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Tech Work in the Boonies?
ERIAMJH asks: "I am a tech working in the metro DC area and my wife wants/desires/requires/NEEDS to move out to a rural area. She can't stand the city/suburb living any longer, and I either go along or she goes without me. I've thought of the telecommute option, or maybe start a small business in an under-served area. I've been doing all kinds of tech work for the last 9 years. I've been slowly moving from the sys admin side to software development. I'm now working on prerequisites for a Computer Science MS. I work for a large defense contractor on a government contract. I would love to work on smaller projects with more individual input, but I worry I will end up working construction or plumbing. Have any of you moved from the hustle bustle of the big city to the peaceful countryside and actually found good work?"
If you're thinking a small town, you could easily set up a small computer shop, and do tech house calls for a relatively large area around the town you're based in.
If you're really isolated (ie. on a farm), then you will have more problems.
boom boom boom
You could try working remotely - systems admin and code-cutting are two IT related roles that can be performed reasonably easily from a remote location.
Systems admin can mostly be done via a VPN connection (unless your VPN gateway is the problem requiring tech support), and code-cutting can be performed similarly.
You might need to check what network connectivity you can get from a non-urban or suburban location, but you should be able to find something reasonable.
Fast, cheap & reliable. Pick two.
Everybody needs a phone. Even someone in the "boonies". That means there are a ton of small to mid-sized telecom companys sprinkled throughout the "boonies". Usually this telecom is also the local ISP. That means UNIX. That means project development. Since they own the copper, they almost always make a profit. That means they have money to spend. This is a good thing.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
You can't expect slashdot to do your homework for you. Don't expect to just ask a question like that instead of doing the work yourself. That's not what Ask Slashdot is about.
Oh, wait...
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Unless you're going to live in or around the Kansas City area, Kansas is pretty much a dead end in tech jobs.
Windows is as solid as quicksand.
What about young people like me, who not only live in small towns, and have the added disadvantage of no work expiriance? I was going to submit this, but it looks like I was beaten.
Simon's Rock College
I am in your wifes boat... can't stand being to close to the city... The Dulles area has grown up too much.....
Broadband ISP out in Bluemount, I noticed a Sys admin out in Hamilton....
There are large websites running out of Charlottesville.....
Depends on what and where... I've made a habit of finding the jobs out there... if only my wife would move with me!
- Slidell, LA
- Stennis Space Flight Center in Mississippi
- Biloxi, MS (Air Force)
- Monterey, CA (not cheap, but away from the urban stuff)
- Omaha, NE
- Colorado Springs (urban, but real country no more than 20 minutes east)
I've temporarily enabled my email with spam blocking -- get in touch.I work for a company in the Northern Virginia space and live 90 minutes out in Louisa, VA. Very small town. Basically, I telecommute and come to work once a month or so. Been doing it for four years now, and seems to work pretty well. FWIW, I'm a rather senior UNIX sysadmin - fortunately, I'm in a team where other people do hardware, so I can mostly focus on the software aspects of my job.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
there are plenty of rural areas within commuting distance of the northern virginia hub. a lot of loudon county is still very rural with the biggest towns being mere hamlets. even the mountains of west virginia near harpers ferry are technically within the 'DC metropolitan area'.
You might look for wireless ISPs in your new or prospective location. Most WISPs are very small companies, so you'd probably get a chance to do some of everything--network admin, programming, tech support--not to mention tower climbs in snowstorms. Read up about this new and absolutely fascinating industry (to me anyway, since I work at a WISP) at the Broadband Reports WISP professionals' forum. --C. Crowley, Wiacomm, Inc.
I moved to Toronto 6 years ago now to get some IT experience and get off the helpdesk circuit. That has since failed and I'm not back to the helpdesk circuit. I'm making just over $30k a year and paying $700/mnt for a small apt on the edge of town, driving a beat up car and living from paycheck to paycheck.
.. there is ALWAYS someone else applying that knows more than me. I apply for a junior admin job, and theres an out of work senior guru that applies just because the job market sucks. so who gets it? not me.
... you aren't going to advance like you would in a city. You aren't going to make as much (or spend as much).
... try hitting up one of the *Bells around and see if they need techs. Perhaps it's time to go back to school .. put your technical experience towards an electricians degree or something logical but different.
.. best of luck. I'm really hoping to find something and get away from the city, but in doing so I may have to give up my career for something else. I hope not, but in the end, I think it's worth it to get away from the city and live around trees again.
And I've just given up. Toronto, while full of companies, just isn't hiring. I can't find an IT job
I've started looking around, trying to figure out what I'm going to do with life. I've debated giving up IT and moving to a small town. I've debated doing as some suggest, opening a small shop and dealing with residents. I've debated doing the telecommute thing or the long drive into a city. But anyway you look at it - life is going to change unless you have a golden horse shoe wedged up your arse. Moving into the boonies is going to change your career for good
Perhaps it's time to consider a new line of work. Someone suggested telecom
I understand what you're going through
good luck!
