NorCal vs. SoCal for CS jobs.

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Hey everyone. I'm Bryan and I lurk these forums a lot (and post sometimes) to find out more and more information on Engineering and people's experience with jobs and stuff.</p>

<p>I go to UC Riverside (an hour away from LA) and I'm a 2nd year Computer Science major.</p>

<p>I've been living in the area all my life. When I graduate I would love to find a job right away. I'm on track to graduate in 2013 (that is I finish on time in 4 years) if I take a full load of 16+ units each quarter. If I find taking a full load to be too much, then I could take 12+ units each quarter and graduate in 2014. My mom says that there's nothing wrong with taking an extra year because I'm still young, but I want to finish ASAP to get a job. If I graduate in 2013, I'll be 21 years old.</p>

<p>I did a very very rough search on dice.com "software engineer" in San Fransisco and there were 2288 results. I did the same search for Los Angeles and there were 942 results.</p>

<p>Do you think it would be a good choice to move up north to try and find a job because there are more up there? Should I just look for internships down here and hopefully they'll hire me?</p>

2

<p>In many cases, searching for internships and jobs is conducted while you are still in school, so you may want to apply to companies in both of these areas (and other areas).</p>

3

<p>I would say that there are more CS jobs in the Bay Area than the LA/SD area.</p>

4

<p>When it comes time for you to find work (internships, full-time work, etc.) it will bode you well to be flexible about location. Apply for jobs everywhere - top choices + places you may not envision yourself looking for. The more willing you are to be flexible, the more interviews you’ll get. Look in the SF Bay Area, SoCal, Austin, Boston/Cambridge, Portland, Seattle etc. </p>

<p>Once you have an idea of what type of CS work you want to do, hit up those organizations, wherever they may be. The wonderful thing about being in technology is that it’s easy to move around (for the most part), so don’t feel like you’re choosing somewhere to live for the rest of your life.</p>