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Comment by curioussavage | Hacker News Reader

I just moved out of SF and went remote. It’s pretty awesome. Living there was fun but also stressful and inconvenient especially with kids.

I didn’t even lose my “walkability” you can find that in many places if you choose the right neighborhood. In fact kind of improves if you factor in not worrying about getting mugged or accosted by homeless crazies.

My large home in one of the top planned communities in the nation costs me just under the shack I rented in the east bay.

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I just did the same thing. Being remote at work allowed me to trade the SF Bay Area for Northern New Mexico a couple years ago, and I can't describe how much happier I am. Life feels so much less precarious, I don't bleed money every time I go outside, and there's less of a crushing feeling of being stuck in the rat race out here.

I'm renting a 2 bedroom house with a nice backyard, able to focus on my health, relationships, and interests, and it's totally feasible now for me to go back to school if I want to (granted, this one is probably made easier by the fact that I don't have kids myself). Compare with my life in the Bay, where I rented a tiny, musty smelling room with no closet in a house with a serious mold problem for the exact same price I pay today while barely scraping by.

I can't honestly imagine how living in the Bay Area would be with kids -- that seems like that would be incredibly hard.

Things I do miss: incredible produce, walkability, excellent public transit, fresh produce, fresh sourdough. But now I have excellent fresh green chiles, beautiful landscapes, slightly more interesting weather, and (IMO) nicer, less-stressed people.

Missing fresh produce? You can buy straight from the farmers off their trucks. Santa Fe has farmers markets every Saturday morning. The natural grocers, sprouts, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods also have fresh produce. Norther NM just had a bumper year of it’s “wild” fruit trees. Even here where I live. Maybe ask around?

the farmer’s market is one of the reasons I want to com le back.

In California it's pretty easy to find like, perfectly pristine greens -- like, zero wilt or bruising or yellowing whatsoever. I'm at WFM and Sprouts nearly every weekend and have yet to find for example cilantro or kale or spring greens that don't have some wilt or yellowing going on. Which makes sense -- the climate out here isn't really amenable to picture perfect greens like California is.

But also, I'm probably more critical because I ran buying teams at grocery (brick & mortar and ecommerce) stores for 10 years so I'm always instinctively looking for minor blemishes

And yeah, really and truly I'm not being completely fair -- I haven't visited the farmers markets yet, and I've heard that about the trucks. Would love to check them out, hopefully I'll find some time this weekend.

The fruit has been pretty great though. I've been really happy with the stone fruit. One weird thing I've noticed is that the California avocados out here are consistently better than they were in California -- like, perfect ripeness, no browning, never disappointed when I get home, which would happen every other time in CA. Maybe there's more QA going on between CA and here, and time to ripen on the trucks

I’m able to find these in stores from time to time.

http://www.caminodepaz.net/?page_id=88

Uh isn't blemishes actually a sign that the fruit is tastier?

For fruit, sometimes, but not usually for greens :)

> One weird thing I've noticed is that the California avocados out here are consistently better than they were in California

Were avocados cheaper in CA? It might be the Alchian-Allen Effect: https://medium.com/@byrnehobart/alchian-allen-and-agglomerat...

The farmers markets are amazing. I’ve had them walking distance from places I lived in San Francisco, Mountain View, San Jose, and Chico. The quality is incredible.

Same here.

My wife and I lived in SF for close to five years. We wanted to have four kids and well, that would have been a nightmare in the city.

So we moved back home to family in Lincoln, NE. We now have four kids, live in a great school district and I've continued to consult with startups.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimjones2/

P.S. First year of being completely remote was fantastic. Fifth year? Really lonely..

> P.S. First year of being completely remote was fantastic. Fifth year? Really lonely..

Yeah, I have taken to trying to find work-ish community outside of work. If you don't meet many people who have shared as much of your experience as employees of your own company, at least you can meet people who have shared similar experiences. It's a bit easier than getting to know complete strangers.

Is there some equivalent of a WeWork, where you can socialize with others? How are the coffee shops?

Baffled by the downvotes... why? Are there better social alternatives for the long workdays?

In a similar situation - year 5 of remote, now living in a small town still working for big tech. It does get lonely and you have to manage this yourself.

Volunteering with an organization you care about is a great way to combat this. They're locals, you get to know the community you're living in, and you probably share a common interest. Also feels great to give back.

Piling on to say +1 of lonely remote work. In my 3rd year remote I ended up renting a desk part time in an incubator just to be around people and get out of the house.

Do you ever just hang out with co workers on slack and zoom to talk about normal stuff you’d talk about in person?

That works pretty well if you have co workers who are interested in doing that.

Curious how remote led to loneliness. I don’t find much value in being in an office, despite being an extrovert.

In fact, I code 8-9 hours a day remote, can _maybe_ code 2 hours if I’m in the office. That productivity feels amazing.

> I didn’t even lose my “walkability” you can find that in many places if you choose the right neighborhood.

Sadly the case for me seems to be that there are very nice walkable areas in these small cities, but everytime I interview for a job it turns out the office in in some way out suburban office park, so I have no way of commuting

The idea is that you work remote not try to find employment in the new locale.

I wonder if there's a way to split the difference, for instance get a job at the new locale, but gradually switch to working from home. This would at least be "less remote" from the employer's standpoint because you could bop into the office for meetings when needed.

While this sounds attractive, the major benefit (salary/cost-of-living arbitrage) completely goes away.

Local employers can't afford to pay you your big-city salary, and the benefit for a big-city employer to keep you remote is retention and a known quantity (assuming you're worth your salt).

It's a win-win for the worker and their employer.

The article focuses on the supposed loser: the township that loses out on a local job - but the newly relocated remote worker adds to the tax base and pays for groceries, etc.

20 years into work from home... 10 years of it after leaving the valley.

There really is no comparison. Less cost, less stress, and more productive. Bonus is valley companies tend to pay the same salary regardless of the jobs on-site/remote status. Got a house with 2 extra bedrooms - set one up as an office and the other as a 'server room'.

Went remote. Bought a house back near my family. Mortgage is nearly a quarter the cost of my one bedroom in Seattle. I'll miss Seattle, for sure, but at least now I don't have to hustle so hard. Especially with a kid on the way.

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