College is not where you find a career. College is where you have fun and drink beer

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

With a four-year degree in Computer Science from a competitive private northeastern college and a third of the coursework towards an MBA, and 25 years experience, I am unemployable in my field unless I move across the country. Well shit happens, and a degree doesn't prepare you for that.

Well. It's true that the cool programming jobs (at least the ones I think are cool) are in NYC, Chicago, and the west coast. But there are lots of corporate, access the database and print a report, jobs out there. According to dice.com, there are 84,116 tech jobs out there. I could be more targeted, but I don't know what your skillset is.

A year and a half ago I was working for a huge corp we'll call HAL and I didn't like it very much. HAL had bought the company I worked for and it was like being absorbed by the borg.

So I evaluated where I was in my career and decided that I needed to move into mobile development. I already had an iPad. I bought a Mac Mini and taught myself iOS programming. After a few months, I put my resume up on dice and the ball started rolling. From first insight to iPad job took just 7 months. That's one of the great things about programming - you need new skills? Go ahead and learn them.

If you've got object-oriented skills, I could put in a good word for you here. Yes it would mean moving. But sometimes you have to move for the right opportunity.

Mrs. Z and I grew up in STL. When I got into PC programming, there wasn't anything there (still isn't by the way). We moved to Seattle, a few other places, and ended up in Chicago. And employment is the reason we still don't live in St. Louis.