
Ask HN: log on, drop out? - cageface
Like a lot of HN hackers, I've been living and working in a big metropolitan area for a while (S.F. in my case). This certainly has its upsides, but also some serious downsides. It's expensive so being unemployed for even a short time can be risky. It's also crowded and noisy and distracting.<p>So, I've been considering selling everything, quitting the 9-5 and moving somewhere cheap, where I can live for $1,500 a month or less total. I've got savings to tide me over for a couple of years and I think this might give me the time and quiet I'd need to do some more serious hacking on my own projects and also to just disengage from all the urban energy for a while. I <i>think</i> I could do enough freelance work to at least break even and probably do better and I could charge less than people that need to pay S.F. or New York rents.<p>There are a lot of places in the West, for instance, where you can rent a big apartment or even a house for ~ $500 a month and live next to some really beautiful national parks, forests etc.<p>Anybody else had similar thoughts? Are there pitfalls I'm overlooking? Anybody else had dreams of a hacker Walden Pond?
======
drewcrawford
Funnily enough, I'm in maybe the opposite boat as you.

I currently live in a quiet suburb of OKC, maybe 20 minutes drive from
downtown. Rent is cheap, around $0.75/SF/month. Bandwidth isn't terrible, but
it's not like SF or NYC.

I'm a freelancer. If I wanted to, I could probably cover all my "necessary"
expenses working one or two days a week. Instead, I work 6 days a week, and
save almost all my money. I want to move to SF or NYC once I have some serious
savings.

To be honest, I just don't like the culture here. Although I've grown up here
and have friends, gf, etc. here, "professionally" I feel alone. I'm one of
only very few tech-minded entrepreneurs. I hack alone. It's not uncommon for
me to go 48 hours without leaving my apartment.

I was in SF on business last week and it struck me at just how easy it was to
get contacts and network in a place where there are other hackers. There's no
awkward "So, what do you do for a living?" conversations where you have to
start at "what is a web application". Even for a hacker, I am really, really
independently-minded. That said, it would be great to have a partner on a
couple of things. But I won't find one here.

tl;dr If it's a short-term thing and you're tight on cash--go for it! But
you'll get lonely after awhile.

~~~
bdickason
As someone who moved from Indiana to NYC, I applaud you. You don't realize how
many opportunities you're missing until you move to a big city.

The fact that a week ago, I decided to randomly google 'tech meetups' and find
one that was meeting the next morning with 20+ high quality entrepreneurs was
ridiculous.

------
olalonde
What about moving to China? (I'm serious.)

I moved to China a few weeks ago and was amazed how this place is an ideal
place for startups/freelancers. First, the cost of living is extremely low AND
you get a similar (if not better) quality of life than what you can get in the
US. I live in Shenzhen, a very young city with a booming economy and the
world's capital of electronics manufacturing. The population density here is
much higher than even the largest US cities, which means: a lot of 24/7
restaurants, night clubs full everyday of the week / hour of the night,
convenience stores around every corner, cheap taxis (3$US can get you far),
etc. There are very few foreigners but it can be a nice thing at the same time
because when you see a fellow westerner, you are tempted to socialize very
quickly and most of them have interesting stories to tell. Ah, I was about to
forget: Chinese girls love westerners.

China is also ideal for startups. The economy here is growing very fast and
the domestic market is huge. The software industry here seems to be lagging
behind the US by a couple years. This means that people knowledgeable about
the western market have a significant edge because they are able to foresee
the trends that are likely to take place in China. That's why there are so
many Chinese clones of popular western websites.

I could go on and on... Get in touch with me if you'd like to ask some
questions.

EDIT: Some pictures from my apartment
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/50425387@N06/>

~~~
matthew-wegner
What is your immigration status? How difficult was the process? How long did
it take?

~~~
olalonde
It's pretty straightforward: you buy a 3 months, 6 months or 1 year visa - no
questions asked. The 1 year visa costs about 700$ but I believe you can get it
much cheaper if you get it from the US. It took a few hours and I bought it at
the border of Hong Kong (no visa needed to go to Hong Kong for less than 3
months).

------
techiferous
"I could charge less than people that need to pay S.F. or New York rents."

Charging less is attractive for commodities. When you are buying toothpaste or
cola, there is not that much difference from one brand to the next, so having
the lower price can help make the sale.

For tech work, the difference in skill among programmers can be an order of
magnitude. Also, there is some information asymmetry--it is hard to know which
programmers are good. So your rate is one indicator that people use to
evaluate your skill level. If you are a highly skilled programmer but charge
low, you may be sending a signal that you are a novice programmer.

Furthermore, if you charge too low you may attract clients from hell. These
are clients that don't know much about programming and think that it's easier
than it is (which is why they are looking for below market rates).

So don't charge less in order to attract clients. Rather, demonstrate (show
specific evidence of) your superior skill and then charge a competitive market
rate.

Also note that it might be harder to find clients if you move away from a
large urban area.

------
starkfist
I'm trying to do the same thing eventually.

However, have you lived in a semi rural area before? It's not necessarily
Walden Pond. Half of my childhood was spent growing up in a semi rural area
and most people who live there are into snowmobiles, hockey and going to
church. You most likely need a car. The quaint rural villages that you really
want to live in can be as expensive as living in a city. "Real" rural america
is usually more like a truck stop than it is a french farming village. I'd be
interested to hear where you are considering. Personally, I would like to move
to Maine or Vermont, but also enjoy the city... it just gets exhausting.

