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

Re:Tele-Working

[Mr. Ophidian Jones]

...systems admin and code-cutting are two IT related roles that can be performed reasonably easily from a remote location.

Yeah, like India. :(

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.

Here's my experience.

[Deagol]

Define "rural". :-)

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.