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Remote Workers Can Get a Cushy Apartment, Free Office Space, and $10K If They Move To Tulsa (nextgov.com)
Tulsa, Oklahoma is offering full-time remote workers in the U.S. free office space, a subsidized furnished apartment, and $10,000 cash if you move there and stay for at least one year. The city wants to attract so-called "digital nomads," who would, presumably, start paying taxes, launch businesses, and otherwise contribute to the economy of wherever they're drawn to. Nextgov reports: Tulsa Remote is one of several revitalization projects in the region funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The Tulsa-based philanthropic organization was started by George B. Kaiser, an oil and banking billionaire who has signed on to Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates' "Giving Pledge," whose wealthy signees promise to give away at least half their fortunes to charity.
The organization has budgeted for 20 new remote workers in the program's first year, says Ken Levit, GKFF's executive director. Applicants must be at least 18, eligible to work in the U.S., already working full-time for an employer based outside the boundaries of Tulsa County, and prepared to move to Tulsa within six months. Applications opened Tuesday at the website TulsaRemote.com; the city hopes to settle the first new residents within the next three months, Levit said.
The organization has budgeted for 20 new remote workers in the program's first year, says Ken Levit, GKFF's executive director. Applicants must be at least 18, eligible to work in the U.S., already working full-time for an employer based outside the boundaries of Tulsa County, and prepared to move to Tulsa within six months. Applications opened Tuesday at the website TulsaRemote.com; the city hopes to settle the first new residents within the next three months, Levit said.
Tulsa's clearly a great town. Just kidding; the only part of it that didn't completely suck was within the four walls of Wild Oats Supermarket (it was lthe closest you could get to leaving that shitty state)... and Whole Foods put a stop to that a while back.
Sound like a smart and potentially effective programm to Kickstart local economy to me. If digital natives are what you're looking for this could work way better than throwing obscene amounts of tax cuts in Amazons direction.
Someone has been thinking outside of the box. That alone makes this program and it's proposal intriguing.
If I were an USian, I'd check this out.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Having lived in OK for a few years, more parts are shit-holish than not. There are small pockets of nice areas, but I'm pretty sure Tulsa isn't one of them. This seems like their gasping for new blood.
This comment is redundant but who would want to live in Oklahoma. It certainly wouldn't be me. If I wasn't retired and was working remotely I can think of a thousand other places I'd rather live than Oklahoma. I guess if you're just getting started on your career it could be kind of attractive but you usually don't get the privilege of working remotely until you've proven yourself.
Oklahoma is hurtling off of a fiscal cliff, and it's entirely self-inflicted. They must be getting desperate.
https://www.csmonitor.com/Busi...
https://www.economist.com/unit...
Feds could easily snap their fingers and send several thousand new knowledge worker jobs to Tulsa within the next 1-3 years just by giving marching orders to a few agencies to move out of metro DC and set up jobs in that general region. It would also save the taxpayers probably on the order of 25-40% on contract costs.
I have never understood why the other 48 states, particularly California with all of its collective bitching about paying more than it receives, has allowed MD and VA to grow fat on all of these jobs. Metro DC could easily be forcibly disassembled by the other 48 states legislatively if they chose to cooperate.
Would the time taken for the move on a whim be about a day?
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I'm a freelancer who would love to get in on this idea. I don't qualify, however, as I am not a fulltimer. Good luck, Tulsa! Looks like North Carolina remains at the top of my list.
Chandler: Y'know how people say that Tulsa is the Paris of Oklahoma?
Monica: What? Who says that?
Chandler: People who've never been to Paris.
The One where Emma cries / 12:50
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Although the extra position left of the decimal point would improve recruiting efforts, I suspect you meant $1.0x10^4...
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Ok, I'm going to break it down real simple for you because the point just flew over your head like a Space-X rocket over a Pacific cargo cult...
1. These are government jobs. "Duh free merkitz" don't apply to key aspects like location because the location is wherever Uncle Sam says it is.
2. Most of these are jobs are needlessly situated in one of the highest cost regions in the United States.
3. If the feds moved a few thousand large scale projects to Tulsa, many contractors would move there if the pay rates were comparable.
4. Pork barreling is when you send bullshit back to your district just to bring local money in. A realignment of the federal workforce to get most of the work out of metro DC is not pork barreling because it's--on paper--real work.
With that base, OK would have a shot of improving its tax base and have a core constituency that it can use to drive other programs to make people relocate.
