[melugi]

Grew up in Miami and spent a few years moving around before settling here for a while with a remote job after the pandemic, personally I love this city but not because of it's tech scene or it's business culture.

I would say the Miami tech scene post-2020 was a meme brought about by crypto hype and our politicians trying to court them. The scene here became a cryptobro scene sometime in 2021 which made me drop out of going to meetups or hackathons because everything was some blockchain, NFT ponzi scheme. I had someone try to sell me on developing what amounted to a timeshare-apartments-on-the-blockchain startup, that was the last straw for me lol.

Outside of the illusion created during COVID, the tech scene here is somewhat limited. That's both in it's size and also the domains you can work in. There's a strong bias towards fintech so if you're not interested in something in that realm you're going to have a harder time. Generally though I found that salaries also tended to be below average for comparable metros. My first job out of college locally started me at $45,000 and two years later I was able to go up to ~$70,000 but that was basically the ceiling at that job unless I moved into management. After that I moved into working fully remote because it was more difficult to find jobs that paid well enough locally. Generally Ft. Lauderdale a bit north gives a lot better opportunity both in salary and domains, so maybe look into those.

Salary issues with the local scene aside, S. Florida also has an extremely cut throat business culture. I've never experienced more wage theft and outright fraud in the workplace, so something to consider if you're trying to start a business down here.

I'm happy to give input if needed, or you could email me.