[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's yo...
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Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
I'm a graduating as a software engineer in a city with a limited
number of tech jobs. Due to divorce + kids living in this city, I
won't likely be able to move to a major tech center. But, I've a
job offer with one of the larger local companies with an option to
work remote. I've thought about taking the remote option and
staying with remote companies to get access to a bigger job market
than I can locally. Anyone here who's done something similar,
what's your experience been? Pro's, Con's, unexpected good things,
unexpected hurdles, that kind of stuff.
Author : holsOndI
Score : 58 points
Date : 2021-01-29 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
| armenarmen wrote:
| Anyone here moved to a rural area or homestead type scenario?
| LVB wrote:
| I work remote now and like it, but I'm not really sure how well
| that would have played out for me right out of school. Almost all
| of my social network, from friends to future wife, flowed through
| those in-person jobs. I was (am) very introverted, but the "Hey,
| we're heading out to grab lunch, wanna come?" experiences at that
| time allowed me to meet people.
| thecolorblue wrote:
| If there are other co-workers going into the office, you will
| need to spend extra time communicating. It is easy to miss out on
| opportunities to add value to the company when you are not in the
| office with everyone else.
| moconnor wrote:
| I've worked remotely for 15 years, variously in a bustling major
| city with a startup scene and currently do so in a small seaside
| town a few minutes from the beach.
|
| Quality of life depends where in life you are. City is better for
| meeting people, seaside town for raising children. Remote work is
| generally good for work-life balance, nobody cares if I stay at
| home with a sick child or finish early for a school play, but I
| probably travelled a lot more than I otherwise would have.
|
| I thought (and was told) remote work would be a career limiter,
| but I have still ended up where I want to be (ML research).
|
| What I miss most is being around many like-minded colleagues.
| What I enjoy most is being able to close the door to my office
| and work uninterrupted for as long as I choose.
|
| I think I'm more productive because I can't just "show up"; if
| I'm not making a difference I might as well have spent the day at
| the beach.
| ishjoh wrote:
| Congrats on year 15! I'm on year 5 of working remotely.
|
| Working in software I definitely think most companies are fine
| with remote individual contributors, and that it has been shown
| to work effectively.
|
| If the company is setup for majority distributed communication
| (slack, wikis, ticket tracker, etc), then I even think tech
| team leads can be remote.
|
| That seems to be the limit though unless the company is remote
| first or close to it. I haven't seen any remote employees in
| Sr. Management roles. Although Sr. Management at the company
| I'm working for have been working from home, I think when
| things are back to 'normal' the expectation is that they will
| be in the office again, although I'll be curious to see if they
| work from home one or two days a week.
|
| YMMV
| axaxs wrote:
| You've summed up my experience, both with location descriptions
| and pros and cons, to a T.
| accraze wrote:
| Are you me? I also work in ML and am raising a child in a small
| seaside town. Your comments are very similar to my experience.
| I was told going remote and leaving the city was career
| suicide, but it's been quite the opposite. The amount of
| assumed travel (pre-covid) was a bummer and often happened at
| inconvenient times at multiple companies, but I still wouldn't
| trade it. I never talk about tech outside of work, which is
| nice, although a little lonely at times. In some ways I think
| my worldview has broadened by not living in a tech hub anymore.
| Work-life balance is super healthy, I don't spend as much time
| in front of screens anymore either. The pros totally outweigh
| the cons in my opinion.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| I live in Algiers, Algeria and we have a limited presence in
| Paris, France. Algiers is a non-tech city. I don't see a
| difference. We have no clients in Algeria to begin with, so it's
| irrelevant.
|
| Congratulations for your graduation.
| flyoverremote wrote:
| Pro: I make more than the mayor of our city and it's not a small
| city, nor is it a city in a doom loop of decline.
|
| Con: That's after convincing the first remote salary position
| that I had the right stuff nearly ten years back, and then
| enduring the neverending stress of making sure I delivered on
| every front so I could be established as a remote engineer and
| not be capped by the limited opportunity in this fly-over state /
| not very technical city.
|
| Pro: There are an insane amount of remote opportunities now.
|
| Con: There's more competition for the positions due to the
| pandemic normalizing it. Also, you don't want to be the only
| remote person. When you interview for a position, interview
| _them_ as to how remote work actually works there. Entrenched
| remote companies with a culture that's battle hardened for that
| kind of work environment is a way better opportunity than a place
| that "does remote now post covid".
|
| Pro: Your money goes farther than your peers in an awfully
| expensive place.
