Should I move from San Jose to San Diego?

[NYSD1995]

I would say that since OP is in hardware it is a bit of a different story - the market for that type of work is strong in SD and there are 2 big employers who define the market - the Navy & Qualcomm. The demand for that type of engineer so outstrips supply that we are basically importing workers from all over the world. I also think data science is pretty good here, especially fraud analytics, due to the legacy of HNC, FICO, ID Analytics, etc. I've written about this before: //www.city-data.com/forum/san-d...l#post24103193

A lot of folks don't quite understand that QCOM is a semiconductor manufacturer (they make widgets) which is just a totally different business than software. Software, particularly the growth areas (SAAS, marketing tech, internet, media tech, ecommerce etc) is a different story in SD. There is just almost nothing here. And really, I mean nothing, once you get past Intuit and ServiceNow who aren't headquartered here. If you are say, an accomplished web developer who wants to shift from hands-on coding to being a product owner, the opps in SD are just minimal. It's not that you can't find a job, it's just that there is no guarantee you'll find another when the one you have goes away (and they all do). The more senior you get the smaller and smaller your employer pool gets and the more you compete.

Ultimately if you are looking to grow your career and not just do the same engineering work forever, SD is pretty limited for most people. Our companies just tend to get bought before they become big enough to spin out the ecosystem of startups you need to create a real tech industry.

We have a lot of semiconductor and related
We have a lot of wireless and satcoms related
We have a lot of bio-med device and related
We have a small but important analytics cluster

But -

We don't have a single major mobile apps or SAAS publisher HQ'd here
We don't have a single major agency (well that's not totally true, a small local firm did get bought by JWT but they are not expanding locally)
We don't have a single major media, ad-tech or mar-tech firm here
We don't have a single major consumer tech product developed here
We don't have a single major software firm HQ'd here
Other than QCOM we don't have any F500 presence.

Contrast this with say, Boston, Austin, Seattle, Portland, Denver/Boulder, and SD is just really not where it should be given it's size and prominence. I mean, those cities just blow us away.

So I wouldn't go as far as Pedro, but he does have a point. If you are ambitious in tech and aren't in one of the few fields we support - just know that if you come here, you won't work on the hardest problems with the best companies. You'll largely work with niche or legacy vertical players or small service firms. Not the end of the world and not a ticket to the bread lines, but be realistic about the decision so you're not disappointed.

[Pedro2000]

Originally Posted by docmcstuffin

You're right, it is a risk and reward thing. Living in a high COL area like Cupertino and getting paid relatively low wage is also a risk. What if you never hit an IPO lottery up there? What if Sony, HP, QCOM, etc. continue to putter along and your prediction doesn't come true? All of these are what ifs. I don't know about you, but my crystal ball is broken, so I can't tell you what would happen. All I can say is, base on where I'm standing, Software jobs in San Diego look bright for the next 2-5 years. Beyond that, who knows. Google just bought a company down here and part of the deal is, they're keeping the office down here. So, maybe 5 years from now, GOOG will expand down here too. MSFT still have an office down here. Maybe 5 years from now, the cost of engineers in the bay would be too high relative to SD and they'll start to expand down here. Who knows... all of those are what ifs. However, what is known is, the OP got an offer for the same salary and the position to him seems to have a better upward possibility. Not to mention he'll be able to buy a house that's at a fraction what it would cost him w/in 15 minutes of Mountain View.

However, like I said in my past post, even at $100k, which shouldn't be hard to get, since QCOM is paying average $94k for a regular engineer, you're much better off here than someone making $150k in Cupertino working for Apple. Cupertino housing is 2.5x more expensive than Carmel Valley. There's also no such thing as a "Mira Mesa" up there (i.e. good school, close to work, and cheap). Anything up there that have good school and close to work are at least 2x the cost of Carmel Valley and are 3-4x the price of Mira Mesa. I can easy afford to live down here on an average Engineer level pay and single income. But there's no way in hell I can do the same up there.

