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Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#211

Post by jstx1 »

shetill wrote: post #210
jstx1 wrote: post #7

London is great. So are many other large and diverse multinational cities. Many of them also happen to be great for in-office tech job opportunities.

you are completely out of context here. if you were working fully remote why would you live in one of the most expensive cities in the world where only way to travel around is overcrowded tube and housing is overpriced for the lowest quality in Europe?

Oh I understood the context and I stand by my answer. It's okay if it isn't for you, people make decisions in different ways and have different priorities.

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#212

Post by asdfsd234234444 »

monkzero wrote: post #207

My city Toronto, Summer is awesome everyone parties, Winter except snowy days is great, I do ice skating , which is one of the best activities I learnt, Taxes are high in Toronto, but good healthcare for all and free schools and visa free life is a blessing. Real estate is another bad thing but o already got a house, so I stopped worrying

Same! Moved back to my hometown after a 8 year stint in SF.

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#213

Post by Snoozle »

Texaner wrote: post #110
happynacho wrote: post #101

Probably Dallas/Austin... or Zurich.

Not sure how Dallas fits in there.

I have lived in Austin for 10 years and Dallas for 20, and I think Dallas is in every way better than Austin.

Less expensive

More things to do

Real airport with good fares

Better weather, not as hot in the summer time

Variety of businesses so it's not just tech bros and poor mexican labourers

More cultural variety

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#214

Post by wholien »

ngokevin wrote: post #56
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco obviously. Perfect density, access to nature, perfect climate. You just have to pay for it.

Wouldn't say walkable though. Public transit doesn't feel super well-connected. If you have the cash to Uber everywhere, it's good though it's a lot of traffic to go through to go a few miles. The time of the slow sparse public transit or the costly Uber ended up having me still just drive everywhere, and then worry about parking everywhere I went.

I found walking + biking + buses + muni trains to do pretty well in San Francisco.

Figure out the major muni train or bus stop I'm trying to get to, and then either walk to it or walk to a shared bike dock and bike to it. Same thing on the other side, if necessary. Often I just bike the whole way to get some exercise and see the city: "it's about the journey, not the destination", right?

The hills make it less walkable than other cities, but if you are healthy you should get used to the hills pretty quickly. I loved walking back to Nob Hill or biking back to NoPa after work. The hills are daunting at first. Sometimes you'd need to get off your bike and walk up parts. But once you get used to it it's not a huge issue.

The cool weather also helps cooling down after you get to your destination. Compare that to somewhere like Austin, TX, where you start sweating the minute you get out of the AC and into the year-round humid weather...

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#215

Post by GoldenMonkey »

ngokevin wrote: post #131
eunoia wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity what are your thoughts on Santa Fe?

Not OP but I lived in Santa Fe for a couple weeks. I felt there was some rejuvenating spiritual energy in the air. And love the high desert and open skies. And Meow Wolf. People that moved there enjoyed having Taos nearby.

Taos has really declined in the last couple years.

It’s quite expensive and run down. Pretty sad.

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#216

Post by mayormcmatt »

dcminter wrote: post #186
mayormcmatt wrote: post #45

If I had to choose one, it'd be Stockholm (or perhaps any Swedish city with water access). A couple years back I did take a two-week trip there consisting of one week sightseeing, one week remotely working for a West Coast agency. My work hours were around 4pm to 1am-2am Stockholm time, which was just on the edge of comfortable. My reasoning is as follows: 1) Fast internet everywhere I went, even the countryside 2) G…

An erstwhile Londoner here who now lives in Stockholm. Technically I'm Swedish having been granted citizenship this year - another plus, it's relatively easy to get residence and citizenship is mostly a matter of waiting. I've been here for a few years and would agree with most of your points. I absolutely love it. Boat trips into the archipelago in the summer months are the icing on the cake of an amazing place to l…

Good points, thank you.