The senior people who actually run the gov't on a day-to-day basis live in the metro DC area and that's not changing. Tribal knowledge is key. Two years ago I saw a senior purchasing contract officer try to retire and a large part of an entire agency was unable to buy anything for over six months. Out of desperation, they talked her into coming back part-time for awhile, but she eventually retired for good and shut the thing down for another year, forcing them to send out a ton of RFPs at the very end of fiscal just so they didn't lose funding. Many other parts still require submission of paper invoices and other documentation. Sure they've made progress, but the US Gov't is the world's biggest employer, and customer, and they're based in Washington DC. The investment in infrastructure alone to support even one decent sized Federal agency is staggering. You're living in a fantasy world if you think that's ever changing. On the contrary, as shown by Amazon and others, DC just continues to become more important.
There are few places that I warn people about and Oklahoma is one of them.
First off, about half of Oklahoma's power is generated from burning coal which something they take pride in. However you feel about coal energy, there are health consequences for living downwind from a coal plant. If you are still on board then perhaps you will be interested to know that Oklahoma is deeply Republican, very pro-gun, anti-abortion and anti-science.
However you feel about these topics, I just think people should know what they are signing up for before the find themselves in a situation they may be unhappy with.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...I personally know a few people who worked in Tusla, and moved away as soon as they had the possibility of remote working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Well the cushy apartment will be great for me, but where will my wife and kids stay?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
According to the the Post Office Tulsa is OK.
It may not be great, but it isn't that bad either.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I don't work remotely, but if I was in an industry where all I did was remote work, I don't think I'd pick Tulsa. Would anyone?
If you need to be in a walkable large city with a diverse culture and lots of things to do, Tulsa doesn't fit the bill.
If you want to occasionally drive to a large city, there are better cities than Tulsa.
And if you want to take advantage of working remotely to explore the best of nature (skiing, hiking, mountain climbing, etc), there's still plenty of small rural towns with cheap properties available
Before you rush off to Tulsa for $10k and a little housing subsidy:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/...
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I mean, Oral Roberts, the Klan and shit.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Lots of flies and gnats and creatures like that? Then head to Oklahoma!
How about excessive humidity? They’ve got that in spades!
When I was a kid, we used to drive through Oklahoma every summer as part of our annual trip from our west coast home to visit my dad’s family in Indiana (speaking of bugs and excessive humidity...). Oklahoma was roughly where the environment started getting unpleasant.
Colorado, though? I loved Colorado.
#DeleteChrome
The general consensus here is that Oklahoma is a shit hole and no way I'd ever live there...etc. I have been to Oklahoma many times and it's not nearly as bad as some here are casting it. Tulsa does have some bad neighborhoods, like nearly every city in the USA, but it isn't terrible. Given the choice I would choose Oklahoma City over Tulsa because there seemed to be more to do. But we did manage to find some very good restaurants there are some nice neighborhoods too.
On the plus side, if you are young and starting out you can buy a really nice house for surprisingly little money. Think about that while you are scratching a rent check for 4K a month for some closet sized apartment in Silicon Valley. Traffic is not bad either, a nice change from a lot of large US cities. Weather? It's not terrible as long as you can avoid the tornado paths, which always seem to strike the same places year after year.
Personally, I am fully settled and not looking to move anywhere but if I were young and mobile I would give this some thought. After all, it is only a 1 year commitment.
I am a full-time remote worker who can live anywhere, so this is interesting...but the problem is Tulsa's 4.87% combined state and city income tax. I currently live in a state with no income tax, and paying that extra tax would more than wipe out the $10k. If OK wants to make itself attractive to high-earning teleworkers who can live anywhere, maybe rethinking the state income tax would be a good place to start.
Your method is the best way to run into budget problem or useless empty places. You do a first study, then an initial program with very few places like their 20. THEN if a lot of people start to want to participate, you increase the programs budget and size of available places.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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I think the problem with Oklahoma is fundamental... I mean fundamentalist.
A quick Google of "oklahoma religion in schools" brings somewhat horrifying results.
Oklahoma is a genuine and true heartland of America state. Tulsa is the heart of that heartland. Even if they were offering $100,000 plus all the other benefits to anyone who would bring a startup to the state, I could not in good faith consider bringing my children there.
"The racial diversity in the population of Oklahoma is currently at 72.9% Caucasian, 7.7% two or more races, 7.4% Native North American, 7.3% African American, 2.6% other races, and 2% Asian."
