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I've lived here for 26 of my 27 years (one miserable year spent in rural central Oregon).
All my life I've considered myself lucky.
Never broken a bone, never had a life threatening illness, my parents provide housing/food/transportation for all my needs, all these things I've been lucky with except for one:
The Job Market.
In my 27 years, I've had 2 jobs (part time, and years apart. Freelance gigs don't count in my opinion as "jobs", of which I've had a few). Both involved customer service/retail.
I've grown up watching the dot com bubble grow, burst, and collapse, giving rise to the tech start up industry's rise to fame and current status as king of the hill.
I've grown up being versed in their products, their intimate usage, and have seen where trends are being set and where trends are popping up.
I could be an HR's wet dream if they saw my drive and determination for the position being applied for...
If they actually got back to me.
You see, I've noticed something as of late (as in for the past 5 or so years)
The people being hired by these tech giants like YouTube, Google, Twitter, etc etc etc, coming in and buying up properties left and right,
Are all people from out of town. As in, they were not born or raised within the confines of what is called "The Bay Area". Sure they could be from California; I mean Cali is a big state. That's fine with me and all, but when I see people who originated from New York, Washington, Arizona, Etc etc etc places NOT HERE, it makes me wonder; why are there so few (and i mean SO FEW) locals who get hired for tech jobs around here?
I know I can't be the only one who was born/raised here who has gone for open positions, but why are the ones being hired from so far away?
I did a freelance job for a interior design magazine in the city last year. 75% of the employees were from Texas and New York; the only person who had been here the longest was a 5 year vet that came from Washington. They have never set foot outside the 5 block radius of their job/residence unless it was to go to the airport to visit family back home. I had to explain to the 5 year vet that the BART station would have been a better choice than taking an Uber to the Daly City Toyota since the Colma BART is right across the street. Any local would have said the same.
Now, I get that California gets new transplants every single day. It's inevitable; the sunshine, the beach, the pay, it's a nice incentive to come here. But why aren't these tech companies hiring people that are native to the area? Is there some sort of requirement in the hiring process that you need to be from out of town to get hired?
What are your thoughts? Are you a local (as in born/raised) and managed to claw your way through the hiring process and land a tech job? Or are you an out of towner who jumps from tech job to tech job with ease?
They probably went to MIT,Harvard, cal tech,u of Washington, Cornell ,penn maybe Europe like Cambridge or Oxford.
I fail to see how an out of town education correlates to real world experience/credentials. The tech companies look to hire people who can DO, not people who have a sheet of paper that says they paid tuition for X years to get said paper. Sure you can have that education under your belt, but it shouldn't be the reason tech companies are hiring you; they hire you because you can produce results. Having a github/portfolio is 10x better to a software dev than a diploma is to a fresh grad. I'll be honest; i have neither of those (i'm not a software dev or a recent grad). But for any position, software/hardware related or not, out of towners get prioritized over locals.
Out of towers are not prioritized .Stanford and Berkeley grads are prioritized then schools like MIT,Washington ,Michigan.
some companies prefer bright young grads they can mold vs experienced people who may not buy into the corporate culture. Facebook is really big on Tsinghau Those are guys (and girls)are bright
Google
School Alumni
Stanford University 1,859
University of California, Berkeley 1,645
Carnegie Mellon University 901
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 763
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) 671
University of Michigan 585
Cornell University 537
University of Washington 519
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 490
Harvard University 478
Source: LinkedIn and Business Insider
Facebook
School Alumni
Stanford University 289
University of California, Berkeley 262
University of Texas, Austin 125
University of Waterloo 122
Carnegie Mellon University 119
University of Washington 98
Tsinghua University 97
University of California, Los Angeles 97
San Jose State University 94
University of Michigan 83
Source: LinkedIn and Business Insider
Apple
School Alumni
San Jose State University 1,063
Stanford University 902
University of California, Berkeley 815
University of Texas, Austin 642
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo 457
University of California, Los Angeles 415
San Francisco State University 381
University of Phoenix 360
University of California, Davis 358
University of Southern California 353
Source: LinkedIn and Business Insider
I've lived here for 26 of my 27 years (one miserable year spent in rural central Oregon).
All my life I've considered myself lucky.
Never broken a bone, never had a life threatening illness, my parents provide housing/food/transportation for all my needs, all these things I've been lucky with except for one:
The Job Market.
In my 27 years, I've had 2 jobs (part time, and years apart. Freelance gigs don't count in my opinion as "jobs", of which I've had a few). Both involved customer service/retail.
I've grown up watching the dot com bubble grow, burst, and collapse, giving rise to the tech start up industry's rise to fame and current status as king of the hill.
I've grown up being versed in their products, their intimate usage, and have seen where trends are being set and where trends are popping up.
I could be an HR's wet dream if they saw my drive and determination for the position being applied for...
If they actually got back to me.
