I am the sort of experienced full-stack hacker many Valley companies would love to have on their team. However, I like smaller cities, commuting exclusively by bicycle, having an enormous garden, eating locally grown food, easy access to amazing outdoor adventures, and mild winters. You'll probably never find me in the Valley or in the Boston or New York area. The bay area is too populous and northeast winters are terrible.

No amount of money can change those things. Quality of life is worth more to me than high salaries.

I do, however, like interesting work and brilliant coworkers. I mostly work with local businesses that are doing interesting non-high-tech stuff, like mass-custom lean manufacturing, but it would be great to have more options for working with people who know programming at least as well as I do.

Working locally with people does seem to beat the isolation of remote work, however. It probably makes sense for a company focused on collaboration tools to have a team that relies on collaboration tools to function.