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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?"
One thing that they might not be to open about (or even aware of) is the cost of living differences. Living on the east coast with the salary you're making might make you feel wealthy. Moving to the west coast with the same salary might put you in the poor house.
Be aware of the cost of living differences between two markets (even within the same metropolis on occasion!).
Watch out for tunnels in the Rocky Mountains. They are pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. Or a Balrog. Either way not fun.
Shades of Grayden
- One-time relocation expense reimbursement
- Bump in salary if new location is more expensive than old location (salary calculator)
- Assistance with finding a house or apartment
More important is how this will affect your family. Being single will make the decision easier, but being hitched with kids will make this truly a life-changing event.
Make sure to get a list from them in writing of all expenses that they will cover. This includes gas/mileage/meals/hotels for the drive. Also make sure that temporary expenses are covered for your arrival (eg, 1 to 2 months apartment rental if you're looking to buy a house). If possible, try to get a chunk of this upfront. If they won't do that, ask them how long reimbursement will take. Some places won't reimburse you until you've worked there for 6 months or a year. This is to make sure that you don't have them cover your moving costs and then bail on them. Oh yeah, and did I mention to get the whole agreement in writing?
This guy's the limit!
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.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Be very careful while choosing the moving company. Choose some one who is reputable and reliable, rather than using some one who promises low upfront costs.
My friend moved from west cost to east, a couple of years ago, the moving company said the truck broke down midway, and didn't deliver his goods for 2 months, and when it finally arrived, the truck driver, wouldn't unload, unless he was paid 500$ extra. Moving companies are a big rip off, if you are not careful.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I recently moved cross country for a job six months ago.. (NorthEast to SouthWest)
Insurance... Verify with your home owners/renters insurance that your stuff is covered during the move... My GF's mother is an insurance agent and figured out that the stuff that is offered by the moving company (PODS, decent experience, except that the stuff was late, due to Katrina) was useless.. We then inquired our home owners, and at least with mine, I was covered.. Otherwise... Your stuff may not be covered during the move..
Do not buy a place right away.. Rent first to learn the area... Make it known that you will be renting.. Otherwise everyone and their cousin will be telling that someone they know is a realestate agent in the area you are moving too..
Order of operations... First, fly out there to pick out a house/apartment.. Same trip/Next trip, stay in new apartment, --buy a new bed--.. Its a new start, might as well start over.. Dont go cheap.. Plus if your stuff shows up late, at least you're not sleeping on the floor.. This was our saving grace..
Make sure you get a decent salray adjustment.. You will spend more money than you think on the move, maybe over budget.. I know I did..
I'm sure others will have good advice...
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
Assuming that you're happy with compensation, benefits, etc... in a perfect world, you want:
- You stuff moved by professional movers
- Some cash to handle incidentals (rent deposits, hotels, various fees for starting utilities, etc)
If they aren't paying for anything, then get as much money as you can, sell whatever you can part with and stuff all of your crap in a POD (www.pods.com) or something similar.
I wouldn't move for a company unwilling to pay for relocation, unless I was two years out of college and didn't really own anything.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Dont go for any of those deals where they load it onto a truck and carry to your location. A friend of mine working for Boeing had a car get *totaled* because they droped another car onto hers during the unloading process... 6 weeks after she last saw the car. Thats when it was scheduled to arrive, and boeing paid for a rental car for the entire time she was waiting for her car, and while she shopped for a new car, and didnt have to pay anything out of pocket save for her time and trouble. I have 7 other friends who got their cars moved, with time spans not less than 2 weeks, and one of these guys got his car back with a cracked windshield. His company also took care of him, but still.
The moral is I wont ever trust one of these companies with my car.
Sometimes, and at least once in every life, you should completely uproot yourself and move on. Better still if you can go to a different country. If you can get your employer to pay for it then that's even better still.
And yes I do have some ties to the old home town. Every now and again I go back and visit my father (mom died a few years back) and I'm glad I got to really see some more of this world. Vacations aren't enough. You have to go out there and live.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
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 crammed 14 vanilla box PC computers..."
You bring up a point that I needed to address simply to move across the state.
"Do I really NEED this?"
