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Ask HN: Where to live in California?

7 points by q-base ↗ HN
I am born and raised in Denmark and have lived here most of my life, apart from a year in Bruxelles. But I am considering relocating to either California, Florida or Switzerland.

I have 10+ years of experience as a C# developer and currently work as a freelancer in Denmark with somewhat lead developer/architect roles. I have also spent a little over 3 years on a start-up I founded together with my dad.

The big question is where to go? The obvious, at least as an "outsider" sitting on the other side of the world, seems like SF. Best "buzz", large tech companies and lots of start-ups. BUT it also sounds like the housing-market is somewhat of a mess, and that you can pay either half your salary on housing or have 1+ hour to work or perhaps even both?

So are there better alternatives in California where cost and availability of accommodation are in better relations to the tech job market? Or is the job market so hot in SF that even though you will pay a lot for accommodation, then the salary and availability of tech jobs more than makes up for it?

7 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 31.9 ms ] thread
masonic
Do you have eligible work status?
q-base
No, but I could not expect it would be any problem to obtain - or am I too naive?
fdafellow
Yea, you are a bit naive in this regard then. Please go and read those work visa(H1-B) horror stories. First find a company who will be willing to sponsor the work visa which is more than half of the battle.
q-base
Since I got that initial reply, I have been looking into it. It seems like I was very naive indeed!

The follow-up question would of course then be, how likely/wide-spread is it that companies will sponsor working visas for new tech-hires? I assume that it would be more likely if already being employed in a company, that then sent you to USA as an expat.

copperx
I was naive in this regard too. I assumed the top 5 handed out H1-Bs easily.
exolymph
If you're trying to max out salary or career opportunities, then you can't really beat the Bay Area.
q-base
That is also the impression I get sitting behind a desk on the other side of the world. But how hard it is to "break in" to this market is a little harder to distill.