Submitted by BostonAndOC_RE_… on April 17, 2006 – 5:32pm
“At the end of the day, its all about jobs, and OC and SD are sorely lacking in high paying professional job creation.”
exactly…..and this fact alone will bite many people in the arse as RE corrects itself.
The Mrs. and I moved down here from SF a couple of years back for a change of lifestyle and for new work opportunities. We are both college educated and we knew before coming here we were going to take a pay cut. In my field, without an advanced degree (PhD) I cannot exceed past a certain point both professionally and in salary. But this doesn’t bother us because we moved here to raise our family where there is a sense of community; something that was sorely missing from the Bay Area. SF is an absolute sewer, but I digress….
I am at peace with the reality of my career advancement because for the most part I make decent money and I do receive benefits such as stock options, 401k, insurance, and I enjoy a flex schedule. It sucks that the both of us have to work in order to “afford” a house and pay the bills but fortunately for us we have money working in the market that isn’t solely tied to our 401k’s. We save, we pay cash, we go out to dinners, etc.
So where am I going with this? No job is safe and I have always felt that you need to keep the skill sets sharp so you can be ahead of the curve in the working economy. Lately I have been contemplating a career change. I am leaning towards an advanced degree (MS in CS) but I have been hesitant because so far it would be a costly investment with an uncertain return in the fields I would like to go into. For the things that interest me now, an advanced degree would be mostly overkill or I am looking to work in very tiny, niche markets. In the Bay Area I would have almost limitless opportunities but it just isn’t the case here in San Diego. San Diego is desperately lacking in high paying, highly skilled jobs that bless places like the SF Bay Area. They exist of course, just not in the numbers that can adequately justify the current RE prices for San Diego county. I could be wrong about the job market (most likely) but at least that is the impression I have received by perusing the sunday employment section and company websites. And it is definitely the impression I have received by talking to my friends and colleagues who are in similar situations.
