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Comment by jborichevskiy | Hacker News Reader

This stood out:

> 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.

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I started working remote from a farm at the foot of the Rockies 4 years ago and never looked back. During this time, I've watched the number of remote companies rise considerably.

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.

> But it's a shame remote work isn't quite at that level to completely make physical location irrelevant. Maybe someday

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.

It's a nice idea, and I've thought along the same lines, but having spent some time away from large cities, I've come to think that it would be really boring to be tied down to one cabin in the middle of one nowhere.

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.

Are you me? Also in NYC and also dream of a quiet place in Montana. My team has actually had discussions about Montana specifically.

What is it about Montana?

NYers flooding MT would be worse than OHians flooding NYC.

Ted Kaczynski did some awful things because of things like a road being built through Montana near his cabin. I don't dare think about what he would have done if a New York people flood came through.

I'm willing to bet you wouldn't refer to other groups as "flooding" NYC. Why do New Yorkers find it acceptable to say such things about Midwesterners?

Because they're not a race group.

The Midwest is pretty culturally distant from NYC, or at least it can be. There’s a long list of things that are different, and a shorter one of things that are similar.

Source: Am Midwestern, lived in NYC once upon a time

More so than Aleppo or Mogadishu? I think not. Sounds like a cop out to me.

Mogadishu is probably a bad example because there are actually an enormous amount of Somali immigrants in the Midwest. But I was really restricting my comment to intra-US comparisons.

You're missing my point. My point is that those places are even more culturally distant from NYC but no one ever tells them to "go back where you came from".

Btw, also a Midwesterner. Recently left NYC. Finally took the advice of the locals.

Because you can make fun of mostly-white yokels without the PC police coming for your scalp the way they would if you were to criticize the influx of any other demographic.

Au contraire, you'll be celebrated for it!

> I'm willing to bet you wouldn't refer to other groups as "flooding" NYC.

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?

Ha! I've never been but from all the pictures I've seen it's stunningly beautiful. I think I'm imagining it to be something of a blend of the Pacific Northwest and Yosemite, but more remote. Someday!

It was possible, when a single individual could write a popular bit of software. Ask https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lutusp who

> wrote Apple Writer alone in a small cottage he built himself atop a hill in the woods of Oregon ..

Anyone else thinking of Sam Neil’s last words in the Hunt for Red October?

I’m in western rural oregon, live on acreage in the woods. Also have 1gbps symmetric unmetered static ip’d internet.

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.

Where in Western rural Oregon has this?

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.

There are multiple areas with telephone co-ops that have dropped fiber in the ground.

For instance molalla, stayton, scio all have fiber networks.

Oh, I see. Different version of rural then. Those are far less remote areas than I was imagining.

Thats why i said "western" rural. Although John Day has some fiber out there, and just got the feds or someone to kick down 6M to build out more.

I believe that Sandy (just outside of Portland) does.

EDIT: https://www.ci.sandy.or.us/sandynet/

It's interesting. I never really wanted to live in NYC until I ended up here and now after 20 years I am absolutely never going for leave. I'm raising my kids here. Especially since it means I never have to drive.

I moved NYC recently from the Bay Area after my wife received a job offer she, and we, couldn’t refuse. Living in the city is great, but I’ve had a hard time making connections, and have had more trouble finding work than I ever expected.

What are the secrets to building connections out here?

>Living in the city is great, but I’ve had a hard time making connections, and have had more trouble finding work than I ever expected.

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.

What's the thing or event that you'd like to go to and meet 'connect-able' people at, if it existed?

Socializing in NYC is much more intentional than most other places. Basically you go do stuff you're interested in and socialize that way. The casual "oh you're also into that" or meet cutes almost never happen.

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.

Pretty much all my friends are work colleagues or parents of other kids. Also, my wife's co-workers. IDK what your wife does but maybe have her invite you to meet her team.

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 a shame remote work isn't quite at that level to completely make physical location irrelevant. Maybe someday.

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.

While I’m supportive of working remotely, I’m somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of making physical location irrelevant.

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.

This article is about Jobbing Musicians :-)

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.

The missing piece probably isn't tools to make remote work better, but whatever's necessary to obsolete in-person networking.

The article (strangely) doesn't say this directly, but it alludes to it ("I met so many wonderful kindreds...", etc).

> Ideally I think I'd want a remote cabin in Montana with a high speed internet connection

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.

3 Mbps should be plenty for many jobs I think? I work remotely with a 3 Mbps connection and it's fine for me.

For mobile dev it seems fine most of the time.

If your dealing with larger files, you need a vm somewhere you can access remotely; instead of pulling the files down completely.

Depends on the job, but I would think for most people on HN 3mbps would be considered painfully slow, which it is.

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.

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