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
...if it is you, and you still have to make a decision like this, then you have a problem which can't be solved by moving to another place...
+1, True Shit
I am in San Diego, Here there is everything from very rural to downtown urban. San Diego is very very spread out. The north county has lots of country areas, orange groves, avocado groves, and still be under an hour from downtown. Valley Center, fallbrook, parts of escondido and san marcos all have very back country areas. then the suburbs, which can be fairly spaced out, large back yards, then of course theare are the more urban areas with lots of aprartment condo types. I am sure there are other areas like this and not as expensive as San Diego.
If she's not looking at a specific area, look for jobs at way-out-of-the-way school districts that need a technician. Most IT people seem to prefer city jobs, with broadband and all, so you may find a position if you're willing to move anywhere.
Umm, you might want to wander around in some rural areas, because most of the ones I've lived in are almost always surrounded by defense contractors or military bases big enough to have a civilian workforce.
I know when I lived in Flagstaff, AZ there was a W.L. Gore Factory there that did a bunch of things, some of them "top secret". High paying, too.
Similar stories in Utah, Idaho, Missouri, and eastern Washington state.
Maybe it's just an "out west thing?"
Oh yeah, nuclear power plants (maybe any power plants) are a good bet for high tech in the rural environment too.
My wife and I (both techies) spent the dot com boom days in NYC and we had all the work we could handle. Though there is much that I loved and still love about NYC, I really had to get myself and my son to a more rural setting. So my wife reluctantly followed me to a rural New Hampshire town (population under 2,000) in 2002. We had saved enough to get by for about a year.
:). There certainly was the prospect that I'd be washing dishes or plowing driveways -- I was prepared for that, but it didn't come to it in my case. Still I think you should be prepared for it and ask yourself whether she's worth it.
After a few months, she found a job as a DBA about a 30-minute drive away (better than a Manhattan commute) and I've secured enough freelance contracts to keep us comfortable. We're not doing as well as the boom days, but we're making about double our pre-dot com incomes and I suspect we'd be doing no better had we stayed in the city.
All of my contracts so far have come directly or indirectly from contacts I made in the city. I have clients in NYC, France, California, and Brazil, but not one in New Hampshire.
I don't know what to offer by way of advice. I followed my wife to the city many years ago for love, and when I couldn't stand it any more, she followed me to the woods also for love. We didn't have a specific plan when we came here; I had faith that it would work out, and she had faith in me (most of the time
My wife and I are very different from each other. I can't really explain what makes us compatible. There's a wide gulf in culture, interest, experience, and opinion between us. By rights we should have split years ago, but somehow the differences keep it interesting rather than get in the way.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
Kind of offtopic here, but your relationship sounds similar to me and my girlfriend (whom I will marry one day...)
We both have almost nothing in common, but we always find a way to share time and enjoy each other's company. I don't think I'd like someone that was a "perfect match" for me -- variety being the spice of life and all.....
And, as far as moving out of the city, I'd do it in a heartbeat if I hadn't racked up so much debt in the past 5-10 years. Oh well, you live and learn, eh?
Karnal
I live in Dayton OH. It has plenty of tech companies plus an Air Force base. Also, because the town sort of follows the north/south Miami River, there is lots of open country (driving, not walking) twenty minutes east or west of here. So unless your wife needs to work in a specific part of the boonies (likely the case) you might check this out. Plus we have the largest electronic surplus store on the face of the planet, Computerfest, and Hamvention. Plenty to entertain a typical nerd.
Unknown host pong.
Sounds like your wife is the problem.
If she wants to escape her current locale so badly that she's going to ditch you to leave, you have a marriage problem.
If anybody ever gave me an ultimatum requiring me to drop everything, abandon my livlihood and move hundreds of miles away, I'd be out the door before nightfall.
Marriage is a two way street. Take care of that problem before you move 1 foot.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
18 months ago, I moved 150 miles from my employer, which is a large state university in the state capital, to a rural town with 698 people (2000 census). I'm a unix admin, and I can do 95% of my work via ssh and screen over 56k modem. For that other 5% I drive into the office once a week to physiclaly handle machines, eat pizza with my peers, and try to stay somewhat in tune with what's going on.
While I haven't taken any local work (other than helping a neighboor retiree with his PC in return for his grandson mowing my lawn), I suspect I could drum up some work doing basic fixing of Wintel boxes. Heck, the owner of the wireless ISP provider the next town 5 miles over was needing someone of my skills, but I didn't jump on that (rural wages -- going down to $8/hr -- did not fit my lifestyle at the time).
I just recently picked up a half-time job (evenings) telecommunting to a place 500 miles away in another state. I wasn't even looking for a 2nd job -- it was a friend-of-a-friend kind of referral. I've never met -- and don't ever forsee meeting -- my co-wokers there in person. Nice. Easy extra money to facilitate my next move.
In a few months, I'll be moving 200 miles even further -- 20 miles from the nearest blacktop and 15 miles from the nearest utility pole. I'll be using satellite internet/phone from this location.
