What's The Best City For an Engineer to Commit To?

Trans - Excuse the ignorance, but what are "Actor" and "Grip"?

For climate, environment and lifestyle I can recommend Cairns.

Family would love it too.

Reef, rain forest, plenty of country to explore, mountains to climb.

Good soil and good rainfall.

Warm all year round

(Sounds like a travelogue!)

I know I wouldn't choose to live anywhere else, although Ky may disagree.

Trouble with paradise is that most of the interesting work is outside on the various mines - usually on a fly in/fly out basis. (Consultancy is the main engineering in the city)

Engineers can often arrange to have 5 days on site (including travel to and from) and weekends home.

Cairns sounds like Panama. Unfortunately, in Panama, most organizations bring engineers in from outside...

Hi cwarner7_11

They do sound alike don't they. Both wet tropics, idyllic surrounds etc.

Our main industry for engineers is mining (unfortunately badly affected by the world economy at the moment).

If you are a consultant, there is some competition from outsiders brought in, but because we have a good skill base here, it costs the people who import skills, so locals are increasingly getting a good go at it.

The others don't realize how lucky we both are.

Of course, where you want to live also depends on what you want to do with family and life when not working. Workaholics are not interested in the surrounds, only the work available. Others weight family life more heavily.

I've done both from time to time and now wish i'd spent more time with family. Hindsight is wonderful!

Wherever the work is! Unfortunately with all the delays and political intervention NYC and the World Trade Center is overloaded with all aspects of engineering and construction crews. Everybody wants to be involved. Seems like any new construction is taking place elsewhere. Just outside of NYC there is a new complex right next to the new Giant Stadium, the Arena and the Meadowlands Racetrack. It's called Xanadu. Completion has been delayed numerous times, be it highways and overpasses or within the complex itself. It's suppose to be one of the largest shopping malls in the country, complete with indoor year round skiing. Since the slow down, recession, depression whatever has occurred, even the businesses looking to rent space are starting to get cold feet. The last time I talked with someone associated with the construction, they were in the process of removing all their scissor lifts and would not be able to complete their work.

It's a tough call. but where and in what field you wish to work should point you in the right direction. Then choose the area that best suits your needs and has work available.

Best of Luck!

Good answer.

You have to let the work dictate your location. Especially at an entry level position. Usually for people in our position it is around some type of metropolitan area. Unless you opt for some type of feild engineering or management work, then you go where they send you.

Good luck

Anywhere in Australia, mate. Visited there last year and, if they'd have me, I'd move there in a New York Minute. Oz has all the resources it needs, it is prospering by sellling stuff to China, everything is new and clean, there's plenty of engineering jobs, and everybody is friendly and proud to be Australian. It's America that works. Horace Greely said, "Go west, young man." I say, "Go to Australia, mate."

Kobe Japan, lot's of foreigners (companies) there and very conveniently placed not far from Osaka, Kyoto, Nara and Himeji

Greenville SC at one time had the highest per capita number of engineers in the USA. Not true now, but this is still a popular place to live and a great place for engineers who want to work for some of the top engineering or manufacturing companies in the world. The trick is finding employment so you can move to this location.

Hi Trans.

I agree with you Bangalore is best city to work because:-

1. It is city of gardens. Many old Victorian gardens full of greenery.

2. Near to many hill stations such as Otty, Kodai etc.

3. Big IT hub with H.O of Infoysis, Wipro and others.

4. International Town ship with latest western style house.

5. New International air port.

6. Cost of living is very cheap.

7. Best medical facilities of international standards.

8. Good hotels, pubs and new malls.

9. Can hire house maid and low salary.

You can live like a king in Bangalore.

Suresh Sharma.

Best place to live for engineers in my opinion is Houston. The place is absolutely packed with engineering firms, energy companies, construction firms, refineries, chemical plants, oil wells, major pipelines, etc. It is a growing city and as long as you are willing to get to work early to avoid traffic (if you work in town), you can live outside of the loop and buy a 2000 sq. ft. house for $150k. There is no state income tax, one of the world's foremost hospital complexes is downtown, and it is home to some miserable sports teams so you don't have to be a homer.

Bad parts are the heat and humidity, you won't find it that bad nearly anywhere else. It literally can punch you in the face. Just like everything is bigger in Texas, it applies to the insects as well, they are everywhere. Most of them either hurt like the dickens or are poisonous. You have to drive everywhere and everything you want to do seems to be at least a half hour away.

