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Comment by devonkim | Hacker News Reader

I took a pay cut to work remotely in Asheville, NC (about the most remote, stable, infrastructure-enabled city I could find next to Chattanooga, TN) and while the community was great and living costs were much cheaper, this kind of plan was still wishful thinking because unless...

1. you stay remote (read: can handle work != social structure)

2. your spouse's employment situation is also accommodating

3. your community doesn't decline due to the brain drain / job drain problem of areas outside major metro centers

So you need to be resistant and resilient to the downsides of living away from so many techies.

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Funny you mention Asheville and Chattanooga. I’m currently working at one of the large tech companies in the Bay Area, but if I ever take a remote job, those are the top two cities I would move to.

I'm surprised more folks aren't moving to those areas. I can see them being the next Boulder.

I knew about the Denver area’s potential at the time but the high real estate prices were a problem. Part of my objective was to get years ahead of a big boom and save money before it got too bad, and I managed to do that fine in Asheville. The region has a lot of the same issues as smaller towns in the US without any industries to accelerate its growth besides craft beer and tourism. The healthcare industry is entirely because of the massive retiree population that are typically snowbirds that don’t contribute to state and county taxes besides property taxes, so its everyday population is starved for government resources relative to its size while it has the highest property values in NC (well, it was until 2016 last I saw). So basically Buncombe County was the lowest earning but most expensive part of NC to live in - this is not a recipe for sustainable growth. I really liked the community and it was a really good place to live if you could afford it. Chattanooga is much better off in comparison although I’m curious about how it’s done at attracting a sustained tech industry almost a decade after its investments.

It sounds like you moved away from Asheville and stopped working remotely. Do you still work in tech in the South?

I was in Atlanta for a few years afterward (not my choice honestly) and wound up back in a much better situation and same location than I started before my move to Asheville. It was a humbling experience that I may not have gotten if I had stayed in the DC region, which also was never my preference either.

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