Thank you all for your insight, especially those who have provided specifics on personal experiences such as charlestweed, and K2.
Charlestweed: Good to hear that there are some practices thriving in CA. I think the business model you have seems to be very sustainable, and certainly worth learning from.
K2: Interesting to hear about the saturation of Colorado. I agree with your advice about serving a more rural area temporarily then moving to a more ideal location after being more experienced. The only problem is that my fiancee is quite successful in her business (she makes more than an avg specialist does) and she needs to stay near her industry so we'll see who's career wins out lol. Of course if some rural areas are getting saturated too, then it just becomes a matter of choosing the lesser evil...
dentaldawg32: Pay for a market research report for the area that you narrow down that you would like to work in. This applies for any type of business you open up, as it will tell you good statistics in the region such as patient
octor ratio, the exact number of competitors you have, avg salary for the area to help establish service charges, etc.
For those of you who seemed to have a problem responding with constructive advice, please read my original post again. I was not whining, nor complaining. I did not say that I was not OK with moving to a rural area to practice. It was a simple question asking about the current state of the job market in the experience of the dental professionals here...
I have been personally hearing from my friends (not rumors) looking for jobs in the cities of San Francisco (Bay area in general), Fresno, Sacramento, Middletown, Manhattan, Brooklyn, LA, OC, and SD. So this saturation of dentists is actually quite widespread and not simply confined to traditional areas of ultra high development (many of these places are suburbs on the fringes of cities that have traditionally treated dentists well). Unfortunately, I don't know anyone looking for jobs other than in those two states, so that is why I was asking for people's personal experiences.
I am glad to see you are so open minded K2. If you couldn't tell, I was being facetious. You picked out a few words of a paragraph that armorshell posted. Yes, they were somewhat harsh, but no one but you had an issue with his comments. If you look at everything he stated, not just the "grow a pair" and " you're screwed pal", you could actually tell his comment was actually useful. He was stating if you only plan on living in NYC or LA, then you are just gonig to have to deal with the fact that there is massive competition and you'll have to deal with the low salary. Otherwise, if you can live outside these overly populated places, there are plenty of places to practice where you can make a good living.
Navy, honestly this post is unnecessary to this thread... There is no need to translate armorshell's post, I think all of our reading comprehension is just fine. In comparison to the advice that K2 gave, armorshell barely answered my question giving very little tangible information.
And I was actually quite surprised that he took on such a harsh tone for absolutely no reason (I suppose its possible a pt died on him or something recently). After all, a moderator's job is to be a neutral party, not a superior entity that exudes a sense of arrogance. Of course, more importantly, as dental professionals we are taught to treat people with respect and patience! Again, never once in my post did I say I was not willing to move to bumtuckville.. However, if I did, then I would want to know the rate of saturation that is currently occurring in these places, a question that K2 answered regarding his personal situation.