I completely agree, the greater Houston area has all the opportunity in the world when it comes to engineering.

I like your answer Milo for it is composed of general precepts.

I also suspect that your strategy means that you pretty much get the going rate for your work, with no expected discount by whomever employs you.

In this thread it probably would be good to delineate what towns or regions are best for what particular sort of engineer one might be.

However your reflections from your experience seem promising for all.

Boiled down they seem to be, live near power centers.

-A power center is a power center, even if it still just the County seat.

I am reminded of how Attorneys of whatever talent tend to have offices in the County Seat, of even the least populated Counties.

Each of us does have to ask ourselves what level of commitment do we have to either a place, or a profession.

Small things happen in small places.

To make a comparison as far as how it may well be recommended that one move for work, I'd consider the lives of sailors, whose whole life is about willingness to move around, change ships, and have tenuous commitments to anything other than their calling.

We may separate ourselves into two categories for simplicity.

Some of us are sailors, and some of us are landlubbers.

Universally worldwide, everywhere, living in a port city, is to live in an overall stronger economy, than to live out in the boonies.

The modern event of the creation of airports is to my view a profound spread of power centers offering options for professionals to compete from anywhere.

There will always be work in a port town.

Now, let us look at discovering what cities or towns in the world are expanding economies, as opposed to contracting, or contracted economies.

How does your answer, Milo, apply to Globalspec, and CR4, which has offices in Troy New York?

Actually it applies pretty well considering the proximity to NYC, and Albany.

I admit that Albany is the State Capitol, and don't know what the County seat is in Troy, but figure a State Capitol City a good enough comparison.

The best rules in triad for taking a job anywhere, at any time, in any profession I know of, are: Good Money, Good People, and Good Project: Must have two out of three.

In starting this Thread I used the word "Commit" for I believe the meaning of your life comes from what and where, and whom you are committed to.

Power Centers isn't really the case. It is more about the industry, community needs and wealth, and the local conditions/environment. Consider California, In general for all engineering disciplines earn substantially less in Sacramento than the Bay Area or Orange County/LA, even through Sacramento is the State Capitol and where all the major politicians are located. Similarly, general most disciplines (except maybe some related to agriculture) earn less in Salinas, CA an fairly large City and County Seat for Monterey County than they do in pacific grove/monterey/pebble beach/carmel, which are about 1/3 the size when composited as a single urban area. There are a lot of wealthy non-local people with second homes and such in the Monterey/Pacific Grove/Pebble Beach Area and there are specific environmental conditions that are a constant problem. consider Seattle, Palo Alto, Pheonix where they pay scales tend to be better for computer technologies related engineering. these areas have the vast majority of the research and industry leaders local within a 20 minute drive of each other, which leads to a higher level of competition for local talent and higher pay.

I have applied standard precepts of sociology in my rejoinder to Milo's post.

There is the natural, and the artificial geography to account for.

The world is not uniform.

Ask yourself if you would have measured up in Rome?

There will always be work in NYC for all disciplines of engineers, right?

My thesis is that those there, that beat it out will set the pay scales.

Can a guy working in Bangalore say, hey, I live in Bangalore, and I can live cheap here, so hire me?

Might work if they do not have to travel to get the job done, and are only in IT.

The problem with working for NYC is that the City is always on the verge of Bankruptcy and gets bailed out more often than Chrysler, so municipal work for that city is not such a great idea. Really old cities tend to have a lot of very old infrastructure that is falling apart and a small proportion of new development occurring that brings in revenues for infrastructure. this is why the east coast suffers from so much urban blight. San Francisco also has some areas of moderate urban blight, though after 1906 much of the city was rebuilt. If it wasn't so damn hot in Las Vegas, that would be nice town to work in as a engineer, they utilize a ton of modern technology, have modern facilities and special needs (like water and power demands) that require engineering skills. However, not much industrial development there, so no need for some disciplines like chemical or industrial engineering. however, all those fountains and lights and such require electrical, civil and mechanical disciplines. I definitely would not focus a engineering career in an area devoted to petroleum production, and also not in an area that is so old and blighted that you'd be working on patching the patches for the patches for the patches that go back to the 1860s or more. Patching old infrastructure is a huge headache and screws up project budgets, as is installing infrastructure in areas that have tons of abandoned older infrastructures. On the plus side though you do become highly specialized to specific solutions for dealing with those infrastructure problem that only very old blighted city's have.

But hey, there is work.