While researching the nearest satellite internet installer to the remote location, the owner of the dealership sounded very interested in having someone with my computer background available to him for regional installs (farms, ranches, etc. -- I live deep in the West).
The point of my rambling? Well, firstly, your current employer may be receptive to keeping you on from a remote location. Next, without even trying too hard, I found several good potential employment opportunities, even in my very rural area. If you put in the time and effort, I'm almost certain you can round up a living wage wherever you end up.
I guess all I'm trying to do is offer you hope, rather than specific advice. I feel your pain, as my wife sounds just like yours -- she can't stand living in a city or the 'burbs. If she can't have her chickens out on the lawn legally, she won't live there.
And if you find the slower rural lifestyle fulfilling, there's nothing shameful with things like construction or plumbing. Hell, the plumber out here can command more per hour than I can fixing PCs. There's even nothing wrong wth talking a significant pay-cut, if that's required. If your wife is worth keeping, she'll realize that the two of you can't (easily) maintain a big-city lifestyle in a rural area.
Good luck.
Method of processing duck feet
i live in west virginia, and unless you go to charleston, there is almost no opportunities for tech jobs around here.
the simple fact of it is that they're all taken.
unless, of course, you consider telemarketing a tech job - then you're all set for WV.
kaens.blogspot.com
What you really need to do is to redefine boonies.
I live in Kansas City, a decent sized (about 1 million in the metropolitan area) midwestern city. The nice thing about this city, as well as many others in the midwest is that it's not shoulder to shoulder with the next big city. What this gets you is some fairly large stretches of undeveloped area and small towns not more than 20 miles outside of the city limits. I have coworkers who live in these rural areas, and make the 20 - 40 minute commute every day. They have the benefits of living in a very small town (3000 people), but being able to work for a large company. When I say large I mean large... Sprint, Cerner, Garmin. There's a Boeing facility not too far from here.
On top of all that, the cost of living is much lower than the coasts, and while salaries are a little lower, your standard of living will probably improve if you find a comparable job.
While I'm all for starting your own business, there's no reason to rule out your current line of work. You may need to just look in different areas of the country.
When I want your opinion I will beat it out of you.
Our house is sold (closing 4/15) and we'll be building on thirty acres an hour drive away from most tech jobs in the area.
Since I already have a tele-commute job, I don't have to worry about that right away. But I worry about what will happen if my job goes away. Worst case, I'll commute an hour each way to a job in the big city.
But there are also alternatives, such as local consulting (most farms use PCs in managing their business now), become local ISP (rural customers have few choices, usually expensive choices), etc.
Then again, I've been in tech long enough to think that a job in one of the trades might be a good thing. :-)
--Tom
I'll bet there is a newspaper serving nearly every area, and the printer isn't too far away... find them and apply, someone has to run their computers. Telephone was mentioned elsewhere, another good place to look.
You don't have to stay in computers. Could you sell tractors? Drive truck cross country? (You would rarely be home, but it is a common job for those who do live in rural areas which should tell you something) Do AI on cattle?
There is always commute. Telecommute jobs are hard to find. Get a VW TDI (anything with good gas milage), and move 1 hour drive from the city, and work non-peak hours. Won't work in California (or NY?) but most cities in between have plenty of land 1 hour away allowing you the best of both worlds. (Not to be confused with suburbs which are the worst of both worlds)
Last, re-evalutae your life. Do you really need as much income as you are making? lower your standard of living and you might find that waiter at the local cafe takes care of all your needs.
Well maybe not bad news, but read anyway. I am a terrible person...
Why does your wife "need" to get away to a rural area? Is she crazy? Easily distracted? Do YOU want to live the rest of your life in the middle of nowhere? What the hell is that? You have a job, you're working. You probably enjoy going out once in a while at night. WTF is it w. moving to the "boonies?"
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
It depends what you consider 'good work'... If you want a job paying 100K+, good luck.
OTOH, if you want to get out of the rat race, you could easily put together a small consulting business and make a reasonable income, with the fringe benefit of making your own hours and living is the kind of place where you don't have to lock the door on your house... Ever.
For me, that tradeoff is worth much more than the difference in income. I live and work in a small Vermont town (population 3,000) with more programming/networking/consulting work than I can possibly handle.
I work for a county agency in a fairly small town in central California. It's not totally in the middle of nowhere, but it's close. I am basically the only IT person for the agency (it's county-wide, but a small county).
It's a nice big-fish-little-pond ego-boosting job.
I think as long as you are not too far from civilization (does Fresno count as civilized?) it's not bad. I have good job security, because few techies would probably want to live out this far.
I have done quite a few repair jobs after work, as well.
The real downside here is that the multitude of farms around make for a fairly nasty smell, and the town is a little, uh, country-music-and-nascar oriented for my taste...
"If you're really isolated (ie. on a farm), then you will have more problems."
Problem's can be made into opportunities. One of my former employers started out 20 years ago, in a barn, and now they're in the fortune 1000. With present day technology(2) and decent roads(1), a high/medium-tech manufacturing business can be started(3). With a local workforce with a good work ethic. Don't forget that the land is cheaper (taxes too), with room for expansion, unlike near a big city.
