around to do better. Way easier to move up where I was. A lot of times interviewing, my high salary was actually an obstacle to overcome.
If I look around at my coworkers my age, I think most have worked 2-3 places, with one guy that has worked 5.
I've screened resumes at one company, and I'd probably just pass right over someone that never had more than 3 years anywhere. The managers I know would do the same. Now, HR people that do pre-screening and headhunters would often send us resumes, but that is only the first pass.
Just to give a different perspective, I've worked at 4 companies in 30 years in tech (not IT, but embedded networking software), with the shortest span being 5 years and the longest being 12. Both the shortest and longest were situations where divisions were being shut down and I moved on. I did get some offers over the years to leverage more pay, but was always extremely well paid overall, and never felt like I needed to jump around to do better. Way easier to move up where I was. A lot of times interviewing, my high salary was actually an obstacle to overcome.
If I look around at my coworkers my age, I think most have worked 2-3 places, with one guy that has worked 5.
I've screened resumes at one company, and I'd probably just pass right over someone that never had more than 3 years anywhere. The managers I know would do the same. Now, HR people that do pre-screening and headhunters would often send us resumes, but that is only the first pass.
Entirely possible, but the three offers I have turned down in the last 2 months speaks to it getting past the pre-screening.
Two offers were Raleigh based companies who couldn't come close on base (My current role has a Boston based salary). The other was a massive raise (45%) with a big five Consulting Company but the timing wasn't right.
Use a crime map that color codes by crime rate. "Crime all over" may literally be true, but it can be exceptionally rare in some areas and prevalent in others. On top of that, violent crime vs petty crime is a consideration.
BTW, probably worth pointing out, like everywhere, there's a lot of people around here that paint large areas with an overly broad brush due to whatever reasons (which can include stereotypes/prejudices/etc.). Definitely look at actual crime rates when making decisions instead of just anecdotal "that's a bad side of town" stuff.
I will also add that there are parts of East Raleigh closer to downtown that are quickly gentrifying and are actually relatively safe to live in now. Though the likelihood of finding something cheap in those areas is probably pretty low since the word is out now but you can still look on the fringes of those areas if you don't mind a transitional period.
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