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From: www.itworld.com
Where the grass is greener
December 13, 2000 —
Thirty-one percent of the members of
techies.com, an online job site for information systems workers, recently said they
would be willing to relocate. While moving to the tropics or the city of one's dreams
is alluring, respondents indicated that when deciding whether to move, the prospect of
a better job opportunity is the overriding factor.
A survey by the American Management
Association found that 29 percent of managers relocated during the
1990s -- including 19 percent of those who did not change organizations. Relocation
within an organization is the kind of thing you can't always predict.
Whether you choose to relocate or have relocation foisted upon you, your new city
may have a great impact on your career. Some cities have more technology jobs than
others, and they aren't all in the Sun Belt.
Software-development hot spots
If you are considering a move to another US city, Silicon Valley is not your only
option. A recent study by the Software and Information
Industry Association (SIIA) found that IT jobs related to programming, engineering,
systems analysis, and tech support have spread from sea to shining sea.
|
Rank
|
face="Verdana">Metro Area |
height="13"> |
Density
(US average 100) |
||
| |
height="13" align="absmiddle"> |
Boulder-Longmont
(Colo.) |
width="1" height="13"> |
416 |
|
|
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#000000">2 |
color="#FFFFFF" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> height="13"> |
San
Jose (Calif.) |
width="1" height="13"> |
397 |
|
| |
color="#FFFFFF" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> height="13"> |
Washington,
D.C. / Md. / Va. / W.V. |
width="1" height="13"> |
307 |
|
| 4 |
height="13" align="absmiddle"> |
Raleigh,
Durham, Chapel Hill (N.C.) |
width="1" height="13"> |
283 | |
| |
height="13"> |
Huntsville
(Ala.) |
height="13"> |
259 |
|
| 6 | height="13"> |
Colorado
Springs (Colo.) |
height="13"> |
251 |
|
| |
height="13"> |
San
Francisco |
height="13"> |
|
|
| 8 | height="13"> |
Middlesex,
Somerset, Hunterdon (N.J.) |
height="13"> |
225 | |
| |
height="13"> |
Boston,
Mass. / N.H. |
height="13"> |
|
|
| 10 |
height="13"> |
Austin,
San Marcos (Texas) |
height="13"> |
223 |
California has long represented a kind of one-stop shopping source for high-tech
jobs, but no longer dominates the list of cities offering an abundance of
software-related jobs. Pockets of software development have sprung up all over the
nation, due largely to the dot-com explosion that is firing many regional startups.
The SIIA study ranks cities by software-development density (number of
software-occupation employees divided by population.) The results may surprise
you -- only two California cities are in the top 10, and New York isn't even in the top
25. This survey is biased towards cities with lower populations, since
software-development jobs will never compete proportionately with the thousands of
other jobs found in cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Yet, several
sizable cities made the list, including Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and
Boston.
Another shortcoming of the survey is that it was released in June, but its data are
from 1998. This may account for its failure to reflect the recent explosive growth of
several dot-com locales, particularly New York City and southern Florida.
Nonetheless, the study offers hope to those considering relocation to further their
IT careers. Apparently, you can bang the keys for profit and pleasure just as
productively in Colorado as you can in the Southwest or mid-Atlantic. The top three
cities are Boulder/Longmont, Colo., San Jose, Calif., and Washington, D.C. (See the
chart for the states with the most cities in the top 25.
|
States with the
most cities in the top 25: |
|||||
|
State
|
|
face="Verdana">No. Cities in Top 25 |
height="13"> |
Cities (Rank)
|
|
|
Colorado
|
height="60"> |
height="13"> |
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Boulder-Longmont (1) Colorado Springs (6) Denver (11) Fort Collins-Loveland (20) |
||
| height="26"> |
color="#000000">California
|
align="center"> | height="">2 |
height="13"> |
San Jose (2) |
| height="31"> | bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> | valign="middle"> |
height="13"> |
Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon (8) Trenton (21) |
|
|
color="#000000">Texas
|
height="13"> |
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Austin-San Marcos (10) Dallas (12) |
|||
While making the best career move may be your first goal, a choice of several cities
and regions expands your lifestyle options. If you don't want to raise your children in
a big city, there are many smaller communities on this list. If you want to be closer
to the mountains, ice fish in the winter, be near a college community, or do a little
cow poking on weekends, there is a city or region with high-tech jobs for you.
SIIA rankings of metro areas by software employment density,
1998
'Number of employees in software-related jobs divided by population; the density data
have been converted to an index number. The US average is set at 100.'
Additional Resources
techies.com Data and Research relocation survey:
http://portland.techies.com/Common/Career/200008/Main/Rung080100b_m.jsp
American Management Association Survey -- Career Advancement in the 1990s:
ch/pdfs/career_adv_a.pdf
Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) Names Top 25 Metro Areas for
Software Employment:
ITworld.com