yeah, it's a tough situation. People who are financially secure enough to not worry about having a job are not gonna be tempted by some small financial incentives; whereas people who may find those financial incentives appealing tend to need jobs to survive.
I think this is a case of standing on the mountain (SF) and everything else looking like a molehill. Yes, there are a thousand jobs opening a day in SF, but there are tens of thousands of applicants.
I was recently in Oklahoma City for a JS conference (ThunderPlains), and there was no shortage of jobs. There was a shortage of devs though - the folks there felt very comfortable moving or losing jobs because there might only be a dozen jobs opening a day, but there were almost zero people applying.
Jobs people compete to get are good jobs. The opposite is probably true as well.
For those many years, one valuable lesson I learnt is, being a sheep and following other people, in a lot of cases, aren't optimal, but ROI is not bad. Being cynical might make oneself seem smart and level headed, but you can also miss valuable opportunity. Don't assume the crowd know the best, but when there are a lot of people, that often indicates it is where the money is at.
I've learned that too. A careful examination might reveal other opportunities, but the swarm of people trying to optimize and coming to similar conclusions suggests that it's at least a local maxima within a fairly decently sized problem space.
I'm happy that OKC has jobs. That's wonderful. No sarcasm. I'm glad to hear it. But it's not rural. :) OKC is a big city compared to everywhere I used to live.
Where I am from most recently, there were 5 employers (in the tech field).
Two universities. They were doing a lot of outsourcing.
One engineering firm, which I worked for, which itself about 90% of all the local jobs.
Then 2-3 smaller firms about 1/10 the size of the firm I worked for. I hear that there's another firm in town these days.
Local pay was, after you did cost of living adjustments, about 30% under what you'd get elsewhere. New jobs that weren't in the big firm showed up about one-two a month, and a lot of that was skeevy MBA types wanting a startup.
This was a big city compared to where I grew up, which had 1-2 web site consultancies, a very-much-not-software engineering firm, and a consultancy I never really looked at.
That is interesting to me, as the small towns I have spent time around have the opposite problem. They cannot find enough people for all the work. The numbers indicate that there are more jobs than people in the town I hale from. And, as it relates to the parent comment, a large section of the community is connected with symmetrical fibre and the entire community is slated to be in the next few years.
The biggest challenge for economic development is getting the word out. It seems in my experience that people have it in their mind that cities are the only place you can find work, so they don't even bother looking for jobs elsewhere.
I doubt it. The problem is the pay in a small town doesn't make up for the lost opportunity due to networking and having a selection of varied employers and colleagues. Also, the pay would have to incorporate a risk premium in case you lose your job, as it is perceived that it will be harder to find a new one.
> The problem is the pay in a small town doesn't make up for the lost opportunity due to networking and having a selection of varied employers and colleagues. Also, the pay would have to incorporate a risk premium in case you lose your job, as it is perceived that it will be harder to find a new one.
Correct.
There's no networking without working your arse off in those locales.
And if there are only 3-4 employers in town, you better believe that you don't want to lose your job, ever.
I can not recommend, in today's economy, a software engineer ever moving to a place without knowing there is an existing job creation engine running. It's too risky.
On the other hand, I'd move to Detroit if the employer was willing to 100% financially derisk the move (full relo, golden parachute on departure for any reason, massive funding of retirement, massive pay). :)
> I can not recommend, in today's economy, a software engineer ever moving to a place without knowing there is an existing job creation engine running.
I don't see that being a big concern. There are several cities within easy commuting distance that are known for the tech industries. If worse comes to worse, I can still get to major tech hubs without any real hardship.
Although I also think that tech industries within small towns are vast underestimated by, again, those who don't know to look. You'd be surprised what companies are writing their own software. I continually am. I recently learned even the little mom and pop funeral home in my town has their own custom-built software (and were, when I learned about it, looking for a developer to work on it). It is not just Facebook and Google who need developers.
But the best part about small towns with more jobs than people is that employers will literally hire anyone. They aren't in a position to be choosy. You don't have to limit yourself to software engineering. You can do just about anything that is needed. If you really cannot find work as a developer, you can go do something else. No problem.
I agree that you probably shouldn't move to any random town, but with careful planning you can have the best of all worlds.
That may be true for top professionals, but I have my doubts that someone working at McDonalds is going to make any more in the city. In fact, I'm certain they could make a lot more, even before accounting for the substantial savings in living costs, by getting out of the city. For what it is worth, the median individual income in the aforementioned place is 30% higher than in the nearest major city as well.
