<p>There’s plenty of software engineering work outside of San Francisco and Redmond. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, you had Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang Laboratories, Prime Computer, Data General, Sun Microsystems and many other computer companies in the Boston area. This was back in the day when these computer companies all developed their own hardware architectures so that software that ran on one manufacturer’s computers didn’t run on others unless they were ported. So you had all of these companies that built their own operating systems, compliers and other middleware in the Boston out to Route 495 Belt.</p>
<p>EMC is also located in the Greater Boston Area and they do quite a bit of software development. Today, with the ability to work remotely, it may not even matter where you want to live as long as you have phone and broadband service.</p>
<p>Those more interested in theory, performance, hardware aspects of computer science may do better in software engineering jobs. Those that are more interested in people and business aspects may do better in IS.</p>