Toronto was kind to the industry but got suckered by Disney (who also sued local kids library for using Mickey Mouse as patron cut-out window cartoon for local literacy campaign)....Zippo lighters counter-sued and cost Eisen his job....totally off topic but thought I'd bring it up.

Currently Vancouver is bigtime friend of the film industry.

The great attractor is tax exemptions and free parking.

Thanks Transcendian.

Rather than name a list of cities, I tried to give tools used to evaluate where to settle.

The obvious answer to your original question would be a bad paraphrase of Willie Sutton, the famous bank robber. HE was asked why did he rob banks?

his answer, "thats where the money is"...

So i didn't think it would be much of a contribution to point out mining engineers should look for cities with mines...Or metallurgists should look for cities with steel mills...

BTW Nucor steel has done a great job of bringing steel minimills to smaller rural communities... I am sure I am the only working metallurgist in Medina Ohio, which when I first moved here was largely a farming county seat with one cold drawn steel bar mill and an asphalt shingle plant. So a contrarian location strategy can work too.

So thats why I tried to give folks "tools they could use " to evaluate cities rather than just a shopping list of cities...

I'm intrigued by your analysis of my comments to be "Power Centers." I'll be giving that some careful thought.

The idea of sailors vs landlubbers seems a bit inflexible. My dad worked his entire working life at one company. I average 11 years and then the company is bought sold etc etc and its time to move on. or whatever.

so I would say that retaining flexibility is important, and more to the original point by DrDoug.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

milo

Agreed with the tools idea, however I still think it points to Houston. In the US at least, it is the highest concentration of engineer-needing companies that I have every run across.

I admit I to tend to look at extremes and try to figure out what will work in general in either case.

My experience was to work in certain industries.

11 or twelve years in Aviation, and 15 or twenty in motion Picture and Stage, or Show Business in general.

Probably 13 or 14 in Construction.

In the course of my last post the landlubbers and the sailors came as a concept ending in acceptance that both sets need the port.

Who here can really say with authority that a Port is not a Power Center?

P.S. Taxes are significant. No Income Tax in Florida for example, but significant fees. "It costs what it costs, and takes what it takes."

"But, God, man, why oh why would you desecrate the law of the land, the law that that strives to bring equality and justice to all, the foundation of our nation, the cornerstone of our society, and then you to rob this bank? What could possibly have possesed you? what could you have been thinking" quoth the judge............

"The money, you idiot".............

'an then there wuz the guy who went hunting with a cheechako. Sez the guy "do you know what deer shit looks like?" Nope. "do you know what bear shit looks like?" Nope. "do you know what your shit looks like?".............why, yes, I do. "how do you know that if you don't know shit"..........philosphy prof, Waterloo.

Well thanks for that!

milo

I stared at that T shirt for a long time (seems like hours), trying to read the label, but can't tell what city that might be. Based on the girls' appearance, I'd bet it's someplace in Australia. Those shielas in Oz are awesome!

If this photo is an indication of what your criteria is for a good place to work,, then I recommend Madrid. In Madrid, the women believe "if you got it, flaunt it!" Never saw so much flesh and tight clothing anywhere in the world. And the prettier and better built they are, the more they flaunt it. And they go to work that way! Noon time on the Plaza Major is a girl-watcher's dream come true.

Madrid is a really cool place, especially for any young, red-blooded, horny engineer dude who can party until 4 am and go to work at 8 am. I'd get up at 6 am and leave the hotel to buy a Herald Tribune, and the party-goers would still be coming home in their evening clothes. What a town! Madrid rocks.

I'm reminded of the old criteria of what makes a "good town": Women and Food.

My fashion advice to women has long been: "Whatever you've got, wrap it up tight." (I spent a good deal of time early in my life around ballerinas.)

Just to round out the profile, wonder what sort of engineering work you do in Madrid?

Imagine you are bi-lingual. Are you getting paid in local currency?

Have you gone round the bend?, Gone native so to speak?

Certainly I applaud you & Milo for having fun and interjecting that facet of criteria into the discussion.

Once you get down by the beach, most any country lightens up. Looks like there is a bulge in a river there by Madrid.

How would you see Madrid working for older married guys?

I've been struggling to come to a decision concerning what advice ought to be given to those of IBM getting fired, and told: "But if you are willing to relocate to another country on your own dime, and be paid at prevailing wages, in the currency of that particular nation, we'll recommend you to our staff over there."

Sounds like you'd say, hey Madrid is great! Come on over!