(1) Ideal is a small town near a majour highway.
(2) If you have a business acceptable internet connection? You can sell your product exclusively over the internet.
(3) One of the hardest things about starting a business, isn't the starting. But what do you start? Use your imagination. You could be the largest maker of coffee novelty mugs, or a board stuffer for a larger customer. Now with interest rates being low, this is the perfect time to start a business.
BTW Don't forget to investigate tele-work as an option in recruiting employees. R & D could be somewere out in the middle of nowere. OSS too.
BTW-II Above all else HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN! Even if you decide to not do it now. This will help you make that decision.
I would look around Middle Georgia, Robins Air Force Base is pretty big (biggest employer in Georgia) and employs a whole lot of civilians, and then there are all the contractors, but if you go 30 min. out of town you are in amongst the farms, or there is alot of suburbia if you would rather that. If you are good it should not be a deal to get a job on base or with a contractor.
You live in DC, and aren't willing to commute 1 or two hours? I'm here in MD and it's insane how far people will drive to work. Carpool from Richmond!? Drive from Baltimore!?
I once had a co-worker say "yeah, an hour and a half is about my limit"! What. The. Hell!
So do what everybody else does: move further out, contribute to the sprawl, and clog I-270!
Seriously though, consider someplace like Annapolis or southern MD like La Plata. There's a bus that'll take you all the way from Anapolis to I Street, so you have some options.
You could live anywhere and try to get gigs from sites like ITMoonlighter.com (recently acquired by guru.com, or RentACoder.com, etc., except you may be competing with programmers in Bulgaria and India willing to work for $1500/mo or less, but if the hiree wants an American or someone more local that would give you an advantage.
If anybody ever gave me an ultimatum requiring me to drop everything, abandon my livlihood and move hundreds of miles away, I'd be out the door before nightfall.
It may not be that simple. From the facts presented, we don't really know how much she has sacrificed for him. Marriages is, as you say, a two way street. We don't know who has been doing the lion's share of the taking up to this point.
He needs to look in the mirror and ask himself (a) whether she's worth it, and (b) the effect that such a move would have on the "ballance sheet". Not that I advocate keeping score, but your gut should tell you whether she's entitled to having it her way this time.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
If, on the other hand, you really hate long commutes, then you might want to look other places to settle, unless your employer will consider letting you telecommute.
You might try the government, they generally die for good, experienced techs. You will find that a fair number of state capitals are smaller cities, with relativly good lifestyle (relative to the size) as the politicians feel it is important to ensurea decent level of culture there. There are also a ton of government agencies that are spread throughout the country.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Public school systems are constantly needing _qualified_ personnel for IT problems. I live in a rural area, work as a sys-admin/help desk for a public school. There are plenty of perks to working for schools, like your not going to work nights, weekends, and count on getting at least 4 weeks off in the summer, 2 weeks for Christmas, and scattered days throughout the year. In addition to the public school that employees me, I also occassionally do work for about 2 other schools in my area. On a yearly basis, I make about $40,000 (don't laugh, in this area that is great, average teacher salary: $25,000, everyone else works in factories).
:wq
Interesting definition of "two way street". The guy's problem is to advance his career, the woman's is to make the sacrifices necessary for him to do so. How's your marriage, I wonder?
Couples often have to make difficult choices when one partner's needs conflict with those of the other. Does her problem with urban living rate with his problem finding work? That's something they have to decide for themselves -- you're in no position to decide for them.
This from a guy who lives in Mom's basement. The closest he's ever been to a woman was when the dental hygienist last flossed his pearlies...
I'm a tech writer, and the latest problem in my profession is: how do you interview an engineer who's never awake at the same time as you are? I suppose that problem is doable (though I haven't actually had to do it yet) but I'd balk at dealing with a sysadmin on the other side of the planet.
Dude, do you have any idea how much a good plumber makes?
Scary.
Less Talk, More Beer.
I have to comment on "I can't really explain what makes us compatible.". If you figure it out, you should bottle it and sell it. That would be the end of your money issues!
... from the sprawling metropolis known as "LA" to a quiet, old, relatively bustling, small country German town.
Best thing ever. Great experience. Massive out of control Cities are a crime!
(Of course, I work for one of the coolest companies in the world too, so that might have something to do with my glee...)
If you can, get out of the city. At least for some portion of your life.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
There are many nice state schools in Virginia. UVa and Virginia Tech both have solid CS departments. Maybe you could even get a job working for the school's IT department. Incidently, if you pull it off, I'd appreciate you telling me how you did it (spent several years in IT and I'm finishing my BS now). It doesn't seem like an impossible task. I'd recommend you talk to the local LUG. They'd probably give you a heads up. I'd actually try traveling to one of their meetings.
