Ask HN: Socialize to make software

I live in Russia, in a small town, not in Moscow and not in St. Petersburg.

There are too few passionate programmers around me who are good enough and who want to work for free or at least for food first time, or to take part in hackathons for making and prototyping ideas and making great product.

I'm looking for opportunities for my personal and professional growth. I want to find friends and partners in the USA to build software and hardware together and run startup company in the USA. Just because I think the USA markets are huge in the comparison to russian markets.

I think, changing the location could open up some benefits, though it has disadvantages too.

I have for now B1/B2 visa, but I have no ideas where to go and what community to meet or join in the USA for the first time to make good networking related to tech entrepreneurship and making software. And how to create reliable relations to expand them when I'll go back.

So, what would you do if you was me? Try to make success story here or change location?

Thanks for help, HN

I think it depends if you can find 'customers' for the projects or tech you're passionate about. Anyway, i think the best could be try to do both. Ie, create a link with California and at the same time, star to gather people locally. Become a connector with the 'Valley' and meet people in your town doing the same and help each other.

It depends. Do you prefer telecommuting or face to face interaction?

Technological globalization has created a situation where, excluding time zone differences, we could communicate in a way that is extremely similar to face to face contact.

Speaking from personal experience, a coding bootcamp might be a good opportunity for you, assuming it is cost effective. Through a coding bootcamp you will have the opportunity to network in regards to tech entrepreneurship and software in general, as well as developing a higher skill level, however you may be proficient enough already.

If I were you I would make a table of pros and cons, based on as many factors as I found to be very important, attribute weights with those factors and make a decision based on the results. Or you could flip a coin and see which side you want it to land on in mid air. That will give you a good idea of which one is more favored by your spinal cord at least.

It's a tough question, good luck!

Do you have a website yet for your efforts?

I prefer face to face, just because from the retrospective of my experience such links are more reliable.

Thanks for sharing ideas!