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I'm a masters student pursuing an MS in Data Science. I currently have two offers, one in California with a startup and another with an established Fortune 500 company in Detroit. The Detroit offer is higher than the startup offer, and considering that the cost of living in Detroit is much lower, this is a really big deal. I'm gravitating towards taking the offer of the Detroit firm. The reason is two fold, one being the salary, and the other being the fact that I'll have a big company on my resume. This is going to be my first job (real full-time job).

My friend raised a concern that I would like to have more clarity on. As we all know, Detroit is by no means a tech center like California. He says that by taking the Detroit offer, I will close all opportunities to move to California later on due to the loss of contacts who can help me get a job. Is this really true? Will all windows of opportunities close just because I end up living in Detroit? Don't companies in other places also hire candidates from other states? Any help is appreciated.

Your friend is just wrong.

Obviously companies hire from other parts of the country, otherwise everyone would be stuck in one city for the rest of their lives. Is it helpful to live in the same area as the companies you are applying to? Yes, of course, but it is by no means a hindrance.

Especially in today's perpetually-connected world with recruiters from around the country constantly emailing and cold-calling, you don't need a personal connection to get a job. When (or if) it comes to the point that you want to leave Detroit and head someplace else, you update your resume and start putting it out there. It might not be as simple as sending it to your buddy who works at TechCorp, but the internet is a wonderful thing, and you'll have plenty of leads in no time!

There are things to consider, but that isn't really one of them.

Your first position as a programmer need not be career-defining, but it is influential, and it will start a rut that can be hard to break out of later. Location... isn't really a big deal. There are lots of ways to get a position that have nothing to do with the specific people you know. More important considerations include things like:

• What programming languages are you going to be working with?


• Are you working on legacy code or new code?


• How large is the company?


• How large is the codebase?


• How long is the position likely to last?

Note that there are almost no objectively bad answers to these questions, but they can still be significant to you. For example, many programmers want to always be working on the new shiny thing, and wouldn't want their first few years to be plugging away on legacy code written in an older language. It wouldn't teach them what they want to learn, and it wouldn't give the look they want on their resume. On the flip side, if you like the idea of maintaining old stuff, there are a lot of people out there who've had long and rewarding careers doing just that, and the best resume you can have for getting a position maintaining code for the next decade is one where you've just finished a job maintaining code for the previous decade. Your first position starts up some inertia. There's some value in making sure that it's going where you want it to go.

I'm a programmer in the south east and receive unsolicited contact from recruiters from California (general San Fransico) as well as other parts of the country at least once a week.

You'll always have the opportunity to move to California (or probably anywhere else you'd like to live). Take the job you're most excited about. If you're more excited about the job in Detroit, take that job. If you're more excited to work in California, move there.

Your friend is wrong about limiting opportunities. I've known people who moved to California from my city because the job was right. I've also known people who moved from California to the south. You probably won't live in one city your whole life.

Your friend is wrong.

I work in a company in Southern California and we hired somebody from Michigan.

I have grown up in Southern California, worked in Silicon Valley, then worked in Connecticut. I then moved back to Southern California, without any issues.

You always have the option to move to CA after working in Detroit, then look for a job (or if you are really lucky, the CA company may pay for your moving to CA).

Don't plan too far out into the future. "The future always changing, it is".

Your friend is almost certainly wrong that taking a job in Detroit will close opportunities to move to California later. If you're good at your job and there's a market for what you do, then you shouldn't have much trouble finding an opportunity elsewhere in the connected world in which we live.

Where he may have a point is in the opportunity cost of not surrounding yourself with some of the top talent in the industry. One could certainly make the argument that living in a tech hub can provide you with additional opportunities that you may not get elsewhere.

Your friend just doesn't want to see you go

Because he's wrong on both counts.

First, you won't have any trouble going to California later, unless you develop an addiction to Coney Islands or Buddy's pizza.

Second, Detroit is a tech hotbed -- wait, we need to have the 8 Mile conversation. Because there's the city proper, and then the metro area.

The Metro Area, i.e. The suburbs, has been booming for 30 years+, and has been sort-of hogging the growth for the entire region. You can't throw a rock in Novi or Ann Arbor without hitting a technology company. Medical is huge, mechanical engieering, and of course, the industry that made Detroit famous: Pizza. Dominos, Little Caesers and Hungry Howie's are from the metro, but you'll want Buddy's, which defines Detroit pizza.

Of course engineering departments from almost every engine and automaker in the world are also located in metro Detroit, even Indian, Russian and Chinese companies who do not build cars for North American markets. Why? The critical mass of staff and suppliers, particularly in enginering and prototyping.

The D (Detroit Proper) was the poster child for white flight and urban decay. About 3 years ago it finished bottoming out, cleared bankruptcy and made a turnaround, and now all the cool kids think it's trendy and hip to live in the D - certain neighborhoods anyway. A million people don't move back overnight, so Detroit proper will, for quite some time, be a block by block patchwork of "trendy" and "extreme blight". Not a lot of white collar industry is in the D, and obviously it's in the nice parts.

Where to live

This makes it harder to price living expenses. A naive first-timer should not pick his house from afar. If you just push "Detroit" into Zillow, you'll get a box of chocolates. Figure out what city your job is in, check Google Maps traffic at 8am Eastern time on a weekday for what commutes you don't want to be married to, and choose towns nearby. For pricing, put in Berkley as a safe, pleasant working class town, Novi is more upscale, and Huntington Woods or West Bloomfield are downright tony.

Honestly I would recommend renting until you get the lay of the land. If I had to spitball one, I'd say the huge apartment complex at 10 mile and Halstead, right at the I-696/275/96/M-5 hub. Farmington is a decent town, and the whole west side is an easy commute. Most of the job growth is on the west side, Novi, Livonia, Commerce, etc.

Transport: Detroit is a great big freeway, put a hundred down and buy a car. If it's an automaker or automotive supplier, hold off on buying the car until you find out if you qualify for the "A-Plan", a steep discount for auto industry employees.

Transit is purely survival-tier with shockingly early curfews and a 1-3 mile walk on both ends of most suburban trips. The exceptions are a few genuinely transitable enclaves like Ann Arbor, Royal Oak or downtown Detroit. But that depends on your employer also being transitable, and for any random employer, that is highly improbable.