|
| Con: Cost of living tiers are more of a thing so the gap isn't as
| big as you might think. What states the company already "does
| business in" limit their ability to pay you / onboard you easily.
|
| Interview enough to know what you are worth, loyalty has it's
| benefits but don't get abused, once you have a solid work history
| of being effective remote engineer / leader -- you're golden.
|
| Never quit learning and make sure you know what keeps you
| valuable as the years add up. :)
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I would have never even thought to check until reading this,
| but apparently I make more than both the mayor of Dallas and
| the governor of Texas? I'm surprised they aren't paid more than
| they are. I suppose people who go into politics tend to already
| be rich and this is just another reason why.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| well...we have United States Congress making million while
| their salary doesn't support such...so...who know.
| souprock wrote:
| Some are already rich. Many get rich for unknown reasons
| while in office for decades. Hmmm. The pay is terrible for
| that level of responsibility and power, so rampant corruption
| is to be expected.
| ballenf wrote:
| Your job probably doesn't have the strange coincidence of
| land you own getting zoned commercial and increasing 10x in
| value by pure random chance.
| reidjs wrote:
| You make more than them on paper*
| mynegation wrote:
| For many, this is an investment into a name recognition and
| making important connections. After they retire, they are
| hired by law and lobbying firms, financial institutions, and
| companies in other industries that may benefit from their
| connections (famous "revolving door") as lobbyists and power
| brokers. This is when and where they make most of their
| money.
| Fifer82 wrote:
| I am from a small town in Scotland and have been working 11 years
| remotely in the same job. My network is pretty much zero and my
| pay is pretty bad. I remember a long time ago that I was
| miserable about office work. I'd dread everything about it along
| with the commute in bitter cold weather and rain with late or
| cancelled trains.
|
| My employer is 30 miles away and I haven't seen them for 8 years.
| Can't get much more perfect than that. On the rare occasions I
| have applied for jobs, they would offer me amazing perks like
| "Nights out twice a month with the team" and "Free fruit and
| pizza". I'd honestly rather poke needles in my eyes than work in
| a situation like that no matter what the pay is like!
|
| The worst thing about all of this though is that I don't have any
| peers for comparison and my confidence is shot. I would like a
| change of scenery and just hoping covid remote has a legacy.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I get a lot more work done. Fewer interruptions. And it's enabled
| me to hire a person I would not have normally thought to hire
| because he lives in another city. The pandemic forced me to
| realize how easy it is to remote work in a tech field.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Exactly. The whole world is your workplace -- you can work from
| anywhere really easily in tech, and you can hire anywhere as
| well. Plus for team retreats and such (after COVID of course)
| you can head to a new location each year and visit a coworker.
| Bangalore, Prague, Springfield IL, Panama City, etc.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Much has been written about it, and can be found here and
| elsewhere.
|
| I've been 100% remote for 20 years. Its ok. Miss some of the
| collaboration sometimes. Have a local groups of guys I share
| contracts with so we can pool skills. So that helps.
|
| Smaller midwestern city is a plus - lots of amenities while still
| very navigable and understandable. Went to my 2nd-favorite Indian
| place for lunch today (2st-favorite is in next city over, 20
| miles). Post-pandemic I'll be able to enjoy one of half a dozen
| production companies on their various stages. Fresh local food
| everywhere. Amazon brings the rest of the world of shopping to my
| doorstep.
|
| In the end I can only live the one life, one person, right where
| I am. What does it matter how many other lives are played out
| around me - 50K or 2M? At some point there's only so much I can
| sample and enjoy.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| My company is headquartered in Cupertino, CA and I live and work
| in Dallas, TX. The obvious pros are I don't need to commute or
| really drive at all, I can work from bed (probably doesn't matter
| to most, but I've got 10 screws in my spine from past surgeries
| and it matters to me), and I can live in a 3,000 square foot
| 4-story townhouse within spitting distance of downtown for less
| than my sisters in California pay for a third of the space in the
| middle of nowhere.
|
| I don't really see any cons or hurdles, honestly. Timezone
| coordination is clearly harder for the people on the coasts, but
| I'm right in the middle anyway. I have a security clearance and
| some of my software is deployed into a classified runtime
| environment, so not having access to a SCIF without traveling
| does make that challenging, but I imagine that specific challenge
| doesn't generalize much and doesn't apply to you.
| legerdemain wrote:
| If your health requires you to work from bed, why do you live
| in a 4-storey house?
