Oh yes, some brought up the homeless. Not to get into it too much. Denver is freaking sketchy. Every few months a gang would kill someone outside my LoDo offices, or someone would show up looking for their ex armed and we would have a lock down. Homeless are rampant. Half real homeless, half young vagabond. It is usually ultra nice, then next block I'd feel the need to hide my watch. Austin, I bike to work every day. I walk around at night every day. Sure there are clusters, like under 35.. but I walk my dog 7 miles on weekends all through down town. Something I'd never ever do in Denver.
Denver has always been an ultra sketchy town, with a hard drug problem. Just look at the Gang statistics for Aurora. If anything Denver has been getting better, but the difference is 10 years ago you would avoid down town at all costs. Now you want to buy a run down house for 700k.
Though if you can find work in Boulder or Fort Collins, grab it. Denver, avoid.
EX Denver developer here. Colorado Native. Now an Austin Dev (I'm a senior / lead android dev) I can safely say that the job market in Denver is terrible. Yes you can find work, but the company culture are terrible. I found myself with brogrammers that had 0 engineering style hobbies or being asked to work 60 hours every week. There are a few gems.. But the Jobs you want, aren't hiring mobile devs because their offices are start up size. IE Uber, google, github. Those are all Boulder offices anyways, not Denver. In Denver you will get mostly Banks, and dinos like Comast / Aol. Sure some will get offers at Pivotal or Workday. But after that you aren't going to like what you can get.
Seriously the drug use is pretty Rampant in Denver too. Not a turn off to all, but given the places I did work, you wouldn't expect it. Texas is so much better. The job I have is so much better, My coworkers are actually nerdy. Honestly. Sorry I just have to laugh at the idea that desert is a great place to look for work.
Here in Austin we can't even find android devs to apply. Denver I interviewed maybe 20 and found most to be just okay.
I find it funny that we have completely reversed methodologies on hiring. If someone gave me a resume with bullet point skills as the first thing on the resume, I would be impressed. Though you can't have too much or too little of any of these elements.
That is interesting. We are seeking the best way to do something, but we are forgetting that people, the interviewers are all different, looking for arbitrarily (but defendable) different things..
Far as new grads. When I got my first job, I did list my class projects, but I focused more on the internships I had had (3 by that point), as well as my freelancing, and the work with open source 3d printers. If a new grad only has projects that would be a red flag.
Denver has always been an ultra sketchy town, with a hard drug problem. Just look at the Gang statistics for Aurora. If anything Denver has been getting better, but the difference is 10 years ago you would avoid down town at all costs. Now you want to buy a run down house for 700k.
Though if you can find work in Boulder or Fort Collins, grab it. Denver, avoid.