Also, you can't get more country than Blacksburg. It's nice if you like open and quiet. There are a few tech companies listed here.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Make sure you have something set up before hand. Even then, scout around where you'll be first. I came to a small town in '99 for contract work (Big mistake), a 3 year contract which wound up being cancelled 18 months in. I was caught flatfooted, and wasn't financially prepared to move back to the larger city I wa from. So I did Service and custom programming for a year, right until September 10, 2001. It seems there was a little event on 9/11/2001 that caused the economy to go a bit soft, and when that happens in a small town, holy hell does it go "soft". I had 3 client go bankrupt by the end of the year, and I don't mean like KMart, I mean like fire the employees, close the doors, sell the building and equipment. Small towns can turn IT careers into a small graveyard on your resume.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I started working in tech when I was in high school, for the school system. This was in a small town, also. (Though it was a relatively large county). Then again, besides that, a few real shit jobs, the job I'm working at now is my first real job. It pays only a little bit higher than what I got paid at the school system, heh. The one good thing about the school system job was that it wasn't taxed, since it was an educational experience. *shrug*
stuff
Don't think that just because you're moving out of the city and into a rural area you're going to be forced to find a job in a rural economy. There are plenty of places in the US that are not the massive sprawl of urbanization that you find out in your part of the country. There are quite a few decently sized cities where you can get out in 'the boonies' with a drive of an hour or so (for example, you can drive from one side of Albuquerque to the other in about 20-30 min in light trafic).
Considering that you're living in a place like DC, where you've probably already got a significant commute, what's the difference, really, between being stuck in traffic for an hour in an overgrown megalopolis and driving that hour at cruising speeds through the areas outside of town?
Even in somewhat larger cities like Seattle (which I just moved from), it's only about 60 miles from the urban core to the edge of the sprawl where you start getting into multi-acre rural lots where people have horses and whatnot.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Charlottesville is a small city, but you should be able to get a place outside of Charlottesville (in one of the surrounding small towns and commute in such that it's "rural," but not have much of a drive. GE Fanuc is on the north side of town, and Kesmai used to be there (when there was a Kesmai). There have got to be other tech job sources in Charlottesville, so poke around.
Dump that bitch. What are you? some kind of pussy?
Check with your current employer to see if jobs are available in other areas. I also work for a DOD contractor who has large operations in DC but we have a project in Bloomington, In. In fact we are hiring developers. Reply if you want more info and I can send you an email.
As another poster asked, define "rural". I live 10 miles outside of Wichita, KS. Prior to 1997 the 2 acre lot my house is on was a wheat field. I have DSL, yet heat with propane, use well water, and have a septic field rather than city sewer. Rural enough? Yet I have a 9 minute commute to work.
I work at a leading communications test equipment company doing DSP, embedded software, and UI design in TCL/Tk. I get to play with 10 million gate FPGAs, 60MSample/second digitizers, microwave comms gear, and stuff that I am not allowed to talk about.
Check out our job offerings - you might just fit.
Now, just up the road (I35, to be exact) is Olathe, KS - a suburb of Kansas City, (KS|MO), wherein there are SEVERAL high-tech job centers.
Down the road is Oklahoma City - again, a city with a fair number of tech jobs, wherein one may live outside the city yet commute without too much difficulty.
Beleive it or not, not all tech development goes on on the coasts. Do a bit of research.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Just in my small (30,000 or so permanent residents) town we have a Big Ten research school, a large defense contracting company, and a large meteorolgical company. We used to have a decent semi-conductor industry, but they're all closing up shop to go over seas.
If that's too large you can always work in my home town (about an hour away and maybe a third the size) there you have a small private college with one of the highest ratios of Nobel Prize laureates to alumni anywhere in higher education.
In short, yes you can find a high tech job in the boonies, and pretty easily at that. You'll have to take a small paycut, but since the cost of living is usually 20%-30% less, you usually end up taking home more money than you did before.
You are attempting to read sigs. Cancel or Allow?
"but I worry I will end up working construction or plumbing"...
Hell, you'd make a damn good living as a plumber and maybe it's the change you need. See here.
-psy
A close friend of mine from college works for a large government contractor in the State College area doing programming. His wife also works for the same and does UNIX sys admin. The main reason they chose that out of collge was the rural area.
Also, Findlay, OH has a Microsoft Office (Formerly Great Plains Solomon). They might be hiring. Findlay is surrounded by small villages and isn't that big itself either. Also, has larger offices for Cooper Tire and Marathon.
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." --Howard Aike
I've spent two separate five-year stints with regional libraries in Kansas doing automation work... running around consulting with tiny libraries helping them figure out how to get the most bang from the small amounts of money they have to spend on computers.
...brig
It's a nice lifestyle... the pay isn't that great compared to what you can make in urban areas, but the cost-of-living is much less and there's a certain amount of non-tangible rewards working for libraries.
-- When I grow up I'd like to be a systems defenestrator.
