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Rural Kansas is dying

newfoodeconomy.org

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Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#121

Post by AFNobody »

caseysoftware wrote: post #118
AFNobody wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. > It's beautiful out here and I wish more tech workers would consider the Midwest when they decide to leave the Bay Area. I think you are confused to the core issue. Your situation is relatively difficult to sustain long term and I know of only 1 person (out of 20+) that tried it that have succeeded for 1…

It depends on the team and the role. From Austin, I joined Twilio (employee #25ish) as the first developer evangelist not on a coast. Now I'm with Okta on the Product Team (almost 2 years) running the technical side of our API offerings. There hasn't been a local office for either during that entire time. Demonstrate that you bring unique value to get your foot in the door, deliver on that value to stay in the game.…

Do you realize Austin isn't a small town? And that the experience you are expressing is in no way relevant to what I said or the person I responded too?

Your career in Austin is the exact opposite of what I want. It is the very definition of a "big city" career.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#122

Post by SuperPaintMan »

jonknee wrote: post #7
ComputerGuru wrote: post #4

TThe only mention of corn in the entire article: While other northwest Kansas farmers were draining the Ogallala Aquifer to irrigate thirsty cornfields, Raile dry farmed. He likes to bet against the crowd. Kansas is wheat country, and corn is king. This article doesn’t even touch upon this 800lb gorilla, it doesn’t mention corn subsidies that keep corn prices high while he author goes on for paragraphs lamenting how…

Well it's not like you have awesome urban living around corn fields either. Huge fields and few people kind of get in the way of vibrant towns.

Funny story, a few of my friends were moving out to the middle of Saskatchewan and I decided to room with them. So we pack our stuff into a hauling van and take off to the place one of the friends had gotten lined up for us. We roll into the city, take a rip through her and eventually pull up on this little duplex. The entrance was in the back so we go to scope her out and just over my fence is a bunch of cropland and bales. Right in the middle of a damn city.

If the wind was blowing right we'd get hit with the smell of manure from the livestock research pens. Ever see a porthole installed on a living animal? Cool!

[1] https://www.google.ca/maps/@52.1325516,-106.6079861,14.25z

[2] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cL9JKhb1HCU/maxresdefault.jpg

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#123

Post by lostapathy »

Madmallard wrote: post #79
chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

how do you feel about tornados

I’ve lived in Kansas over 20 years and only been in one.

The risk/frequency isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#125

Post by lostapathy »

walrus01 wrote: post #100
dajohnson89 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you manage multiple windows on a single huge monitor? some window manager? is the quality of screen resolution for 4k noticeably helpful towards productivity?

It's big enough that I manually tile things. The pixels per square cm (or ppi for americans) is about the same as 1920x1200, 16:10 aspect ratio, 24" display from 10 years ago. It's just a lot more real estate to work with. I'm using a fairly recent version of xfce4 and don't need to scale UI elements as would be necessary on a 28" or 30" size 4K display.

This. Once you get to 40” screens it seems like you naturally shift to away from the desire to take windows dull screen and the rest follows easily.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#126

Post by stephengillie »

durkie wrote: post #117
stephengillie wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we could automate the attribute of "being a human". Alas, as I often say, "as long as humans exist, there will be a demand for other humans to explain things to them". Thus a machine picks the berries while a human explains their feelings about the berries. Could not the human do both, and take the job back from the robots?

Have you picked berries for hours on end? It's terrible work.

Have you ever had to put 45 cases of cans on a shelf in an hour? Sorry for the "what about ism". There are some jobs that I wish automation would take, since they are so thankless.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#128

Post by cup-of-tea »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #110
chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

Though I understand that it likely seems rural, by US definitions you live in an urban area. Any area with over 50,000 people is urban, which Manhattan manages even before adding the 25,000 non-residents there most of the year. The labeling system seems outdated. I live in an area that is rural, yet everyone in a 120 mile radius of me would say I lived in a city. A new classification of "rural city" seems necessary.…

In the UK that would be a town. Nowhere near rural. My parents live in a village with less than 100 people living there. That's rural.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#129

Post by cup-of-tea »

WalterBright wrote: post #62
DanAndersen wrote: post #18

The failed promise of telecommuting is a tragedy of the tech world. I'm a Kansan born and raised in the KC area (suburban rather than rural), and I wish a work-from-home career was more feasible in my line of work. I'd like nothing more than to live in a small Midwestern town; the city-hives hold no real attraction to me. The Internet should have freed more of us to live where we want, but in the most connected point…

As a counterpoint, the D programming community could not exist without the internet and telecommuting. It's spread out all over the world, and we only meet once a year at Dconf. I remember "telecommuting" in the 1980s with a fax machine (international phone at a buck a minute was impractical) and mailing floppy disks (weeks of delays for international).

Geeks have been doing this for decades, though, via IRC and email communication mainly. The problem is non technical people don't get that and insist on silly face to face meetings all the time.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#130

Post by cup-of-tea »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #68
bsiemon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting to consider why there is a preference to work physically together. The hive metaphor could shine some light here. Is telework effective/possible when there are workers and managers? In my experience managers resist telework. What if we had a pervasive culture of self organization and direction?

I realize it's kind of a popular opinion on HN to shit on managers as only valuing "face time" and poo-pooing telework, but as an individual programmer, I find working at home without face-to-face interaction with product managers and designers a major pain in the ass. I can have a design discussion much more effectively with an in-person session than remotely. Of course, when I just want "get shit done" time I love…

But surely a design discussion is once a week at most, not every single day, and certainly not randomly throughout the day.
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