| jdreaver wrote:
| I have lived in Riverside, California my whole life (about an
| hour east of Los Angeles), but I've been working remotely for
| companies in SF for the past 5 years. There are a ton of
| advantages over living in SF:
|
| - Houses are probably 1/3 the cost of houses in SF (or the bay
| area in general).
|
| - I can get to SF with a 50 minute flight and I live 15 minutes
| from an airport. This was a huge plus when I convinced my last
| job to hire me as the first remote engineer.
|
| - I am in the same timezone as SF.
|
| - The cost of living adjustments to my salary have been either
| zero or very small (like 5% less salary than an engineer in SF).
| Totally worth it in my opinion.
|
| We have talked about moving to a cheaper CoL state entirely, but
| my whole family is in this city and it is definitely cheap
| enough. My wife is also a teacher, and teacher salaries in CA are
| much higher than in lower CoL states.
| blank_fan_pill wrote:
| Working in an office and being incidentally exposed to how others
| work, debug, talk about code, collaborate with other engineers,
| etc. was incredibly important to my growth as a software engineer
| at my first job. There are a lot of things you see and learn that
| you would never think to ask a question about unless you
| overheard someone else say it or like see someone do a nifty
| command line trick while sitting next to them.
|
| After that first job, I would say there hasn't been much
| advantage to non-remote.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I've done it a bunch of times. The big thing to be aware of is
| that managing remote people requires better management skills, so
| you need a boss who cares about doing it right. I had two
| experiences go sideways, in both cases my manager got stressed
| and busy, and because I was their only remote report, they did a
| crappy job. Prior to them getting too busy to do a good job, it
| was fine. It really is a lot better if they are a mostly remote
| shop.
|
| pro tip: apply to places you want to work anyway, whether or not
| they say they will hire remote. I worked at a couple where they
| had not considered hiring a remote Canadian, and just needed me
| to tell them how easy it was after they saw I was a good fit.
| (one form, the W8-BEN. So easy.... but so many payroll
| departments don't know that!)
| abledon wrote:
| so as a Canadian, remote work in US is easier to find if you
| remind them of w8-ben, even if they are only listing REMOTE
| inside USA?
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit more on the pitch as a a Canadian?
| chrisa wrote:
| There's almost certainly other developers in your city - even if
| you're in the middle of nowhere :)
|
| Check out local meetups especially, and you'll probably find a
| smaller, but interesting group of developers you can connect
| with.
| vidanay wrote:
| The only meetups in my area are on FarmersOnly.com
| chrisa wrote:
| :) remote meetups then...
|
| but even still - there's probably at least ONE other tech
| person in your area. It may be difficult to find them, but
| it's worth it (for sure) to get a community going.
|
| This isn't like online communities where you need 1,000
| people before it's interesting. Even just 3 people can make a
| very interesting local community
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Expect to work their time zone, which may conflict with your
| local time zone. East coast vs west coast is a big deal.
|
| You'll also be making a _shitton_ of money, even with their CoL
| adjustment, so, don 't be a dick about it.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > You'll also be making a shitton of money, even with their CoL
| adjustment, so, don't be a dick about it.
|
| CoL adjustment is a pretty bad signal. If the company has time
| and money to pay folks to try to squeeze every penny it can
| from CoL it's not trying to attract the best talent.
|
| I believe in rewarding contributors proportionally to their
| contributions, not some arbitrary spreadsheet HR cooked up.
| irvingprime wrote:
| I don't live in a city. Largely because of that, commute times
| have often been an issue in the past. That's one of the reasons I
| decided, years ago, to drop the commute and just work from home.
|
| Now, not only do I have no commute, I have a job that pays
| significantly more than what I could make in my local area.
|
| There are no cons. This is the way life should be.
| mech422 wrote:
| I've been working 100% remote for 20 years..TBH, if there's down
| sides, I really stopped noticing years ago. Get yourself setup
| with decent office equipment when able (second hand office
| furniture stores can be REAL cheap). A reasonably fast, very
| reliable internet connection is a must.
|
| As for pluses - it gets easier to find remote jobs all the time,
| salaries/rates are real good. Can't beat the commute :-)
| brudgers wrote:
| As a new engineer, onsite is a better career option because it
| will create more robust bonds in your professional network. Who
| you know matters. Being onsite will also probably generate more
| what-you-know as well simply by virtue of casual interaction.
|
| There's nothing wrong with remote in theory, but it simply does
| not provide equivalent networking potential to physical
| interaction. You can always go remote later. Good luck.
| agf wrote:
| This is true, but if you're not in a good market I think the OP
| is right that having access to better companies and jobs
| outweighs that.