P.S. I have no job with IBM, but just consider the reports of how they are treating their employees as a "Touchstone" event.

>Just to round out the profile, wonder what sort of engineering work you do in Madrid?

I don't work in Madrid. I just visited there a couple of times. Spain is a delightful country, and most folks speak English. Barcelona is an engineer's delight, what with all the architecture by Gaudi and the modern buildings.

Spain would be a wonderful place for your IBM guys to live, because the climate is great, living costs are low, and trains and airplane connections to the rest of Yurp are pretty good.

One of the best paying public employer is East Bay MUD. Tends to pay better than the cities of LA, San Jose or San Francisco. Plus it is overlooking the Bay, so weather not horrible, and you are in a location where you could travel to a more open spaced living environment and drive in to work in 45 minutes or less from the livermore/dublin area. The city of San Jose would be another good location for high pay and proximity to cheap semi rural living environments about 30 minutes outside of town in the Morgan Hill Area. It does get a little warmer in the summer and colder in winter further inland from the bay though (so like 85 in july or 45 in january, instead of 80 in july and 50 in january). Metropolitan Water district is good, but you have to travel through a lot of urban spawl to get to the cheaper housing with larger lots and houses, (Plus southern Cal is always operating as if they have a drought because of the excessive population demands).

I'd have to ask what kind of engineer?

I guess for my purposes ('cause I have stuck myself off in a specialized field) the best city to commit to is one with excellent air connections.

Do you use Boston Logan or Manchester?

What is it about Rochester, NY that you like? I agree with you it is a very nice area and difficult to recruit engineers for relocation.

I lived in Rochester New York at least eight years of my life, and visited once a month to see my daughter for the 4 years I lived and worked in Manhattan.

As the first "Boom Town" Rochester has a unique history, and is highly technical.

Between the University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, Nazareth, and even the Community College of Monroe County I went to it is an intellectually stimulating place.

Sometimes it is comfortably bleak.

I tell everyone who ever has any reason to go there to visit The George Eastman House, for it is a great museum.

The Eastman School of Music rivals Julliard, and sort of like reports to me of what it is like to live in St. Petersburg Russia, friendships tend towards more depth than in less troubling environments.

Still like many of the US Medium sized towns, there is a lassitude, as if there is always tomorrow, that can grate on the entrepreneur. The History of Xerox, as opposed to the history of Kodak is considered defining two philosophies in conflict in the town.

Interesting that Xerox and Kodak have met similar fates.

My close longterm friend who teaches at RIT recently told me that the city had contracted to a near perfect stasis.

I'd like to see the city of Rochester rise again, but am aware of some influences that would prefer to keep it partly secret.

There has been a strong influence over what happens in Rochester from the Intelligence community. The President of RIT at one time was exposed as CIA, and once CIA, always CIA.

Imaging Technology is important technology for spying. So if you are involved in that sort of work, there will be in Rochester, likely some work for you.

That kind of intellectual environment can be found in many locations. The Bay Area has Berkeley, Stanford, UCSF, San Jose State, and a number of other less reputable state and private universities. The LA basin has Cal Tech, UCLA,Pepperdine, USC, and other less known universities. Boston area has MIT and Harvard. I am not sure that this is a good guideline to selecting a good location for an engineer to live and work (maybe a professor). Plus what is the weather like. As a general rule I would try to find a location where the winters don't drop below feezing during the day or the summers dont get above 100. It just makes it really hard to work efficiently when you are freezing or sweating excessively.

I lived in Rochester for a while. I remember two things in particular:

1. The Kodak film processing plant took water out of the Genessee river, ran it through its film processing equipment, and--without treating it--returned it to the river cleaner than when it started.

2. The city used to dump raw sewage into Lake Ontario. When people reported floating sewage on the public beaches, the Republicans and Democrats proposed different solutions (I forget which party suggested what). One solution was to install floating barriers to keep the turds out of swimming areas. The other solution was to move the outflow pipe a half-mile farther out into the lake. Nobody thought about actually treating the sewage.

Rochester was called "the gilded ghetto" by some.

I still remember Marge's by the lake, Coney Island hot dogs, and skiing Greek Peak.

Go somewhere they are building Nuke plants, or where they are clustered, like the Carolinas. Wilmington NC is a nice town, nice people, and great seafood resturants. Palo Alto CA has 4 reactors at one site, They are almost constantly doing outages or upgrades to one of them. You will need a clean record (FBI check) and pass a piss test. A Union card will help but is not necc.