To wrap up my point, I agree with you have our job market is not as vibrant down here as it is up there. But if you're smart, you shouldn't have problem finding another job of Sony/HP/QCOM go away. There will be others to take their place. Although there are a lot more jobs up there, there's also a lot more competition. So, just because there's more jobs doesn't mean you'll land them if you're not good. Which is why the pay relative of housing cost suck up there. If anything, I think the competition is also much higher up there, so it might be harder for you to get a job up there.

It's really not about being smart in SD, it's the fact there just aren't as many jobs. The reality is you can go to some tech conference in San Jose or San Fran and wind up with 100 different job opportunities. This has happened to many of us in the industry, so it's a fact of life. Some of them are 4 person startups with $10 Million in funding, but still, they have funding.

So it's not just about being smart, that's almost a given in the tech space for the most part, if you're not, it doesn't matter where you live, it'll be hard to find work. And it's 2015, many people don't even stick around at the same companies for more than 3-5 years anymore for various reasons.

As far as the crystal ball, it's not an opinion or guess, Sony has already dumped thousands of employees. They aren't a San Diego problem, they have a Worldwide company problem. It's not some guess that they are losing billions of dollars every year. They are losing billions of dollars. The reality for them is they need to change what they do, if they don't, they will be gone in 5-10 years. And it's not a new story. Go look at the history of many companies in the Tech space. Even Microsoft needed to change their image and how they make money. Windows being 'free' and moving to the cloud and subscription based is not Microsoft. Except it has to be because they've been killed and made irrelevant due to up and comers and others.

This isn't some guess about companies like Sony, it's a fact of life. Companies that don't change now, disappear. Look at IBM. They were once kings of the world. Now they are pretty much a non US company doing Consulting. They are trying to save themselves, but they are another company who have been in decline for years now. But they are 'all in' on cloud, analytics, big data, Watson, etc. But they aren't spending as much R&D as they market or compared to others. Microsoft spends billions on R&D. As does Google. Even Google and FB and Apple are buying for the future and investing for the future. SD companies that aren't biotech, seem to have the 'laid back' attitude and just hope for retirement or hope for an exit strategy that never keeps jobs in SD.

As far as Qualcomm, they will be around for years. They make billions. They are in a space that is growing. Mobile, Internet of Things, etc are hot and there are only a few of them in the world. They might have more competition now, but they still are in a good spot. But a lot of their jobs are more firmware, hardware, most of their software jobs get offshored these days. Will they expand in SD? I don't know, SD politicians have not exactly been friendly to them in the ways other cities are friendly to their cash cows. And Qualcomm is pretty much it when it comes to San Diego. If Qualcomm suddenly packed up and left, SD would be depressed and screwed.

I am not a big believer in Cities taking care of businesses all the time, but it is odd how SD seems to treat their big cash cows like nothing. Qualcomm is a cash cow for SD. And, in a different way, Comic Con is a big big event and identity. And it makes the city money. True, it's only a weekend per year, but SD seems to treat it like a joke. They also don't seem to give a damn about a great convention center that would attract huge huge events.

I've been to Tech and Business Conferences that have over 100K people in cities. Places like San Jose, Chicago, Las Vegas, Austin, have figured out ways to expand and attract huge huge conferences. And business people with expense accounts spend a lot of money. Things like this SD just doesn't seem to care to do at all. And they don't seem to ever be interested in the big businesses around here unless one of the politicians had a tie with that company. It is odd how it seems SD is anti-business in a place that doesn't exactly have a ton of huge businesses. You would think they would try and keep them happy.

And the other sad reality is it's no longer just about SF/San Jose anymore. You go to Austin and they have a ton of money and huge companies now. And a lot of movement and they've really come out of nowhere. You could say the same thing about Dallas/FT Worth/Irving. I am no fan of that area, but AT&T, Verizon, BoA, Chase, and tons and tons of other Fortune 500 corporations have opened huge offices there. Some Offices with thousands of employees, not just 50 of them. This is why I say SD seems more interested in Marketing reports in some magazine over real growth. Other areas add offices, businesses and residents. SD just seems to add residents and not much else.

As far as the OP, yeah if he has a job offer in SD for more money, move to SD. Silicon Valley is expensive, very very expensive. San Fran is what, $4K per month in rent or more. That's absurd. But the reality is SD is not the place where most smart techies move. It's a place where people go to "retire" or hope to take a job that lasts 20 years and they don't need to work that much compared to other places. That's the reality.

