I don't want to talk you out of it! Having talented and skilled people around is about the only thing that makes working in this kind of environment tolerable. But it's definitely a "grass is greener" kind of moment.

I've tried to make the jump out West a handful of times, but getting good jobs for me and my family at the same time out that way, at this point in our careers, and with resumes that read like random acronym spaghetti, has been near to impossible.

Even with the higher cost of living in the Bay Area, many of the places I've interviewed have balked at my salary requirements. During interviews with one big West Coast company, I made it through all of the phone screens, phone interviews, work history discussions, face-to-face interviews, lunch, meeting with the senior management, and then it all fell apart when we got to salary. "You realize Mr. Bane that not even the CEO for this organization pulls that kind of salary down?" "That's fine, I'd be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for preferred stock options" and that usually is the end of the discussion.

The interviews I've had with the Googles and the Facebooks have also left the interviewer at a loss for words as they tried to untangle my resume and ask reasonable interview questions. The environments: the technology, the politics, the hiring practices, the career progression, the titles, everything is just so different that at some point the interviewer and I inevitably end up just realizing it's not going to work.

For example, most people out West with a similar career progression as me might have done a year long stint in Hyderabad or Shanghai trying to setup a new office. In a normal interview we'd chat about the challenges doing that, how it's so hard to get approval from the local government for the kind of high speed internet business line we'd need or the difficulty in ensuring overnight delivery of important data center parts or whatever and how I'd solve that with a reasonable inventory of spare parts but not provision too many blah blah blah.

When the topic comes up with me I have to talk about my time in a couple of combat zones, dodging mortar fire or stepping over a pile of gore that used to be a man. My principal challenge wasn't recruiting local talent, it was finding cover from a late night firefight or figuring out how to get fiber in my diet after a month underground in a bunker eating MREs so I could use the toilet. After all that was accomplished, then I got to figuring out how to coax industry obsolete technology running off of a jury-rigged diesel generator to do something useful for my work.

I don't regret it out here, I've managed to be involved in some history making events, had some awesome travel, met incredible people and did far more than figure out how to get people to click ads. There's a concept I've heard from PhD students [1] where they describe that moment where, before they publish their first paper or their dissertation, they know something new that nobody else in history or on the planet knows. Working here is kind of like that. There's been moments where I've solved a problem or learned something that nobody else on the planet knows and it's pretty awesome to be there at that moment.

But at the same time, you don't really ever "build" anything in the sense of creating something that will advance the species. It's not what I would call "life affirming" work. You build siege engines that become obsolete as soon as the walls of the enemy are penetrated. You become Leonardo da Vinci looking for work. [2]

If you want to see what's being looked for check this site out: http://clearedjobs.net/

1 - http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

2 - http://gizmodo.com/5460442/leonardo-da-vincis-resume-explain...