Move to the Big City (2018)
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> So why do I hate to admit this?
> Because I love how the internet has made it possible for anyone to get successful, anywhere. I love the idea of living in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nature, yet being connected to the world.
> But still, when I look at the facts, it’s impossible to deny. Living in the big city, and being where everything is happening, will help your career the most. Being anywhere else won’t hurt you, but it won’t help.
Though I'm in NYC right now, I plan to leave eventually. Ideally I think I'd want a remote cabin in Montana with a high speed internet connection. Wake up, go for a 2 hour hike, code a few hours, watch the sunset, read, sleep. Sounds like some sort of paradise.
Realistically though I'll probably end up somewhere closer to civilization.
But it's a shame remote work isn't quite at that level to completely make physical location irrelevant. Maybe someday.
What is it about Montana?
Source: Am Midwestern, lived in NYC once upon a time
Btw, also a Midwesterner. Recently left NYC. Finally took the advice of the locals.
Actually I would. In fact NYC has a great history of groups flooding into each other. Before I dive more into that though...there seems to be an airplane overhead?
> wrote Apple Writer alone in a small cottage he built himself atop a hill in the woods of Oregon ..
There's just so much nature, and it's so varied in it's majesty. You can quickly drive to plenty of remote outdoor areas from NYC; most of New York is basically a huge forest. But you can't drive to see the Grand Canyon without making a big time commitment, much less places on other continents.
Unfortunately, even big RVs have their share of problems, and there is no community to be found on the road. I don't have any good answers, and I don't relish the thought of returning to a large city, but I'm not sure that moving away from them would be the panacea that many people seem to imagine it would be.
I worked remotely at Blackbird (https://blackbird.us/) and you could totally do this as a software engineer. It's great. Your can live in a cool place and the only thing you really need is a high speed internet connection.
What has me wanting to move away is the insane politics in salem, caused by too many people in Portland outnumbering the rest of the state.
I figured most people in the rural parts were still relying on satelite internet like they were when I lived there. Maybe cable internet in some of the developed suburbs.
For instance molalla, stayton, scio all have fiber networks.
The article (strangely) doesn't say this directly, but it alludes to it ("I met so many wonderful kindreds...", etc).
That's a fantasy unless you consider 3mbps DSL to be 'high speed'.
And that's not even remote, that's often the highest speed available not even an hour outside of many major US cities out west.
For mobile dev it seems fine most of the time.
But even for the less technically apt, consider other common tasks that require speedy broadband. Something like restoring a 100GB iCloud backup to a new iPhone on a 3mbps connection would take over 3 days, assuming the connection (or your patience) could hold that long.
And you certainly won't be streaming your favorite shows in 4k.
A lot of the big decisions happen between meetings in the corridors.
Working at a satellite location, despite being onsite, is also considered harmful to your career.
It is the fact that the people who make decisions are not physically near enough for everything that happens between the bits of work. Those are the things that have historically mattered far more in career growth.
Internet was expensive at first, but I could expense it so I didn't care. Now that Starlink is on the way, it really won't matter anymore.
The key is to work at a company that is REMOTE FIRST. If the remote team is in the minority, then you'll always be left out of the important discussions and decisions, and, ultimately, promotions.
Yes, it's a bit of a pain getting out to other places. But I'm perfectly happy to spend 90% of my time in nature, so I consider it an acceptable trade to have extra hassle 10% of the time.
PS: Think twice about an RV. I tried that route, and it's a big hassle having to move around all the time (because of California's tenancy laws, for example), it's a pain to find a place to park the thing, propane isn't always conveniently available, repairs are a pain, black/grey water is a pain, and a lot of places just aren't RV friendly. Also, RV parks just generally suck and have TERRIBLE wifi. If you DO go this route, get a 5th wheel so that you get the extra headroom, easier turns (IMPORTANT), and can drive the pickup to the store. You DON'T want to drive a 30ft coach around town!
Also, get an RV with one popout (more is just asking for shit to break), the kitchen in the back (otherwise it's always in the way), and NO island (it just gets in the way).
Also, don't go lower than a half-ton for your pulling vehicle. You'll thank me on the hills.
If/when we get there it will also imply abstracting away the physical interaction between people. This might have unwanted social implications, read people losing many important social skills.
You don't get a call saying "hi xxxx we need a guitarist for seals new album can you be at Abbey Road this afternoon" if your living in a cabin in Montana.
Btw I used to work with a polymath developer who had a Phd in music and also had been a side musician on top 40 hits.
What are the secrets to building connections out here?
I used to live outside NYC, and finding work there is indeed difficult, depending on your specialty. If you already work in "fintech", you're set: there's tons of jobs there doing that. If you don't have any experience in finance, then it's not so easy, and there really isn't much programming work there outside of finance and full-stack web stuff.