So if you're 35 and think the company will be around and won't dump you for the next 20 years, and a 9-5 lifestyle suits you, and flip flops to work, and $100K sounds great, SD is the perfect spot. That's not always the case, but people move to SD because of that more than anything else. Like I said, you could land 100 interviews in places like San Jose and Austin in a week. SD doesn't even have 50 companies who could even think about hiring you. That's the difference.

[Pedro2000]

And the Data Science/Analytics space in SD is more marketing than real. It exists, but not really.
SD will have Data Scientist or big data roles listed, but most of the time they are looking for some $100K Business Intelligence Analyst and nothing more. Nothing wrong with that, but most companies in SD just don't exist that can even think about that kind of analytics or analysis.

So it becomes a place where even hot jobs like Data Science aren't really data science here(then again it's not just a SD challenge). So if there are 5 real data science jobs in SD, where they actually are doing machine learning, NLP, visualization, blah blah blah, and those companies happen to pay what they should be paid, how often do you think those jobs would ever come available unless somebody died or moved away? And that is one of the hottest job markets out there. That is SD. Even hot job markets won't have a ton of opportunities here. And if you do land one of those, you probably never leave or can't leave.

If you're a data scientists doing cool things, but grow tired of your work, start searching and discover most of the other jobs aren't even data science or they want a data scientist who also knows big data and real-time tools and java and......but pay under $100K, you either look to move to a different city or you wind up consulting and traveling to other cities, or you just hope to keep your job long enough.

There are pockets of IT here, but the people who say "tons of jobs here" obviously haven't left SD often or they are close to entry level. Yeah you can find a ton of $40/HR or $90K jobs here. And then what? That's where it all dies in SD. At that point it's just silence or you feel underpaid.

[docmcstuffin]

Pedro2000, let me ask you, if you have two offers, a $90k offer in SD or a $150k in SF, which one do you think will yield you a better quality of life? Which one will allow you to buy a decent size house and send your kids to good schools?

I personally don't think income matter as much as net savings. I also don't care if there are 1000x more jobs in bay area compare to here. All I care about is that there's enough jobs down here that I won't have to worry about finding a decent paying job. To me, a job is like a house, you only need one at a time. So, if you're smart and good at what you do, I think you'll be able to find one that would want to hire you when you want to move. Which comes back to my 1st paragraph. The salary data are all there on Glassdoor. Look for yourself. When you compare the same company down here vs up there, the salary different isn't that big. When you factor in cost of living, then I would say you'd be paid less up there than down here. So, would it matter if you'd have 1000x more opportunities if that 1000x still yield you a lower quality of life due to lower pay when factoring in COL?

Also, there's no point in comparing CA vs TX. I've looked at TX every time I look to change job, just like I look at the bay. The numbers work out great for TX. But I can't get myself to move out of CA. However, I do understand your point about TX and agree wholeheartedly. Although SD isn't actively attracting businesses like cities in TX and isn't an established city with long history like BA and LA, I think we're doing OK and growing. Not as fast as you or I would like but we're growing. 20-30 years ago, SD is a sleepy beach town with no major university (UCSD only started 55 years ago, 20-30 years ago, UCSD was tiny and not really on the map), while BA and LA have many established universities. So you can't possibly expect us to be anywhere as diverse in job opportunities as BA and LA. But we've come a LONG way over the last 20-30 years. So, given this trajectory, I predict that we'll be just fine. While you like to point at Sony, I like to point you to the many Bio-tech companies like ILMN. Here's a list of companies headquarted in SD: List of companies headquartered in San Diego - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Seems like a pretty decent size list. Biotech is the biggest category. They need software engineers too. Just go to ILMN career page to see them.

As I've said before, between EvoNexus, UCSD Moxie, and SDSU's MBA program, I think we're starting to seriously foster SD's startup community. That's where big companies came from. You just have to give it time. EvoNexus and Moxie wasn't around 10 years ago. But I can see them making a huge impact in the start up community 10 years from now. The more vibrant the startup community is, the more likely there will be new companies forming head quarter here as those startup grow up.