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Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

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Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#251

Post by micaksica »

njarboe wrote: post #216
uiri wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is the only state in the US where that is legal. I'm guessing serious traffic problems are the reason why.

I read somewhere that California has a tradition of lane splitting due to the fact that it was an early adopter of multiple controlled access freeways that would be often have traffic jams for miles. Most early motorcycles would overheat if not moving, so motorcyclists had a high incentive to drive between stopped cars in a traffic jam. This tradition continues to the present day, even though legality of lane splitti…

This is actually still a problem with some air-cooled bikes, and a lot of even the common beginner bikes made up into the 00s are air-cooled. The bike overheating aside, when you're sitting stopped on 101 near Mineta airport on a gasoline-powered heater, you will overheat too.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#252

Post by rublev »

MegaButts wrote: post #235
Danihan wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your specialties?

I recently made the switch to management, but before that I built robots - electrical, mechanical, and software engineering. The switch didn't really bump my pay - many of the engineers I work with make more than me. It is definitely easier to command a higher salary working on the software side of robotics, although I do know a handful of people doing hardware making even more (these people are truly outliers though…

Are these skills possible to acquire if you do not have a university background? I am self taught in everything, also learning math. I am make great money in frontend but would like to work with a more interesting skill set.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#253

Post by lsc »

madcaptenor wrote: post #246
ffumarola wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those calculators are ridiculous because they assume you spend your entire income. The cost of living adjustment only applies to what you spend when evaluating which salary:city combination is ideal for you.

Those calculators are ridiculous because they assume you spend your entire income. For most Americans that's pretty close to being correct - the average savings rate is around 6%. ( https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/03/heres-the-average-... )

You don't think that varies a lot by income? My impression is that savings as a percentage go up dramatically with income. I don't think I know anyone working in the industry that considers it reasonable to not max out their 401k, and who doesn't save substantially on top of that.

This would be quite difficult for someone on an average salary with kids, or sometime who works in an industry where keeping up appearances is important.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#254

Post by notfromhere »

wenc wrote: post #175
swampthinker wrote: post #4

Without looking, I'm going to guess (in no particular order): - Cambridge/Boston - DC metro area - Austin - Bay area - Seattle - NYC - Philadelphia - LA or San Diego EDIT: Hm, got most right. I forgot about the Triangle entirely, but I'm surprised Baltimore outpaced Philly.

I'm a little surprised Chicago is not on the list. The Chicago tech scene is not huge, but it is growing, and it is definitely much more dynamic than Philly or LA or San Diego. It is the third largest metro in the country with a large hinterland, so cost of living is still fairly affordable. Tales of crime are overblown by the media -- they are mostly outside the city, and normalized to population, is not significant…

It's actually a positive for Chicago. The economy here is highly, highly diversified. We have a large tech sector but it doesn't dominate the economy...nor would it be a good idea for it to do so

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#255

Post by vonzeppelin »

icelancer wrote: post #104
zw123456 wrote: post #40

Reasons for Seattle: 1) take a long shower 2) wash your car 3) water your lawn 4) cheap electrical rates 5) enjoy the outdoors 6) awesome IPA's 7) pot is legal 8) great culture 9) moderate weather as global warming progresses downside - traffic is horrible. That is my take as a long time Seattlite.

Been here 12 years and while I agree with those things (not that I care for IPA or weed), there are HUGE major cons: -Traffic is quickly becoming worse than all cities in the US and the tunnel nightmare will not solve that (many projections say it will make it worse) -Local and regional bureaucracy is far worse here than comparable west coast cities -Massively regressive taxes due to no state income tax (consumption…

Seattle was nice but it had no lightning bugs so I left. Lightning bugs are important.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#256

Post by MegaButts »

rublev wrote: post #252
MegaButts wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently made the switch to management, but before that I built robots - electrical, mechanical, and software engineering. The switch didn't really bump my pay - many of the engineers I work with make more than me. It is definitely easier to command a higher salary working on the software side of robotics, although I do know a handful of people doing hardware making even more (these people are truly outliers though…

Are these skills possible to acquire if you do not have a university background? I am self taught in everything, also learning math. I am make great money in frontend but would like to work with a more interesting skill set.

I think you can learn a lot if you become very familiar with ROS and just start building things (on the software side at least - much harder to pick up electronics and mechanics if only because of the material and machining costs). My first real foray into robotics was with OpenCV (which is part of ROS) many years ago. There are lots of tutorials online - find something you think is interesting and build it and go from there. If you really like it then start going to meetups (there are enough in the Bay Area for robotics) and meet other people, some of whom are amateurs and some of whom are professionals.