You see, I've noticed something as of late (as in for the past 5 or so years)
The people being hired by these tech giants like YouTube, Google, Twitter, etc etc etc, coming in and buying up properties left and right,
Are all people from out of town. As in, they were not born or raised within the confines of what is called "The Bay Area". Sure they could be from California; I mean Cali is a big state. That's fine with me and all, but when I see people who originated from New York, Washington, Arizona, Etc etc etc places NOT HERE, it makes me wonder; why are there so few (and i mean SO FEW) locals who get hired for tech jobs around here?
I know I can't be the only one who was born/raised here who has gone for open positions, but why are the ones being hired from so far away?
I did a freelance job for a interior design magazine in the city last year. 75% of the employees were from Texas and New York; the only person who had been here the longest was a 5 year vet that came from Washington. They have never set foot outside the 5 block radius of their job/residence unless it was to go to the airport to visit family back home. I had to explain to the 5 year vet that the BART station would have been a better choice than taking an Uber to the Daly City Toyota since the Colma BART is right across the street. Any local would have said the same.
Now, I get that California gets new transplants every single day. It's inevitable; the sunshine, the beach, the pay, it's a nice incentive to come here. But why aren't these tech companies hiring people that are native to the area? Is there some sort of requirement in the hiring process that you need to be from out of town to get hired?
What are your thoughts? Are you a local (as in born/raised) and managed to claw your way through the hiring process and land a tech job? Or are you an out of towner who jumps from tech job to tech job with ease?
They need to sucker in Mid-Western kids with a glimmer in their eye that they'll "make it big". It's the same thing that keeps NY expensive.
I fail to see how an out of town education correlates to real world experience/credentials. The tech companies look to hire people who can DO, not people who have a sheet of paper that says they paid tuition for X years to get said paper. Sure you can have that education under your belt, but it shouldn't be the reason tech companies are hiring you; they hire you because you can produce results. Having a github/portfolio is 10x better to a software dev than a diploma is to a fresh grad. I'll be honest; i have neither of those (i'm not a software dev or a recent grad). But for any position, software/hardware related or not, out of towners get prioritized over locals.
I don't think that's true at all. I think it really just comes down to qualifications and experience. And yes, sometimes that means an outside candidate will win out over a local candidate.
And experience doesn't just mean a good education (some of those great schools ARE local, by the way). I've never seen a case where being a good candidate didn't ALSO incorporate into it what one has done in their career (for a software dev, yes that would be their software portfolio - for a scientist (such as a myself), publication history is a huge deal).
That said, I'd say for entry-level/junior-level positions, being local is actually a gigantic help. It's the main reason I used a friend's address (who I ended up living with for a while - so it wasn't really a lie) in the area when I obtained my position at Stanford before moving to the area. I'm fairly certain I would have been passed over had I not done that. That's because there are enough qualified candidates often at the junior level that there is no real need to look outside (i.e. why would you hire candidate Y from the East Coast, when you can hire candidate X who is local, doesn't need/want relocation money, and can start in a week?).
Where location begins to not matter as much is in the more senior roles. That's mainly because companies are often looking for something really specialized/specific, and it might take a long time to find that person (who may live in a different state or country).
My advice to you is to try to get more experience in whatever it is you're trying to do. And that might include going back to school or attending classes on that topic.
I have plenty of local native friends (the majority of my friends are natives) that have obtained great jobs in tech here - so tech is definitely not an "outsiders only" thing. The key is they had to work hard (pretty much like everyone who got to where they are) and did things like go back to school or even attend 3-month long crash courses on various coding topics (my one SF native friend attended codecademy and had huge success finding jobs after completing that course).
Another good idea is to get in contact with recruiting and contracting companies (Kelly, REAL Staffing, Aerotek, MOTIS are a few that I know of) - these are great ways to get hired quickly at a company, even if on a temp basis. Sometimes you'll get moved over to full-time, and other times you'll be let go - but you will have just gained a good amount of experience in the process. I've done contracting a few times myself, and it's been a good experience overall (especially if you have the right expectations going in).
It all comes down to qualification, education, skills, experience, and your network (your connections).
I am a local Bay Area person (born and raised, but attended college at UCLA), and have never had any issue securing a position here in tech sales. In fact, old colleagues contact me from to time with open positions in their companies that they want to fill.
They need to sucker in Mid-Western kids with a glimmer in their eye that they'll "make it big". It's the same thing that keeps NY expensive.
For New York it looks like Oxford Cambridge and London .
Making $3-$6 million yr in New York.not bad
Goldman Sachs
School Alumni
New York University 428
London School of Economics 419
Cornell University 359
Harvard University 339
Columbia University 311
University of Oxford 303
University of Cambridge 300
University of Pennsylvania 284
Brigham Young University 273
Imperial College of London 248
Source: LinkedIn and Business Insider
Morgan Stanley
School Alumni
Baruch College (City University of New York) 482
New York University 480
University of Mumbai 383
Rutgers University, New Brunswick 383
Columbia University 321
London School of Economics 300
University of Maryland, College Park 273
Cornell University 268
Harvard University 208
University of Pennsylvania 199
Source: LinkedIn and Business Insider
JPMorgan
School Alumni
Ohio State University 1,811
University of Phoenix 1,081
University of Mumbai 989
Baruch College (City University of New York) 774
Franklin University 745
University of Delaware 660
New York University 619
Rutgers University – New Brunswick 524
Ohio University 474
Arizona State University 463
Source: LinkedIn and Business Insider
I eventually broke through from the lower tier tech companies after trying and luck. I eventually did SaaS consulting which helped me build my network and develop more in demand skills. The experience led me to an easier path to jobs.
