Because Where You Live Matters
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I have a confession: last summer I fell in love with a city.
I love Chicago. I’ve lived many different places, but none have ever taken hold of me the way Chicago has. I love jogging down the lake shoreline on hot July mornings, watching the crowds gather on the sandy beach. I love walking through my neighborhood right after a snowfall and soaking in the crisp white, the dead beauty of the silence. I love taking public transportation, eating out at local restaurants, and watching professional sports. Chicago has captured my heart, and I can’t see myself leaving here anytime soon.
This poses a question we all have on our minds: should you choose a place to live and then find a job, or should you find your dream career and move to wherever it takes you?
I’m still not sure what my answer is. I feel my personality type thrives best in a large city, so a move to NYC or San Fran wouldn’t be a huge stretch for me. But moving back to St. Louis would require a pretty damn good offer. Luckily, a large city means a ton of opportunity, so it’s difficult to imagine not being able to maintain a job I love right here.
How do you choose? Is where you live more important than what you do? Or the other way around?
Summary of answers:
It turns out when I wrote this I oversimplified the question. From the responses, people have a lot of different reasons for choosing a place to live. Here are some of the most interesting points:
1. Jaclyn points out where you went to school matters - this is probably true for most people. Not only are you going to stay close to where you went to undergrad (if not moving back to where your family is), but the school’s name recognition and reputation only stretches so far.
I went to a liberal arts school that was billed as “The Harvard of the Midwest,” when really the school’s name is only recognizable in St. Louis and other parts of Missouri where it’s located. Moving outside of that bubble to Chicago was a huge pain because I always have to explain where my alma mater is located.
An option is to go to a nationally recognizable school, which is what I insisted on for my grad school education. But I’ve found that the majority of grads are still concentrated in Chicago (I go to University of Chicago). So even if you go to a large state school that has national name recognition, the reputation of your program might not carry if you move too far away.
2. Networking is key - A few people mentioned they don’t want to move because they’ve built a professional (or personal) network in a certain city. Building a network is difficult and it’s also tough to find friends and get a steady social life after moving. If your job revolves around the strength of your network, it might not be a good idea to move.
At the same time, you can sometimes expand your network by moving, as long as you can maintain relationships at your old place of residence.
3. Cost of living - an obvious but important factor. You have to strike a balance between finding a job that pays well enough to live in the city of your choosing. You also have to consider whether the type of job you want is available in your city of choice, and that can affect whether you settle there or not.
4. Partner or spouse - things get more complicated when you have two people to please with both preference and career. My husband and I went through this before we finally settled on Chicago, which has a school for his profession (and ample opportunity afterwards) and also has a ton of technology businesses for me.
Thanks to everyone for the comments - there was some great discussion on these questions. Feel free to keep the conversation going by leaving your own thoughts!
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Monica O'Brien is the founder of Twenty Set, a website about personal and professional growth and development for the Millennial generation. She has been a blogger since 1998 when blogging was still in its “Dear Diary” form and in May 2007 began blogging for personal branding and profit.
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It’s hard for me to answer the question exactly as you’ve posed it. Where I live is important and so is what I do, but I’m not sure I could say which is more important in a general sense. All I know is that I need to be happy. If one factor or the other is causing unhappiness, then it’s time to reevaluate. What’s most important to me, then is the balance itself and not one of the “weights” over the other.
If you’re OK with sacrificing a little on preferred enviornment for preferred career, then great. But if you won’t be happy in the city or town where your dream job is located, then you have to take that into account. It would be foolish to decide which is more important and then go with it. I think it all depends on the specific job in question, the specific city in question, and the specific person in question.
Great question, though, and I’m interested to hear what others have to say!
Jarred @ Tropophilia
I had the opportunity to move from Central MA to Boston, on very short notice. I decided to move first, and get a job later. I moved first, and found a fantastic job later. It took six months of commuting back to my old job while I looked before something landed in my lap. I had some anxiety and doubt, but I never let it trump the overwhelming sense that things would work out. I couldn’t be happier that I followed my instinct and took the leap.
I think with respect to loving your job or loving your city…one can make the other more tolerable. My advice to anyone, trust your gut…if you can afford to take a leap and move somewhere you know you will be happy, have faith that you might also find a job that will make you happy as well. I did.
I think the answer to this question is totally depends on the personality and the goals of a person. I would never take any sort of job in the place I don’t want to live in. That is because job is not my priority number 1 in life.
However, I have a friend who moved to Korea and left everything she knew just to get the job with McK.
I love Chicago as well. When I used to go to school my favorite places were: “Green Mill” one of the amazing live jazz bars in the world and totally from different spectrum “Exit” Chicago oldest rock club. It looks pretty scary from the outside, but there are a lot of hip and friendly people on the inside.