I live in the DC area now, and have also had a terrible time making connections. I'm planning to leave within a year because of this. I'm not going to NYC though; the job situation there is terrible for my specialty, as I learned before.
>What are the secrets to building connections out here?
I'm not sure about NYC, but here in DC I think it has to do with going to a lot of rooftop bars and drinking a lot of alcohol. If you're not into that scene, you won't do well here. I suspect NYC is similar.
My advice is to look for meetups, look in your neighborhood for ways to volunteer, get on Reddit and Facebook, and don't be shy about asking people to hang out.
There's also every kind of social community imaginable here. You can attend tech meetups if that's your thing. Take a drawing class, find a D&D group, volunteer at a community garden, host orgies. Sky's the limit.
> “It’s not casual. It’s not a place for a comfortable work/life balance. It’s fueled by ambition. People go go go.”
What of all those, and they will likely be most people, that don’t thrive in that environment. Are they getting a net benefit moving to a major metro? I really don’t know the answer there. The statistics are messy. All other things being equal, those of my friends that moved back to my hometown after college do not seem less happy or satisfied with their lives than those who went to major metros.
I'm a bit torn as I consider myself a mid-level developer at 7 years of experience. At the moment, I'm looking to relocate anywhere to be surrounded with senior engineers who can push me to the next level.
With that being said, I'll probably go back to the remote life when I feel more comfortable with my skills.
It’s so important to have in person human contact, especially with remote work, that Montana or wherever will always be a dream. Would love some ideas on how to solve this if anyone has any!
OTOH, you can have more community and more friends nearby in a smaller town -- and actually get to see them and do things with them.
But you need to take the time to make friends with those people. Still I know several people who moved to a small town, small island even, and made great friends with the local community, even people from an entirely different country. YMMV.
The great thing about a big city, at least in theory, is that whatever sort of weirdo you are, you can probably find a group of people that sees it as a positive rather than a negative. On the flip side, many people in cities are very busy and don't have much room for new relationships, so it can be hard to establish close friendships, the kind you can hang out with on a daily or weekly basis, without some catalyst like school or (non-remote) work.
In a smaller town, people will have time for you and it's easier to integrate into a community, but you may have to water yourself down a bit to fit in. It's tough to have it all!
A, yes, that part is crucial. E.g. a common interest in just life, nature, and common stuff: small talk, food, drink, some games, etc, sure helps.
One obvious example is on demand food delivery. In a small town you still just get one or two places delivering food, the internet cannot solve that.
But in a city you’re immediately connected to every provider in your radius. It was technically true before but required walking around, local knowledge etc. The internet removed that upfront investment and made the physical network available to anyone immediately.
Does anyone who wants to do great work have to live in a great city? No; all great cities inspire some sort of ambition, but they aren't the only places that do. For some kinds of work, all you need is a handful of talented colleagues.
You don't have to live in a great city your whole life to benefit from it. The critical years seem to be the early and middle ones of your career. Clearly you don't have to grow up in a great city. Nor does it seem to matter if you go to college in one.
The Impressionists show the typical pattern: they were born all over France (Pissarro was born in the Carribbean) and died all over France, but what defined them were the years they spent together in Paris.
Will it help your happiness? Will your goals and career benefit humanity one iota?
I want to make it to Comfortable, by working on interesting but non-stressful problems, reach FI at forty, then enjoy my family and work at hobby research.
Am I alone here?
For an IT audience, Nashville is probably irrelevant, also it assumes there's "no live" outside of those cities.
Tokyo? Beijing? Shanghai?
You'd think it creates a competitive environment where the best talent rises to the top but this is not the case.
What I've found instead is that the environment is competitive to the point that everyone is focused on politics and social manipulation; for example trying to claim credit for other peoples' work to get promoted or making friends with the founders. Top level managers are not capable of identifying talent and seeing though all the political BS; they fall for it over and over again but it doesn't matter because they're friends with millionaire investors so they can keep raising money even after their company fails.
It feels like behind every powerful person in a position of power, there is either a rich friend or a rich daddy.
That's why I'm into blockchain now, I'm tired of this nepotism. I want to participate in creating a new industry in which human nature can be factored out as much as possible.
Also, the issues you mention (being friends with millionaire investors, etc) might be very specific to Silicon Valley / San Francisco, and less about other "alpha" places?
If you want a hyped up ICO, yes it has been like this and that's why there are so many crappy projects with a high market cap right now but this is changing.
Ultimately, cryptocurrencies which are backed by real value are the ones which are going to stick around. Right now the ecosystem is mostly still founded on hype but all that hyped up money needs somewhere to go so there are a lot of opportunities even if you have very limited connections.
LOL, as if Nashville is even vaguely comparable to the other three?