Would you move for a Perl job? (relocate for employment)

[Anonymous Monk]

I've been job searching for a little while. Have been hoping to find something within reasonable commuting distance and Perl-related, but not finding much. I'm starting to consider a possible move if that would improve chances of landing something.

Searching PM, I hear tales of others having held 5 or more different jobs in as many years. Have you been able to find Perl jobs in your area, or have you had to relocate to find employment?

Is it more common for kids just out of college to relocate for work? Is there some level of expertise that makes relocating to find work no longer necessary?

[Your Mother]

If you're single and not tied to anything in particular, why not move? Experiencing a new part of your country or another country rules; even when it doesn't work out to be that much fun it tends to be much more valuable on many levels than kicking around your home state.

I've had… gotta think. Three different Perl gigs in the last five years but only worked three years so it's about one a year; in the Pacific Northwest. When I'm looking for work I can go three depressing months without a nibble or a listing that seems any good and then all of the sudden find my inbox full of recruiters I never even contacted and have to pick between three jobs.

Lack of experience will not just be a problem at home but with relocating too. Probably moreso because if it's worth relocating for, the competitive pool just got deeper.

Keep your eye on Perl Jobs telecommute listing. I've landed two jobs through it and one indirectly: they tried to hire me for telecommute but their local office took me for an office contract. Telecommuting is also a place where lack of experience is gonna kill you because the competition for the those jobs can be fierce.

Spend time making yourself a more attractive choice and maybe expand what kind of work you'd be willing to take to get a resume bullet. Shore up your Perl in areas you're not already adept (POE? Objects? Sysadmin stuff?). Contribute to the CPAN directly or indirectly by submitting patches or tests. Pick up some PHP; ewwwww, I know but many offices use it and half the posts I see for Perl ask for it too. How is your web 2.0 stuff? It matters because a lot of the venture capital that's coming back is going that way. Most of that stuff--Ajax, CSS, DHTML, XML, XHTML, JSON--is really easy. It's just getting your head around the 1,000 simple details. There are always jobs for technical writers if you have the interest (or stomach).

Dive into the Perl that will make you a star. DBIx::Class, as just a single example, can make one developer so productive with data slinging that it's amazing. Just playing with Moose will make you a more thoughtful hacker. Stick around here. I can't sing this place's praises enough. I'm not here much when I'm working but the time I spend here when I'm not is part of why I've been able to get employed when I need to be.

Reiterating: moving is great and some areas have more tech jobs. The pay in the Portland/Seattle area is not as high as many places because of MSFT, Adobe, etc but there is always tech work. Both towns are great if you can take the winter rain. The East coast pays much better. I see postings there for $100k that would post on the West coast with 5x the required skills for $50k (and it's not because NYC is more expensive than SF either because that's not true). A lot of great places to live down the Eastern seaboard.

Last. Don't give up. It can seem bleak. Sometimes a job you don't get is really a bullet you dodged in disguise. Be diligent, creative, and positive in your hunt. And good luck!

[parv]

Depends on how bad you need the money, and how long out of some decent work that you would love. That was the case for me so I moved from West Virginia, USA to Hawaii, USA. (USD1000-1200 14-16-hour flight in third class sucks however.) Note that I was fully compensated for moving & interview expenses. Otherwise, I would have remained on the contiguous 48 states, and possibly would have to move on my own.

Good thing is I am working with Perl (along with being a DBA in training) as a junior programmer. Bad thing is everything is expensive here, besides the dangers of tsunami, earthquake, volcano eruption & vog. (I was aware of the natural hazards before I applied for the position.) Sometimes I have to remind myself for being in Hawaii. As I a said, depends.

[Anonymous Monk]

would u have 2 be a dancer if u want

[parv]

I failed to parse the sentence. Could you rephrase it?

[artist]

Job search and deciding the right job for you may not be that easy, but don't despair because it is not that much difficult either in recent market for experienced people. If you don't want to relocate, you have to retrain yourself, if Perl-related jobs are not available in your area. Relocation for better career opportunities for your life is very common in USA. It also gives a chance to explore yourself in new territory. Decide your options and explore it well. Make an educated guess for your future. About your last question.. I would say, make yourself changeable, so gaining higher level of expertise become second nature for you in IT world, rather than hiding under some secure shield.

[Joost]

I'm a free-lance programmer, so jobs can come from anywhere. I'm lucky enough to live in a fairly well-connected (as in public transport) town in a fairly small country. This means I can get to more or less any major city in this country (the Netherlands) within an hour and a half.

I am thinking of moving, since on average I can save a lot of traveling time doing so because by far most clients I work for are located in the Amsterdam/Utrecht region, so moving there will safe me traveling time and generally make things easier.

Note that I already have jobs in other regions. In your situation, I would very much prefer moving if I already landed a job (in other words, try to get the job first, then move). On the other hand, if you seriously can't get any job at all, you're not risking much.

