[_raaq]

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.

[Johnny555]

I found myself with brogrammers that had 0 engineering style hobbies

What is an "engineering style hobby"? I work in the SF Bay Area, and the most popular hobby of my coworkers is "parent".

[vin7]

You can afford Thai children? Lucky!!

[dang]

Can you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and only post civil, substantive comments to HN? We'd appreciate it.

[clumsysmurf]

I agree. Have been here for about 6 mos now, was hoping to have a good work / life balance (to me, that means running outdoors in open trail areas, not necessarily mountains - and not having a bad commute). I'm now working downtown and can not find any acceptable commute to a sparsely populated area. The W line to boulder is way too damn slow, I could probably ride a bicycle faster (it takes about 1:15 to go from boulder to downtown). The sprawl is larger than I expected.

I also notice it stinks pretty bad from whatever those smoke stacks are doing near Colfax & I25, and north of Denver - like some metallic smell.

In areas like North Thornton there is hydraulic fracking, so I'll pass on that, along with Arvada near Rocky Flats.

There is a lot of homelessness, but i read about 75% of those people have jobs - but can't find a place to live affordably. Rents might not be as bad as SF or Seattle but they are going up, apparently from the influx of people coming for legal weed and affordable housing shortage (luxury stuff is being built)

Oh, and avoid the 16th Street Circus. Centennial, Parker, Boulder, or Golden all look nice if you can find opportunities there - but the commutes from those (also nice to live places) are too much into downtown.

[JPKab]

Send me a private message. I'm an engineer and my company is hiring and we are nerdy to a fault. Our stack is C++, Node, React, Python, and C#(we are phasing that out).

We are in Broomfield, since Boulder got too expensive after we grew enough.

[jdwithit]

Arvada is still a decent place to live if you want to be on the north side of Denver. Otherwise, look down out to the south and/or west so you can at least be on the light rail.

I think you are maybe talking about Commerce City with the giant flaming smoke stacks? That area is indeed horrible.

Boulder is not part of Denver. It's its own city.

If you want someplace cool and good to live (though you will want to secure a 4-5 day a week remote job first, because driving down I25 to Denver will make you want to die. Ask me anything), may I recommend Fort Collins? :)

[kornish]

As far as commute: the express Flatiron Flyer (FF2) makes getting from Denver to Boulder about 35min or so.

[starwind0]

I owned in Broomfield. It's the burbs. It .. well not for a 20 something single dude. Otherwise very nice.

[username223]

> ... 0 engineering style hobbies...

I can't comment on the rest of it, but many people move to Denver because they have outdoor style hobbies, and think that it's near the mountains. They are probably disappointed to find that it's more or less the standard Great Plains sprawl -- Dallas within a few hours' drive of Longs Peak -- and that Boulder is an overpriced NIMBY colony.

[_raaq]

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.

[look_lookatme]

> 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.

What does this mean? If you mean cannabis use, who cares? It's legal and it's harmless. If you are talking about opioid abuse or something else, that's a different story.

It sounds like you had some subjectively bad individual experiences because you mixed with people that you are not socially compatible with, but there's nothing here (brogrammers that don't share your hobbies? weed smokers?) that seems like an indictment of the entire city of Denver. Similarly, while your new job is great and you have found your tribe in Austin, your nerdy coworkers are but a very small part of the selfhood of ATX.

[u801e]

> If you mean cannabis use, who cares? It's legal and it's harmless. If you are talking about opioid abuse or something else, that's a different story.

Whether or not people use drugs or alcohol when they're not working shouldn't be relevant. If it leads to impairment in the workplace such that they cannot perform their job, then it becomes a problem.

[rdiddly]

Well there's one more way it can matter, and make your experience suck: When the downstairs neighbors smoke out at all hours, and it comes up through your floor and in through your windows, and the whole place smells like Tom Petty & Willie Nelson were hanging out. Not even during work hours. Or worse, during your remote-working hours that don't happen to correspond to the neighbors' working hours.

Almost sounds like I have personal experience doesn't it?

[Apocryphon]

That's not too different from the Bay Area, or at least the trendy neighborhoods in SF and in Oakland where the tech people live

[starwind0]

Feel free to move to Denver :-) Just remember you were warned. I only lived there about 25 years. Trust me I am not talking just coworkers. People in Texas are in general more friendly. You will notice these things if you move around like I have.

[JPKab]

I live in Colorado.

I've lived all over as well. The Denver metro is about as friendly as Austin metro in my opinion. Texas as a whole is friendly because it's the south, but that pertains to non urban areas.

I do find people in the West to be poorly mannered but not unfriendly. Frankly, growing up in the South, people in other places have bad manners in general to me.

I think it's important to know that companies have different cultures, and your experience of Austin or Denver can be heavily affected by that.

[scottlegrand2]

I heart Austin. Happiest place I've ever lived as a techie. Hope to return.