The extra added benefit of rural living is uber cheap land. I currently own and live on 200 acres with 80 acres being woodland. It's allowed my wife to fulfill her dream of owning a horse ranch. It's quiet, I can only see my neighbors house at night, if they leave the outside lights on. I have DSL, Cable TV, indoor plumbing and the works. Ten years ago I would have told you that I was going to move to a larger city. Now I plan on spending the rest of my life in a rural enviroment. It's pure bliss. YMMV
To Stepford, you'll love it, your wife just might not.
we have idiots who commute backwards, who live in Atlanta and work in the suburbs. Yes, we now get rush hour in both directions. . .
I do a reverse commute in Minneapolis--live in the city, work in the 'burbs. Why? Because I like living in the city and my job happens to be in the 'burbs. I'm a contractor and I've been through a couple career changes since college; if I had to pull up stakes and move every time I got a new job, I'd never unpack.
I hate rush hour and deplore commuting. But it's a good job. And I like my little house, which we bought before the real estate market went crazy. So I spend an hour a day in my car. I can tolerate that.
Draw a circle around a metro area where the jobs are. If you anticipate changing jobs at some point, and you don't want to endure a horrifically long commute, the smartest move is to find a dwelling somewhere near the center of the circle. Then the drive to any job in the metro area is bearable. But if you buy yourself a house out on the fringe of that circle, Murphy's law says your next job will be on the opposite side. (That's not the main reason I choose to live in the city, but it's a factor.)
I worked for many years for the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC-DD) in King George County, VA (a.k.a. Dahlgren). As I understand there's plenty of tech-stuff going on there.
It's so rural you'll have a red neck inside of a week (mostly for protective/camo purposes. Throw away that volvo, get yourself a beat up Ford truck with a gun rack in the back. If it's good enough for your department head, it's good enough for you).
The only reason I moved is most of my family lives in the NJ area. Oh, and your salary tended to cap out at $60K, at least as a contractor.
No seriously, or rather, a town outside of a college town. I go to a medium sized student public university in western North Carolina in the mountains. Outside of the town, it's an hour+ drive to anything, but because of the colleg,e there are all sorts of technology related things.
Several Hi-speed ISP's
The local cable co
The (shudder) university it dept.
And other stuff
Now, you aren't going to find a software development firm, but theres plenty of other stuff.
Been doing it for over a year now and it has been great. I work on various programming / sys admin type jobs which I can do over the internet. I have DSL access so that helps, if I was stuck on dial up I don't know if it would be as viable.
I live outside (in a rural area) a town of 50K-60K, not counting the students at the local universities. I know one guy that all he does is Mac consulting work, partly because he's good at it and also because he's one of the few people in town with that skill. In his case, newspapers are big on Macs, so he got his foot in the door that way, then most of his customers arrive by word of mouth. He also does some light advertising of his services, which is a cheap method around here to let people know what he does and how to get hold of him (and has a webpage, of course).
We need a little more input here. Are you just looking to move to a suburb of the area you're in, or are you considering the whole rest of the country?
As a midwesterner, I take a little offense to the idea that leaving "the big city" means there is no tech. We've got plenty of tech jobs in places that aren't full of smog and crime.
You hinted that you might want to pursue a MS, how about doing that full-force? Move to Ames, IA or Urbana-Champaign, IL and get your MS in a small city.
..I've lived in every major metro area on the west and east coast, and a few major cities in Europe.
After the dotcom boom ended, I thought moving to a rural area would be the thing to do. Unfortunately, we picked a town of 15 people an hour outside a town of 35,000. It's a pretty uneducated area and there's not much of a white collar community.
I teach at the local college and I picked up 14/hours a week at a local non-profit. It gets me by, and I also have two online businesses. The problem is I'm working far below my level and I'm frustrated. There's a general lack of professionalism out here, so I'm not enjoying my interactions with the locals.
I'm heading out this summer.. back to a bigger city. I'll be "California adjacent" and I'll keep the rural house for a retreat. These were particularly bad circumstances, but it may be worth keeping in mind.
Hello:
I used to live and work in Des Moines, Iowa and in Leavenworth, Kansas. I was a programmer and consultant in both places, and found the work interesting and mostly cutting edge, with some exceptions. If I didn't want to live in an urban / suburban school district, I could have moved a whole 10 miles out of town and gotten a nice farm with horses, a field, etc. Of course, horses require maintenance too, so beware of extra jobs you take on if you move to a "farm" and have 'pets' of cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens, etc.
Note that if you choose Des Moines, you'll probably find a lot of jobs are in the insurance industry (no, I don't know why). Lots and Lots of insurance there. If you don't mind working in the industry, it's a pretty nice place to be.
Likewise, you could live near Kansas City and definitely live somewhere rural. Topeka, Kansas is a decent sized town and you'd find some high tech there in the form of sysadmin work.
I'm sure the same goes wherever you live in the U.S., that medium sized towns offer quite a lot of opportunity for rural living, some small commute of 15-20 minutes, and a decent medium/high tech job.
Oh - and let's not forget University towns like Ames IA, Iowa City, Lawrence KS, Omaha NE, Lincoln NE, Champaign IL, etc. They have lots of high tech jobs but quite a bit of rural opportunity.
