I work at Aberdeen, MD making 141k. I got an offer once for 155k from a nearby military base not long ago. I've seen houses nearby for 180k. Pretty easy to save here if you're ok with Gov beurocrac. Easy to get a new job, too.
In my experience, the best ways to maximize your income as a software engineer are to job hop, study data structures/algorithms, and learn how to market yourself. Companies rarely reward engineers who stay put.
My experience with bootcamp graduates has been that they struggle with any non rudimentary problems and lack knowledge of any of the fundamentals required to do non CRUD applications.
> - A lot of big companies have satellite offices around Austin, like Apple, Intel, IBM, etc. You aren't necessarily locked into working for an "Austin company", if you don't want to.
Sounds good to me! I just want to avoid anything government-contractor related after my experience in the DC metro.
Well, it you view this page's source. You'll see tags that haven't been used since the 90s like <center>. Maybe the jobs are to maintain legacy systems and alot of engineers don't want to maintain legacy systems. Still, seems like having Y Combinator on your resume would look great.
People like to knock on government funded research on security/defense here, but it is actually one of the reasons the US leads in tech. DARPA produced the arpanet, the predecessor to the internet. Also, while everyone is aware of Stanford and silicon manufacturers contributions to making Silicon Valley, the defense industry also played a big part in SV's early days. And let's not forget Alan Turing was working for the British government to defeat the nazis. Funding research is a great idea.