[menolly]

I did move across the country after college, and I've interviewed for jobs which would've required relocation since then, before I bought my condo. Now moving would require selling, which would be difficult or impossible in this market (or renting at a loss, as it wouldn't rent for enough to cover everything; the local market is wacky). If you can afford to move, and can't find something local, go for it.

[oakbox]

I have moved twice for Perl work. The first time I left a stable and well-paying bank job, where I was one of many, to a small firm where I was the whole IT department. 3 years later, I moved to the Netherlands for a Perl job.

No matter where you go, just start talking to businesses in the area and find out if you can make things to ease their pain. That kind of networking can be difficult for some of us tech types, but sometimes you just have to cowboy up.

What would the Perl Programmer equivalent be to 'Cowboy Up'?

[Herkum]

I actually did move because I was not able to find ANYTHING near where I was living. (Pittsburgh, PA -> Tucson, AZ). I am taking slight risk, Tucson does not have Perl programmers to compete with me but it means if I don't like my job I will not be able to find another one.

Perl has pockets where it is extremely popular and places where no one uses it. If you want to do Perl(as a career), you are probably going to have to move. You could get lucky and be hired to do programming someplace that has not committed itself to a language and programming staff, but they can be few and far between.

[sundialsvc4]

If you're young and you want to do it, by all means take the opportunity to move. But, don't think that “Perl jobs are non-existent,” no matter where you live. If you find yourself ping-ponging across the country “five times in five years,” either you love to travel, or you're really pissing-off the people who try to work with you, or you have no sticking-power, or you're just doing something wrong and need to adjust your strategy.

What you gotta do, though, is to quit limiting yourself to Monster and Dice. Quit looking just for hits on keywords like “Perl.” Don't expect a commissioned recruiter to do your leg-work for you; don't limit yourself to what they have to offer. It's your job. You're going to have to define it and then get it:   that means salesmanship.

(Don't freak out at the word “sales.” As they say in in-flight magazines, “you don't get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate.” It's true. And, it can be great fun.)

So, define your product. You are a computer programmer, not a Perl programmer. You might even find that your true talent is not being a programmer at all, but rather some other part of the overall business. I, for example, am much stronger as a project-manager and architect:   I work better at a higher level of abstraction. I know this about myself, and generally pursue opportunities accordingly.

This does make “the sales cycle” a little longer and harder to come by. But it also makes it a whole lot more interesting, and the job that you finally land is much more likely to be something that enables you to grow, not just eat.

It's worth remembering that the computer-programming business is constantly changing. Perl skills, and HTML web-site development skills, are already becoming dated. There's nothing that you can master now that's going to carry you through the next forty years, at least not if you measure your worth (or pursue your career) strictly as a technical specialist. Five, maybe ten years from now (at most) it will all be different technology, and what we are doing now will be getting tagged with the word “legacy,” which is roughly equivalent to “oldie” to a radio-station. And yet, people will continue to be doing large technical projects using digital computers of some sort... so you can “go with the flow, wherever the flow may take you,” and have a helluva ride. Not too many careers can offer that, but you have to learn how to surf.

Anything that will be making your house-payment five years from now is likely-as-not going to have been invented during the last five years, and you will have acquired those skills on-the-fly during that time. (Training programs and/or college degrees on the new subject will yet be, at best, many years away.) You will be answering ads for “eight to ten years' experience in” this technology ... :-D ... and you'll be successfully landing those jobs by selling yourself. May as well face it and get real good at this:   after all, you did the same thing with Perl, didn't you?

You thought you were “faking it,” right? (OMG, they're gonna find out and fire me!) But you came to realize that you really weren't “faking” anything at all. You adapted. Somehow, you landed four-paws-down.

Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, liked to use this story:   two shoe-salesmen were dispatched to the jungles of outer-nowhere. Both of them promptly wired back:

• COMING HOME NEXT BOAT X NO ONE HERE WEARS SHOES XX
• GREAT OPPORTUNITY X SEND ALL YOU HAVE X NO ONE HERE WEARS SHOES XX

[bwelch]

I relocated several times after college. My objective was to find good places to work and get experience in various fields to find what I liked. Relocating was a 'cost' paid for more opportunity. It was also a good way to try living is different parts of the country.

Some areas had a large number of companies with developer, engineering, and academic jobs. Finding jobs in those was easier in general, but cost of living was higher.

To me, it's all about cost-benefit analysis. Define the benefits of a new area such as better job market, lower housing costs, proximity to a good university, etc. Beware of the 'grass is greener' syndrome. Remember that benefits and costs involve social and culture parts, too. For example, my local job market is quite small, but family is nearby and many of my friends are from this area. Laying out the costs and benefits on paper can be quite helpful in making decisions like this.