I'm not sure I agree with the risk premium either. With the numbers showing that there are more jobs than people, something that is definitely not the case in the city, you are comparatively better off as you can walk into virtually any job out there. If you are hung up on doing one specific job, that may be a different story, but I'm not sure someone at McDonalds is only willing to work at McDonalds.
New Haven, Connecticut - https://broadbandnow.com/Connecticut/New-Haven says they've got fibre, but another source says it's not in many places at all. Also, how do you get 115 megabit downstream on DSL?
Depends on where in the city you are. In a larger apartment or condo building you can usually get Webpass, which is very good (cheap for the US, fast up/down, low latency, good net neutrality policy, fantastic customer service).
I know someone who gets 800Mb/s with Sonic fiber now for less $$ than Comcast. So happy for them to be off Comcast too. Can't wait for Sonic to cover me and I think they were only a few blocks away last I checked.
Well, that is really a surprise. You are right, never would have thought that. Why is that, can you shed some light on this eventually? I would like to know some background here.
I am pretty sure wireless is really going to change this in the next few years. Most of those locations probably already have LTE coverage and many times its better than the wired tech in the area.
Everyone is just waiting for a good unlimited plan and many will just move over to hotspots / LTE routers. It has the benefit of going with you when you travel or move and the carrier like it because last mile is so expensive to upgrade.
I know a lot of people working remotely in RV's moving around the country and it's only possible because of good wireless coverage that's getting better very fast.
I think with more remote work and better wireless coverage you could see floodgate open of tech workers moving to rural areas, I know I want to.
I live in a rural area (only 2 neighbors within a mile), and have a 50/5 Mb internet plan through a fixed wireless provider. The tower is about 5 miles away and is uplinked to another tower at least 20 miles away. This, along with Verizon LTE as a backup, allows me to consistently work from home.
Last year the best I could get was 15/5, and a few years ago 10/3. So it’s definitely changing for the better.
Warnings for those thinking about fixed wireless: they tend to turn off tower equipment to prevent damage during storms, your connection can be over saturated at peak times, you may have to pay overages (on non-business Plans, but significantly cheaper that overages by cellular providers), and line of sight and distance from the tower can prevent service.
Correction on Harmony. The phone company offers adequate DSL.
The article doesn't mention that the build-a-house rebate program has a "buy local" clause so you will pay more than if you buy materials at a major building center.
Jobs: Harmony is a reasonable commute to Rochester, home of the Mayo clinic, a huge employer of not just doctors and nurses but orderlies, clerks, etc, and then all the support businesses like medivans need drivers, etc.
Genuine question: If your job is in programming (or heavily uses tech, such as an office worker etc.) why does internet speed in 2017 matter? Most places in my opinion have adequate bandwidth.
Here's what I'd imagine a remote worker's workflow:
1. Connect to your company's VPN
Then for a programmer:
a. NFS/Samba mount a drive which has your code
b. Log in to a remote VM with your development environment
c. IM client for textual communication
For a office worker:
a. Remote Desktop: Either full remote desktop or dumb terminal/thin clients
b. Google office suite/Office 365 etc.
c. Sharepoint or some such (this maybe slow IIRC)
d. A softphone for calls (this shouldn't be an issue with the bandwidths listed)
So the bottleneck can be your VPN, remote mounts or remote VMs, that's not something your internet speed can control.
> A softphone for calls (this shouldn't be an issue with the bandwidths listed)
As long as you have at least 64Kb/s up and down available for each call (depends on codec) bandwidth is largely irrelevant... what is really important is latency and packet loss.
I haven't seen any citizenship restrictions, though usually there is a "you must live here at least X years or repay the benefits" restriction.
Edit: If you mean culturally, I really can't imagine any problems as long as you're friendly, respectful, and speak the language. I've lived in some fairly remote places and never had an issue; a lot of people in my experience are pretty hands-off -- even if they don't like you, they don't bother you unless you bother them.
I thought Japan doesn't really want immigrants. This is an opinion piece but it jives with other things I've read over the years http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03...
Isn't this part of the reason they are trying to make robots that can take care of their aging population - they don't want to have immigrants come in and do it.
I think it's difficult to say "Japan doesn't want immigrants" but perhaps more accurate to say that "Japanese society is not friendly to outsiders."
The difference is that rather than being explicitly "we don't want immigrants," Japanese society is a fairly closed one that relies on a niche language. No language, no acceptance.
Beyond that, for educated people to immigrate to another country, you need to have a job market that accommodates those people; Japan doesn't really have that. The wages and benefits aren't competitive and the pension system is unfriendly to immigrants. Additionally, you really need a good grasp of the language.
You can also see another recent post of mine about the difficulty of making friends in Japan, which is another thing that makes it difficult for people to come here. It doesn't help that people who come here often have a mediocre grasp of the language, which makes things more difficult and encourages them to live in a "foreign bubble," which will often lead to depression when it pops.
On the up side, the Japanese immigration process is INCREDIBLY simple, especially compared to the US one (which I've heard about second-hand from Japanese people). In order to work here, you basically need a university degree and a job that pays more than around $25k/yr -- with those, you're a shoo-in within a month or so.
Agree with all the points sdrothrock made. I lived in Japan for 5 years first via working holiday visa and then through a spousal visa after marrying my wife who is Japanese. After getting married, all I needed to do was take the marriage certificate to the immigration office and was pretty much instantly approved for a 3 year visa. I guess the train of thought is "Well, if one of our own approves of you, that's good enough for us."
Getting PR in Japan is pretty much just a matter of having lived there for 5 years and not have broken any laws.
Compare that to when my wife immigrated to Canada. Despite her speaking English, coming from an economically developed country, having a University degree and years of professional work experience we still needed to wait for over a year and it cost $2000 for everything involved.
If you want to work and live in Japan, legally speaking, it's incredibly easy. The difficulty of integrating into society is the tough part. Even with a fluent grasp of the language, you'll always be an outsider.
To say "Japan doesn't really want immigrants" is kind of accurate though. Japan relies on its closer culture to keep immigration low even though it may be more subconsciously and not a formal government policy.
> After getting married, all I needed to do was take the marriage certificate to the immigration office and was pretty much instantly approved for a 3 year visa.
Yeah, this is the part I always think of when I hear people here grousing about standing in line to submit visa paperwork or whatever. It's annoying to waste a day at immigration, but I know people in America where one partner is an American citizen and the other is an immigrant, but they've been watched and scrutinized and interviewed for years and years before the immigrant partner could get a green card. It's pretty ridiculous.
The robots are because they don't want large-scale immigration of low-skill workers to take care of their aging population. On the other hand, they welcome professionals and high-skill workers.
Getting a job as an American here is easy. Just be proficient in the language and have solid skills in your field and it's not difficult to get a good programming job that pays about $2000 a month with 25-40 hours of expected overtime.
And that's on the low side. The overtime, not the pay. I've seen job openings for ~$1600/month here and average expected overtime of 91 hours/month for one company. I've been contacted by companies offering similar.
And pay raises are pretty much based on age.
If that all sounds like an improvement over your status in America, it's easy to move over here. Pretty much all visas are approved. If that sounds bad, Japan is not a good place. For me, it was an improvement.
I don't have enough experience to speak on it (lived here over 1 year), but my foreign friends tend to try to stay out of JP companies, and smart japanese friends end up working (remotely or moving) w/ western tech companies.
The globalisation history there is that the pottery industry went away, to China. But that's an industry that the UK and the Netherlands took away from China in the first place in the 1700s.
If you have rarer skills maybe. Often times you won't have competition for positions, and often times the parent company will be a multinational so you will have some support to get paperwork through (maybe with some delay at the lower levels). Some of the immigration systems are literally set up to make rural areas have some extra leeway or less competition for foreign workers.
For IT administering old, rare, industrial, and strange technology.
For mechanical skillS heavy equipment repair, tool and die cast, quarry and lumber work, or similar.
Norway does something similar. If you're willing to move to the northern parts of northern Norway they will write off a chunk of your student loan each year plus give you pretty decent tax reduction on your income tax.
The difference is that this doesn't cause any incentive to stay in Scotland after your education nor for anybody from the rest of the UK to move to Scotland after their education.
That is true - although being of an age where I have kids a university I do know people who have stayed in Scotland because they have multiple kids wanting to go to university.
And here is a discussion about someone considering moving to Scotland because of the fees situation:
The 'problem' with this policy is that it cannot be used to direct people to the parts of Scotland where they 'need' people the most. In the Norwegian approach the government draws up a list of counties and says you have to move to one of the counties to get the benefits, and they can update that list as the situation changes.
Of course, reasonable people can certainly disagree on whether or not this is something the government should be involved in at all.
Indeed and that is that rationale used by the Norwegian government. The counter argument is that if the only way to have a viable remote community somewhere is for the government to heavily subsides people to live there then perhaps you shouldn't have a remote community there.
Personally I'm rather conflicted about which side of the debate I come down on.
52 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 18.2 ms ] threadThe thing that is most toxic about long-term survival in small towns is the lack of many jobs. No jobs, no mortgage payment, no point.
Although if I was up for relocation right now, I'd look at Colorado (Denver/Boulder) or Baltimore...
I was recently in Oklahoma City for a JS conference (ThunderPlains), and there was no shortage of jobs. There was a shortage of devs though - the folks there felt very comfortable moving or losing jobs because there might only be a dozen jobs opening a day, but there were almost zero people applying.
For those many years, one valuable lesson I learnt is, being a sheep and following other people, in a lot of cases, aren't optimal, but ROI is not bad. Being cynical might make oneself seem smart and level headed, but you can also miss valuable opportunity. Don't assume the crowd know the best, but when there are a lot of people, that often indicates it is where the money is at.
I'm happy that OKC has jobs. That's wonderful. No sarcasm. I'm glad to hear it. But it's not rural. :) OKC is a big city compared to everywhere I used to live.
Where I am from most recently, there were 5 employers (in the tech field).
Two universities. They were doing a lot of outsourcing.
One engineering firm, which I worked for, which itself about 90% of all the local jobs.
Then 2-3 smaller firms about 1/10 the size of the firm I worked for. I hear that there's another firm in town these days.
Local pay was, after you did cost of living adjustments, about 30% under what you'd get elsewhere. New jobs that weren't in the big firm showed up about one-two a month, and a lot of that was skeevy MBA types wanting a startup.
This was a big city compared to where I grew up, which had 1-2 web site consultancies, a very-much-not-software engineering firm, and a consultancy I never really looked at.
The biggest challenge for economic development is getting the word out. It seems in my experience that people have it in their mind that cities are the only place you can find work, so they don't even bother looking for jobs elsewhere.
Can't tell if the 'town you hail from' is the town you are currently in (then please ignore my question) or were previously (possibly raised) in.
Correct.
There's no networking without working your arse off in those locales.
And if there are only 3-4 employers in town, you better believe that you don't want to lose your job, ever.
I can not recommend, in today's economy, a software engineer ever moving to a place without knowing there is an existing job creation engine running. It's too risky.
On the other hand, I'd move to Detroit if the employer was willing to 100% financially derisk the move (full relo, golden parachute on departure for any reason, massive funding of retirement, massive pay). :)
I don't see that being a big concern. There are several cities within easy commuting distance that are known for the tech industries. If worse comes to worse, I can still get to major tech hubs without any real hardship.
Although I also think that tech industries within small towns are vast underestimated by, again, those who don't know to look. You'd be surprised what companies are writing their own software. I continually am. I recently learned even the little mom and pop funeral home in my town has their own custom-built software (and were, when I learned about it, looking for a developer to work on it). It is not just Facebook and Google who need developers.
But the best part about small towns with more jobs than people is that employers will literally hire anyone. They aren't in a position to be choosy. You don't have to limit yourself to software engineering. You can do just about anything that is needed. If you really cannot find work as a developer, you can go do something else. No problem.
I agree that you probably shouldn't move to any random town, but with careful planning you can have the best of all worlds.
I'm not sure I agree with the risk premium either. With the numbers showing that there are more jobs than people, something that is definitely not the case in the city, you are comparatively better off as you can walk into virtually any job out there. If you are hung up on doing one specific job, that may be a different story, but I'm not sure someone at McDonalds is only willing to work at McDonalds.
Marne, Iowa - Marne Elk Horne does fibre, up to 200/5 (hope you never want to upload a YouTube video!), but it'll cost you.
Curtis, Nebraska - DSL? Because of regulation: https://www.fiberconnect.org/page/nebraska-137
Harmony, Minnesota - http://www.broadbandsearch.net/service/minnesota/harmony says Centurylink has fibre, but the main game in town appears to be fixed wireless.
Baltimore, Maryland - Xfinity in some areas, but seems like it's pretty bad? 2015 - http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/technology/bs-md-ci-bro...
New Haven, Connecticut - https://broadbandnow.com/Connecticut/New-Haven says they've got fibre, but another source says it's not in many places at all. Also, how do you get 115 megabit downstream on DSL?
Alaska - Initially I laughed, but it's okay. https://broadbandnow.com/Alaska
Colorado - apparently you want to be in either Denver or Phillips: https://broadbandnow.com/Colorado
Wyoming - https://broadbandnow.com/Wyoming. Teton, maybe?
I'm not from the US, please correct me.
Surprisingly, San Francisco has pretty shitty Internet too and it's one of the most expensive place to live in the US.
Longmont, where Mr Money Mustache is, has their own fiber network. 1 gig, symmetric. broadbandnow even listed longmont. https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m...
Fort Collins just voted to add in community owned fiber.
Alot of cities voters voted to allow their communities to consider their own networks two years ago. http://blogs.denverpost.com/tech/2015/11/05/44-colorado-citi...
Everyone is just waiting for a good unlimited plan and many will just move over to hotspots / LTE routers. It has the benefit of going with you when you travel or move and the carrier like it because last mile is so expensive to upgrade.
I know a lot of people working remotely in RV's moving around the country and it's only possible because of good wireless coverage that's getting better very fast.
I think with more remote work and better wireless coverage you could see floodgate open of tech workers moving to rural areas, I know I want to.
Last year the best I could get was 15/5, and a few years ago 10/3. So it’s definitely changing for the better.
Warnings for those thinking about fixed wireless: they tend to turn off tower equipment to prevent damage during storms, your connection can be over saturated at peak times, you may have to pay overages (on non-business Plans, but significantly cheaper that overages by cellular providers), and line of sight and distance from the tower can prevent service.
The article doesn't mention that the build-a-house rebate program has a "buy local" clause so you will pay more than if you buy materials at a major building center.
Jobs: Harmony is a reasonable commute to Rochester, home of the Mayo clinic, a huge employer of not just doctors and nurses but orderlies, clerks, etc, and then all the support businesses like medivans need drivers, etc.
(Source: Harmony is my wife's home town.)
Here's what I'd imagine a remote worker's workflow:
1. Connect to your company's VPN
So the bottleneck can be your VPN, remote mounts or remote VMs, that's not something your internet speed can control.As long as you have at least 64Kb/s up and down available for each call (depends on codec) bandwidth is largely irrelevant... what is really important is latency and packet loss.
Edit: If you mean culturally, I really can't imagine any problems as long as you're friendly, respectful, and speak the language. I've lived in some fairly remote places and never had an issue; a lot of people in my experience are pretty hands-off -- even if they don't like you, they don't bother you unless you bother them.
The difference is that rather than being explicitly "we don't want immigrants," Japanese society is a fairly closed one that relies on a niche language. No language, no acceptance.
Beyond that, for educated people to immigrate to another country, you need to have a job market that accommodates those people; Japan doesn't really have that. The wages and benefits aren't competitive and the pension system is unfriendly to immigrants. Additionally, you really need a good grasp of the language.
You can also see another recent post of mine about the difficulty of making friends in Japan, which is another thing that makes it difficult for people to come here. It doesn't help that people who come here often have a mediocre grasp of the language, which makes things more difficult and encourages them to live in a "foreign bubble," which will often lead to depression when it pops.
On the up side, the Japanese immigration process is INCREDIBLY simple, especially compared to the US one (which I've heard about second-hand from Japanese people). In order to work here, you basically need a university degree and a job that pays more than around $25k/yr -- with those, you're a shoo-in within a month or so.
Getting PR in Japan is pretty much just a matter of having lived there for 5 years and not have broken any laws.
Compare that to when my wife immigrated to Canada. Despite her speaking English, coming from an economically developed country, having a University degree and years of professional work experience we still needed to wait for over a year and it cost $2000 for everything involved.
If you want to work and live in Japan, legally speaking, it's incredibly easy. The difficulty of integrating into society is the tough part. Even with a fluent grasp of the language, you'll always be an outsider.
To say "Japan doesn't really want immigrants" is kind of accurate though. Japan relies on its closer culture to keep immigration low even though it may be more subconsciously and not a formal government policy.
Yeah, this is the part I always think of when I hear people here grousing about standing in line to submit visa paperwork or whatever. It's annoying to waste a day at immigration, but I know people in America where one partner is an American citizen and the other is an immigrant, but they've been watched and scrutinized and interviewed for years and years before the immigrant partner could get a green card. It's pretty ridiculous.
And that's on the low side. The overtime, not the pay. I've seen job openings for ~$1600/month here and average expected overtime of 91 hours/month for one company. I've been contacted by companies offering similar.
And pay raises are pretty much based on age.
If that all sounds like an improvement over your status in America, it's easy to move over here. Pretty much all visas are approved. If that sounds bad, Japan is not a good place. For me, it was an improvement.
The globalisation history there is that the pottery industry went away, to China. But that's an industry that the UK and the Netherlands took away from China in the first place in the 1700s.
For IT administering old, rare, industrial, and strange technology.
For mechanical skillS heavy equipment repair, tool and die cast, quarry and lumber work, or similar.
And here is a discussion about someone considering moving to Scotland because of the fees situation:
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1698260...
Of course, reasonable people can certainly disagree on whether or not this is something the government should be involved in at all.
Mind you, there's a general GP and NHS recruitment crisis already which has been compounded by Brexit uncertainty.
Personally I'm rather conflicted about which side of the debate I come down on.