|
| I work with a number of people who were hired, both remote and
| out of network, pre-COVID, onto a mostly co-located team. They
| have built trust and a strong network within the company,
| leading to promos and significantly increased comp, and through
| their excellent performance have built networks that will stay
| with them throughout their careers.
| manuelflara wrote:
| I've been working remotely for 10 years and I agree that for
| junior developers, onsite is a much better way to learn and
| create a network.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| This is true, but has to be weighed against the fact that you
| may land a job that is a better fit for your skill set, which I
| would argue trumps everything. Remote allows you to find work
| where you're a star, IFF you're willing to hunt for it. This is
| more likely to matter if you already have other career skills
| though (i.e. mature applicants transitioning from other work)
| cheriot wrote:
| For an early career engineer I'd argue finding the highest
| quality coworkers is the highest priority. Even if it's in a
| stack that's not one's first choice. So much of this
| profession is rules of thumb and best practices that we learn
| from our colleagues.
|
| Then for a mid-career engineer I think your statement becomes
| accurate.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm fully remote these days and have gotten more and more
| remote over the past 20 years. That said, it's hard for me
| to imagine being in that situation out of school even
| taking into account much different times and communication
| mechanisms.
| manuelflara wrote:
| I don't think there is any downside in having a remote job in a
| tech vs non-tech city, unless you: a) enjoy going to in-person
| tech meetups b) want to have the option to also find local onsite
| jobs
|
| If you already live in a non tech city and you've been offered a
| good remove job, I'd consider that a big win. Take it! Once you
| start working remotely and build a resume as a good remote
| worker, it's also easier to get future ones (i.e. companies know
| you're used to it, you like it, you'll work efficiently that way,
| etc).
| sjg007 wrote:
| Your org and team need to support remote first. This means lots
| of documentation, slack and zoom calls. Otherwise you need a key
| partner e.g your manager to keep you in the loop. So your written
| comms need to be solid. That and you have to be really good at
| planning. I also find I work more. When you have collaborative
| projects you really need to have excellent communication skills
| and excellent documentation for dependencies.
| UmRTg26u33367Ye wrote:
| I live in Sarasota County, FL and work remotely for a company in
| San Francisco that everyone here knows about. Sarasota is a city
| of less than 60k inhabitants, but the surrounding area houses
| <250k people. I live in a somewhat suburban part of the county
| that trails off into farms less than a five minute drive from my
| house. The Gulf of Mexico is less than 15 minutes away with
| traffic. There are lots of great restaurants, and the arts scene
| pre-pandemic was booming.
|
| 20 minutes from me is an international airport, and New York City
| is this less than 3 hours away. Tampa is an hour to the north by
| car, and Miami is a 3 hour drive away. Orlando with its theme
| parks is 2 hours away, and I like to visit the Space Coast to
| watch rockets go up from Cape Canaveral.
|
| Now that you know where I am and what's here, let's talk about
| who's here. I'm old enough not to care that the median age of
| residents in my area is about 50 years. If you're looking for a
| humming dating and club scene (modulo pandemic), you'll likely
| find it somewhat lacking. There are plenty of young people, but
| not in the numbers you'd have seen if you had gone to New York
| City in 2019.
|
| I find it refreshing that I don't bump into engineers, VCs and
| project managers on every street corner. I know people in non-
| tech occupations, and their perspectives help me stay grounded in
| the real world. The mid-to-upper social class here is much more
| diverse than in NYC or SF. People's occupations range from
| industry to sports to medicine. They hold diverse political
| opinions and vote accordingly. No one's at anyone's throat all
| the time because of "inconvenient" politics: we coexist
| peacefully with each other, left- and right-leaning alike. This
| is a kind of diversity you won't see in big coastal echo
| chambers.
|
| Proximity to nature is another aspect that I find quite
| important. Between the ocean and farms and state parks, there's
| no shortage of green space and fresh air. I know some Amish
| farmers who supply me with fresh eggs, pork, veggies, and
| chickens. There's a large locally owned dairy operation (Dakin)
| whose milk dominates the local market.
|
| You might be surprised to find out that when people's living
| quarters don't occupy every inch of land in sight, it turns out
| that everyone can live comfortably and cleanly.
|
| In closing, I'll say that this lifestyle suits me a lot. I don't
| miss the "tech city" I moved here from, and I enjoy working from
| home using the office setup of my dream, for which I have space
| without inconveniencing my family.
|
| P.S.: Gators don't bite if you don't get up on their faces.
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