I started out in 'Circ.Water' scrubbing out 8 foot dia. intake pipes, and wound up as a Turbine Tech. Do it right and you can clear 10 or 12 hundred dollars a week.

A union card to work as a engineer?

I guess it is possible he is talking about a sanitation engineer/operating engineer/or railroad engineer. though in general that is not what most people generally mean by the term engineer or even considering engineering.

I once worked as project engineer at a coal mine.

Part of the deal management had done with the unions was that I had to join the union (I think "Miscellaneous Workers Union" or some such. Capitals are necessary, they take themselves seriously.)

Only time I've every been in a union.

I lived in Wilmington NC for a year. Seems like Corning Glass had good presence at the time. It is a port city.

My experience there was not particularly enticing.

Streak of xenophobia, and racial divisions.

In my line of work Vancouver took a good deal of business away due to exchange rates, and incentives.

As typical for me, I got in trouble for something I wrote for a magazine that was published. I had to leave town and return to NYC for work.

Suspect if you are a bland conformist with no blemishes at all on your history, Wilmington would work quite well.

(No disrespect at all intended, just the facts. Tippycanoe does mention piss tests, FBI checks, and Union cards.)

Yeah, they are pretty bland in the Carolinas. Starting about 10 miles inland, good resturants become harder to find. Goldsboro was about the worst.

The Union card will find you a quicker slot and a better pay rate than if you just walked in off the street as I did. Working outages is a good place to start. As a 'road whore' you can work any place, and if you get in tight with a company, they'll keep you busy or reccomend where the next hiring is. I got passed back and forth from The Atlantic Group, to Beacon (yeech!), to Power Equipment Maintanence. I'd still be at it yet if it wasn't for my love for the Catskills.

My son loves Vancouver, BC. Trouble is Canada has some pretty tough rules about outsiders. You need to have a job that no Canadian can fill or wants. He made good money with the Salmon fleet, and picking cherries in Alberta. Our original poster is an Actor and a Grip, I'm sure he can BS his way into a rigging crew somewhere.

actually I was the original poster.

actually what got me in trouble was an article I wrote recommending Unions, and Union Members for a mature industry labor pool.

NC has a long history of very anti union sentiment.

They really must be worried about things blowing up if they like a guy with a card.

My Union Card wouldn't help me get work with Locals in Vancouver.

Union Locals compete you know.

"If you think a professional is expensive, wait till you hire an amateur." "Yeah, we freed the slaves, now we just rent them." Ten fifteen years go by and next you know arthritis, and whatnot.

Hey only been out of work for two months now!

P.S. I knew a guy that worked as a rigger in Greensboro, NC for stage shows that would go in the summers to Canada to fish. Seems he told me he fell in the water and nearly died of hypothermia in about 3 minutes. Could that be true? Was that summer?

? A professional engineer belonging to a union, as a professional engineer. I do not know of any professional engineering unions. Are you talking about a State license? keep in mind the term professional engineer is is title, and in some case practice, protected under state laws. Technicians on the other hand do have a lot of trade unions, like the operating engineers union.

Didn't know myself of an engineers union. I was in IATSE. International Alliance of Theatrical & Stage Employees.

As a licensed professional engineer they made you join a union to practice engineering?

Yes. The union controlled the site. Management had to walk carefully.

At one time I designed some gadget to make a particular maintenance job easier.

The workshop foreman got a contractor to make it without asking the union.

I went down and saw the gadget sitting in his office. No one was allowed to use it because contract labor to make it hadn't been approved by the union.

He wasn't game to take up my suggestion that the next time the job came up, tell the boys that it was there and that the union had banned it. The boys would have quite willingly pinched it from his office, used it and returned it. The foreman was afraid that if that happened, the union would call a strike, even though he had told them not to use it.

Let me just make sure I understand what you meant by "yes". You are a licensed professional engineer and they made you join a union as a member? or labor manipulated site activities through threat, but you weren't actually a union member? and/or you are not actually a licensed professional engineer (or the australian/new zealand equivalent)?

Also, why couldn't the workshop have used a union sho to manufacture the gadget?

I am a licensed professional mechanic engineer (degree from Sydney University).

The union had such control of the site that professional people had to be a member of the union.

I admit I was astonished, but had no choice except to comply. I was only working there for about 6 months on contract anyway.

Depends where and what time you fall in the water. Glacier fed mountain streams are not exactly conducive to bathing in. Any waterways north of Superior....forget about swimming in it....come to think of it, though I've done it, most should forget about swimming in Lake Superior.

