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Handling a Cross Country Move?
Tarin.n asks: "For the past 2 years, I have worked remotely from the East Coast for a Silicon Valley company. The company is now considering moving me to the west coast, so that I can be closer to their headquarters. I'm trying to make a list of questions to ask of the company as we discuss this transition, as well as a list of items to take care of personally for such a move. What experience have others on Slashdot had with a cross-country move? Specifically, what should I ask and watch out for?"
You're probably much better off selling/giving away all of your large things (beds, wine cabinets, couches) and purchasing new ones at your new home. I moved from one end of New York State to the other a while back, and the cost of trucking my worldly possessions downstate was only slightly less than buying new worldly possessions. Consider the cost of a large enough truck, diesel fuel, time, food on the road, et cetera, and it adds up.
As for the rest, pack your bags as though you were going off on a long trip, and ship everything else.
Now, if you can't divest yourself of your current furnishings, or have large, difficult-to-move things that you -must- retain, you're pretty-much boned from the start. Being mobile in the modern world means travelling light, not amassing tons of "stuff," and generally being willing to lose it all and move on.
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I moved to the Philadelphia suburbs from Michigan several years ago. At a volunteer function, somebody was going to make run over to a sandwich shop to get lunch for everybody. I ordered an Italian hoagie.
"With oil or mayo?", asked the person who was making the run.
"Neither. I'd like mustard on my sandwich. Brown if they have it, otherwise yellow is OK."
I swear to God, all conversation stopped and everyone stared at me. These were all people who had grown up in the Philadelphia area, locals for at least 5 genereations.
"Mustard? On a hoagie? You want me to ask them to put mustard on a hoagie?" She sounded like I'd asked for a crunchy frog with a side of anthrax ripple.
Asking for mustard on a sandwich was apparently such an outrageously bizzare concept that, it took me a minute or two to convince them that I was serious about it, and did not want oil or mayo, but mustard. This was such heresey, that one year later, at this same function, this woman's son referred to me as the guy who wanted mustard on his hoagie.
This, in a place where they put mustard on pretzels, and eat it with a straight face.
Your biggest problem won't be computer, work or salary related... it will be cultural.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
1) Make sure that you are cool with downsizing your place. Not sure where you are coming from, but in almost every case you will get a smaller house/apartment for the same $ out here in Silly Valley.
2) Find out about opportunities and resources to participate in the things that you love to do in your time off of work. In most cases you will find that this area is great for all sorts of pursuits, but make sure.
3) Make sure that you enjoy interacting with an incredibly diverse cultural group of people. This is one of the coolest things about living in California. I have however seen a lot of instances of people that move here from out of state and have trouble relating to the diverse ethnic groups (generally this does not seem to happen with east coast transplants - it seems to be more of middle-america thing). One of my favorite things about the Bay Area is that in most areas you are virtually unlimited in the new types of cuisine you can try on a daily basis. It's kinda cool to be able to eat your way around the world without leaving your own town.
4) Make sure that you like to drive. Unless you are in the middle of SF, public transit is only useful in very specific cases. It just isn't deployed widely enough to be a full time option for many people, so traffic is a part of life. This brings up another related point - when you are plotting out how much more pay you will need in order to make the move, be sure that the increase includes enough to be as close as possible to your office. In California a lot of people are moving farther out into the central part of the state and driving huge distances to get to work due to the availability of (somewhat) cheaper housing. Try not to be one of these people. :-)
All in all, this is a wonderful place to be. Hopefully these items will help you to decide if it will be the right place for you.
Good luck!
\/\/oobie
I lost my job, and a friend of mine found me work in Pittsburgh, and so I moved from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, PA. I'm afraid I still haven't recovered from the culture shock of being in Pittsburgh. I now plan to move to the Philippines instead of staying in Pittsburgh because the place is so depressing to me. I'm going to keep my cost of living very low so I can make a startup venture work, but above all because I think I'll find a better life there.
In moving to the Bay Area or Los Angeles, you can be assured that your destination isn't depressing, but it will look horribly expensive. Food's actually cheaper (and higher quality) thanks to intense competition, but housing makes up for all that and more. However, the fact that you won't have to pay much for heat helps a lot. Heat in the east is more expensive even than air conditioning in Los Angeles. Real estate taxes are high, but lower than you might think based on the value of the homes. A $150,000 house in the Pittsburgh city proper actually has higher taxes than a $428,000 house in Los Angeles.
I'd recommend checking out http://www.craigslist.org/ and http://www.realtor.com/ for your destination city to get a handle on the cost of living adjustment. Check out the housing sections for Craigslist.
Don't find your mover via Craigslist, though. The one I eventually used was unprofessional and did a poor job with my stuff. The actual worth of your stuff is likely to be very close to the cost of moving it; unfortunately, that's not true of the cost of re-buying it new. In other words, if you have a desk that you bought for $1,000 you'll be lucky to sell it for $200, but moving it will cost $300. If you're patient and can find something equivalent for $300 at your destination, then you're better off selling your stuff than moving it. If it's something that will be difficult or expensive to find at your destination, then you're better off moving it.
If you're driving your own car, ignore the advice I saw elsewhere and cram as much in it as possible. I took most of my computer equipment that way, and boy was I happy to have it before I got the rest of my stuff!
In the end, unless you have really strong ties where you are, you'll probably like the west coast more than the east. The cold-weather East, at least to my eyes, has been an exceptionally drab and depressing experience and I will be very glad to leave it.
Good luck!
D
...to people in the East. You just don't deviate from normal patterns and expect to get away with it. There's a cultural freedom in CA that we take for granted until we go elsewhere. The rest of the world is not like that. Dare I say it, it's a big reason CA has been such a font of innovation. People feel free to try anything, without a bunch of naysaying from the peanut gallery. In CA, doing new things, or old things a new way, is encouraged, rather than disparaged.
I had to Google NEN to determine that it stands for New England Nuclear. Sorry, no can do. The only isotopes I use are permanent fixtures of my irradiator, just over 50,000 Curies of cesium-137, behind three feet of steel and lead. *Warm* steel and lead.
I didn't see 28 Days, but I can certainly understand the sentiment. Irradiated food is not only safe, wholesome and nutritious, it is ofter safer, healthier and more nutritious than non-irradiated food, since the spoilage organisms and any human pathogens have been eliminated. This is especially important for commodities that have a history of foodborne illness outbreaks, or in an environment where multiple foods may pose an increased risk of harboring pathogens.
This isn't just me spouting the party line because I drank the Kool-Aid. There's more than 60 years of research by industry, academia and government on the safety and nutritional adequacy of irradiated food, and it's culminated in as solid an endorsement as anything could receive.
I'm presenting a talk on the subject at the Institute of Food Technologists's annual meeting in Orlando this July. Any Slashdotters who are registered for the meeting may want to swing by.
Plasma treatment of food is also deeply, deeply cool. There are some exceptionally fascinating aspects to this technology, not just for food, but for lots and *lots* of applications. You'll be hearing more about it in two or three years. As it happens, I'm writing a book chapter on non-thermal plasma treatment of food. It's open in another window, and I should be working on it instead of procrastinating on Slashdot.
I like my job. It's fun being a scientist.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain