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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

This idea works really well for remote developers.

I live in the tiny, 1,000 person, village of Arbonne-la-Foret, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, France. That is, unless you're a rock climber, in which case it's exactly in the center of the largest concentration of fantastic bouldering on the planet. American companies are happy to pay me the same to work from here as from that little Ohio town in the article, or from the Bay Area.

I think the strategy to follow if you're in tech these days is to:

  1. figure out the thing you like to do most in life,
  2. find the best place in the world to do that thing,
  3. move there and,
  4. contract remotely for a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

There is good internet everywhere. I'm finding less and less reason why anybody who could would ever want to work in an office.

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Sorry to nitpick but that "smack dab in the middle of nowhere" is 40 miles from Paris :) Anyway, it is very surprising that freelancing and remote work are taking off so slowly. At the company where I do remote freelance work I think less than 10% are freelancers and less than half of those are remote, even if the opportunity exists for almost everyone, even employees could switch to a freelance contract.

France is a central-governed country (in contrast to Germany), so everything outside Paris is a smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

We (jokingly) call everything outside the inner ring of Budapest countryside :)

Just like everything north of New York City is “upstate”.

With respect to smack dab in the middle of nowhere, I think this is a matter of relative scale. For reference, I grew up six miles outside of Conrad Montana, which isn't all that "close" to anything. However, my cousins thought nothing of hopping in the car to drive to the middle of Utah to check out a dog that someone was giving away. Or take a little further east to the town of Jordan, Montana where there is no railroad and the biggest events are the high school football games. My friend works at the University in Missoula, and complains that in driving back east, after an 8 hour drive he is still in Montana.

And Montana isn't even the biggest state. There are counties in Texas that are too small to have courthouses, so they share them with neighbors. That are not really walking distance. Check out the book "Miles from Nowhere". It tells of two census takers who ran out of gas and were lost for days in a county in populous Oregon.

My definition of remote is likely different from yours. I would define it as no internet access other than satellite, no roads connecting the rest of the country, no waterway access. I would be hard pressed to find somewhere in Europe that is smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

> a county in populous Oregon.

Oregon's population is mostly concentrated in the western 1/3rd of the state. The central and eastern bits have some extremely empty areas. Indeed, SE Oregon is one of the emptiest places in the US outside of Alaska.

For reference: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/427788.Miles_from_Nowher...

My wife and I have been debating a move to France. Are you French, or did you move there from elsewhere? If you moved, how was that process? Any tips on expatriating?

We like where we live currently (small town USA), and the thing that really keeps us here is family.

The thought of working in an office is a big NOPE for me. I can’t EVER see myself going in to work somewhere. This ends all sorts of roads for me but I just have it so damn good to ever change it.

This area is hardly remote: https://goo.gl/FKNQPv

Still, as someone who has (as is still doing) the remote thing (Vlore Albania, Sackville NB Canada -pop <2000) I completely agree :)

The strategy seems easy to execute but the first two points are quite tricky.

I've been trying to figure out what I'd like to do and where for the past 12 months. I've been jumping from one continent to another, living in villages under 50 people and in multimillion metropolises - all this while working remotely for clients in Europe. They didn't care where am I as long as I replied to emails in a timely manner. In South America I had to wake up at 4am and in Asia I would go to sleep at that time, but that's the only inconvenience I had.

p.s. No, good internet isn't everywhere :)

Amazing part of the world. I lived there for a year as a child (Bois-le-Roi) when my Dad was teaching in Insead and visited every summer (to a small village called Recloses) until I graduated high school. Fontainebleau is not exactly the middle of nowhere though. Only around an hour by train to Paris.

We used to go bouldering in Buthiers, which I'm sure you've visited. It was also the location for the world mountain bike trials championships in the 90's.

One of my favourite places in the area is the sand quarry near Bourron-Marlotte (48.342808, 2.676220). Highly recommend a day trip there.

I currently do remote work in Toronto for an SF company, but as a full time employee, with benefits etc. How does your healthcare situation work?

He's in France. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France

Thanks for the link! That's a pretty long article, however. Can you point me to the relevant section?

Some Googling led me to https://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/contractor_guide_cont...:

>“Although sole traders in France receive no paid time off, extra pay or unemployment benefit, they do have access to the French healthcare system and accrue pension benefits, albeit at a lower rate than an employee.

jasonkester, is this your setup?

... at the moment. Try not to read that in as a factor, especially if you're looking for reasons why this might not work for you.

I've done the same in England, Spain, Thailand, Colombia, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. And shorter stints in a dozen other countries while traveling.

It doesn't really matter where you set up shop, provided it's cheap to live there and you like it.

I've always arranged my employment as a contract, so benefits were never a consideration. Health insurance turns out to be quite affordable when you're billing out at effectively double the hourly rate of the full time guys, as is pretty common when contracting.

Are you a Canadian citizen? How to taxes work in this situation?

Did you ever try making apps vs contracting? I see so few folks living off apps or games (as products) it seems..

Do you make the same salary as you would in the Bay Area or did you have to offer a discount?

Not OP but having been in this situation I am willing to offer a discount, but I still insist on a premium over what I could earn locally; as a remote I am giving up career advancement so comp neefs to recognize this. Otherwise I might as well work locally and get the career benefits of being onsite.

Not the OP, but know several remote workers for Bay Area companies, and all are getting comparable salaries. The ones in FL and TX are seeing quite a bit more take-home due to no state taxes.

Employers will happily take you up on a discounted rate if you offer it. But then they'll also pay you your market value if you ask for that instead. So that's what I do.

Took a few years to work that out though, personally, so I'm glad you asked for the benefit of anybody else who may not realize it yet.

I've worked for two separate companies as a remote worker, and with neither did I have to take a discount. Most companies want to pay you for the value you bring, and are not willing to lowball and risk losing highly-talented employees.

There are a few companies out there that play this game (Gitlab [1]), but many others (Basecamp [2]) that pay you what you're worth regardless of location.

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051062

> Team members in high-wage regions having less discretionary income then ones in low-wage countries with the same role.

Heh, so their answer is to take away (presumably unearned) discretionary income from people who win the location lottery?

How very egalitarian of them.

I've said it before but as long as you can get a PO box for the vatican city then Gitlab are going to have to pay you a lot!

If I could only find a remote job...

That is a nice fantasy. I don't see it applying for most people tho. I know exactly zero people who do contract/remote work and don't struggle to make a living, even in a cheaper area. The hardest part is to get any decent paying contracts.

You might have some advantage that is not even clear to you. Maybe you worked in a big company for 10 years and now can gather work through contacts from there. Maybe your father is well known in the industry you work. Something like that.

erikb, I'm not writing this to be rude, but I am hoping it can change your perspective a little. Every sentence in your reply is so negative. You almost certainly won't get something you want if you think it's impossible. It means you wont bother trying. You have an excuse for everything. Its completely possible. I've worked for a large company for 2 years and made it happen. I know plenty of other people that do it as well.

The attitude in your comment was such a bummer I had to log in for the first time in years just to respond. Try to be more positive and go after what you want. Have a good rest of the weekend.

I think parent is right to point out that remote/contract work is more tenuous than the alternative in most cases. I also found your comment aggressive and nasty... the irony of the "stop being negative" put-down.

Sorry it came off that way. I'll keep that in mind next time I comment.

Your comment above didn't come off as negative to me fwiw. I had the same reaction.

The error in thought is limiting his perspective to people he knows personally, which of course can make it seem unlikely or impossible. For example, I don't personally know anyone who lives and works in Silicon Valley and doesn't struggle to make a living, but I do understand that it would be possible for me to try to do so if that was my desire.

I think he is mostly correct though. "If you have a good resume and live 30 minutes outside even a small town, but you also have to drive everywhere" isn't really comparable to the "standard deal" in a city.

This is not negative, this is called objective. The bear eats fish. That is nice and relaxing for the bear, but really painful for the fish. And there is not much the fish can do about it. Will the positive thinking fish get better results? No. Has the bear an innate advantage in that exchange? Yep. Is it negative to say that the bear has innate advantage? Nope.

If you think that your success comes from happy thoughts I bet you are in a similar good situation as the bear.

E.g. compare a western european software manager to his developer comrades in eastern europe offices. Independent of his skill he can make $70-150k a year. Most of his programmers will be in other countries where even people 5x his skill and putting in 3x his hours will earn around $18k/year. (Example could be Munich vs Brno, 600 km apart)

Who do you think can achieve more with his happy thoughts?

I don't say "do something for the poor". I don't say "you are bad for having an advantage". What I want to make sure is that one knows about ones advantage and that others can't easily copy it. In fact ignoring that difference is quite assholey.

Yes, you need to break into the industry before anyone will take you seriously as a candidate. So maybe add in at the top: 1. Go live in the US long enough to get established in the industry.

It's still out of reach for most people in the world, but not even San Francisco can employ literally everyone.

I can’t say I agree. I started freelancing in a brand new (to me) industry just 2 years ago with zero contacts and have been doing alright. I think a lot depends on your attitude, work ethic, desire to learn and self improve. Being nice and authentic with everyone you engage with is probably helpful too. I didn’t know anyone in the states and I certainly don’t know anyone in my country and it hasn’t been a deal breaker.

Still you are probably male, white, born in Western Europe or US, etc.

I found even some little things like how people style their hair, if they use face masks to keep their face clean, if they paid for teeth whitening/straightening in the past, can make a difference. In some regards that is attitute, true. But the kind you can't really learn growing up in the countryside for instance, or can't afford from the pay you get in some countries.

One of the best programmers I know has even some black teeth. He'll never be invited to a meeting where financially sound contracts are made.

What was your sales strategy to get started?

You don't need to become a contractor, you can just work remotely from Europe for a US company. So, you just one job offer.

True about 60% I'd said. You will be surprised though how two different people, one white-male the other asian-female will get offered for the very same job with the very same skills.

Here are three companies off the top of my head that offer remote positions as standard: IOHK, Github, Stripe. Those jobs are certainly out there.

Actually I'm going to check them out. Thanks.

Last I checked for that was Wordpress and they paid like $1500/month if I remember correctly.

You might have some advantage

Keep in mind that the first 10 odd years of your career out of school should be all about building that advantage. You want to hit your 30s in a state of Embarrassing Employability, where another amazing contract gig is just an email or two, or a Twitter status update away.

Spend your entire 20s amassing a collections of artifacts you can point to to demonstrate how good you are at all this stuff, and a horde of ex-bosses and ex-co-workers to whom your name springs first to mind when asked by somebody who needs a guy to do that stuff if they know The Guy.

So yes, absolutely. Get an advantage. But know that the short list of "built in" ones you gave above is not comprehensive. The best advantages are the ones you construct yourself.

Sure, but those aren't the people struggling. People with successful careers and property in the Bay Area have probably seen both their salary and property value double in the last ten years. Which is pretty hard to beat anywhere else.

Just checking in. I have been remote ~10 years now apart from when I ran my own startup that was running location specific ops. I now work as CTO for a listed company completely remotely even though we also have offices in a few countries. I also have a completely remote team working on a new startup (currently side project status for me but full-time for the team). I can assure you none of us have any trouble earning a living.

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