The World’s Best (and Worst) IT Cities to Work and Play

For every best IT place to work and play there is also a worst, here’s a look at where you should go…and where you shouldn’t.

Worst Cities to Work in IT: International Edition

The Worst U.S. Cities to Work in IT

10 Best U.S. Cities for IT Jobs with Tech Startups

The Best Cities for Finding IT Jobs in 2012

Let’s start with the homefront. If you’re a techie who wants to be in the center of the high-tech universe, there’s only one place to be: Silicon Valley. It’s the home to Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle, Intel, and where venture capitalists along Sand Hill Road fuel great ideas. Oh, there’s also a nice little city to the north called San Francisco.

(Picture: Apple’s planned “spaceship” campus in Cupertino, CA).

The Belfast “Good Friday” agreement of 1998 ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland, yet there are still occasional outbreaks of violence. Most folks will tell you Belfast is perfectly safe, citing low crime rates and friendly people. Then again, Belfast is the birth place of the Titanic. How much bad luck can one place have?

Paris is one of the great cities in the world and should be on the short-list for job destinations. There is so much to do: spending leisure time in a cafe, gazing at the Eiffel Tower, touring the cathedral of Notre-Dame. Of course, we’re not all that sure about the technology scene. Our guess is it’s a bit insulated, given the many years France spent pushing its own version of the Internet, called Minitel.

Sao Paulo is a city on high-tech’s fast track, specifically the emerging area known as Brooklin. Who’s in Sao Paulo? AT&T, Microsoft, Samsung, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, to name a few. Sao Paulo’s favorite tech son is Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, the picture-sharing app that Facebook just bought for $1 billion.

Sydney and Melbourne are the two largest cities for IT in Australia. Actually, they’re the only cities in Australia. (Just joking, mate!) We’re going with Sydney because of its hot tech startup scene, venture capital, good bars, and lots of cool architecture. Check out Sydney’s Super Digital Precinct. Sydney is to software what Melbourne is to bio-tech.

The Great Barrier Reef is a SCUBA diver’s paradise — that is, until the man in the white suit shows up. When this happens, you don’t want to be anywhere near the water. News reports of swimmers getting attacked by great white sharks in the Great Barrier Reef are becoming more common.

We’re kidding, of course.