[starwind0]

Why you leave?!

[scottlegrand2]

Wife hates Texas.

[CyberDildonics]

Warned about what? You didn't answer his questions or explain what you meant.

[starwind0]

Yeah I'm not getting into that debate on an internet forum.

[vin7]

Where in Texas are you talking about? It's a huge state.

[souprock]

It is not legal. Federal law has not changed. The fact that enforcement in Colorado is minimal does not make usage legal.

The federal government sure does care. You won't be getting a security clearance if you are a user. This cuts you off from over a million jobs.

It's not harmless either, particularly if you breath it. Even non-drug stuff like Lysol and candle smoke will mess up your lungs. The drug aspect is real too; we don't have the term "pothead" for no reason.

[NotSammyHagar]

You don't need a security clearance. It wasn't a crime to smoke pot in 1900, and pot itself does not one any damage. And I've never smoked pot! I do live in a state that has decriminalized it. In a few years it won't matter across the whole country. We'll still have things you puritan can use to look down at people, so don't fret. Mushroom (I've also never taken these either, person!) aren't becoming legal soon. Although they again cause no one any real trouble.

[JPKab]

I held a top secret clearance for 8 years, and worked in the DC area.

Those jobs suck, and your attitude does as well. You sound like a stuck up prude.

[oh_sigh]

What are 'engineering style hobbies'? Do you mean doing engineering stuff in your free time as well as work, or stereotypical things like getting into flame wars over vim/emacs, watching Star Wars, etc?

[starwind0]

Sure, gaming, tech interests, programing.

[dionidium]

Sounds great, honestly. I do program in my spare time, but I don't play video games, or board games; I don't care about comic-book movies; I'm not interested in prognosticating about cryptocurrencies; I don't think repetitive "sportsball" jokes are funny; and I really, really don't care about the specs of your new drone, tablet, phone, etc.

It's nice having programmer co-workers who like to talk about almost anything else. If having other interests makes you a "brogrammer" then, well, OK, I guess I like brogrammers.

[oh_sigh]

It's funny to me that OP was basically lamenting that there are normal people who happen to be programmers in Denver. Isn't the nerd culture dominant in software frequently cited as part of the reason women drop out of the industry at higher rates than men?

[starwind0]

Sorry, no, that is not what I was saying at all. I also do not appreciate that logical leap you tried to impose.

[starwind0]

You like well rounded people. You do not understand the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brogrammer Interesting well rounded people are cool. Being a sterotypical frat boy is not.

[dionidium]

I understand the term to refer to something that's more or less a reactionary myth. There are no "brogrammers." They don't exist. It's an idiotic, reactionary term, best forgotten.

[starwind0]

Okay then.

[jdwithit]

To get all my disclaimers out of the way: I don't live in the Denver area anymore (moved for family obligations). I'm an Ops / systems / network person foremost, not a developer. And I'm not responding to the OP directly, just posting my own experiences jumping off from their points.

I loved living and working in CO, and am passively looking to move back there if the right situation comes up. Anyone trying to compare it to SF or NYC is not being serious. Those cities are in their own tier and we all know it. But Denver is a very active job market. Once I got some sufficiently "hot" technologies on my resume / LinkedIn, I had no shortage of recruiter hits, even when I had minimal experience.

It's true the traffic is HORRENDOUS and only getting worse due to the influx of people to the state every year. I would encourage anyone looking to work in Denver to negotiate part-time WFH unless you happen to live super close to the office. Mass transit isn't really a thing unless you luck into your home and office both being on the minimal light rail routes.

I absolutely had NO issues with people pushing drugs on me or making a big deal about drug use. If anything it's a bigger issue where I work now on the east coast.

I had no trouble making friends with people of diverse interests. Some of my buddies in CO were major contributors to OpenStack or Ceph. Some others were PhD's in ecology, or doctors, or poets, or restaurant managers, or lawyers. It's not all ski bums and stoners.

If you're willing to expand your search into the surrounding burbs, there are some good jobs to be had at the likes of Level3 or Comcast. Some of the smartest people I know work for Comcast on uniquely challenging problems of scale, on small, nimble teams. Calling them a dino seems a bit disingenuous. Though they are a huge and hateable company, won't dispute that heh.

Agree with the sentiment that Boulder is not Denver just as SF is not Oakland. Boulder was a cool place to live in the 70's, but good luck buying a home for under a million bucks today.

So I guess I lied a bit, I am responding to the OP directly. I am absolutely NOT discounting their life experience. They lived in CO longer than I did. But since it's one of the top comments on this story, and I had such a great time living in Colorado and want to move back, I felt compelled to share another viewpoint. It felt like home to me. Obviously to them, it didn't, despite being their birthplace. And that's fine.

[starwind0]

Some people love it. My dad is obsessed with it despite being from Texas. It's unfortunate that the responses and strong opinions took away from the points I was trying to make.

