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.
186 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] threadCongratulations for your graduation.
Check out local meetups especially, and you'll probably find a smaller, but interesting group of developers you can connect with.
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
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.
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. :)
Believe it or not there are people who get into public service for the “service” aspect and not just because it’s some calculated career move.
Hustle in business is good for society. Unhealthy hustle where you forsake everything for some Pyrrhic victory is not.
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.
I've got neck problems and a similar situation. I can sit at a normal desk bolt-upright for a few hours, but not a whole day. For long coding stretches I don't lie down but rather use a weird custom chair I built myself that has my back at about a 45-degree angle to the ground. My leg-torso angle is still 90 degrees, but (important part) the angle between my torso and jaw is much much less than 90 degrees. It requires a somewhat elaborate monitor arrangement (I like huge 4k screens) based on a repurposed adjustable-height standing desk.
I can't imagine this setup working in one of those now-ubiquitous "open office plan" places.
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.
As for pluses - it gets easier to find remote jobs all the time, salaries/rates are real good. Can't beat the commute :-)
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.
Then for a mid-career engineer I think your statement becomes accurate.
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.
One of the few times I worked onsite was at a place where ... many of the people on the engineering team already knew me. The company had rapidly hired many Rubyists, and they all had known me from the Atlanta Ruby User Group.
I learnt so much during first three years of my career just by being around some of the most brilliant engineers. As an added bonus some of those became my life long friends or go-to mentors even though our careers have long since diverged.
I guess the true consequences (both good and bad) of full remote will begin to emerge in about 5 years from now.
I think this is key. If you have great coworkers on-site work really helps your development. But if your team sucks, it can stifle it. Having been on both sides, I would place an emphasis on your team, especially early, and look for jobs that have a strong mentorship program
Personally I've worked with lots of remote teams from the get go and co-workers I've never met in person. It's actually been incredibly fine for me to build strong relationships with them, to the point where I eventually meet them after many years and can pick up conversations with them as well as any of their local colleagues.
Though again I think that varies by person. I'm what I'd call a very social introvert in that I take part in lots of company/industry community but don't have a need to socialize like an extrovert might. I think that's helped me because I don't feel isolated when remote, but I get on very strongly with a wide range of co workers.
Anyway, to the point, I think you're right in that it's harder to build those bonds, but it is doable.
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.
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
I'm not seaside, but bayside, and my experience is similar to others in that regard in this thread. Great for family and all that, not so much if you don't like feeling a bit isolated. In the before times, I'd travel to one of the company motherships three or four times a year to get in-person time with the team. That works well to keep the team gelled.
I've gone from IC to team lead, to group lead. I think this is my limit at the moment. Not because I'm remote, but that's how much I can handle at the moment.
I don't get some of the hallway chats from the mothership, but the feedback routinely is that we're one of the strongest groups in the company. So I would take that as a sign that the remote aspect isn't a deal breaker.
Personally I wouldn't go back to the office routine unless I was out of options.
And yes, I do spend 80% of my time in various calls. This is not different from being in an office and working with a distributed team (also in offices in their regions).
Yes, it gets cold, but you don't have to go out in it if you don't want to. You can go from heated space to heated space pretty easily.
But throw out daily commuting (or even, really, just accept a reasonable driving commute) and many possibilities open up in many coastal cities, especially given that many jobs aren't in the cities anyway. Yes, if you want to live in the city, many of the coastal cities will be more expensive but, e.g. Chicago is not especially cheap either.
Wonderfully put. This right here is the perfect expression for why I love remote work. You play your part and make a difference, then the rest of your time can be enjoyed elsewhere. No “the next 8 hours are dedicated to being at the office, maybe I’ll get some work done and chat with my co workers and go to meetings...”. Remote work seems to condense all the dead space in between, by allowing you to fill it with other non-work parts of life.
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.
- 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.
After that first job, I would say there hasn't been much advantage to non-remote.
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!)
Many were still not interested, but it only takes 1!
There's no requirements for the TN visa holder reside in the same location as the business, to my knowledge. So a Canadian could reside in Washington and be employed in California.
Also, if you're living in another state getting a US drivers license might be impossible (how do you prove residency if your work visa is for a different state?) . Some states don't require residency for a drivers license, (Oregon and CA don't) but you can get a RealID on your DL if you can prove residency. RealIDs are strongly suggested because you can use them to fly in the States, instead of your Cndpassport + work visa. Again, TSA agents have the legal ability to detain anyone on a work visa, so having a RealID lowers the chance of complications.
I think this might be one of those pivotal moments that will change my trayectory in a significant way.
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).
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.
Also, I'm a night owl and now I can work from like 12pm-9pm. Working on west coast time while living on the east coast is a major life improvement for me.
If anyone is considering moving to FL and buying property, Sarasota is the obvious choice. The amount of construction going on here is incredible. I wouldn't buy anywhere else in Florida.
I also looked into Austin TX and Vancouver WA as possible destinations, but the real estate values seemed more predicable in Sarasota. If you get in at the beginning of a construction project here, you're pretty much assured to make money. I bought my house as new construction at the start of a new development and it was worth more than I paid by the time construction was complete.
If someone is considering moving to FL but wants more of that "tech city" vibe, you can rent a really nice place up in St Pete where there's much more happening, but I wouldn't buy there because the whole thing is a flood zone.
In most of Florida, Sarasota included, if you go with a traditional home, you'll want newer construction in a community. The HOA takes care of all the outside stuff like landscaping, so it's pretty much condo living except without shared walls. All the houses look similar.
The HOAs usually maintain some kind of "activity center" where you'll have a gym, pool, common area, tennis courts, etc. Again, it's pretty much like living in an SF condo, except instead of all that stuff being downstairs, it's down the street, and much larger.
If you prefer to live in an actual condo, there's plenty of those too with a walk-able downtown area, but I like not having shared walls. Also downtown is in a flood zone, so you might need to evacuate if we get a bad enough hurricane. I wouldn't be too concerned about flooding if I was buying several stories up though.
As for internet, frontier offers decent symmetric fiber (previously fios). I'm on gigabit with them and it's been fine. It's in most of the area.
Also, as a rule of thumb, you want to buy when a new community is just getting started or just finishing up. You'll get a better deal if you're one of the last houses before they shut down the sales office, or if you're one of the first to buy. Construction takes 8-12 months usually, but it's perfectly fine to have the house built while you're remote. I lived nearby with family while mine was being built, and me walking the construction site periodically wasn't particularly useful.
Hope that helps! Happy to answer any other questions you might have.
Large metros like Tampa are full of crime and traffic. If you want a "nice" walk to the beach, or you don't want your car broken into, you are much better off in a less dense area like Sarasota, Fort Myers, etc. But if you want to hit a few bars/clubs, get a little drunk, and have a short cab ride home, you'll want to be closer to a metro area. Otherwise you may have a 50 minute drive home after hitting a bar with some friends.
Florida is famous for attracting just a few kinds of people, so if you aren't in a part of the state full of your kind of people, you may bump up against culture clash. Research neighborhoods in each area to see which one you might fit in with. But also remember that the "Florida Man" isn't just a meme, it's one of your neighbors.
I grew up in Florida, and I really hate it. I don't understand why anyone but a retiree would move there. There's nothing to do other than sit in your sterile air conditioned house, go to the beach, go to a bar, or get high. And the people are terrible. I still go back for vacation though. It's like a bad ex I keep texting just to remember why I left. Oh, right... you're dead inside.
> I don't understand why anyone but a retiree would move there.
Taxes and cost of living.
Maybe I am misreading, but the only downsides in your comment are crime and hurricanes.
As someone who moved from Florida to the Northeast, the biggest drawback to Florida is the outdoors. It's warm, humid, there's showers half the time, bugs everywhere, there are no seasons or elevation. So what you're left with is water sports [minus surfing].
It also lacks culture. Not so much music, but any other form of art that isn't centered around Wynwood only exists as much as the elderly will invest in it. Compare to Baltimore, a tiny northeast city with a crap economy, which has probably more arts diversity than all of Florida combined [outside of Miami]. Why? Everybody sits in their house or goes to the bar. Why be an artist when you can do heroin on the beach?
