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"I went through a time in my life where I was more attached to places than people."

I'm a hell of a lot more attached to people outside of work than I am inside of work. My school, my church, my neighborhood, my family. I'm barely willing to move 40 minutes of drivetime let alone all the way across the country to a community I barely know.

My children and my family are going to be a legacy whether I make it my focus or not or not. I choose to make it my focus. (even the choice not to have children or family is some type of legacy choice for generations to follow)

Absolutely—I didn't mean to make a distinction about which people you want to be with, or which priorities are important to you.

It is definitely important to make decisions for family and community as well as for work. Since I spend much of my time at work with coworkers, I tend to think of those relationships as being important at this point in my life. YMMV.

From the perspective of the company itself, priorities surely differ from your own. I think it's important to bring all these needs into account when determining how to make our companies and our lives better and more successful.

I also tend to think of my coworker relationships as important but most companies have a culture where if a person leaves the company s/he's is brushed under the carpet and never to be mentioned again. Startups tend to be smarter than that, but what a waste in general!

If you're relocating for jobs, you're clearly making a distinction between work and non-work people. If you care about people, relationships, community, you won't go chasing jobs all over the country. A few moves? Sure. But there may come a time when you say, "I like where I live and the community I have here, I have to work remotely." Relationships and community take a long time to build.

I'm currently not interested in moving because of people. I like my friends here. I like my community. Jobs are easy to find. Good friends and community? Now that is difficult, and is life without friends?

As one of calinet6's said co-workers who recently relocated from Boston to Myrtle Beach, SC - I feel obligated to reply.

Like the OP - I also grew up in the middle of nowhere, PA.

I previously worked remotely for companies during college, and I've been surprised by how much I'm enjoying the co-worker experience here -- just a different one. Nearly every day I go to CoworkMYR (www.coworkmyr.com), and we're excited about building a tech culture here, and touting the benefits of lower cost of living, and all MB has to offer.

I agree with OP and calinet6: People have a lot to do with your happiness. I've met more neighbors, made new friends, and had more in-depth interactions with them in 4 weeks here than in 6 years in Boston. That blows me away. I think its part environment, and part busy: Most people in Boston are there to get education, get started with careers, etc: They're extremely focused on that, and not so much on friends, relationships, etc.

Another huge benefit of leveraging the cost of living towards happiness is that we've realized my wife doesn't need to work full-time. She's pursuing other interests, she just got a job teaching. Her happiness has increased so much! (Her metric for this was that I've caught her giggling in her sleep numerous times here, as opposed to worrying sleep talk in Boston).

TL; DR: I agree with OP on the values of working for a good company remotely and having more control and flexibility over your time and life. I invite calinet6 to come visit and give it a try ;)

Thanks man :) We will definitely visit and I'm looking forward to seeing the coworking spot and checking out life down there.

You know I'm a huge believer in coworking, and I think it's for similar reasons—you meet people and generate ideas and relationships that are also valuable. I just think it's also a great thing to be coworking with your own coworkers, or at least that it shouldn't be discounted as unimportant in the general case.

For us, it's a shift that we're really working at, and we're getting better at it by the week. Just because I say I would be hesitant to start a company with remote workers or bring people on remotely doesn't mean it's not applicable to the current situation, or at a later stage. Even with a different company I'm sure it would be a more difficult and more complex decision than I anticipate.

I still think it would be great to all be working in the same room, but at the same time, it's great to have everyone happy and living the life they want to live, and it's a small price to pay. That is truly of unmeasurable importance and I couldn't be happier for you for following your dreams.

Being someone that may soon be in a remote working situation, I'd be very interested to hear what tools you (and others) find crucial for your day to day remote communications. I am not an engineer, but in more of a producer role so personal communication is a large part of my day to day work. I'm wondering if I can get anywhere near the level of communication that I've grown accustomed to, working onsite. I'm obviously familiar with Skype/iChat, Basecamp, Campfire (we use these tools extensively even though we are in the same office)... Just wondering if there is anything else that helps more than these tools, or if its just a matter of being very diligent with them.

> Talk with people about more than work. Connect and develop relationships. Work toward a true culture that exemplifies what the company stands for both internally and externally, and make it meaningful to everyone involved.

So, what, people can't do this type of stuff online? The remote team I work with hangs out on internet chat all day long, every work day. We talk about plenty beyond work related stuff. We even post messages over the weekend. We care about each other and our personal lives and have a very cohesive team. Again, this is ebooks vs. paper books. People have a romantic notion about what true interpersonal communication is supposed to be, but when it comes down to it there's no reason why one method of communication is inherently better than any other.

The one big difference I have found isn't about communicating with your team, but that when you are actually at the office you spend a lot more time talking to people not on your team or in your department. People with entirely different backgrounds and working on entirely different projects.

This can lead to new and creative developments and projects that would never happen from simply talking to people on your team. These projects have, at least for me, often been the most fun and challenging (and profitable) project I've been involved in.

Again, this could happen online just as effectively. But even so, this is fairly obscure benefit to working on-site.

I tried to propose an idea where I work of having a threaded chat room to mimic conversations in the hall. It could get even better by having some intelligent gleaning of conversation keywords and showing those visibly by each chat room, so people know when their ears should be tingling and can join in on the conversation.

The method of a single chat room means multiple crossing conversations become hard and there's constant distraction trying to see what people are talking about only to find it's not interesting to you.

The product I work on is called http://kona.com and we use it to collaborate online. It allows us to have multiple chat rooms going on at the same time for one team that are separated out by topic. We have discussions both dedicated to work topics and non-work topics. It simulates the "water cooler effect" quite nicely.

In my experience, relationships grow proportionally with the time and energy you commit to them.

There is no reason that can't be done remotely, and surely people are getting better at it with current technology. But it is decidedly more difficult, in my experience, than a physical presence, and you may not realize what might be missing.

You appear to be one of those "people persons". Awesome, great for you! Still though, please don't project your personality traits to everyone and try make them sound as absolute ideals. Avoiding talking with people "about more than work" and generally keeping an arm's length from "company culture" (whatever that means) is a major reason some of us have started (or can't wait to start) working remotely, more than location or any other factor.

Thanks for being honest that the reason you want to remote work is because you don't want to interact with people. That is somewhat orthogonal to the OP though.

You have a valid point, and I readily recognize and appreciate the various personality types and interaction styles people have.

I am actually generally an introvert who has developed some people skills over the last ten years or so. I am not always a "people person;" I simply recognize the advantages and see what makes a company tick, or not, and I think personal interaction is one of the big reasons.

After all, a company is a group of people, and interaction between people is one of the key features of a growing business weather or not it is your personal preference.

I'm not saying that you can't do well without being a "people person" and I absolutely do not mean to project my preferences on others. My statements were observations based on a variety of people at several companies, and seem to be true for most cases. YMMV. In any case, these ideas are still good to think about and evaluate.