Omaha is the blue-collar IT center of the country. If it's IVR, bank transactions, cellular, or pre-paid phone cards, chances are it runs through the Omaha backbone. Cost of living is OK... West Interactive, FirstData, PayPal, Mutual of Omaha, Oriental Marketing, Omaha Steaks, InfoUSA, and Qwest are some of the companies with large telemarketing AS WELL AS large IT departments. They frequently hire from the telemarketing pool into the IT departments... at least West Interactive and PayPal do. It's a good training ground and will get people experience. At the moment it's not a great place to go much further than a solid entry level or basic IT job because of the economy, but when it picks back up, there are solid opportunities to jump in pay scale from company to company. As far as pay scale as you climb up the ladder, again, it's not great and requires you to jump to another company usually... but they all seem to hire back if you find a place you like (but need the money boost elsewhere) and you didn't burn bridges.

and after Alaska, the weather won't even seem so bad.