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Comment by chrissnell | Hacker News Reader

As someone who works remotely and who posts remote-friendly openings for his team in the Who's Hiring HN thread, it's kind of amazing to me that more people aren't actively looking to get out.

I live and work in a small midwestern town because my wife's military job has us here. If I was single, however, I would make the most of my remoteness and try working from a variety of towns. Here's some places that I would try if I was a young remote worker:

- A small Colorado/Utah/Montana ski town. Some place like Telluride, where I could ski/hike/bike in the mornings

- A fun desert town with great recreation like Moab, UT...Prescott, AZ...Bend, OR...

- A beach town in S. Florida during the winter

- Costa Rica, Panama, Bay Islands of Honduras in the wintertime

- Thailand

- South coast of Texas in the Winter, Texas Hill Country in the fall

It could be so much fun...

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I lived in Denver for 2 years, and now Portland. Bend, SLC/Sandy, Jackson, Durango, Steamboat, the list goes on.

edit: I'm CEO at Aptible, where we recruit for remote. Personal freedom is a nice perk.

That's awesome. What are the challenges you've faced as a remote employer?

Do you have a job board with these postings? I'd be quite interested in researching something like that. Recently was trying to do that with the company I worked for and they were a little timid to do it I also had another offer I wanted them to match so I think the combo made them timid to counter.

I did this for five years in Panama. Weather was nice. Met my wife there. Learned Spanish. There's no income tax there if your money comes from out of the country. As long as you're not from the US, that's amazing. For Americans I think you still have to pay tax over 100,000 income. Remote salaries don't go much above that anyway though. Paid off my mortgage by 31. Not too bad for a college dropout.

If you paid Bay Area wages and offered something more than at-will style job security you'd probably see more people wanting to get out.

For me I've yet to see a remote position that wasn't fraught with the same risk as any other company, or that pays anything like a reasonable salary.

I can't speak for other companies but we make salary offers based on the candidate's experience and role, not their location.

However, the job security is an interesting point. I suspect that Zapier gains huge leverage over it's relocated employees because they're now dependent on their Zapier job, another hard-to-find remote gig elsewhere, or funding their own move back to a tech hub. I don't know what Zapier's pay bands are like but I'll bet their employee churn is lower than industry average.

Yes, and that is an unhealthy way to manage churn in most cases. Perhaps Zapier is different but I'm skeptical. I think it's more likely that a higher than typical fraction of their workers are dissatisfied but locked in for reasons you note.

As for wages, the concept of "cost of living adjustment" is just a way for owners to keep more of the profits at the expense of employees. If web/mobile app shop X in the Bay can pay $120k for a freshly minted BS grad, they can pay that for a remote dev living in Milwaukee or eastern Europe, and it's very likely a company based in Milwaukee could do the same. They don't because of the leverage, though.

With that in mind, it makes one wonder why more bay area companies aren't making use of remote resources.

I worked remotely in Vietnam for about a year. It was pretty great. Fun and super cheap. I wasn't in a big city so I could literally pay my monthly rent with one hour of work.

>Costa Rica

I worked on site in San Jose for a time and also remotely in the US while my office was there. Internet is a real, real issue in a lot of Central American and other "nice" foreign places to visit that aren't fully developed. Became a real problem for me as a remote worker.

I work remote and I've worked from a few of these places. Panama is ok. Costa Rica and the Bay Islands of Honduras both have HORRIBLE internet. Thailand is hell if you need to work the same time zone as people in the US.

But I agree, it's great to travel and work.

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