And the people really are garbage. I was one of those garbage people. I changed so much after moving away. I don't even know why. I just know when I left, everywhere I went, people seemed nicer.
If you just want to live alone and still be able to go to the beach, there are an infinite number of cities on either coast where you can do that without all those downsides. I dunno. Maybe there are reasons people move to Florida other than the weather. I personally cannot fathom it.
Even if you're socially withdrawn (hell, I am) you can get so much more out of life even on your own in a place where there's nature, culture, diversity, nice people. Where you don't have to drive four hours to get to another large metro area. And that's just one area of the U.S.
It's a big world out there. Moving to Florida is like throwing the world away. You only get one life, don't waste it.
Must say the gator situation was hilarious when we first visited a customer in Tampa - half-way through discussions one surfaced in the water right outside the conference room window. Everyone not from FL immediately reacted, but the local team didn’t even flinch and continued on. Made for some great beer talk afterwards!
I'm not sure how to take that. Given the rest of your post I took that as people are at each other throats because they live too close but there are plenty of big densely packed cities were people get along with each other and "live comfortably and cleanly". That SF or NYC is not one of those has nothing to do with density.
It's... fine? I guess?
I guess I never really thought about doing this job in a "non-tech" city, versus doing it in a "tech" city.
I'm not entirely sure what the difference would be in a "tech" city. If you're into the startup scene, or simply really enjoy local hacker stuff like local user groups, maker spaces, etc then doing a remote tech job in a non-descript suburb would surely suuuuuuuuuck. Those aren't big factors for me though. I have friends and family here, and I satisfy my urge to connect with the larger "tech community" online and thru my team at work.
As far as working from home in general, I love it. It's not for everybody. For most people I believe it's 1000% healthier than commuting if you have a full and healthy life outside of work and your job provides at least a modicum of community via daily video calls, etc. It's just a simple math equation: there are a fixed number of hours in a week. Since I switched to remote work, I spend less hours commuting and thus I have more time for sleep, other pursuits, exercise, friends, etc.
Not everybody feels the same about remote work and that's fine. You will quickly discover if it's for you!
Unexpected hurdles?
1. Feeling like you're "always at work". Enforce some kind of physical space for work time. If you don't have a separate office, it can even just be a particular chair at the dining room table that is reserved for "work time." 2. General lack of respect from friends and family assuming that "work from home" means. They think you aren't working, or you can just completely make your own schedule, leave work on a Tuesday afternoon to drive Aunt Sally to the dentist, etc. For folks who've never worked from home it can be hard for them to wrap their heads around it.
I live in semi-rural Scotland, so about as far away from a tech centre as it gets :)
My experience has been entirely positive, but I should add that I'm an introvert.
No commuting has obvious benefits - more sleep and/or family time, and cost savings from transport. For some, those cost savings can be pretty substantial.
Being able to have breakfast and lunch with the family (I have 2 young kids) is also great. It also means I can help out here and there, such as watching the kids for a short period while my other half gets stuff done.
I'm the kind of person that prefers a quiet space to work in - and in an open office (which is invariably the norm) there is always at least one really loud person who paces back and forth while speaking loudly in conf calls! I have a home office that's just perfect, with a door and everything! If you're going to work from home, I think a dedicated workspace should be a priority, as long as you have physical space of course.
I don't have any regrets, and doubt I'd ever return to an office environment, unless it was 1 day in 10 or something like that.
In my experience, the key is to work for a company that is remote-first (or even remote-only), because it will be structured accordingly. I've never worked on a team that's partially remote - I can imagine that could cause friction and a certain degree of alienation.
I would also add that there is definitely an advantage to being on-premises and in a tech hub for an engineer that is at the beginning of their career: easier access to mentoring and learning opportunities, creating a professional network, meeting friends, etc.. It's a tradeoff.
At the moment, in Silicon Valley, that answer is pretty obvious. . . you can find another job. Outside of silicon valley it's going to be curious to see what happens when you quit your remote job at Google and try to find another one.
My suspicion is the RSU package is not going to be as generous. This is just my suspicion.