Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Virginia as Tech Worker Paradise?

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

There is good news and bad news in a recent ranking of the best places in the U.S. “to work in tech” by Zurich, Switzerland-based SmallPDF, a company that converts PDF files to Word files.

The good news is that Virginia ranks at the top of the list. From the press release:

The research found “that Virginia is the best state to work in tech right now due to high average wages in the Computer and Mathematical Occupations field with $110,510 a year, 58.44 employed in the field per 1,000 jobs, and the highest current tech vacancies with 128.97 openings per 100,000 people in the industry.”

“When measuring the average salary against the average annual rent spend, those employed in the field would only be spending 21.68% of their salary on rent. Those wanting to work in tech remotely also have lots of options, with 27,563 remote openings available at the time of the study.”

The bad news is that Virginia stands out as having more tech vacancies per 100,000 people by far than the other top 10 states. A high level of tech vacancies may be advantageous to the workers, but it’s a restraint on economic growth generally.

Why the high level of vacancies?

One possibility is that Virginia’s tech sector is undergoing such a boom that it’s hard for companies to keep up. I haven’t seen much evidence of such a boom. Northern Virginia, the undisputed tech leader in Virginia, has experienced less-than-world-beating growth over the past several years.

The other possibility is that Virginia has trouble recruiting tech workers. If that’s the case, it’s not the cost of housing (as expensive as that is). Rent as a percentage of tech worker salaries is comparable to the state of Washington, and less than Massachusetts, Colorado, New Jersey, and Utah.

Could hellish traffic congestion in Northern Virginia be the problem? Does Virginia have an image problem? Any explanation for the high level of tech vacancies should incorporate the fact that more U.S. citizens are moving out of Virginia than moving in.

— JAB

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58 responses to “Virginia as Tech Worker Paradise?”

  1. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    I personally think the challenges with tech workers in Virginia is the lack of real cities in Virginia. I was recently at a meeting with Amazon Web Services in Arlington. What a mess. The place is basically un-walkable, traffic congested, ugly and (as far as I can see) lacks a combination of residential and commercial space.

    The lack of real cities is not an accident. Independent cities, a ban on annexation, undersized (by physical area) cities all add up to a lack of real cities.

    Finally, I have no idea how SmllPDF compares rents state-wide to specific technology jobs. The tech jobs are largely in the suburban sprawl areas of the state, not evenly spread across the state. The only rents that apply are those rents also in the suburban sprawl areas of the state.

    1. Lefty665 Avatar
      Lefty665

      That’s Crystal City isn’t it? That’s been ugly, congested and un-walkable since it went up ca the ’70s, It displaced any residential areas with hi-rise offices. It had, and still has, the virtues of proximity to the Pentagon and D.C. corridors of Gov’t power and largess. For those reasons it was a better choice for Amazon than Brooklyn. Amazon’s Gov’t cloud contracts are real money.

      1. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        Exactly. Hard to understand how Crystal City can be rehabilitated. Having Rt 1 split it in half and Reagan Airport blocking it out from the south are real challenges. Just another area of office sprawl.

      2. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        There’s the underground in CC. I found out about the underground after a 3′ snowfall back in ’78. Oh, and AFTER walking from JP-5 to NC-1 through it the next morning.

        “Why didn’t you walk underground?”

        “Underground??”

    2. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      There are “real cities” around the DC area. Very walkable. But one unlucky step, and you always wonder the source of the feces on your shoe… Dog? Or human?

    3. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      IF I listen to DJ on his view of cities – I get the impression it’s a “density” issue, that “real” cities are dense.

      I could be wrong and he’d correct me.

      I still don’t “get” the independent cities thing. Houston and LA are not “one” city. They metro amalgamations of multiple cities not unlike what Northern Va is. So what is the real difference? That Fairfax, which is already not “dense” enough cannot annex more less dense geography?

      The only way that NoVa/Fairfax/environs can get more dense is to rezone existing low-density development – like single family home neighborhoods.

      1. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        A real city has combination of density and size. Let’s say at least 100 sq mi and at least 7,000 people per sq mi. That’s a minimum population of 700,000.

        Nothing in Virginia comes close.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Right, but is that because of the independent city thing?

          Houston is not one city, right? It’s actually several cities adjacent.

          And “independent” enough to have their own police and schools so I’m not quite understand the distinction.

          1. DJRippert Avatar
            DJRippert

            As far as I know, Houston is one city. It may have different neighborhoods but I think it’s one legal entity.

            The independent city approach makes joint planning between the city and the suburb very hard. It also makes annexation almost impossible. Everything the city gains the county loses. The independent city approach was presumably intended to minimize double taxation between the city and the county. However, I’ve seen no evidence that Virginians are less taxed than residents of the other 49 states which don’t have independent cities. Seems like another theory of the Plantation Elite proven wrong but still in place.

