archeantus

Watching that video semi-inspired me to become a person that had clothes worth caring about and looking half-way decent on a day-to-day basis.

But then I looked down at my go-to fully-remote attire of a t-shirt and gym shorts and thought "Nah..."

Mormons aren't polygamous. Please stop spreading this narrative that you know isn't true.

There are certainly times I regret having so much space for our kids to clutter, but we ultimately bought it as a place for us to grow into. My wife is expecting our 6th child later this year, and our house has 6 bedrooms. So in that sense, it isn't insanely lavish, but a comfortable place to raise a large family.

Also, as the commenter below mentioned, we do enjoy hosting people for parties and family get-togethers. We spend a good amount of energy and time and money on these activities that are for the enjoyment of other people.

Wealthy people often build massive palaces to honor their own greatness and inflate their egos, I can assure you this is not one of those homes :).

That is a fair point. Instead of the word "quite", it might have been better to use the word "more".

I do native iOS development. I'm very much a proponent of remote work, and I wish more Bay Area companies would embrace it. If done right, it can lead to higher satisfaction from employees as well as increased productivity and reduced costs!

I'd have to look at the bill but I think that it averages out to be around $250-350/month for electricity.

That was actually an onerous task at first. But I bought my wife a Neato robot vacuum a few years back and it has been such a nice thing to have.

Our utility bills certainly have gone up, which we aren't thrilled with. We are considering some solar panel options to help bring our carbon footprint down. Being fully remote, I try to make up for that by not driving very much :)

Overall, the valley we live in has pretty much everything we could want, from a retail perspective.

A nice small-town grocery store about 3 mins away, and larger national chains further down the road.

Yes, I guess 8,000 sq ft translates to 743 meters :)

I am not a minority race, but Utah is becoming quite diverse. My personal opinion is that it is a welcoming place and is a great place for families to raise their children.

We decided to move to Utah. We have some family here and the tech scene is actually quite strong. Overall it has been a great move, and besides the nice people that we met in California, we haven't really missed the craziness of the rat race down there.

We moved to Utah where the tech scene is actually quite strong, and the cost of living is significantly less. We bought an 8k sq ft house for the price of many 1,500 sq ft town homes we had been putting offers in on in California.

It can be such a rat race down there, it is refreshing to remember that it doesn't have to be that way. Life exists outside of The Valley, and it happens to be a pretty darn good one (and affordable!) :)

Wow, this resonates with me. In 2013 my wife and I were living in the Bay Area and had just welcomed our third child into the family. I was making 105k/yr at Apple (which seemed like a ton at the time!) but I felt like I was saving very little of that.

I was approached on LinkedIn to take a job with matching pay but that was fully remote. I could live anywhere I wanted in the entire country. I jumped at the chance and felt like I became rich overnight! I miss working at Apple, and would definitely jump at the chance to work remotely for them, but I don't think I could ever afford to move back to California.

I think the value of using an IDE and having access to a debugger outweighed the clunkiness of the stuff I didn't understand (like public static void main(String[] args)).

So much of web development comes across as formidable voodoo because of how many languages/frameworks are needed to even get anything to show up.

What a cool service. The spending by our country (and the associated deficits and debt) shouldn't have to be a partisan issue clouded by smoke and mirrors and political handwringing.

I didn't care much for how Ballmer ran Microsoft (except for his developer conference chants), but I'm really warming to the post-Microsoft Steve Ballmer.

Preach! This resonates so well with me, thank you for taking the time to share. My company has started implying they want to move away from new remote hires and I can't understand it.

Good remote workers, who are disciplined (as you said), are so much more productive.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I've decided that working remote IS the most important benefit of my job.

I've been fully remote doing iOS development for nearly four years now, and I am not interested in entertaining any new job offer unless my fully remote status can be retained.

Are there downsides to this mentality? Yes. Am I missing out on networking/schmoozing opportunities by being remote? Almost assuredly. But as I've been thinking about it lately, I don't think I want any of that stuff. I can't see myself enjoying the job of management or being a director, etc. I would probably enjoy the pay, but not the work.

So for me the most important thing is that I love my job, I get paid very well, and I'm home to watch my five kids grow up.

I don't think I'm interested in trading in that setup, not for any job title.

This is what matters to my job satisfaction:

1. Fully remote 2. Great pay 3. Developing for a platform I am passionate about (iOS)

I am fortunate enough to have all three of these things right now, but anytime I've considered making a job change, being fully remote is the requirement that continues to surface as the most important thing to me (and my wife :).

ROFL

I am remote, and have been for the last 3.5 yrs. As a software developer I find that the times I am least productive are when I need to work in an office. It is loud and distractions are everywhere. People stop by your desk to chat and ask for things, you inevitably get roped into ping-pong or foosball games, you take way longer lunches because that is what everyone else seems to be doing. The list goes on.

I am always glad to get home from the office so I can focus and get work done in peace. It may not be the case for all roles, but for software development I think (motivated and diligent) remote workers are way more productive, and can provide a much better ROI for their employers.