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?"

Comments

Don't move to Kansas.

[CycoChuck]

Unless you're going to live in or around the Kansas City area, Kansas is pretty much a dead end in tech jobs.

Lots of defense work in less urban areas

[crmartin]

I'm doing some Navy stuff, and work with several off hand:

• 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.

Re:Lots of defense work in less urban areas

[(startx)]

I've got to add St. Louis and Kansas City Missouri to your list. Both are fairly large cities with real country under a half-hour away. You can live on several acres of land, surrounded by no one, and still drive into the city on a daily basis for work at any number of tech places/defense contractors in both cities.
Plus, life just seems to move a little slower/more relaxed out here than it does on the east coast.

We did

[ccarr.com]

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.

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 :). 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.

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.

Define rural (again)

[wowbagger]

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.

Rural areas near DC

[cyoung1035]

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.