I definitely relate to your thoughts and questions in this post. Obviously there’s no universal answer, but as I consider whether I should move and when to do it, I keep thinking back to when I was deciding on where to go to college. I wish I’d had the foresight to consider how the location of your school can effect the opportunities you have after you graduate. I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college in the U.S. so my family members couldn’t advise me based on experience in this regard. Attending school in Washington, D.C. gave me a lot of networking opportunities and I did my best to take advantage of many of them. As a result,I have an excellent network here and unless I push hard against the tide, it would be easy to stay here in terms of professional advancement - I know a lot of people, I’m familiar with organizations and groups here etc. On the other hand, I never thought I’d settle in Washington, D.C. and as a recent college grad with big student loans, this is a super expensive city. There are aspects of this city that really appeal to me, but I also feel like I’ve gotten what I need to out of my six years here and it’s time to move on. Most of my friends from college are now living in other cities and even though it’s very easy to meet young professionals in D.C. and there’s a great scene for that, I find that I rarely meet people who plan on staying here for more than three years, which means I am meeting new people and having to form new friendships every few months.
So for me, it’s looking like city might take priority in the next few months. Of course, if a really exciting opportunity comes up here, I’ll probably just sweep my complaints about the city under the rug.
My family moved when I was growing up - a lot. By the time I was 22 we had lived 11 different places. I’ve lived all over the south and midwest. I got a “safe” job just out of college, near St. Louis. After I worked there for two years I decided professionally, it was time to move on, and I started looking towards my favorite cities, and traveling more so that I could get a feel for others. I was interested in Washington D.C. and Savannah, GA.
Then my husband and I started dating and I realized what I wanted more than anything was just to be settled. He is a small town farm boy and really wanted to live in the area his family is from. The nice thing is my line of work allows me to go almost anywhere - so it wasn’t difficult to find a good job.
So - we are buying a farmhouse and this big city girl is getting used to cornfields. It is a challenge and somedays I feel completely out of my element. I am used to the anonymity a city and moving often provide. It feels odd to have people you don’t know, know who you are and know the history of your “family”.
I’m right there with you. Chicago is awesome! I’m sad because I don’t think I’ll ever live there.
I would have to say with my experience you should get the job and move to where it takes you. I live where I love, Columbus Ohio, but the jobs for college graduates are few. You would think with it being a college town companies would be grabbing the fresh meat, not so much. In one of my classes a professor warned us that Columbus was for people with 3+ years experience and if we don’t get jobs right out college in this city to not be surprised. He was right. If I search for jobs in Cleveland or Cincinnati it is totally different, jobs are plentiful for Entry Level. But now I am getting married and just bought a house so moving it not an option, besides I love Columbus. I guess it will just take me a bit longer to get the experience I need to move up.
I think that unless you are strongly tied to a particular city or area, you should let the job decide where you go. For instance, I would like to stay in Quincy because I do well in a smaller-town atmosphere, but the opportunities for college grads with IT degrees are few and far between.
I took the job that I will be starting in July both because it was an excellent opportunity and because it will force me to acclimate to a different sort of environment. Even though Overland Park is just a suburb of Kansas City, it still has over 100,00 residents. There is no way that I would have imagined moving here if my job did not require it. I think the dilemma becomes harder still when you are in a committed relationship. Often the subject of where the two of you will live is not as easy as “this is where my job is, this is where we’re going to be.”
I really liked this particular post, and I look forward to reading more of them.
There are many cities I would love to live in, but for me, the job (and job market) is a more limiting factor and dictates where I am. But beyond the job, what is keeping me from moving somewhere totally different is the lack of relationships and a support network in a new city like Portland or Seattle. So, for now, I am sticking with Minneapolis, where I know people and have connections, even though it’s not my ideal city.
That’s a hard question for me to answer it the way you posed it. But I think the approach I would take is decide where I want to live and then find a job. Most likely I’d be living or really close to a large city, so it shouldn’t (hopefully) be too hard to find one. I currently live in Los Angeles. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by our year-round pleasant weather - but temperature/climate really effects my mood. Most likely I wouldn’t move to a place where it snows all winter or rains half the year, because I just wouldn’t be able to function. I suppose if I were offered the “perfect” job with a larger than average salary for that position I could be swayed…but right now, I don’t think that will happen.
The ideal, of course, is that your location and your career each enhance the other, which is possible with some compromise. If you enjoy the climate and culture where you live, you will be happier on your way in and out of work, thus improving your perceived enjoyment of your job. If your job is challenging and fulfilling, you will be more satisfied outside of work. It’s easy to identify when something is totally missing in your life, which is probably the best indicator you need a change - of job, location, or both.