We've had guys here who are found still driving their skidoos days after going through the ice. The cold shock immobilizes them. Officially the term is known as dry drowning and takes seconds. Some people recover after spending a long time and are pronounced doa........new techniques of warming their blood and pumping it back has brought a few back from the brink.

I think it depends on what you are used to in Moscow they have this event that they cut a piece of out of the lake and then swim in it. But i do not know the temp. difference between a glacier river a Moscow winter lake

Hey....when I was younger I'd have a sauna out on the lake, cut a hole in the ice and jump in. Damn good for the circulation.

These days I'm too lazy to cut the hole so I just roll in the snow.

If you haven't already you should check out the bathing culture in Japan....everything from freezing streams to hot mineral springs....not to mention skin cleaning fish!!!

When I produced my travelogue extolling Cairns, I forgot to mention it has an international airport and a university ranked among the top 500 world wide.

As soon as mining picks up again, there will be plenty of good work available, on a fly in/fly out basis, so the family can base in Cairns while you work and come home for weekends.

We do get cold weather here, One winter we had one night which fell to 7C (45F). The last time it fell that low was about 50 years ago, so the old timers say. The day was about 25C (77F), as usual in winter.

If it falls below about 16C (60F) at night, everyone starts complaining bitterly about how cold it is. Days are never below 20C.

Disadvantage is humidity in summer. Temps are only 32-35C. (Record is 42, which was about 4 above the previous record).

Apart from a humid 3 months, climate is virtually ideal for the rest of the year.

We will probably wind up with as many cities recommended as there are contributors, but it is interesting to see the virtues of various places around the world.

Romans had already a word about it:

"ubi bene ibi patria"!

"Where I am well, that is my country." Is that the translation perfectly? Had to ask my wife for the translation. She has a fine University Education whereas I am a bit rough around the edges.

If I start a discussion by asking a question, I do try somewhere along the line to attempt to make a summation from what I have read by contributors of their thought.

There have been in this thread specific cities mentioned, and general principles mentioned.

They tell you in Sociology that if you want to be a success, move to a large urban area, and essentially say that small things happen in small places.

Now I say that Milo and Endigan seem to have a good handle on where to live.

I am sorry that I cannot right now remember who wrote on the basis of a plentitude of work in Houston, but that is of course a more secure environment as opposed to an environment where there is not more than one clique.

For a complete summation I feel I am incapable of putting here any sort of perfect one for I recognize it may still be best for an automotive engineer to move to Detroit.

For Civil Engineering the Urban rule along with the power center rule would seem more generally true, than say Chemical and Material science.

There will be towns that may be of great physical flaws, (like lousy weather) that will be superior for some ones particular talents.

It would be both fun and hard for us on CR4 to summate what specific locations were best by Section.

For example, Detroit is the best place for automotive engineers, or MIT is best for Education.

Actually, detroit WAS the best place for automotive engineers.

Shanghai, China,Birmingham Al, (honda , Hyundai) Marysville Ohio(Honda), Georgetown, Kentucky Toyota). Are places that still have competent corporate structures behind their Auto production.

Detroit is all but dead, except perhaps Ford. Chrysler's engineering research center (i was in it twice) worked for accounting and just analyzed the delta between their model and a competitior to see where they were leaving money on the table. Fastener count, gage of material, material choice, etc. Essentially a race to the bottom. And explains why my last two Chrysler brand rentals left me stranded...

Even rip van winkle knows the pain at anything associated with the wreck that is GM/USGOVT.

I apologize I don't know the Canadian hot spots... nor speak for europe or rest of asia.

Milo

So then, in Automotive Engineering best cities are Shanghai China, Birmingham Al, Marysvile Ohio, Georgtown Kentucky, and Detroit, with only Ford.

Next up, BioMech & BioMed. Raleigh NC and RTP local to where I live are known for Glaxo Smith Kline. SAS in Cary is strong in Software, but I am not competent and experienced enough with them to put them in a stepped rating.

There are two ways to move. One just move where the work is and try to get a job, or visit till you get a job.

There are some Tier two companies in Michigan too, but mostly they are tied to the dying.

Actually Cirque du Soleil out of Montreal would be a likely employer of world class grips and stagehand talent willing to work intensely and travel.

Fuel cell hot spot includes Vancouver. I visited anadian National fuel cell research center there in 2003. There were a number of companies in the area.

milo

milo