Relocating to another state?

Disclaimer: I'm pulling this entirely out of my ass

You could try looking at job postings in various cities in Texas and applying. Another option is to figure out if there's one city you'd like to live in or where you know people and move there, and then start looking for jobs in person.

Pretty much all the large and even some of the mid-sized cities in TX have an LGBT presence.

 

Well Austin is full so you can't move here until after 1 Aug, as that is when I am moving to Minnesota.

This will be my second move. When I moved from Dallas to Austin, it is because we were moving the datacenter I worked at. I had to make several trips here to prep for the dc move, so I was able to scope out places to live, and get recommendations from other people at the company that lived here already.

This time I am taking a new job, in Minneapolis. I've never been there, and all of the interviews I did were over the phone. In my case, I am taking a contract to hire job, and the contract house I am going through has placed me before. They have received very good feed from past clients, so this one is comfortable brining me in with just a phone interview. What I have done so far is post to a few forums to get recommendations on areas to live, and talk to a couple of apartment finders.

To get an idea on the cost of living I look at Craigslist apartment listing, and sites like rent.com to get an idea of what rent is. Then I also check what the state's income tax is, and check on a couple of things like price of gas.

In Texas for IT jobs, you are going to end up in either Dallas Fort Worth, Houston, or Austin. The IT market in these area is pretty hot so you should not have an issue finding a job before you move. Especially if you are open to taking contract jobs.

What I recommend doing is start networking with recruiters in the area you are looking to relocate to.

As far as the homophobia. In the larger cities like DFW, Houston, San Antonio, Austin. It is alright. Austin is the most gay friendly city in the state, but the problem is that it is still in Texas. I am a native Texan, grew up in small North Texas town, and I'll be frank. I am tried of the closed mindedness and bigotry that comes with living in a culture dominated by the right wing Christians. If I hear one more person say that global is a hoax, or that the earth is 6000 years old I am going to scream.

Though from what I have seen of your posts you are quite a bit more conservative than me, so the things that annoy me likely won't bother you. Though I used to be a conservative myself, but moving away from where I grew up has changed my world view. So my position on quite a few matters has changed significantly.

 

Well, it's great that you're an IT pro. You can search in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Dallas/Fort Worth. They say that Texas is becoming the Silicon Valley of the South due to the high concentration of industries, with companies such as: Texas Instruments, IBM, Dell, Verizon, just to name a few. You'd have a lot of good opportunities, let alone for the fact that Texas is such a huge state, with many large cities for one to choose from. Try to apply for those jobs and give the intent that you're either A. willing to relocate B. are about to move there.

 

I have up and moved to another state before. Kind of a mistake the way I handled it, and I learned a couple of things from it. I know Texas is possibly the next-best IT hotspot (next to California) because I work in IT, as well, and have eyed Austin (and continue to do so) for my next move. But I'd still say the best thing you can do before you quit and move somewhere else is make sure you have a pretty nice amount of money saved so that you can survive until you find a job and/or until you can find a job that pays well enough so that you won't have to turn down jobs that can help your resume or just get your foot in the door in your new location...or just for the unexpected. When I moved to Chicago, I had some money saved but it wasn't enough. I found a job after about a month, but it also didn't take me long to lose the job over, I believe, office politics-type reasons...and the job was not well-paying to begin with, which meant it was not adding to my bank account enough for me to handle losing the job in an expensive place like Chicago. So, I had to go back home.

I have never been able to get a job without an in-person interview, not in another city. In my own city, yes, but twice. You might luck out and find a company that likes to phone and Skype-interview only since it's IT, but I doubt it. When I've had opportunities in other cities, they always wanted me to come in for an interview at some point on my own dime. A lot of places will not interview you if you're out of state. The best way I could combat that was not by saying "willing to relocate;" it was by saying in my cover letters, "I'll be in Chicago on [xyz] dates and would love to meet with you during that time." That absolutely worked. Take some money and time to go to the city and use that time to do interviews. Recently when I was interested in moving back to Michigan, I wrote in cover letters that I used to live there, loved it there and WOULD be moving back (which was a lie, just wanted to move back and it depended on getting a job), and I got interviews for every IT job I applied for using that approach--but they wanted me to come up for interviews. But I think you have to make some sort of tie clear; they're not going to want you just because you say you will come when they've got plenty of people in Texas to hire. I have ties to Michigan and Chicago and emphasized them.

Here is a cost of living calc I use:

Cost of Living Calculator: Compare the Cost of Living in Two Cities - CNNMoney

I haven't been to TX in a long time, so I can't speak to its homophobia. But I am still from the South and live there, and all I can say is I feel homophobia down here is never quite how people make it out to be. Obviously, don't live in some little hole-in-the-wall one-stop-light town; the closer you are to a major city, the better. My experience across many different Southern cities is Southerners are great with you, as long as you know what sets them off and you know how to navigate it and identify people who aren't like that. I live by the idea that I'm going to avoid certain topics with Southerners as much as possible (race, politics, sexuality, religion) until I know that individual Southerner can handle it and it has served me well, but not everyone wants to live like that.