Notice that the demographics specifically show that the vast majority of the state is white as all hell, Native American, because the federal government didn't place enough value on the land in Oklahoma to try and ship the native Americans off of it, a whole bunch of people who are descended from slaves. I'm not going to suggest a black person never voluntarily chose to move to Oklahoma, but Oklahoma was VERY DEFINITELY a Klan state... and like other similar places I've visited, when the American civil war ended, Oklahoma proactively segregated. What this did was horrifying for the entire state population. It made the entire state dumber than before. Stupid begets stupid. And to be fair, Oklahoma may have changed since the 50's, though but there are both white hate and black hate groups across the state. Organized black hate groups happen because ignorant black people organize as a possibly violent herd to respond to perceived threats from ignorant white herds. You know racism and education are horrible when people choose to establish hate groups to combat hate groups.
Then there's Asian... there's 2% Asian and I can't possibly figure out how the hell that happened. There appears to be a small Muslim population... I'd suppose this must be due to some industrial relationship or possibly some effort by the immigration services to foster integration by refugees. There is also Buddhism which suggests that East Asian descendants, possibly rail workers for example settled. There's also a chance there was industrial reasons. And there's Hindu as well, that's not surprising, people from India seem to be willing to settle pretty much anywhere if it provides the opportunity for them to establish a better future for their families.
What's important about all of this is that Oklahoma makes it very clear from the demographics "You're not welcome here... unless you're white, christian, and a fan of both kinds of music."
Oklahoma also seems to have the absolute worst educational statistics in the entire U.S.. They have a low drop out rate which suggests the curriculum is too easy. High school curriculum's are specifically designed to promote a healthy drop-out rate. There's none of this "Participation Trophy" bullshit in high school. Either do your work and discipline yourself or learn how to use a shovel and get a good pair of boots. But it seems that Oklahoma has a very high rate of students staying in school. That means that while the work-place isn't being flooded by children, it also means that the top performers are punished by the bottom achievers.
The standardized testing results for Oklahoma clearly say that people from Oklahoma are systematically made stupid. Maybe it's the water or the air. I would suggest it's misallocation of limited government resources.
Oklahoma is the 40th worst ranking state by average income level. This program to get remote workers sounds great because the average person in Oklahoma doesn't have enough money to pay any real taxes. Most of the state is almost tax exempt on a federal level. A LOT of the state is on welfare... but this is true for much of the U.S. at the moment. Oklahoma has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Oklahoma is in the worst 10 states for higher educate either undergraduate or graduate. To me this means the state is generally apathetic or that people with education simply do go back
Should be an interesting experiment.
What do North and South Dakota have that Oklahoma doesn't?
My wife is from North Dakota and I've been everywhere from Bismark/Mandan, Devils Lake, Grand Forks and Fargo. Literally none of those places meet any of your criteria -- shit airports with flights to MSP or maybe Denver. No interesting activities beyond mainstream movies and (admittedly good) college hockey. The food is for shit unless you're a bar food fan. They do like to drink A LOT there, if that's your thing. Grand Forks and Fargo are prone to flooding and are cold even by my Minnesota standards in the winter. The only outdoor activities are hunting and fishing.
I mean, the people are great, I've liked most people I've met, but it's the ass end of the universe.
I can't comment about South Dakota too much, as I was only there twice,20 years ago, but it's not much different IMHO. Neither Rapid City or Sioux Falls are any better than Fargo or Bismark.
Nebraska at least has Omaha, but really, it's not great, either.
These dying-ass, country-fuck places need to pull their heads out of their asses. They can decide if they want to dry up and blow away or get into the 21st century. Fiber internet everywhere. Legalize pot. Make air travel easy, even if it means leasing a 737 and running 3x daily shuttles to an airport with direct international flights.
It's really a beautiful city. The photo in the picture shows the large building, the BOK (Bank of Oklahoma) building, not scene to the west of this photo is the BOK center, hockey, basketball and large concerts. In May they close off the entire downtown area for a festival. Good times. Yeah, there are bad sections of Tulsa, as you would expect in any major city, but it has the Arkansas River area which is being built up, a beautiful Oklahoma Aquarium, and many things to see and do. I'm from southwest Missouri, 3 hour drive and I'm down there about 5-6 times a year. Never had a bad time in Tulsa. Now, the traffic on 71st near the mall can be a zoo most of the time, or on 71st, around the Rhema Bible Church during Christmas with their HUGE walk through Christmas light display. And, you might have to put up with a tornado from time to time, but they usually skip over most of the city proper.
I put in my time stationed at Fort Sill. The common saying was: Fort Sill isn't Hell, but you can see Hell from the front gate.... and they weren't shitting.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Texans hate Oklahoma because the states are exactly alike. They're just unaware.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That got reported to the IRS...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A careful reading of the requirements states that you need to âalreadyâ be employed remotely.
The demographic they're trying to attract is one with a progressive, entrepreneurial character...not deadbeats trying to bootstrap their underwater basket weaving business.