Reviews & Comments
Midland, TX
Only come here if you're desperate. -
9/23/2018Honestly, if you're not desperate for money or a big boost to your career, don't come to Midland. You've been warned.
The cost of living is quite high, and yet there's little to do here. If you don't mind the high cost of living here, then there are plenty of better places to live where you'll get a much better bang for your buck like, say, California where you can enjoy the beaches or mountains or the East Coast where you have good history and urban life. I moved here from California and I must say that this place has nearly ALL of the problems that are causing countless Californians to flee their state (like high cost of living, crime, drugs, overcrowding, rude people, poor schools, etc.) without any of the perks of living in California like beaches, good scenery, good food, etc.
One of the biggest problems with this area is its extreme isolation. You're at least a 4.5 hour drive to ANY big metro area (like Dallas or El Paso.) Can'f find the right doctor or auto mechanic? Don't like the activities in town? Want to visit a place with better scenery? You're forced to drive 300+ miles for these things! Yes, they've got an airport but the flights are often overpriced, sold out, and require 1 or more connections unless you're flying to a limited # of cities: Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, or Las Vegas.
The oil and gas industry dominates the local economy and provides a lot of very good paying jobs for people without degrees. This results in a lot of local services that employ unskilled and even some skilled workers with an employment shortage. During an oil "boom" when oil prices are high, expect to find a shortage of cashiers, restaurant servers, auto mechanics, and other workers that you may take for granted in your everyday life. Since anyone with a half decent work ethnic chooses to work in the oil fields and other jobs related to the oil industry, you're left with the bottom of the barrel folks serving you food, cutting your hair, fixing your car, etc. who still demand to be paid a fortune for very poor quality service. They can get away with that because all of the good workers are in the oil fields and there's very little competition within a 4.5 hour radius to replace them.
Housing is also in very short supply during an oil boom. Few business people will elect to build apartments here because they'll likely stay vacant for many years at a time except during a boom. A lot of out of town folks who choose to come here for oil field work live in so-called "man camps" which are nothing more than temporary glorified shanty towns.
If you're a dual income household, think very carefully before deciding to relocate here (I already warned you about living in Midland in general.) Unless you're the main breadwinner in the household AND you're unemployed AND you landed a sweet job offer in Midland. Or if BOTH of you are in the oil industry, that's also fine. Since the oil industry dominates the local economy, it'll be very difficult for your partner to find a job here in his/her industry which completely defeats the purpose of coming here to make a ton of money. If you do choose to come here, especially during an oil boom, you'll definitely want to negotiate the salary on your job offer AGGRESSIVELY; many employers here are desperate and have trouble luring people into Midland no matter how high they pay.
All in all, I strongly advise against coming to Midland if you can help it. That being said, the severe labor shortage here makes Midland a great place for people who need a second chance in their careers: people who don't have degrees, people with criminal records, people who were blackballed by their former employers, etc. can all take advantage of the tight labor market here to reboot their careers when no other employer in the country will give them that chance.
Garden Grove, CA
A Safe and Boring Town -
4/10/2017So safe and boring that the police here rarely have anything better to do. At one time, I rented a room in another person's home and decided to put some aluminum foil shades on my window because my room was getting baked by the sun during the day. While I was at work, the police stopped by and made the owner take my shades down because it had the appearance that marijuana was being grown in the house.