Being in a tech city sucks. I moved to San Francisco for a better job with better pay, and was overwhelmed with people with shitty politics and group think. Working in a community with people who do tangible things is much better.
Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
81–90 of 187 posts
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#82As a new engineer, onsite is a better career option because it will create more robust bonds in your professional network. Who you know matters. Being onsite will also probably generate more what-you-know as well simply by virtue of casual interaction. 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. Go…
I've been working remotely for 10 years and I agree that for junior developers, onsite is a much better way to learn and create a network.
Have to agree! I love my remote work lifestyle, especially since I have kids at home. But it works for me partly because I have a strong network that I built earlier in my career in face-to-face settings. There are lots of people I can call outside of my immediate group to learn about different areas, hear the actual gossip in some sub-industry, or get a recommendation for folks to hire. I've found it much harder to make new connections like that while remote, and I think this lends itself to professionally productive but not personally close relationships.
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#83I’ve worked remotely for 15 years, variously in a bustling major city with a startup scene and currently do so in a small seaside town a few minutes from the beach. 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, b…
> 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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#84Saskatoon: - the internet is decent. It is better in a hub city, but as long as one can live with occasional disconnects, it's fine. - Deliveries : add 3 days, weeks or months (depending) on time to delivery. "overnight" does not exist. International diplomacy makes a difference here - so ship from countries that are at least "not aggressively unfriendly". (fwiw : faster to get things here from China than from USA. O…
By the looks of it, Saskatoon is an hour further from the UK than New York is, no?
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#85I want to ask a question to the group, too. How do the companies headquartered in SF and NYC and places like that decide your salary and if you are in a cheaper locale? Do they give you a lower salary, are taxes weird, is there an awkward conversation with HR? Has anyone moved from an expensive place to a cheaper place and dealt with awkward company reactions (HR)?
Some of the larger SV companies publicly said they would be adjusting salaries for employees that chose to move to lower cost of living locations. Typically when this is done, it uses the numbers provided by the government to provide the adjustment numbers.
As someone working remotely for a company out of the Midwest where things are cheaper, they specifically mentioned that they would not be adjusting salaries up or down if their employees choose to move.
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#86I've lived in the Midwest my whole life, mostly in college towns with small stints in Midwest cities. Nothing techy.
Today I work remotely for a company based in California, but previously I've worked at several local firms, largely B2B, contract and full time. We are actually moving somewhere out west, for non professional reasons.
For my particular slice of the Midwest:
Pros:
- Local jobs do exist, especially around a few urban centers
- Your wages go further here, especially if you earn a coastal salary
- Maybe local companies are a little more WLB oriented
Cons:
- Local jobs are largely around a few very specific industries (ag, insurance)
- Your org might run a little differently than you'd expect coming from the valley (dress codes, non technical leadership, older tech and older deployment practices)
- less "to do", and fewer takeout options
Nothing too unexpected, and you have the same pros and cons of normal remote work. Lot of freedom, limited social interaction.
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#87I've lived in the Midwest my whole life, mostly in college towns with small stints in Midwest cities. Nothing techy. Today I work remotely for a company based in California, but previously I've worked at several local firms, largely B2B, contract and full time. We are actually moving somewhere out west, for non professional reasons. For my particular slice of the Midwest: Pros: - Local jobs do exist, especially aroun…
WLB = Wacky Local Bakeries?
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#88I've lived in the Midwest my whole life, mostly in college towns with small stints in Midwest cities. Nothing techy. Today I work remotely for a company based in California, but previously I've worked at several local firms, largely B2B, contract and full time. We are actually moving somewhere out west, for non professional reasons. For my particular slice of the Midwest: Pros: - Local jobs do exist, especially aroun…
WLB = Wacky Local Bakeries?
Work Life Balance
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#89I've lived in the Midwest my whole life, mostly in college towns with small stints in Midwest cities. Nothing techy. Today I work remotely for a company based in California, but previously I've worked at several local firms, largely B2B, contract and full time. We are actually moving somewhere out west, for non professional reasons. For my particular slice of the Midwest: Pros: - Local jobs do exist, especially aroun…
WLB = Wacky Local Bakeries?
Work Life Balance
Re: Ask HN: Remote workers in a non-tech city, what's your experience?
#90The biggest issue is just infrastructure and security. We're still building up our system. Everything gets so much more complicated when your team is no longer all in the same building. We built up a really nice intranet with file servers, gigabit ethernet to all of our computers, encrypted backups. But now most of that stuff is useless because most of our team are not on the network! So now I have to write up a budget proposal to get offshore VPS service, gigabit fiber to the building, a software stack for secure encrypted messaging and file sharing over HTTP, trustworthy backup services. It's very time consuming research! And we haven't even deployed anything yet! And It's even worse when part of the team is in a completely different country, because then we can't reliably send data through the mail; we have to mule it.
If our threat model was milder we could just use centralized 3rd party web services for our encrypted file sharing and messaging. It's very difficult to secure an international remote team. I think it might actually be impossible to have full security. Especially when the remote teams have no system admin or security skills to help share the administrative workload.
People bringing their own computers also creates a huge security hole, so we're also planning to start loaning out laptops to people so we control all the software and policies on the machine.
IT support for a remote team is very time consuming. Very expensive. That's what I think.