          2. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            I was looking at this:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/258359116572fb54fe8d47d1d25bdaf8b1d47b33dbc147e7124a817f2f50beae.jpg

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Greater_Houston

            and to give an example:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/afee4007a55ead22e3ae32afe0c3aa86107bdf2514dd11fe1b5a16622ffcf74a.jpg

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ef377d278a0fd95c06298d6a8e0d717d564d37a331621d072ac09ef78d0e99f.jpg

          3. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            San Antonio maybe, but only because the surrounding coutryside was wide open.

          4. Matt Adams Avatar
            Matt Adams

            Houston is also not walkable and the only “mass transit” it has is a trolley that traverses a very small section of the city.

  2. how_it_works Avatar
    how_it_works

    Does $110K a year allow one to live in some place more expensive than Manassas?

    Manassas, a real paradise. It’s also a city.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      It allows you to live like a prince in Fredericksburg! 😉

    2. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      Cheer up. Melissa Lee (CNBC) just now said that Powell’s interest hikes may turn the labor market so employees won’t be able to demand “quality of life” benefits anymore.

      1. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        Already happening. I hear more and more employers saying that employees need to be in the office more and working from home less. A year ago, the employees would just quit. Today, not so much. Another “benefit” of having a senile president pushing out of control spending because his handlers (who are pulling the puppet strings) tell him to spend, spend, spend.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          I’ll take him ANY DAY over the other.

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          Hmmm, choices, choices. Senile. Career criminal. Senile. Career criminal.

          “Ya know, I’ll take senile for $2000, Alex.”

          “For $2000 and the win, ‘1980s President with Alzheimer’s disease who turned operation of the WH over to his wife and her astrologer?’”

          1. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            For the bonus question:

            “2020s President with Dementia whose tenure was ensured by his choice of an identity politics correct VP with no observable skills beyond an inappropriate laugh and the ability to run off staff.”

            and for extra credit:

            “Which Two 2020s politicians culturally appropriated the Native American appellations of Pocahontas (aka Squats to Pee) and Spread Eagle?”

          2. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            The sobering question is “Why has the US made the Presidential choices it has made for the last 50+ years?”

            Firesign Theater was prophetic “I think we’re all Bozos on this bus.”

      2. Lefty665 Avatar
        Lefty665

        Job openings shrank by 1M in August. With new housing/construction markets tanking and summertime vacation hospitality employment ending, September’s openings will shrink even more. The rate of decrease likely will be increasing. It may vary inversely with interest rates and the flop from quantitative easing to quantitative tightening. The emptying of the strategic petroleum reserve and OPEC/Saudi/Russian flipping Biden the bird bode ill for oil prices too.

        Not only “quality of life” benefits will be disappearing, but wage increases too. Folks will be lucky if all they lose is inflation’s 8-10% bite over the course of a year. People may find that the opportunity to show up on site for a job is a feature not a bug.

        About 20% may be the official decline in the market, but the tech and mfg stocks I watch are down 40% – 50%+ (AMD, INTC and F are three of ’em).

        My guess is fasten our seat belts, it’s about to get bumpy.

        1. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          When a younger man, I took a job with a major government contractor. They used to (probably still do) refer to the employee groups as “cost centers”.

          After two years with the company, at a meeting with the divison VP I asked, “Do you really think of your employees as ‘costs’?” It was the 2nd best day I had at the company. I left the next month on the best day.

    3. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      It allows you to live like a prince in Fredericksburg! 😉

      1. how_it_works Avatar
        how_it_works

        Fredericksburg today has all the charm that Manassas did 20 years ago.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Yep. As they say, we’ve been Fairfaxed!

          ;-(

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            I faxed myself once to someone in HR. Not my better side. But it was a fair fax.

          2. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            How did you fit through those skinny little wires???

          3. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            That’s not the term I’d use.

            You’ve been “Manassased”

          4. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Naw, the NoVa leap-frog Manassas to get to us…

            they stick out like sore thumbs… 😉

          5. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            To say something has been “Fairfaxed” might lead one to the mistaken impression that it has become something other than a bedroom community.

          6. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Perhaps but it pretty accurately describe NoVa folks coming down and gobbling up whats good and leaving behind their poop.

          7. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            The only thing “good” down there is cheap housing.

          8. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            so they live here and crap up the place with their cars and “needs” for places to eat and shop.

            It was a FINE place without them for those who were here all along and liked it. No one invited the NoVa buzzards to come to begin with and then bitch and complain once they come down and crap up the place.

            ingrates

          9. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            Some of those people who lived there all along made quite a bit of money selling their land for those new subdivisions.

          10. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            They did. Their land was their 401K retirement.

            And why not if you can’t stop the NoVa vultures anyhow?

            right?

          11. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            They sold you out. They’re the ones you ought to be angry with, not the people who moved there to buy the houses that wouldn’t otherwise have been built.

          12. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Naw.. the sons and daughters who had moved away to Fairfax, then sold their parents land after they croaked.

            It was insiduous.

