If you’re an expert Web developer with Python experience and want to move to the Imperial City, this database-backed Web developer opening in Washington, D.C. should be appealing. You’ll get paid reasonably good money and have a chance to work with Nathan Cobb, the physician who founded QuitNet, which has helped literally hundreds of thousands of people quit smoking. QuitNet is a good reference for when folks ask “Has anyone ever done anything useful with social media?”
Cobb is notable for learning about Facebook and Web 2.0 in 2004 then developing a time machine in which to travel back to 1995 and start his online community with many Facebook-like features.
The job should be secure since the money is ultimately coming from the $206 billion Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement between the cigarette companies and the states. [Most of those states will probably soon need to start sending every retired public employee a free carton of cigarettes every week in hopes of reducing their pension liabilities.] Not that you’ll really need the cash since all of your entertainment will be free (museums, lectures, concerts, recreation, etc., all paid for by collecting taxes from people in Ohio, Michigan, and other struggling states). You’ll be getting good experience building applications that plug into all of the popular social networking sites. You’ll be living in a city where there are literally 10 jobs for everyone with a modicum of skill, so if you don’t like it you will have your choice of places to work next.
[In case you’re a single male Python nerd tempted to move to Silicon Valley, keep in mind that there is a huge surplus of single men in the San Francisco Bay area whereas the opposite situation applies in Washington, D.C. (see Boston Globe (written by a journalist and therefore not adjusted for overall population size). Would you rather be by yourself fighting California traffic or with a lovely young female government employee riding the Metro? Remember that your government worker companion will be well-paid and she won’t have to work long hours so she’ll have plenty of time for recreation.]
South Bay is like living in Saudi Arabia meaning for a guy, there are no single women besides possibly coeds at SCU or SJSU, but you can live in SF or Hayward/Oakland, and the odds will be much more favorable for you. You’ll have much better nightlife for a young person. Just take the train to work. When you meet your mate, try to convince her to move to Sunnyvale or San Jose to make your commute easier. Good luck with that, btw.
Another thing which I believe explains the numbers in California, is there are large numbers of male illegal immigrants who have a wife and children in Mexico and live in places like Santa Ana renting a bunk in a house with 8-12 other males in similar situations for $250 a month. This is by no means all of the illegals but a substantial number do this. I believe this explains a lot of the data in the West. I think it’s the same in the rest of CA, as well as AZ and TX. Anyway, they’re (usually) not competing with you for a mate. The border is must pretty porous because they go home several times a year and they continue to mow my neighbors lawns. Several people in my office have bought up foreclosed houses in Santa Ana for $200k, painted them, put bunk beds in every room and rented them out to 8-12 people for $250/mo. They’re cashflow positive which means that demand must be high for this sort of thing.
Hello Phil,
This sounds like an awesome job. I’ve been wanting to get into web development for a while now. The problem is that I don’t know how to code at the level that I want to. What material would you recommend before tackling your online communities workbook? And would be the ideal environment under mac os? Thanks!
Jay: I don’t know about your explanation about the numbers in CA. This would definitely happen before 9/11, but not after. After 9/11 it got much harder to cross the border. Before 9/11 a lot of Mexicans would go back home to see their families and enjoy the town festivities. But now crossing back into the US cost more money than what it’s worth. 5k with no guarantee that you will make it or that you won’t run into the zetas? No thanks. $250 a month is pretty damn cheap tho! A dorm at cal poly was running at $450. I might just have to move to Santa Ana.
George: http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/ isn’t supposed to have any specific prerequisites. It is used by students who have never used an RDBMS before. Just go through the book four times with four different customers and you’ll do a better job each time. That’s what I did! (except maybe it was 200 times)
What tools to use on Mac OS? I think Oracle experience is valuable. The software is available for developers at no charge. The manuals explaining how to install and administer are excellent (a more complex and capable system than MySQL but the documentation is literally 100X better). If you can deal with Oracle you can deal with any RDBMS. Since the job calls for Python, you might as well use Python/Django. I think it is as good a development environment as any.
While the District might have an absolute surplus of single women, if one restricts one’s search to women 18-34 (as a young male web developer might), that surplus flips from 15 extra women per 1000 people to 27 extra men. (In SF, the figure is 57–although keep in mind that SF is a gay mecca.) Have a look at this marvelous Processing visualization of the American Community Survey:
http://www.xoxosoma.com/singles/
D.C.’s demographics are also very different than those of the Bay Area. Most people, for whatever reason, still prefer to date within their own race. Computer nerds are, for whatever reason, overwhelmingly white or Asian. DC is 42% white and Asian. SF is 76% white and Asian. Sadly, the ACS doesn’t join race, age, and marital status, so we can’t estimate the odds for a garden-variety male computer nerd.
I’m going to head out on a limb and speculate that while being a computer nerd might potentially possibly maybe be cool in the Valley, it is much less likely to be cool in D.C.
The overwhelming majority of excess single women in East Coast cities are african-american women facing a lack of african-american men due to the high prison population in that demographic.
The abundance of latin immigrant men on the West Coast is only a part of the oversupply of single men and dating does cross ethnic boundaries more than in the East, so a man is still much better off Atlantic than Pacific.
*I’m going to head out on a limb and speculate that while being a computer nerd might potentially possibly maybe be cool in the Valley, it is much less likely to be cool in D.C.*
I can assure you there is no place in America where it is cool. That goes double for Silicon Valley.