In the really old days you would move somewhere (often because you heard that some industry was booming there) and then look for work. Today you can't do that without a lot of savings.
[1] https://www2.census.gov/library/visualizations/time-series/d...
[2] https://www2.census.gov/library/visualizations/time-series/d...
[3] https://www.challengergray.com/blog/historical-analysis-fewe...
my old man used to work for Big Oil back in the day, both in the US and internationally, and in basically all cases it wasn't even really a discussion -- "here's the cash to cover the move, how soon can you be here?"
for international, esp. in places like Kenya or Australia, they had apartments or condos for short term workers that they'd put you in until you found something more permanent. after my folks had me + my siblings, they even had listings of nannies and maids pre-sourced so you could find reliable help once you landed.
I have an extremely negative impression from jobs that grant visas. Here are some points to consider:
* Work visa is an extremely valuable asset to the worker. They will do a lot of bad things before they even consider endangering their status in the country they reside. This leads to a pathologically abusive workspace because no criticism ever goes up the administrative chain of command. This severely impacts product quality, creates a toxic working environment.
* There's no good selection process for the applicants. On the other hand, applicants have a huge incentive to stick with whatever potential employer might employ them. This results in the overall poor quality of the workforce hired in such a way, it's also a workforce that's difficult to replace or to improve.
In other words, after working in Israel as a programmer for some twenty years (Israel doesn't issue work visas to programmers) I've seen both good quality products and programmers as well as bad. When I came to the Netherlands I was in shock because of how poor was the quality of both the product and the workforce. At first, it didn't make sense to me: how on Earth if these people can pay more and have a bigger candidate pool do they end up with such bad outcomes? My bullet points above are the conclusions I came to while trying to understand the problem. Perhaps they are wrong, but the observation, definitely, isn't: the quality is so bad I want to cry.
Otherwise, Boston, NYC, DMV, Seattle, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, and others all could have become the next Silicon Valley.
which is geographic...
and let's also not forget the vast, heavy investments from the Navy and government during WW2. the SV wasn't just a couple of fancy colleges, San Fran is a major city that got a ton of investment.
the DMV arguably is the east coast SV
On that note, thanks for explaining it to me.
Given the reduced competition, you couldn't find primo jobs unless you moved to a hub (which is why most people are in NYC/SF/LA), but when you found a job it was more stable.