I will also say I've worked with mostly young people. IE an old guy was a manager in his mid 30s.

I will also note, as someone who has worked at dino companies. That is not a reflection of the engineers. It's how the day to day works. How painfully slow work is because 3 departments need to get their act together. I'm sorry you took that as me saying your friends are bad.

[vin7]

Traffic makes you patient. LA is for grownups.

[JPKab]

I work in Broomfield. Used to live in DC.

My company is nerd to the core in the right way. Hate the brogrammer crap.

We regularly host tournaments for obscure board games, people hack on crazy languages like Haskell and elm for fun, and add to that the company wide obsession with rock climbing.

I love it. But some of the shops I've seen sound like what you described.

I heard spotx is a bunch of brogrammers for instance.

[starwind0]

I love how crazy everyone got and how very far off the mark I went. Hah half of them are telling me, a power lifter who works out 4 days a week how I must hate people who are into sports and athletics. I should have been more explicit. Sounds like you have a great crew! it's just a pattern I've noticed. Having worked in 3 states. Culture is a real thing. There can be pockets. I think the culture is MUCH worse in Denver, than Broomfield, boulder, fort collins.

[electricslpnsld]

What type of position were you looking for? I have friends who do backend dev in Denver (lots of Go and Rails folks), and recruiters are beating down the doors to hire them. I haven't heard of anyone going for more than a few weeks before landing a solid gig in the area.

[stevenwoo]

Maybe it's also an issue of job seekers not looking/knowing the right place to search? Off the top of my head there were not too many Denver postings in last months hiring post but hacker news might not be the best place to look.

[kylixz]

I hate to hijack this post, but I need help in Denver. And no, I'm not a recruiter... I'm a tech lead. Chesapeake Technology also supports remote opportunities and have a few sites around the country. I think we have a pretty relaxed, yet get stuff done culture that I've had a hard time finding at other work places. In our Denver office there are about 10 people that come in semi-regularly but work remote as life happens.

If you're into IoT, Software Defined Radio, and know the JVM pretty well... you'd be a perfect fit but we'll happily embrace people that demonstrate motivation and a desire to learn. We have a few core products that we work on for the defense industry as well as a random one-off research work. Some travel required periodically.

Apply here: https://cticinc.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=4&source=ycomb... or ask me questions.

[Arubis]

If you haven’t already, I’d suggest joining https://denverdevs.org/ and dropping this into #topic-gigs on a Gigs Day. There’s a pretty active community there, and word of mouth branches out.

[starwind0]

It's not that hard to get a job as an Android dev. It's hard to find a good place to work. Not to mention everyone wanted contract.

[starwind0]

Android devs. We can find iOS easily. No one wants to do Android. Seems weird given that android is OS. But I live in Austin now, not Denver. Denver is terrible.

[matwood]

> Android devs. We can find iOS easily. No one wants to do Android. Seems weird given that android is OS.

Having done both, Android development is a pain and just not fun. The simulator/emulator situation has improved a lot which helps, but it used to be a terrible development experience.

[markcerqueira]

When did you last do Android? I've done both for about eight years and while the development tools at first on Android were total trash I cannot stand Xcode and the iOS development ecosystem these days.

Throw in Swift and things get worse. On the other side, Java/Kotlin interoperability in Android Studio is great and the tooling keeps improving.

[starwind0]

I still do Android. A lot better since we went to studio, but it's still far far from where it needs to be.

[starwind0]

Yeahhhh. Heck just trying to do UI or integration tests are a pain. Not to mention the things I do to match the iOS animations my counter part got for free.

[jonny_doe]

I second that (..culture, practically no great opportunities, etc..). My story - if you're a c/c++ & linux & kernel & backend & network & .. & senior sw guy who doesn't do camping (gaming term), I wouldn't recommend Denver, unless you are ready to 'convert' to python, java, .. I've moved from the Bay Area.

[JPKab]

Yo, I'm an engineer and we are hiring senior c++ devs in Denver area. Hit me up.

[snow_mac]

How's the pay in austin?

[austintechwo]

Low. About 100-120k for senior level.

[starwind0]

In Austin you can get anywhere from 100k to 160k. For instance I know for a fact that Amazon pays mobile devs in austin 160k. That said, this isn't san fran. you can own a house for a quarter of a san fran condo's bathroom. I was making more at my colorado job, but I feel like I have a lot more money here.

[arcanus]

That's too low. It's 120-140. 150+ is generally principal level.

[ckdarby]

Considering living cost in Austin I wouldn't say that is low.

[Balgair]

I second this

[orangehour]

I can interview.

[starwind0]

You know Android?

[orangehour]

Yeah, I do. I'm graduating college this semester though, so I don't know if you're looking for someone that Junior.

[itronitron]

how big of a technical leap is it to from Java UI dev (Swing/Java2D/JavaFX) to Android? I know Chet Haase and Romain Guy did so curious to know if it is an easy transition.