That would be my advice, although I have a university background so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#257

Post by madcaptenor »

lsc wrote: post #253
madcaptenor wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those calculators are ridiculous because they assume you spend your entire income. For most Americans that's pretty close to being correct - the average savings rate is around 6%. ( https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/03/heres-the-average-... )

You don't think that varies a lot by income? My impression is that savings as a percentage go up dramatically with income. I don't think I know anyone working in the industry that considers it reasonable to not max out their 401k, and who doesn't save substantially on top of that. This would be quite difficult for someone on an average salary with kids, or sometime who works in an industry where keeping up appearance…

OK, savings rate does vary by income, according to the Fed: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2016-economic-wel... . They only break things out into three income brackets (0-40K, 40K-100K, 100K+) - but even in the 100K+ bracket the median savings rate is somewhere between 6 and 10%, which isn't quite "max out the 401k" level. It looks like the data is available (https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/shed_dat...). The survey asks about level of education, what field that education was in, and number of children, so something like what you're asking about is actually checkable.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#258

Post by MegaButts »

Danihan wrote: post #237
MegaButts wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently made the switch to management, but before that I built robots - electrical, mechanical, and software engineering. The switch didn't really bump my pay - many of the engineers I work with make more than me. It is definitely easier to command a higher salary working on the software side of robotics, although I do know a handful of people doing hardware making even more (these people are truly outliers though…

What are the main toolsets in use / in demand on the software side? I'm in the Bay Area and I'm feeling underpaid. Please tell me what to learn. Off-topic: try a five day water fast for your migraines. You need neuronal autophagy.

Personally what I look at is what someone has built. If someone is a great engineer they can adapt, although there are some limits to this (I wouldn't hire someone who only works with MATLAB for a position that largely involves coding in C++). What I like to see are demos, not papers (although a demo of a paper is excellent).

ROS is something of a standard framework used in many places. AI is largely a buzzword and can mean many things, but ML tends to have more specific meaning. TensorFlow is becoming the commonly used library for all things machine learning. CUDA is becoming an incredibly useful skill, and GPU experts are always appreciated (including outside of robotics).

So play around with OpenCV if you want to work in computer vision, play around with TensorFlow if you want to do machine learning, and play around with ROS for learning how the backend of these systems work. If you want to be more of a specialist, learn CUDA and optimizing GPU code - I suspect that will be highly in demand for some time.

>Off-topic: try a five day water fast for your migraines. You need neuronal autophagy. reply

Tell me more.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#259

Post by acchow »

walshemj wrote: post #125
acchow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their data is obviously broken. If you look at the source, it is "Indeed", which is obviously not an unbiased sample of data. Let's pick a huge employer in Silicon Valley, Facebook, and search for jobs on Indeed. https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=facebook&l=Menlo+Park%2C+CA Not a single Software Engineer position. And I really don't think hot San Francisco startups are using Indeed to look for talent, which is why SF fal…

Indeed is a scraper with lots of low quality inventory or as my boss ex Total Jobs director said "shit inventory". Tier one employers don't normally advertise on indeed

Exactly.

Which is also why Indeed's previous article "Where are the Highest Paying Tech Jobs in the US" is complete garbage. Shows SV average at $111k. SV and SF have disproportionately high portion of Tier 1 companies and positions, many of which will never show up on Indeed.

How can you talk about SV without Facebook? Facebook has 20k employees, about half of them in SV.

Re: Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs

#260

Post by MegaButts »

sidlls wrote: post #238
MegaButts wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has an extremely low cost of living, yet there are tech companies here paying SF wages. I am skeptical of this. I am early in my career, live in SF, and make north of $300k. I do not work for one of the big 4, and I know people making more than me. That's not imaginary money - it's all liquid. This isn't meant to brag. I just think a lot of people underestimate how much you can make in SF if your skills are in d…

Very few engineers (as a percentage of all engineers) even in the Bay Area earn that much (base, all-in, or otherwise). Typical non-management compensation (all-in) is going to cap out ~15% or more below $300k. I've taken several salary surveys and done plenty of research through publicly available sites (e.g. glassdoor, linked in, payscale, etc.). For what it's worth, my all-in compensation is well below $300k/year…

I'm not saying these salaries are normal - I understand I am highly paid. My point is you can typically do better financially in the Bay Area if you are great at what you do. And something I think a lot of people don't appreciate is that by moving to the Bay Area you are more likely to open yourself up to those opportunities in the future. I would have a completely different career had I never moved here.
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