I've moved 4 times in 6 months, its about to become 5. I'm a college student doing work at other schools in the state and the next one will be out to Germany. Each time I've moved I have found things like old computers, empty shell casings, "project enclosures" (old liqor bottles and neat metal boxes, old notes from classes, clothes that don't fit, clothes that I never wear, sex toys from ex's that were angrily thrown somewhere, pots/pans that were totally redundant, glassware (I was living alone and had nearly 150 glasses, mugs, and cups), the list goes on.
The thing is, I donated, recycled, sold, and disposed of nearly 70% of my posessions. I still have the things that have value to me, either useful value or sentimental value, but I don't have all the clutter and the 'stuff'. Open space, and not having a self-stor unit crammed to the gills with scrap is incredibly liberating.
I finally ended my excile and returned to Las Vegas last summer, with two more children and much more stuff than when it started.
#1. Don't use U-Haul. The web pages about disaster experiences aren't exagerations. Your "reservation" is issued automatically, without even a cursory check as to the availability of trucks. They finally found me one an entire day late--90 miles from where I should ahve received one. The average age of their fleet is significantly older than all of their competitors.
#2. Throw it away. Unless you're absolutely certain that you'll actually use it, toss it. Then do it again. Then toss everything, and only take out what you *really* need. Then throw a bunch more away.
#3. Don't use U-haul. Few people have had positive experiences with them., and the horror stories are common.
#4. Avoid U-haul at all costs.
#5. Be *entirely* packed and living out of suitcases and a couple of plates a full week before you leave. You *will* run over.
#6. Did I mention not to use U-haul?
#7. Film your old rental housing for when your former landlord comes up with "interesting" charges. Insist that the landlord do a final walkthrough with you--but the place needs to be empty for this.
#8. Most importantly, don't use U-haul.
#9. If using a rental truck and there are any mountains in your path, or even those little bumps that the easterners fancy to be mountains, you want a diesel and not a gas engine. The difference in fuel consumption is significant, but the diesels are much better on grades.
#10. Don't use U-haul.
#11. Consider alternate starting and stopping points. Rates are based upon the amount of trucks going each way. By going 60 miles further east to pick up a truck and overshooting Las Vegas for Orange county, I knocked more than a third off the rental price. Everyone was leaving my part of PA, whle everyone goes *to* Las Vegas, and everyone is fleeing California. There's a discount for bringing a truck *to* California, and a surcharge for leaving one in Vegas.
#12. Pay the damage waive ron the truck. Really. It's a dumb move on a car, but you're driving something big that's easy to bump and scratch. I'm, umm, well ahead of the game on this one. It also helps when the equipment malfunctions and damages itself; there's no issue of them charging you (On my previous move, the hitch failed on myU-haul trailer and rammed the truck, ruining much of the equipment on the tongue).
Now, for an unfortunate, sad, fact of life: Only uhaul rents large closed trailers one-way. This is why I ignored my past experience and used them last summer. What I *should* have done was rent a Penske truck and a U-haul trailer, slapped a hitch onto my van (which has Class IV towing), and moved it to the Penske at the house. There hav ebeen many reports of U-haul refusing to hand over trailers to those who show up in competitor's trucks, claiming that that model doesn't appear on their list of approved vehicles (5,000 pound towing capacity needed).
Aside from being over a day late, our u-haul broke down three (3) times. After a thousand miles, it threw the trailer off the hitch. According to the repairman who came out, the hitch was properly attached (besides, we *had* travelled 1,000 miles by then), and couldn't have come off unless the ball was undersized.
Then, coming over the first major downgrade on the Rockies, the transmission *selector*, not the transmission, broke, leaving me stuck in thrird gear. Massive damage to the brakes (completely smoked), and the truck sp0ent a week in a Uhaul depot waiting for a part (again, old trucks).
Once it was ready, it turned out to be massively overweight, and we had to rent a Penske to offload 5,000 lbs. With the U-haul and Penske approximately equally loaded, we attached the trailer to the Penske. Even with the trailer, it would blow past the U-haul, even uphill.
Finally, approaching Vegas, the uhaul started overheating. We ended up dumping it in Vegas, as it wouldn't have made it to Orange county, anyway.
hawk, who never wants to move again.
...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