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Comment by runT1ME | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to be the naysayer here and say that a year and a half back when I was looking for jobs I considered all options up and down the California coast. My conclusion from my search was that I will not be moving to San Diego. The salaries are far below Orange County, which are below Los Angeles, which are less than Bay Area salaries. Now, money isn't everything, but I'd say tech culture (in terms of technology, meetups, like minded folks) are also ranked in the same order.

If someone wants to be a 'blub' programmer than SD is probably no worse than any other place, but someone looking to grow their career and have fun doing it, I'd recommend LA, OC, South Bay, and SF above SD whole heartedly.

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If you think the place where you program determines whether or not you are a 'blub' I believe you are sorely misguided.

That was not what I meant at all. I mean if you aren't particular about the technology stack you are working with and/or hoping for a high salary, then odds are more in your favor in SD, vs. being picky.

You come off as really full of yourself for a guy who sounds like he does little more than write CRUD apps with the FotM web stack.

I'm not a web programmer at all, not sure why I come off that way. Also, since we're on HN, I assume most readers are familiar with PG's term 'Blub programmer', which more ore less means 'java' these days. shrug

I work in San Diego. I work for SPAWAR on missile defense technology for the navy, a massive presence in San Diego along with the marines. Uncle Sam has a pretty big budget for defense and lot of cool technology to play with. I get to work on things from device drivers to websites the whole gambit. Silicon Valley ain't the only place to learn, that's kinda the whole point of this whole internet thing.

What's the point of making more if you have to pay more to rent/buy a place and to live?

As a San Diego native who relocated to the Bay about five years ago: the income difference scales up faster than the rent difference. I've put away a lot of savings on that margin.

Now if your intent is to own a home, well, that's another story altogether. I'm generally priced out of even the cheapest areas.

>If someone wants to be a 'blub' programmer than SD is probably no worse than any other place

Weird, I always considered web devs who do little more than paste together abstractions written by other people to solve easy problems and then go talk about how awesome they are for doing it at meetups 'blub' programmers.

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