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Comment by 40acres | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone speak to.the job market in the DC metro? I've been thinking a lot about moving back to the east coast and DC seems like a decent trade off between cost of living and interesting jobs (compared to my home NYC).

What kind of jobs are in DC, what's the salary range like?

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I just moved from Philadelphia to DC for a job, and I am still biased towards Philadelphia. The jobs I see around here seem to be slanted towards government and non profits.

The biggest problem is the absurd high cost of living, Housing prices are high for miles out of the city, and they spike along all the major forms of transportation. Unless you like sitting in traffic for hours a day you will be paying a premium for housing. Traffic is also a mess.

It has been my experience that you would be much better off in Boston, NYC, or Philadelphia ( I would check out Philly, very low cost of living and a burgeoning tech scene )

Philly is cheap and we are getting more start ups. There are a lot of tech jobs though, but the downside (for some) is that many are in the suburbs either on the main line or in New Jersey, and I don't think that will change much until the city business problem tax is lowered.

I think the business and wage tax are putting a dampener on growth, but they haven't prevented the city from still putting on tech jobs. If you don't mind the wage tax I knew lots of people who did reverse commutes and they worked out well. I think of any city I have lived in philly is right on the cusp of being the next breakout place to be. Its a great city with amazing cultural institutions, the best food scene on the east coast, low cost of living, a lot of great educational institutions to churn out talent and a pretty good regional transit system. If they can fix their governance issues and attract some more capital willing to lead big rounds I think they could hold their own against NYC and boston

Only thing keeping me from moving into Philly is the wage tax. I think within the next year I'm just going to bite the bullet and do it.

Just negotiate that factor into whatever salary you get. I feel like firms in the city proper realize they need to add a couple thousand to compete with suburban firms

The latest stats I've seen for us here in the DC metro area are that we have 7 of the 10 richest counties in the U.S. That tells you a lot about the density of opportunity here. The downtown areas have gentrified amazingly in the last several years. Nice place to be if you want to be close to things.

I was in Seattle recently and it's a truly beautiful city with a stunning landscape. But seemed kinda sleepy compared to DC. I was in Silicon Valley also recently and came away scratching my head why anyone would wish to live there now - miles upon miles of industrial parks, seemed kinda run down even in Cupertino. But just my 2 cents.

The majority of jobs in DC metro are government contracting as you would imagine. That is not to say there are not interesting opportunities available. A few startups and many small contracting shops filling niche spots for the Gov.

IMO the cost of living in not good in DC metro. Very high home prices, only below SF, Boston, NYC. Lower salaries than SF/NYC across the board. Upper middle class in DC requires 200k income, many families here with two 100k earning parents.

I left the DC area in 1998 after programming there for 13 years. Wages were suppressed by government white collar salary caps, which also constrained contractor incomes. A decade later, housing costs had more than doubled, yet wages hadn't budged. AFAIK, the CostOfLiving vs salary ratio remains just as unattractive today, making DC the most uncompetitive tech hotspot I know.

It should be noted that most people don’t live in DC proper - most commute in from the suburbs. My friends in the area all bought houses in places like Fairfax, Springfield, and between Baltimore and DC. House prices are not cheap, but I’ve heard $600k for a nice house quoted to me.

DC proper is just ridiculous. Thankfully you can find more reasonable places just across the river with a short commute time.

And the price difference is similar for apartments. I'm paying $1000 for a ~1000 sqft apartment on the cheap side of the bridge. I have a coworker paying $2500 for a smaller place in DC. The difference in commute time is 5 minutes.

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