[ashark]

I'm another Midwesterner thinking of taking my family to a coast. My biggest concern is that, being well past college-age (but a bit under where people usually start hitting age discrimination) I may have waited too long.

I lack a top university pedigree, and I have a fair bit of experience but it's all of the typical Midwestern sort—nothing exciting, nothing you've ever heard of. I reckon I'm somewhere between the top 25% and 5% around here talent-wise, but I fear I may be so far down in the bottom 50% anywhere near an ocean that I'll be unemployable, especially without a household-name university on my résumé. I haven't put hundreds of hours in to open source so my GitHub is unimpressive. I've never had an employer who paid me to contribute to open source. (Damn do I envy the people who get paid for that! No agonizing over whether to spend time with the wife or kids, do any of a hundred other things that aren't programming and I also like to do, or try to log some unpaid commits to impress prospective employers!)

Anyone in a similar position had any luck getting offers on the coasts? How about remote positions with coastal companies? Frankly, I find my résumé so embarrassing compared to what seems to be the "typical" applicant in SV or Seattle that I'm not sure it's worth the hours it takes to submit to a few positions. Is this just the HN effect where it seems like everyone's really amazing all the time except me, or will the rest of the stack truly be full of MIT and Harvard grads with three years at Google and numerous international awards for building cancer-curing, firefighting, baby-kissing drones that also make a mean cup of coffee?

[justinph]

Is this just the HN effect where it seems like everyone's really amazing all the time except me, or will the rest of the stack truly be full of MIT and Harvard grads with three years at Google and numerous international awards for building cancer-curing, firefighting, baby-kissing drones that also make a mean cup of coffee?

In my experience, this is just perception. When people discuss their work, here or elsewhere, they generally don't talk about the mundane minutiae and un-glamorous failures that went nowhere. It makes people sometimes look superhuman, which is a false perception.

I'm in a similar situation (live in MPLS, want to move to a coast), but I don't think it is quite as bad as you think. Most decent employers shouldn't give a shit about where your degree came from, or if you even have a degree, so long as you can do the work.

[beachstartup]

i noticed that you only mention seattle and silicon valley, and you only seem to talk about top schools and companies (i.e., household names). you're probably right - you'll never work for those companies, or in silicon valley. but is that what you really want? i mean have you actually gone to the middle of, for example, mountain view, and looked around? it's a bunch of generic office parks and shitty suburban tract homes that cost $2M+.

LA, portland, new york, south florida, va/nc are all on the coasts and have strong tech job markets and hiring all the people like you, but you're sitting here moping about silicon valley. seems a bit like you're missing the point. the boom is happening everywhere and if you want in, you gotta find your way in.

[ashark]

Oh, yeah, those were just examples. No way I'd move a four-person family to SV, or anywhere near :-)

Portland, Seattle, VA/NC? Maybe. Or remote work.

Nice to know that the SV "Ivy, MIT, or GTFO" standards don't necessarily apply in other tech hubs.

[beachstartup]

for what it's worth, we have a lot of remote guys that live in texas, midwest, etc. we're in LA and pay those guys LA salaries.