My resume gained some useful skills, and they are the ones that recruiters are looking for in their keyword searches and I got interview requests from cold applications.
I do well when I get an interview (my interview to offer rate is high). Most of my jobs have been from cold applications. Or a recruiter reaching out to me.
I finally know enough people who can refer me into helpful jobs. And this is how I got my current job > referred in.
I am not sure I 100% agree with your assertion, but I'll give a download based on my experience. Generally speaking venture-backed startup leaders have been trained to "look for patterns." And this usually means one of a few things:
a. Hire people like me with my background
b. Hire people who came from other tech companies I have heard about
c. Ask my investors who they would recommend from their networks
d. Ask my team who they know, in their networks
As you can imagine, if your 4 main avenues of finding people are: people I know, people like people I know, people who the people who give me money know, that pool starts looking pretty limited. And the more the list of desired schools includes out of state people, the more the pool of candidates will look like non-locals.
Now if these 4 things don't work then they say "what would google do?"
And google's hiring practices are well know, and they only recruit from a small list of top tier schools. And ask them really hard questions.
So if you want to get on those lists there are a few things you should be doing:
1. make friends with people who fit the profile (aka went to a "top tier school," worked at a well known tech company)
2. work at a tech company that has one of those top tier VCs as investors
3. work at a big name tech company (even if you are a contractor)
There is one other avenue, you need to be a proven superstar in your field of choice, this can help you overcome that 1-3 list.
So all those things might be hard. But you can work on appearing more like a superstar in your field. Blog on medium about your topic, tweet about it, run metope groups, speak at user groups and other events. You have to build your brand to elevate your presence so people will take notice.
I eventually broke through from the lower tier tech companies after trying and luck. I eventually did SaaS consulting which helped me build my network and develop more in demand skills. The experience led me to an easier path to jobs.
My resume gained some useful skills, and they are the ones that recruiters are looking for in their keyword searches and I got interview requests from cold applications.
I do well when I get an interview (my interview to offer rate is high). Most of my jobs have been from cold applications. Or a recruiter reaching out to me.
I finally know enough people who can refer me into helpful jobs. And this is how I got my current job > referred in.
I am not sure I 100% agree with your assertion, but I'll give a download based on my experience. Generally speaking venture-backed startup leaders have been trained to "look for patterns." And this usually means one of a few things:
a. Hire people like me with my background
b. Hire people who came from other tech companies I have heard about
c. Ask my investors who they would recommend from their networks
d. Ask my team who they know, in their networks
As you can imagine, if your 4 main avenues of finding people are: people I know, people like people I know, people who the people who give me money know, that pool starts looking pretty limited. And the more the list of desired schools includes out of state people, the more the pool of candidates will look like non-locals.
Now if these 4 things don't work then they say "what would google do?"
And google's hiring practices are well know, and they only recruit from a small list of top tier schools. And ask them really hard questions.
So if you want to get on those lists there are a few things you should be doing:
1. make friends with people who fit the profile (aka went to a "top tier school," worked at a well known tech company)
2. work at a tech company that has one of those top tier VCs as investors
3. work at a big name tech company (even if you are a contractor)
There is one other avenue, you need to be a proven superstar in your field of choice, this can help you overcome that 1-3 list.
So all those things might be hard. But you can work on appearing more like a superstar in your field. Blog on medium about your topic, tweet about it, run metope groups, speak at user groups and other events. You have to build your brand to elevate your presence so people will take notice.
This bolded part can't be restated enough. I find most recruiters have a very vague grasp of what many keywords even mean (at least in my experience in technical fields) - so it's really important to have the right keywords.
That's important because you can have a SUPER related concept on your resume - but if it's not the EXACT keyword they're looking for, you'll get filtered out. In science, this happens all of time I've found. I might put down "microbiology"...but maybe the term they're looking for is "cell culture".
Or on the software end of things, maybe I'll put down "relational database" - when what they're looking for is "MYSQL" or "Oracle database"...
This is really critical to just getting looked at. Once you're in, I actually think it can be a bit easy. Especially if you get on their "It" list. One you get there, they'll just keep bombarding you weekly with new job openings (even if they're not really up your alley). It's not a bad problem to have, I suppose.
But it's just getting noticed sometimes that can be the trickiest part. And much of that really has to do with getting through their filters and having the right terms on your resume or on your LinkedIn page.
Last edited by HockeyMac18; 03-30-2016 at 06:46 PM..
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