Language is something I would relish learning in the actual setting of Sweden. Having learned Japanese for three years in Japan, it was (and remains) a difficult thing to master and I suspect conversational Swedish would be simpler to pick up, at least. My short time spent in Sweden, the people I met were very happy just to hear my few halting phrases of their language, as are my Swedish friends here, in California. That's always encouraging.

About housing (and prices of things overall), yeah, I suppose things are reasonable relative to our respective hometowns. My impression was that local salaries were also lower, though. My recollection from a couple years ago was that front-end devs (my current employment, 6-ish YoE) were making around SEK 400k-500k/year, which is a good deal less than my current salary. Perhaps my view of tech salaries is highly skewed due to my location, though. Also, this conversation does revolve around remote work, so maybe a moot point.

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#217

Post by throw_this_one »

kgin wrote: post #182
wly_cdgr wrote: post #117

New York * most diverse and cosmopolitan English-speaking and relatively-free city in the world, by far * compact with good public transit, creating an incredibly high points of interest per commute hour ratio - the best metric for measuring urban qol * not the BEST tech/entrepreneurial communities, but still has very good ones, and is better rounded than the very top tier tech hubs: high quality art, design, games,…

All very true. The one thing that worn on me about NYC: most people leave after 5-7 years. If you stay longer than that, everyone you built relationships with early on will be gone and the ones from the middle will be planning their departure. You can keep meeting new people to fill up the leaky boat, but gradually as you get older, you lose access to the spaces where all these new, exciting (mostly young) people mee…

I don't get what would be so interesting about nyc after age 35 or so. Just people trying to make it, money to be made, tourists and visitors, etc. The young people you can kind of classify and thus they're not that interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#218

Post by throw_this_one »

andygrd wrote: post #162

Berlin, a bit cold and gray in winter, but possibly in the top one for greatest city on Earth.

Why do you think so? Berlin is cool. I like techno a lot. Obviously very German vibes. But stuff seems pretty far apart, transit kind of annoying.

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#219

Post by ngokevin »

wholien wrote: post #214
ngokevin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't say walkable though. Public transit doesn't feel super well-connected. If you have the cash to Uber everywhere, it's good though it's a lot of traffic to go through to go a few miles. The time of the slow sparse public transit or the costly Uber ended up having me still just drive everywhere, and then worry about parking everywhere I went.

I found walking + biking + buses + muni trains to do pretty well in San Francisco. Figure out the major muni train or bus stop I'm trying to get to, and then either walk to it or walk to a shared bike dock and bike to it. Same thing on the other side, if necessary. Often I just bike the whole way to get some exercise and see the city: "it's about the journey, not the destination", right? The hills make it less walkab…

I used to bike Outer Richmond to Mission daily. It's okay, but not ideal. SF isn't very well known for being bike-friendly outside of the major bikeways (worried about getting doored heading down Mission or Valencia). Some stretches were great (GGP, Page). Weather is nice for it, although a bit chilly at night.

I used to take Muni daily as well, but just doesn't run active enough for me, and was not competitive with UberPool pricewise.

Experience with docks wasn't often good, sometimes it wouldn't register my bike was docked, or the dock is full, or the dock is empty, or the bike is out of battery or smeared with poop. Plus was worried about sharing bikes with COVID. Just personal experience.

Re: Ask HN: What's your ideal city in a 100% remote world?

#220

Post by lemerou »

wingerlang wrote: post #205
rococode wrote: post #21

Tokyo! Pros: - Safe almost everywhere even at night and generally very clean - Infinite amount of things to do, you'll never finish exploring new restaurants (with delicious food) and stores - International events happen there: conferences, concerts, etc. - Very walkable (including the metro), especially around city center - Reasonable housing prices - high, but comparable to cities in the US - Politeness is baked in…

> 1) a lot to do, 2) very safe, and 3) don't need a car I think Bangkok matches this pretty well.

I really don't think Bangkok is very safe. It wasn't when I lived there a few years ago anyway.

I'm not saying it's super dangerous but it's definitely not 'Tokyo safe'.

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