~~~
cageface
Yeah that's a very good point. I've wondered about this. For example, the
Southern Utah desert is my favorite place in the world and there are some very
inexpensive towns to live in down there but the culture is _very_
conservative.

Main or Vermont are definitely possibilities. The winter sounds horrific but I
was in Vermont in the fall a while ago and it was totally stunning. From what
I understand Vermont and Maine both lean much more to the left politically so
it would probably be less of a culture shock.

~~~
mikecane
Let me give you four words of advice here: Stay away from winter. At least do
that. Really.

~~~
dhimes
...unless you like winter. I moved to New England a few years ago, and we have
three excellent seasons here: summer, fall, and winter. There is no spring, at
least by any reasonable definition of spring by anybody who has lived anywhere
where there is spring. But "sea and ski" is what it's about here, and, it
turns out, I'm ok with that.

~~~
nostrademons
There is usually about 1-2 weeks of nice spring weather in May/June. I like
spring in New England more than spring anywhere else, because you know that if
you blink, it'll be gone. So it's time to have classes outside and enjoy the
nice weather and go for a bikeride or something.

Here in California, it's spring all year round, and so we sit at our computers
and ignore it most of the time.

~~~
dhimes
_because you know that if you blink, it'll be gone_

Indeed, it goes away if the sun goes behind a cloud. Even better when you have
kids, and have to make sure the baseball field is dry and safe for them.
You'll be shoveling mud into wheelbarrows, transporting it to a mound of dirt,
and coming back with wheelbarrows-full of dry dirt. Heavy work. More rain. So
you do it again. You. Well, and the mosquitoes.

I agree that there are glorious days in the spring here, but in my view they
don't a season make. But all-around it's still a fabulous place to live for
the climate.

------
thaumaturgy
I'm going to pitch for my adopted home town here: come to Grass Valley! We
have a solid technological history (and, I think, future), an energetic
Economic Resource Council that's trying to attract new talent, and some really
beautiful spaces. Traffic flows easily, locals spend their weekends at one of
several nearby rivers in the Summer, we're not far from Tahoe, etc. etc.

I visit the Bay Area often for friends and business, and I don't mind it
there, much, but I'm always happy to get home again -- despite being a
wanderer from 18 to 27 or so. I wholeheartedly recommend living in a beautiful
natural environment.

It's not super super cheap here, but close enough: my girlfriend and I live in
a great modest home with a shop and small yard, and awesome neighbors, for
$795/month.

We do get snow, though.

EDIT: And if you're interested, I'd be happy to take a day out to show you
around and introduce you to people.

~~~
cageface
I had something a little smaller in mind but Grass Valley looks pretty nice. I
should visit that part of CA sometime.

~~~
thaumaturgy
One of the things I like best about this area -- and stop me if I start to get
annoying -- is that it's just about as small or big as you want.

There are plenty of places 10 or 15 minutes from town that are really
isolated: little dirt roads in and out, and neighbors that you might meet but
never actually see. You can pick your climate too; beautiful, chilly Tahoe
forest a short drive up highway 20, or rolling grassy hills without snow in
"south County". (Both of those have a lot of trouble getting broadband
though.)

If you feel like you need a more social night out, Auburn is 30 minutes away,
Roseville is an hour, and Sac'to is just a bit beyond that. If you get to
missing the Bay Area, it's just 2.5 hours away.

Or, if you want to really get away from everyone for a bit, just drive up
highway 20 to the Grouse Ridge area, or highway 49 to Downieville (another
beautiful small town) or Sierra City, with some gorgeous 8,000 foot crags and
lakes.

So yeah, come check it out!

------
tptacek
I think that you will have less success than you think you will trying to
underbid projects because of your lower cost structure. For work that is truly
local (some law practices work this way), there may be an established regional
price point that may indeed be lower than the wider market. But you aren't
going to get lucky trying to sell iPhone dev or Django projects on the cheap;
people don't buy projects that way.

