Ask HN: Has remote work made you move to a new location or consider it?

Point taken.

Let me refine by saying my neighborhood in SF is 90% white, Democrat voting, can’t-get-off-the-hedonistic-treadmill culture, love to talk about progressive ideals while voting for restrictive policies that hurt residents.

I lived in a swing state a long time ago and it was actually nice interacting with people from a lot of different backgrounds, none of which dominated the culture. You could go to a rave with some anarchist one weekend and go deer hunting with an evangelical Christian the next.

Yes. My son was born at the beginning of the pandemic and raising him in Toronto was hell on earth. I bought a house to be closer to my family and have more space for my son to grow up in.

Given the housing crisis in Canada it was not possible for me to buy in Toronto. Seems I was ahead of the curve because the insane housing prices seem to have expanded out from the city to pretty much everywhere but I was lucky enough to manage to get something for a reasonable price.

I work with someone in your exact situation on my remote team. The time zone difference is challenging but we’ve made it work and he is a very bright developer who I find invaluable to our team. I asked him one day if he ever wanted to move to America or Canada and his answer was the same as yours. It’s always interesting to get takes from outside of your cultural bubble. I am very happy where I am but I would be lying if I said your situation is not appealing to me (even if only for a little while).

My wife and I moved from California to the mountains of Central Arizona about 23 years ago. Living away from any large cities is definitely a pain sometimes (we can get to Flagstaff or Prescott in an hour). We temporarily moved, renting out our house, for gigs at Google and Capital One, but have otherwise stayed out here because we have so many local friends. Both times we enjoyed culture and other perks of living in real cities.

Living in more remote areas is less expensive and perhaps a healthier life style. When I go to places like NYC for business I probably walk an average of an hour a day, at home I probably average 1 1/2 hours a day.

Anyway, it is a difficult decision for you to make because there are advantages to both options.

It's been a few years since I've seriously looked into some of these places so things may have changed or I am not remembering 100% correctly. Also, some countries listed below require a certain level of passive income as well but I'm not 100% sure which ones.

You can apply for residency in places like Mexico which require very little physical presence to maintain/renew a visa for the first few years. After 3 years (I think) you have to live there for the last 18 months before applying for citizenship.

Chile is the opposite in where you must spend the first 18 months in the country but after that you only really need to be there once a year.

Other countries have generous tourist visas like Turkey. If you rent an apartment for one year in Turkey (anywhere, for any price) you can get a 1 year tourist visa.

Wikipedia has a list of all countries visa policies as well. You could find out about where you are allowed to stay for longer than 90 days somewhere by searching for "visa policy of $COUNTRY".

Then there are places offering visas for remote workers but requires you to live there for at least 6 months of the year (making you a tax resident of that country). This includes places like Portugal, Estonia, Georgia, and the UAE.

I believe in Georgia and the UAE they will not charge income tax for the first year as well but I may be wrong.

If you have deeper pockets there are Golden Visa programs for places like Portugal, Greece, Malta, Cyprus (might be wrong on this one), New Zealand, Georgia, Montenegro, and many Caribbean nations.

Lastly, most every country in the world has some sort of business owners or startup visa. If you're entrepeneurially minded and have sufficient startup capital, you can get a visa pretty much anywhere in the world.

EDIT: I use travelingmailbox.com for snail mail and OpenPhone to maintain US-based communication for whatever reason.