Silicon Valley: Perks for Some Workers, Struggles for Parents
This is another very important article about the difficulties of a career, rather than a stint, in high tech.<p>I've noticed that many health-care related professionals, such as dental hygienists and registered nurses, have median pay that is close to or exceeds the median pay for software developers [1], and that well paid professionals such as dermatologists or radiologists often earn vastly more.  These fields also offer what I'd describe as <i>career</i> flexibility.<p>As a software developer, I can almost always go off and have a cup of coffee when I please.  So in that sense, yes, it is "flexible."  But one very attractive quality of being a dental hygienist is that you can step back from the field for a few years, work part time (or not at all), and re-enter a few years later.  My cousin is a radiologist, and she worked half time while she had kids (collecting a much higher salary than the typical full time developer).  I also know an emergency room physician who was able to scale back while she had small kids without badly compromising her career progress.<p>Add in open offices, back visibility, a dave n busters vibe, mass layoffs involving work visas and "knowledge transfer", frequent allegations of sexism and discrimination, an insistence that you locate to a place where the median 3br house is well over a million… and now, as it appears, a situation where you they don't want you if you have kids.<p>At this point, why do we keep acting like there's some mystery why people with <i>choice</i> (i.e., whose professional options aren't limited by the visa process) are avoiding this field?  Why does President Obama nod gravely as he stands next to tech CEOs talking about severe shortages of tech workers at press releases?<p>[1] check out US News Best Jobs, which provides a summary of BLS data on median salary <i>by region</i>.  In San Francisco, dental hygienists earn $112,970, software developers  $114,400, and registered$127,670.  Physicians and lawyers, of course earn considerably more.