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with technology everyone knows that you can work almost anywhere and still be intouch. As for moving to a smaller area, with the defense experience that you have I would assume that you have security clearence and that will almost gurantee you a job in SW Virginia.
Sig removed by order of FBI Patriot ACT
I wouldn't want to work with the existing staff at my school system. First, everything is proprietary, and would be difficult to convert. Second, they attempt to censor web access. Third, they are incompetent. Students with almost no technecal knowlege are always finding security holes and exploiting them. Most of the computers carry malware of some type. If anything goes wrong, the staff just clones a new drive without any attempt to prevent a repeat.
Simon's Rock College
If you don't want to leave the DC area, consider looking around the Pax River (MD)/Dahlgren (VA) areas. Both areas are basically swarming with defense contractors, most tech related, but there are still lightly-populated areas nearby. Southern Maryland is building up quickly, but is still considered rural (we don't even have a 24-hour Wal Mart or grocery store, or a mall!). Same with the area of Virginia just south of the Nice bridge. Close enough to the big city to enjoy the good things (or commute -- if you're a masochist), but far enough away to enjoy small-town or even rural living.
I too was a tech worker in DC. While I loved the city, I wanted a little more space and decided to move to Chesapeake Beach in Calvert County. It is rural. Nascar, drive through liqour, shotguns in pickups. I just couldn't stand the suburbs.
Now I'm 45 minutes to DC. From my door to the US Capitol. 38 if I speed a bit. Those commute times aren't much worse than Dulles to DC I should note.
For what it is worth, I bought a home here and a condo in DC for LESS than it would cost to buy a house in a good area of DC proper. When I have a lot of work in DC, I spend the night there, but when I can I get out here.
Needless to say, they have a difficult time finding programmers willing to move to Monett, MO, so you'd have an advantage there. Land/houses are cheap there too. For the price of a house in DC you can buy a 100 acre farm in Monett with a house, a barn, and maybe even some livestock.
One problem with college towns is that many of them don't have enough of a local economy outside the university to be able to have a decent non-student life. If everything revolves around the school, then jobs tend to be mostly filled by "slave labor", the student who will do anything for minimum wage and isn't moving anywhere until after graduation.
Depending on how far you are willing to drive/commute you can stay in DC and your wife can get the rural fix. Have you looked at the Eastern Shore of Maryland? Its a long commute but it isn't THAT far, and its plenty rural, farms and everything, but you have nice proximity to Annapolis. Just an idea, maybe you and your wife can meet in the middle.
-G
"Immolation is the sincerest form of flattery."
I know this is flaim bait, but this is truely my opinion.
You have a good job in the city, why ruin it? You said she will go with or without you..... Come on, what a bitch. I would dump her ass in a cow pasture and tell her to go on her merry way.
Don't get walked all over by your wife. Marriage is a two way street.... She needs to understand that you have needs too and not to be so selfish.
During the bust, I managed to land a good gig at a small company in the piney woods of Louisiana about an hour away from the town I was living in. I make about half of what I could pull down in a major metro (and turned down a six figure salary to come here), but the cost of living here is low. The hours can be long, but I really enjoy my job, work with a great team of people, and have much less stress that I would experience in a big city. I started out as the "computer guy", though I'd been doing software development work for the previous few years - web development. Now I'm the IT Director with a growing staff and the inventory management web app I built has turned into a good source of revenue for the company, having been purchased by seven other companies. I've since relocated to the little town (am posting from work on a late Friday night) to cut 10 hours out of my week and be less than 5 minutes from home. I don't care for the "big city"; never have, probably never will. I've been with this little company for nearly three years and hope I'll be here for the next twenty. The downside is that it's hard to find good IT folks willing to relocate to the sticks. I'm trying to hire a developer or two right now.
I wasn't considering leaving Silicon Valley when this discussion started. But now I'll have to give it some serious thought!
The only downside I see to living in New Mexico is that when you travel to the rest of the country, you keep having to explain to geographical ignoramuses that you're not a furrener. I believe that's why New Mexico is the only state that puts "USA" on its license plates!
Wal-Mart's HQ is in what many here will consider a rural area. They have a sizeable IT staff.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Same thing with most companies (on all points), Ghost is the messiah.
stuff
I lived and worked in Ithaca NY for a couple of years, and it definitely meets your requirements for rural living. Ithaca is a small rural town in the finger lakes region of NY (think wineries and dairy farms) that is also the home to Ithaca College and Cornell University. The area definitely has the rural "feel" to it, but because of the two schools it isn't totally backwards, technologically speaking. Finding work in your field shouldn't be an issue, either through one of the universities or through a private company based in the area.
If you dont like long, cold upstate NY winters, I would imagine that other rural college towns might meet your needs, as well.
