I doubt people only wanting to move to Seattle/SF/NYC is the problem. What about all the people who only look for jobs in their hometown or regional hub where there are approximately 0 jobs for software engineers? From what I’ve seen that is a much more common problem, people basically limiting their search parameters to a very small set of all open jobs, rather than looking at the three cities that have the most jobs.
This, for sure. And you definitely don’t need to go to SF or Seattle, there’s plenty of jobs in cities like Chicago, Austin, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, Atlanta, etc. But there may be be much less options in rust belt towns and rural areas.
That was a bit of the "Reluctance to move" aspect.
I've moved across country twice and from one end of a state to another twice... its a pain, but I like new places.
One of the companies that I worked for (smallish city in rural midwest). There were a few tech jobs there (and a reasonable sized tech company)... several of my co-workers had never been further than about 100-200 miles away from where they were born (and then, only as vacation).
Yea... the reluctance to move is a problem.
I attribute part of this to my (gen X) and the "this is how things are" that I got from my parents (boomers).
My father's family had a few moves through the years... not too many, but a few. My mother's family moved several times (and once even to another territory) as part of my grandfather's career. Once my parents were married, they moved twice before settling down.
For me, when I graduated college, it was almost expected that I move somewhere else for a time. And I did. My brother too... and my sister. My brother (gen X) has moved five times since graduating college and my sister (gen X / millennial cusp) has also had five major moves since graduating college.
I believe there's a generational shift in that expectation of moving out - possibly from the financial insecurities that the dot com crash, '09 recession, and the '20 recession have instilled in the millennials and gen Z as they look for jobs... though that's just a guess.
> rather than looking at the three cities that have the most jobs.
There are a lot of cities/metro areas that have a lot of jobs that people tend to pass by. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm - note that there are other classifications that are applicable, but I can't get a page that has a set of them together... so just using this one as an example.
If you look at the raw employment figures, Dallas, Chicago, DC, and LA are way up there too.
If you expand this to the location quotient (based on how many jobs there are compared too other jobs) you'll find many other cities have quite a few jobs too. Huntsville, Durham, and Madison are also up there.
* Reluctance to move / restrictions on where they want to move (only SF, Seattle, NYC)
* Extreme focus on product development (and not applying for the operations jobs that keep many large orgs running).
* Focus on working for a high salary at a big tech company (and not applying to jobs at companies that aren't seen as big tech... say... this job - https://csx.taleo.net/careersection/basic_faceted_search/job... )
I believe that there is extreme saturation in certain desirable sectors of the field and "where is everyone?" in other areas.