<p>“If you go to work at a company that uses highly technical people, hen your technical expertise will be appreciated.”</p>
<p>By “appreciated”, do you mean “we’ll actually pay you enough to live on”? Nowadays, family-sized houses in and around America’s big cities (New York, Boston, SF, LA etc.) routinely sell for over $1,000,000. That’s a mortgage payment of $6,650 a month (cite: [Mortgage</a> Calculator](<a href=“http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage-calculator.aspx]Mortgage”>http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage-calculator.aspx)). I don’t know a single programmer who makes enough to afford that, and I know a lot of programmers.</p>
<p>(Yes, I know I don’t technically <em>have</em> to live in a big city, but that’s where all the jobs are.)</p>