Ask HN: Should I quit my job and relocate?

[gardncl]

I'm a software engineer currently living in a small tech market and looking to move to Boston, MA and only Boston, MA. I just started working with a recruiter this week and he has gotten me four job interviews with great companies. I'm junior (a little over a year of experience), but I have some good experience and build projects in my off time (one of my projects has almost 300 stars on github). Should I just quit and either move up or go full time to preparing for job interviews? I'm not trying to change fields and I really do like software, but my current job is draining, distracting, and not giving me very much experience--but it is a fortune 500 company. I have about 10k in liquid savings that I can use (the rest of my money is in high interest CDs and roth ira/401k). Should I take the leap?

[godot]

In an ideal world you would land a job offer before you quit and make the move. (I've even known of someone who received a job offer, quit and moved to a new city, and got the job offer retracted by the company right before starting. So even having an offer is not 100% safe!)

If you feel like your job is draining and distracting though and you'd rather not be there at all, and you have savings to last a few months, you may consider quitting. I'd suggest at least landing an offer before moving to a new city though. How far are you from Boston now? Is it a drag to fly there to interview? Also, assuming you current live in a smaller city with cheaper rent, in the bad case scenario where you don't land offers, at least your savings can give you a longer period of down time, compared to if you just moved to a bigger city (and spent a lot of it on moving expenses).

[gardncl]

I live in the south and have a 2 hour flight to Boston. I was flown up there about a month ago for a day of job interviews, but didn't get the job. A job before I move is the goal but I'm not sure how easy that will be since companies are wary of relocating--a friend of mine (same company and same experience level) after months of searching for a job in Denver finally moved there and had 5 job offers within a month. So perhaps I am too encouraged by his good fortune, but I feel it cannot be that difficult.

[madcaptenor]

Why Boston? In particular, if you have personal connections there you should be working those, both to find a job and to find a place to live.