Ask HN: Should I quit my job and relocate?
I'm a software engineer currently living in a small tech market and looking to move to Boston, MA and only Boston, MA. I just started working with a recruiter this week and he has gotten me four job interviews with great companies. I'm junior (a little over a year of experience), but I have some good experience and build projects in my off time (one of my projects has almost 300 stars on github). Should I just quit and either move up or go full time to preparing for job interviews? I'm not trying to change fields and I really do like software, but my current job is draining, distracting, and not giving me very much experience--but it is a fortune 500 company. I have about 10k in liquid savings that I can use (the rest of my money is in high interest CDs and roth ira/401k). Should I take the leap? In an ideal world you would land a job offer before you quit and make the move. (I've even known of someone who received a job offer, quit and moved to a new city, and got the job offer retracted by the company right before starting. So even having an offer is not 100% safe!) If you feel like your job is draining and distracting though and you'd rather not be there at all, and you have savings to last a few months, you may consider quitting. I'd suggest at least landing an offer before moving to a new city though. How far are you from Boston now? Is it a drag to fly there to interview? Also, assuming you current live in a smaller city with cheaper rent, in the bad case scenario where you don't land offers, at least your savings can give you a longer period of down time, compared to if you just moved to a bigger city (and spent a lot of it on moving expenses). I live in the south and have a 2 hour flight to Boston. I was flown up there about a month ago for a day of job interviews, but didn't get the job. A job before I move is the goal but I'm not sure how easy that will be since companies are wary of relocating--a friend of mine (same company and same experience level) after months of searching for a job in Denver finally moved there and had 5 job offers within a month. So perhaps I am too encouraged by his good fortune, but I feel it cannot be that difficult. Another option you have is to try to line up your interviews for all the companies there throughout the span of one week. Take a week off work, fly to Boston and stay there that week and do all your interviews. It can be exhausting, but you save on the flights and you're not quitting your job before the offer. Due to some unforeseen circumstances in the last couple of months I've had to take over (only 2 hours) the allowed PTO from my company so I'm definitely not able to take a week off. Probably something I should have mentioned originally. Thank you for discussing this with me! Why Boston? In particular, if you have personal connections there you should be working those, both to find a job and to find a place to live.