When I arrived in Hawaii nine years ago I was still looking for work, or at least open to getting a job. But as I had found back in the New England area there are darn few job openings for people in my age range. Basically, I had aged out of the industry. Employers are always looking for people with "3 - 5 years experience". When you've got over 40 years of experience they just don't even consider you, I assume because they expect the salary requirements to be too high. So, by default, I ended up retired.
Overall I think there are very few openings for software engineers here in Hawaii, at least not if you're actually looking for software DEVELOPMENT work, like creating new products. Most of what I see is just IT work, i.e. maintaining some company's internal network and such. For me, that's drudgery work. My career was mostly development work.
I know that there's lots of talk about increasing the high tech field here in Hawaii, to offset the reliance on tourism, but I just don't see that happening. I can't imagine anyone deciding to work in the high tech field in Hawaii when the salaries are so much higher elsewhere.
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Scotty,
When I arrived in Hawaii nine years ago I was still looking for work, or at least open to getting a job. But as I had found back in the New England area there are darn few job openings for people in my age range. Basically, I had aged out of the industry. Employers are always looking for people with "3 - 5 years experience". When you've got over 40 years of experience they just don't even consider you, I assume because they expect the salary requirements to be too high. So, by default, I ended up retired.
Overall I think there are very few openings for software engineers here in Hawaii, at least not if you're actually looking for software DEVELOPMENT work, like creating new products. Most of what I see is just IT work, i.e. maintaining some company's internal network and such. For me, that's drudgery work. My career was mostly development work.
I know that there's lots of talk about increasing the high tech field here in Hawaii, to offset the reliance on tourism, but I just don't see that happening. I can't imagine anyone deciding to work in the high tech field in Hawaii when the salaries are so much higher elsewhere.