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www.moneybythenumbers.com
You could easily find an IT job in a medium size city (pop between 50,000-250,000) and live about 45 minutes away and be in the country side. PA and New Jersey both have many areas where you could do this and I would assume you could do this in NC, MD, NY as well.
at present. How rural are you talking? This town has 231 people in it but we're practically out of town too. You could very well set up a computer shop in a larger town, one that at least has a dozen store fronts. Realize one thing though. Once the local population has a computer, they probably won't buy one from you again for many years. You won't have much recurring business. You could offer classes of course. One of the biggest money makers is to offer internet access in a town that doesn't already have it. My local telco owns about 2 dozen exchanges here in rural Kansas and Nebraska. They also handle the cable TV. Since they of course own the lines they can easily provide fancy smancy Internet options that other rural places could only dream of. This town with 231 people in it has DSL. The neighboring town doesn't get it's phone service from this company but they do get their cable TV from them. That town has cable modems. My folks' new house north of town 5 miles is going to be on with long-range Ethernet soon. They've offered dialup since 96 or so. I was their second helpdesk person hired at the time. I now keep their servers running like clockwork and have had a hand in some of their networking over the years. That's another possibility. Get on with a local telco/ISP. They can always use a good programmer/sysadm. Learn to set up custom applications to handle all types of user data and billing in databases. Make user info available via LDAP. Things like that. It may seem rudimentary to you and I but I can assure you that few small town ISPs have this. Everything they do now is replicated in multiple locations and is very disorganized. Learn to provide this functionality. If you want to learn a trade that ISPs will always need, hone your spam-filtering and security skills. These are two skills that will always be needed. Also, give your local school district a try. Perhaps you could work for them part-time to keep their servers running or provide them with custom-built machines with support. There's lots of options in the sticks. You just have to look for them. Me, I want to live miles and miles from the nearest person and yet have very high speed Internet access. I also want to be able to get to town quickly for supplies and entertainment. This is why I plan on getting my pilot's license. :) Best of luck.
Sloth love Chunk!!!!!!
Rocky-Road!!!!!!
--- Oh! I thought you said Goonies!
If you move 2 hours away, you'll probalby still have access to broadband, and will be out of the city. If you're in a technology sector, you can probably convince them to let you telecommute 3 or 4 days a week. And come into the office 1 or 2 times a week. That cuts down on your long distance commuting, but shows you're still dedicated enough to your job to come in once in awhile and let them know you still work there. I have been telecommuting since november and we have meetings once a week I need to attend. You can always resort to dialup too. If you're a sysadmin or programmer, you can still ssh into your server and do your work in vim/emacs without needing a huge pipe. Forget about the porn and mp3s though - you will get used to the slow browsing after a few weeks :-)
Other option is satellite - no idea if it's any good though.
It's All Politics
Have any of you moved from the hustle bustle of the big city to the peaceful countryside and actually found good work?
I moved from a small town (pop. 17K, relatively isolated) to the "Big City" and had all kinds of trouble finding work - in fact I still have not been able to find an IT-type job, after almost 2 years...
Depending on how rural you get, you may have no problem finding work with a small computer repair place, local university, hospital, etc. Your level of expertise will determine how your skill set rates compared to the locals.
I live out in the countryside, about 50 miles south of DC in a little county called Caroline County. I moved here about 5 years ago and there is little growth. I work for a Network Security company in D.C.and i have no problem comuting every day......
... to get a job. It's truely bizarre, but after being an unemployed software developer for almost a year in the Vancouver area, I ended up with a development position in a small town (less than 20,000 people) on Vancouver Island. Most people are jealous, but I actually prefer the city; i'm not cut out for small town life. But it pays the bills. I actually telecommute when I can from the city to the office in booneyland.
Your clearly unemployed, don't lash out at others because of it.
I'll second that. It's a MAJOR timesaver when you have 120 students walking around with leased laptops. They always find ways to mess up the machines. What's easier: Spend 10 minutes cloning a partition, or an hour or more trying to cleanup a machine that has every known piece of spyware/malware on it?
I recently visited a commune way out in BFE. The largest town within decent distance (30 min drive) is around 4k. It's more of an ecological friendly expirentmental village than a commune. Everyone who lives there year round has some sort of job that can be done from a distance like web design, travel agent. Check them out at http://www.dancingrabbit.org. Pretty nice group.
There are a couple of other options you may want to explore. One is to start your own website. This is the option I am currently doing. I was a MCT in Chicago and we relocated to southeast Georgia. Needless to say, there isn't a lot of Microsoft high-end training work here. About 4 months after we got here I was expecting our 1st child and couldn't fly. So now I'm starting my own e-publishing site. The other is to look for a rural tech job. Yes, there is such a thing. Contact every headhunter you can find and send a resume with a cover letter stating that you are willing to relocate to a rural area. Techs are often needed at large manufacturing plants, which are located in rural areas. Check out the websites of companies like John Deere, Purina, Westinghouse, General Mills, Quaker Oats, etc. and see if they have job openings. Often they have a hard time filling tech jobs because techs don't want to live in the middle of no-where. I know techs are needed at these kind of locations because I use to travel to these sites to train them. Target areas that you are willing to locate to and contact their chamber of commerce. Ask who their largest employers are and then send a resume. Hope this helps.
A few items to consider: