Entry level IT and LA (find a job, school, maintenance)

[centauri]

Lately I have been contemplating to move to LA is the past couple of months. I have several friends that live out there and have been trying to get me to move out there the past couple of years, and now I might take a shot at it. I am still currently in school at my current location and quickly working toward my certs, but I am thinking of finishing school in a city where I will have a better opportunity. The one question that I have for now, is LA a good city for an entry level IT tech to start a career?

[smokingGun]

not really, LA's not a mecca for low-level IT support the way that the Bay area or even NYC with its vast financial network maintenance needs are. Even with entertainment firms, my tech friends have told me that a lot of their IT support has been outsourced to other regions or states (even Israel and Ireland!) so their operations run lean & mean with project managers doing liaison tasks.

[ElysianEagle]

yeah LA is definitely no tech hub. in general, tech jobs in NYC and Silicon Valley are more plentiful and also a lot more interesting than the ones in LA. sure you could get lucky and find some really cutting edge work being done, but most of it is pure web dev work.

also, off-shoring is pretty big. OP - i know you mentioned IT support and not IT dev, but even so, i'm noticing a sort of trend lately especially among start ups where initial dev is offshored to ireland, poland or some other place and then, once the system reaches a stable level, it's brought back in and devs hired locally to maintain and tweak it.

[BRinSM]

I work for a software company and we have a hard time filling out our Dev team. If you have coding skills, you can find a job. If you are good then you make good money.

[centauri]

Originally Posted by BRinSM

I work for a software company and we have a hard time filling out our Dev team. If you have coding skills, you can find a job. If you are good then you make good money.

I am currently messing around with Python, and I would like to pick up a language or two. I am open to suggestion to other languages to learn. I am in school for Data Forensics and hopefully I can land something with that. Working toward SEC+, CEH, and CCNA Security, and for some reason the school dropped the CISSP program.

I have considered NYC, but if I live there, it will be no more than a year or two and I'd rather be in a warm dry climate. The reason I am choosing LA is because I have friends there, and I can work on projects on the side if I want too. This area is too dried up with the exception of music video's and reality TV shows.