Life in computers as a Sys Admin

I moved to Silicon Valley a few years ago having run out of options in the midwest and fearing for my career I went to one of two last places to find a job in information techonology. In this day and age only Silicon Valley and New York City are the last reliable places to find work. From time to time Austin, Chicago and other cities have a boast in jobs but they come and go every few years. With the promise of work I thought and many friends told me this was the place to be for the computer inclined. I though with all my ideas in six months or a year I would be on my way to being the next Zuckerberg. I have many good ideas and it seemed like a good idea would get you a check. Instead what I find is just enough to live on. Granted my I have a good life with a lovely wife and nice things. I even have the latest iPhone and a few of the top Android phones. I have nice toys and we can drive an hour and be at the ocean. It can be a nice life. I make more than I ever had and about twice what I made in Memphis where I lived last. Back in Memphis most of the friends that I worked with had moved on to contract jobs with six month terms that kept them in limbo. There were only two major employers that still had work but almost all the work for Information Technology has turned into contract work. I feel like the last of the old school information techonlogist. Not that my skills aren’t needed. Our lives are more about technology than ever. Life is changing and not for the better. I’m living the new american dream. I am stuck with a house in Memphis that I can only sell if I give a realtor 20k. I live in the most expensive real estate market. A normal home is well over a million dollars and would require that I make over 300k a year to afford with a normal salary. Now some people either get lucky with stock options or have two great incomes and can some how afford which is crazy. This is what happens when people have to much money and a complete disregard for their fellow man. Local city regulation have made it very difficult to build new houses and even more apartments. I pay more a year for my one bedroom apartment than most people make in salary for a year. Rich people have created a market of unreal housing prices in the guis of protecting the land or setting aside land for no one. You see whole neighborhoods that no house is for sale. It is unlike any place I have been. it has been created by a few rich people, the startup market and regulation. The real problem is people have gotten greedy. Companies have been allowed to take over smaller companies and combine industries to give themselves an advantage. Currently the US economy is worth about twenty trillion dollars. About sixteen trillion dollars is locked up in corporate, billionaires and millionaires bank accounts. The rest of us about 150 million people have to fight over twenty thousand dollars a piece. Plus the working 150 million people are supporting another hundred plus million people. How have we allowed ourselves to get here. The problem is simple. We need to either make money worth more or give more of the pie to the rest of us. Instead we are under ten percent inflation, making the same or less money and devaluing our money. One plus there are less millionaires than there used to be. Not a plus really.