Greg

Hi there,

I'm (hopefully) moving to the US from the UK later this year with my
wife on a marriage visa, financed by the equity in selling our house.

Faye and myself keep changing our minds about where to move to though.
We have quite a few friends and family on the East Coast. The
favourite possibilities are in New York, Ohio and North Carolina.

I'm starting to take seriously the danger of not been able to get a
job particularly quickly, and am thinking this should be a major
factor in the decision.

So the question is, where is a good place (or at least, a not-so-bad
place) to move to if I need to find a job as a Software Engineer?

Or alternatively, are there any areas on the East Coast I should avoid
like the plague if I'm in IT?

Thankees,

Greg

NC Penguin

All I'll say is that typically, employers start to wind down their recruitment efforts from Thanksgiving onwards (last week of Nov) so if you're planning to move to the US toward the latter end of the year, do so before November.

You say you are a software engineer? Do you know Java? Do you have certification and experience in it? I've got the impression that if you have experience and certification, this may make finding a job easier since Java is so popular now (and has been for the last few years).



NC Penguin

Vampier

    > Hi there,
    > I'm (hopefully) moving to the US from the UK later this year with my
    > wife on a marriage visa, financed by the equity in selling our house.
    > Faye and myself keep changing our minds about where to move to though.
    > We have quite a few friends and family on the East Coast. The
    > favourite possibilities are in New York, Ohio and North Carolina.
    > I'm starting to take seriously the danger of not been able to get a
    > job particularly quickly, and am thinking this should be a major
    > factor in the decision.
    > So the question is, where is a good place (or at least, a not-so-bad
    > place) to move to if I need to find a job as a Software Engineer?
    > Or alternatively, are there any areas on the East Coast I should avoid
    > like the plague if I'm in IT?
    > Thankees,
    > Greg

Hi Greg,

I would say the complete USA right now. I've been looking for a job for 8
months (good resume and good refs.) 200 resume's out the door, 0 reactions
back.

Go figure..... some people luck out though. Hopefully you're one of them.

GreeTz

Patrick

Andy Platt

All areas have been hit; the Washington DC area is supposed to be much
better off than many areas but it's also home to a lot of government or
government-related jobs that we don't qualify for

Andy.

--
I'm not really here - it's just your warped imagination.

"Greg" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > Hi there,
    > I'm (hopefully) moving to the US from the UK later this year with my
    > wife on a marriage visa, financed by the equity in selling our house.
    > Faye and myself keep changing our minds about where to move to though.
    > We have quite a few friends and family on the East Coast. The
    > favourite possibilities are in New York, Ohio and North Carolina.
    > I'm starting to take seriously the danger of not been able to get a
    > job particularly quickly, and am thinking this should be a major
    > factor in the decision.
    > So the question is, where is a good place (or at least, a not-so-bad
    > place) to move to if I need to find a job as a Software Engineer?
    > Or alternatively, are there any areas on the East Coast I should avoid
    > like the plague if I'm in IT?
    > Thankees,
    > Greg

NC Penguin

I might add that even a lot of Americans don't qualify for government jobs because many adverts lately specify that candidates must have current security clearance. Even having lapsed security clearance is no better than never having had it...



NC Penguin

Sj

What are your areas of speciality?

SJ

On 4 Aug 2003 09:13:12 -0700, [email protected] (Greg) wrote:

    >Hi there,
    >I'm (hopefully) moving to the US from the UK later this year with my
    >wife on a marriage visa, financed by the equity in selling our house.
    >Faye and myself keep changing our minds about where to move to though.
    >We have quite a few friends and family on the East Coast. The
    >favourite possibilities are in New York, Ohio and North Carolina.
    >I'm starting to take seriously the danger of not been able to get a
    >job particularly quickly, and am thinking this should be a major
    >factor in the decision.
    >So the question is, where is a good place (or at least, a not-so-bad
    >place) to move to if I need to find a job as a Software Engineer?
    >Or alternatively, are there any areas on the East Coast I should avoid
    >like the plague if I'm in IT?
    >Thankees,
    >Greg

Peter Newton

There are plenty of firms in the Tri-State area (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) which hire software engineers. That said whether they are hiring or not is another story.

It's no longer the case that you have to go to Silicon Valley for these jobs - this area is in fact declining.

One up and coming place is Florida. A lot of companies are moving their data centers down there to reduce costs.

Waterpony

Hi Greg,

I work for a major IT company and I checked our internal listings - the majority of the openings are in Virginia/DC area...roughly 4 times more than in other states...however, many jobs do require security clearance (government contracts).

Here's the link to public site if you'd like to check (please don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to advertise my company, nor am I a recruiter, just trying to help):

http://www.saic.com/career/find.html

Good luck!

nathan barley

Paging Patrick to thread 170229.
He'll tell you all about the IT jobs in North Carolina

Patrick

My beeper just went off, where ever there is danger I will be there, where ever I can piss someone off, I will be there, come rain or snow!

Hey Greg,

Avoid NC at all costs. It is an IT job vaccum at the moment. Places that are slowly but surely recovering or hiring are Boston and Dallas Fort Worth areas. Silicon Valley is dead, the software companies around Washington have been suffering of late too. If you go onto www.boston.com you can get an idea of the jobs about.

Patrick

Fuzzzb

I work in the IT field myself, and thankfully have a job. I'd say avoid
Pennsylvania all together, really nothing's out here. Baltimore, MD and area
have an okay job market, but who knows how fast that changes.

Good lucky with your search

"Greg" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > Hi there,
    > I'm (hopefully) moving to the US from the UK later this year with my
    > wife on a marriage visa, financed by the equity in selling our house.
    > Faye and myself keep changing our minds about where to move to though.
    > We have quite a few friends and family on the East Coast. The
    > favourite possibilities are in New York, Ohio and North Carolina.
    > I'm starting to take seriously the danger of not been able to get a
    > job particularly quickly, and am thinking this should be a major
    > factor in the decision.
    > So the question is, where is a good place (or at least, a not-so-bad
    > place) to move to if I need to find a job as a Software Engineer?
    > Or alternatively, are there any areas on the East Coast I should avoid
    > like the plague if I'm in IT?
    > Thankees,
    > Greg

RaymanInPA

Greg - my advice is to try the RTP area in NC and South East Penn/south-NJ. Theres always jobs in these areas. Don't worry about others telling you there arn't - have a look yourself at sites like CareerBuilder etc.

For me the optimum work to house-price ratio region seems to be NJ/Penn. Theres plenty of jobs here with affordable house prices. You can go towards NYC and the job opps increase but so do the house prices.

Good luck.

Patrick

Yes try RTP, where last week alone 5000 people where laid off. Unlike this ****ing moron I am actually in software and know what the **** I am talking about. NC is really not a good place to be if all your qualifications are in software. The IT business in the triangle has been constantly cutting back and cutting back. IBM, Nortel, Cisco. MCI and all points in between have tightening there belts and the triangle has suffered. In NC for every high tech job there are over 200 applicants. There are already 100's of IT workers and software guys out of work in the triangle so you would be joining an already long line.

I just did searches for software developers for the triangle and these are the results

dice.com - 6 (27 in NC on the whole)
monster - 18 (although I wouldn't trust some of them because they want money to place you)
careerbuilder.com 14 (out of 33)
goinglobal.com 2 (out of 3)

This is pretty bad for a state which has 13 million people and is based on high tech industries. Now if you develop Java you have the choice of about 6 jobs, web developers about 7, C - 4......and so on and so forth. NC is not the place to come for software at the moment, if you want to avoid moronic analysts avoid PA aswell.

Another thing you may have to be aware of is some of these job sites advertise jobs in RTP but the recruiter is based in RTP and the job is actually in Texas.

What is a matter with non IT people who live in pa and belfast and think they know what they are talking about when it comes to IT jobs in NC. Stick to what you know and stop giving people shit advice about a subject you know **** all about.

Patrick

Pulaski

If you are going to keep quoting this example perhaps you should be a little more honest about what these people actually did?

I guess that telling us that the people who lost their job worked in a cotton mill rather spoils the story.

Yes, it terrible, yes it will affect the local (retail) economy, and yes it proves that the NC/ US economy isn't about to soar into the stratosphere any time soon, but it has about as much to do with the IT sector as does the price of fish!

Patrick

It doesn't matter that these people worked in a cotton mill or in an oil refinery or in a chip shop. What it means is that 5000 more people are now looking for jobs in NC. This doesn't include the estimated 5000 jobs that will be lost in the fall out.

The knock on effect is that all the current IT and other people out of work now have 10,000 more people to compete with. There are no jobs in IT so people are seeking jobs in other areas, so there are 10,000 more people looking jobs in other areas.

If I (4 year degree, 4 years experience in the IT and software industry) went for a job in walmart with 200 others who have worked in the cotton mill (high school education) - I will lose out because I am overqualified and they will not hire someone with a degree for a shelf stacking job. Even if you leave it off your resume the fact that I spent the last 4 years at Nokia working on software gives the hint you are not a career shelf stacker.

Another thing, are you telling me at least a couple of hundred of those people didn't have something to do with IT. 200 on top of the thousands already out of work is 200 too many.

The local hospital here laid off 40 last week (including nurses), a software company 15 miles from here laid off 4 (all software developers), another High Tech company closed its doors all together three weeks ago laying off 200.....shall I go on. It doesn't matter where you look there are people being layed off, other companies are having hiring freezes. There are of course some companies that are still growing but they have the cream of the crop to choose from. Another thing I have found out about NC is that it really is who you know and not what you know.

I already seem to be getting a reputation for being negative and this post won't help because I am pointing out the reality of a depressed economy.

Patrick