Austin, TX

[Still Looking]

Hey - just wondering if anyone on here lives and works in Austin. I would like to move to the area, but I need to land a job first. If so, what type of industries are in the area? How do you like the Austin metro area? Any help would be appreciated.

[lonestar]

here here...though I am not going to be in town much for the next two months (company training in Kansas City).

If you are in software or computer hardware, there are tons of engineering/cs positions at Dell in Round Rock or Freescale and several other tech companies in the area. A lot of people work for the state or university, which have advantages...Have you been to Austin before?

I live in central near the University but I am considering getting a better apartment away from all the students (it gets tiring after a little while). I think Barton Springs area or SoCo are the coolest places to live...check for places around Zilker Park.

[Still Looking]

Yea, I was there just a few weeks ago and will be returning in a few more weeks. I went out there to visit a friend a few weeks ago and had such a great time that now I would like to move out there. I went to school in Oklahoma, had an awesome time, but returned to the southeast after that. The southwest has always been an adventure for me.

I only have experience in automotive manufacturing (quality engineer) so I think I might have a hard time finding a gig, right? It would be cool to get a job at one of the tech companies, but I don't have any "official" experience in that area.

Any advice?

[lonestar]

I don't know of any auto manufacturers in this area, but I could be wrong on that...

[Still Looking]

Cool....thanks for the info. I will have a look around when I come out there in a few weeks.

[Still Looking]

Anyone else on here from the Austin area that could provide some input?

[paiger81]

There aren't too many Texans on this board, and those of us that are from Texas are pretty spread out. I think Lonestar is the only regular poster from the Austin area. Workaholic is our West Texas gal, I've lived in Corpus & Houston & am now moving(literally, leave in 15 minutes) to Aggieland, and we used to have a guy from Dallas, but he's been gone for a while.

[analogman]

Austin is also known as silicon hill. There are a lot of tech jobs (hardware/software design, manufacturing, validation, etc). Are you a mechanical engineer? Your manufacturing experience should translate into a semi-conductor job. Things are manufactured using robots/automated systems now and Q&R (quality and reliability) concepts are pretty similar just with different metrics.

Large semi-conductor companies that do manufacturing in Austin include Freescale (formerly part of Motorola), AMD, Samsung, and possibly IBM (not sure about this one). I think a big contract manufacturing company Solectron is also in Austin.

As lonestar mentioned, long with University of Texas at Austin and the state capital are the obvious big industries. I am a semiconductor design engineer so I don't know the other local industries.

Nice places to live I knew are the hills west of MOPAC and south Austin near Barton Creek mall. Places to avoid I knew was east of I-35. Area between the two is iffy.

PS: I am a semi-conductor design engineer and went to school in Austin. I graduated 5 years ago so my info might be a little old.

[Still Looking]

Thanks paiger and analogman.

Freescale is a new one for me so I will have to look into this. Hopefully something will pop up in the next few months before I move out there.

To answer your question, I am a mechanical engineer but my focus during and after graduation has been in automotive. The automotive industry is really getting bad now and I am ready to bail.........And you are right, most of my quality and reliability skills should be transferable.

[slaphappy]

Hey there,

I'm from Austin as well, but I haven't been on the boards lately. A few other big companies to try here in town are Motorola, 3M and AMD.

I live in the Crestview area (north of downtown) which is a nice eclectic area in town and the real estate is booming. You can buy a decent one/two bedroom house there and in a few years your value will double. South First street is another cool area where you might find some cool eclectic houses.

And then there is Hyde Park and Terrytown, both very old neighborhoods close to the city - but you need to make/have a lot of money to live in those areas. :rolleyes: