[alexjplant]

If you (OP of the parent's parent) do interview in the area be sure to dig in to find what the company's lines of business are. CloudTamer, for instance, is ostensibly a commercial product-based company but does business with federal agencies and contractors (per their web site) and was at the AWS Public Sector Summit a few years ago. A different company that I interviewed at in an adjacent space (security vs CloudTamer's compliance) was in a similar position... they were selling their product to the Air Force but swore up and down that they'd never contract with them outside of being a vendor. I was skeptical and my suspicions were proven correct six months later when they put out a press release announcing the award of an Air Force contract.

Maryland/Northern Virginia are _not_ the places to be if you want career options outside of government [contracting] work. It's not un-doable but you'll be much better served looking for work in a place where 80% of the value of the economy doesn't revolve around Washington-type work.

[alistairSH]

Maryland/Northern Virginia are _not_ the places to be if you want career options outside of government [contracting] work.

While it's true that .gov work is huge in DC metro (and extending to Baltimore), there are MANY companies completely outside, or on the periphery, and even more if you just want to eliminate military jobs.

Amazon has large AWS offices, plus HQ2 is spinning up. Google and Microsoft both have substantial presences (albeit much of that is .gov work). Walmart has their innovation centre here (Walmart Labs?). Oracle. VW of A. Several universities. Smaller companies like Ellucian (my employer). Freddie and Fannie (.gov-adjacent). The list is long.

[couchridr]

I would add that there are financial technical jobs at T Rowe Price, Legg Mason, Morgan Stanley etc. Not to mention that there are computer security jobs at those places where the stakes are high.

[alistairSH]

Oh yeah, info-sec jobs abound. Many are .gov consulting gigs, but lots of law firms, banks, and hospitals too.

And Capital One Bank has a massive complex in McLean/Tysons. It's not their HQ (which is in Richmond), but there has to be a few thousand employees here.

[whimsicalism]

TBF, "Washington-type" work also includes journalism and NGOs, so it could be the place to live (along with NYC) if you want to do tech in either of those fields.

[RicoElectrico]

Can anyone give a perspective why is it the case? In Europe it seems impossible not to have commercial software positions in a big local hub city - and in US whole areas seem to be devoid of them as HN crowd implies.

[alexjplant]

It's because Washington, DC is the nation's capital and where our legislative bodies, heads of state, and our various departments (ministries) are based out of. There are also many military bases in close proximity and the military headquarters (Pentagon) is across the river in Virginia.

I think people are misinterpreting my comment... there _are_ non-defense/government jobs in the area but they are dwarfed by the number of such jobs because of the pervasive nature of the aforementioned entities. When I lived in the area more than 90% of LinkedIn recruiter messages that I got were about these jobs. This ceased being the case after I moved even when I was still in the defense contracting industry.

[alistairSH]

See my sibling comment. I think the OP overstated the lack of non-government jobs in the area. I've lived here (Dulles tech corridor) most of my life and work in non-government software.