          13. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            Kinda like when I sold my dad’s house in Manassas, after he passed away, to some couple from Loudoun who thought it was a good deal since they were getting a detached single family house for less than the price of the townhouse they had in Loudoun?

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          Well, look at the name. Just hints at a Trumpian term.

          1. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            Paul Warner Powell (go look him up if you aren’t familiar) was not only from Manassas, but a multi-generation Virginian. (Someone actually put him in their family tree on Ancestry…)

          2. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            As of June and in certain States, such persons will start showing up in family trees more regularly now.

          3. how_it_works Avatar
            how_it_works

            “Look, honey, the only person in our family who ever accomplished anything…even if it was raping and then murdering a 16-year old girl and getting fried in Virginia’s electric chair!”

  3. keydet16 Avatar
    keydet16

    I’m curious to know whether those job openings included Federal IT jobs. I work in Federal IT consulting, and the biggest reason for vacancies is getting people who are cleared or are clearable.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      The Feds are relentless consumers of IT – across the board from DOD to all the other agencies.

      It’s an easily-gotten job for just about anyone with a BS or even a BA.

      1. keydet16 Avatar
        keydet16

        Not as much as you might think since they skew towards people with experience and getting a security clearance is not at all “easily-gotten’. There’s an entire sub on reddit dedicated to people trying to navigate the process and a lot of federal contractors want people who already are cleared.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          living in a bedroom community – now chock-a-block with apartments for entry level workers commuting to NoVa.

          REAL IT jobs are tougher especially ones that are actual Fed jobs and/or involve classified systems – yes.

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          What’s the wait time of going to TS now? It was almost a year the last time I checked (10 years ago). It was 3+ months for Secret with ZERO adverse information. We had a guy with an arrest on his record for a violent crime and it took nearly a year for his Secret clearance.

    2. how_it_works Avatar
      how_it_works

      I think there’s also people that just don’t want to work on Federal contracts.

  4. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Oh, go cry in a bag of money!

    As I walk through the valley of the silicon death
    I take a look at my life and realize there’s not much left
    ‘Cause I’ve been codin’ and compilin’ so long, that
    Even my mama thinks that my mind is gone.

    But I ain’t never crossed a bug that didn’t deserve it
    Me be treated like fungible, you know that’s unheard of
    You better watch how you’re cd :/in’, and where you’re rm *.*in’

    Or you and your homies might be RIF’ed in COU smoke.
    I really hate to trip but I gotta loc
    As they croak, I see myself in the LinkedIn job line, fool
    I’m the kinda EE the little homies wanna be like
    On my knees in the night, sayin’ prayers in the display light

    Been spendin’ most their lives, livin’ in the techie’s paradise
    Been spendin’ most their lives, livin’ in the techie’s paradise
    Keep spendin’ most our lives, livin’ in the techie’s paradise
    Keep spendin’ most our lives, livin’ in the techie’s paradise

    “A high level of tech vacancies may be advantageous to the workers, but it’s a restraint on economic growth generally.”

    Been that way since 1865, eh? There are those who just can’t believe that the proletariat contributes…

    1. Lefty665 Avatar
      Lefty665

      Too funny:)

      “treated like fungible” – Nah, that’s why they invented spaghetti code and made commenting optional. They’re the anti-fungibles.

      ‘Cause I’ve been codin’ and compilin’ so long, that
      Even my mama thinks that my mind is gone.       Uh huh, clutching my first fast compiler I jumped into the deep end of the coding pool and didn’t come up for almost 40 years.

      It was a great ride. Now if I could just get young and do it all over again with today’s tools….

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        https://external-preview.redd.it/HrJ0ykbvDdh5m9r0LXpfiodYAt911KoORIvzrMzYOuI.png?auto=webp&s=94bbeff43c9399bfa42eacebf89ea4df642b7045

        1. Lefty665 Avatar
          Lefty665

          Incentives must be carefully constructed:)

          On the value of coding structure and comments:
          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f5a2b445ed3f64b9ba2359d772122bb9a6dac15a8edd70c952bd3b5205254f7b.gif

          1. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            My own personal talisman when peddling our applications software:
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bd6436958c3961f3622bb9458a6d78c6b49a26b4cad7b4f88a6d782fad430bf1.gif

    2. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      one of your longer tomes… and creative… 😉

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        Nah, most of the hard work was done. RIP Coolio.

  5. how_it_works Avatar
    how_it_works

    Virginia #2 in the nation:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/57da013f75a2c41a309e47e400710002121bee953e76616d6d3b465b0ed1806f.png

    1. how_it_works Avatar
      how_it_works

      And just in case ya’ll from-heres think it’s only Northern Virginia:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae8b63b85559c09f57244f11f8382092021b607809659828093ec0710dfd76a8.png

    2. how_it_works Avatar
      how_it_works

      And just in case ya’ll from-heres think it’s only Northern Virginia:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae8b63b85559c09f57244f11f8382092021b607809659828093ec0710dfd76a8.png

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