The most important rule of freelancing/consulting/selling-to-companies: your
customers aren't paying with their own money. There are plenty of things that
are more important to them than an abstract dollar number.

~~~
cageface
That's an interesting observation. I have no experience in the current
freelance dev market so this is definitely useful information. I guess I could
at least take advantage of a cheap location in that I could live off the
revenue from handful of smaller personal projects (apps, facebook games, etc),
but this is definitely the big unknown in this plan.

~~~
starkfist
You don't actually need to freelance. A lot of big companies these days will
let you work remotely. Especially if you've got a niche set of skills that
they need.

------
fgf
I'm surprised the possibility of moving to the third world doesn't come up
more often here. For the price of rent in SF (say 1000$ pr month) you could
eat out (and eat well) everyday, party with westerners for next to nothing and
hire a programmer to help you out with your work in countries like Malaysia or
the Philippines. Links to blogs, posts, twitterfeeds etc. of people who have
done this would, btw, be appreciated.

~~~
cageface
Yeah I've considered this too actually. I was kicking around the idea of
relocating to Vietnam for a while this way. I wonder how much more difficult
working remotely from that far away would be. I imagine there are programmers
already living in places like that that would be happy to get contracts at
first-world salaries, so hopefully being a native speaker and understanding
first-world cultural conventions would be enough to justify asking first-world
salaries.

~~~
fgf
Professionally I think you can leverage your knowledge and first world status
better if you move to a place with people who speak better english (the
Philippines/India/Malaysia) and with a larger outsourcing industry (the
Philippines/India/Malaysia). Unless you by native speaker mean native
Vietnamese speaker, that could be an awesome advantage -- wages are for
workers in the outsourcing industry is, among other things, determined by
english speaking ability. When it comes to getting first world salaries where
you do contracting work is probably often irrelevant -- and could also be hard
to tell (depending on need for communication making time differences or
unstable internet connections problematic etc.). I have been wondering about
the possibility of being a sort of salesman/manager/quality controller for
contracting work with Filipinos doing the grunt work. (The Philippines and
Malaysia does not tax foreign sourced income, wich could go a long way to
offset a decrease in pre tax income.)

------
lowkey
As an alternative to moving to a low-cost rural location, have you considered
moving to a lower-cost, creative cultural city? I'm thinking specifically of
Montreal, QC.

There is an incredible creative scene in the city covering, music, the arts
and an amazingly supportive technology community. There are also a couple of
very active seed-stage funds (though nothing compared with Silicon Valley and
not much of an angel network, I'm afraid)

The best part is that cost of living in Montreal is among the lowest in North
America, yet you still have access to amazing infrastructure, stunningly
beautiful architecture, and beautiful friendly ladies - seriously.

I am actually looking to trade places with you and am planning to leave this
wonderful city to go check out San Francisco for a bit (I have my reasons),
but I cannot recommend Montreal enough. Oh, and I'll be back!

~~~
numix
How easy is it for programmer from the U.S. to move to Montreal? Are there a
fair amount of companies in the startup scene able and willing to support a
visa?

------
philwelch
I live in a rural college town--Pullman, WA.

Monthly living expenses for me can top off around $1000/mo comfortably. I have
a car but don't pay for the insurance (though I do pay for repairs, gas, etc.)
so $1500 is definitely doable. Rent for a single person can be had for
$300-$400 with some looking, and not necessarily in bad conditions. $500 will
get you plenty of space. You will likely need the car, though the town bus
system is very good (supposedly one of the best small-town public transit
systems in the country). It's a college town so you have a younger population
than some rural communities--it's not quite "truck stop", in other words, but
having a large student population has its own problems. There are quiet parts
of town, where families and grad students tend to live, but the "student
ghettos" have loud parties, crappy apartments, and predatory lending practices
aplenty.

The next town over, Moscow, ID, is about 8 miles east. It's also a college
town, plus it has a nicer downtown (complete with hippie food co-op). Haven't
lived there, though.

If you like variable weather, where the temperature goes from -10 to 110 over
the course of the year and you see wind, rain, snow, hail, and sunshine in the
course of about the same week, you'll like the area. Speaking of seasons,
summers are a lot nicer and quieter than the school year, at least in Pullman.

Not sure I'd recommend living here to anyone, to be honest, but if you want to
feel isolated from the real world for awhile it'll do the job.

~~~
noodle
this general idea is good.

there are a lot of rural colleges where living is cheap and parks are close. i
went to school at clemson, and the situation is quite similar.

plus, if you're working on a project and want to hire people, there are lots
of students who would jump at the chance.

------
thibaut_barrere
Hey, we just did exactly this!

My wife, my 2yo and I moved last month away from Paris/France to a rural
location in S/W of France (1h away from Bordeaux the city).

We gathered savings before doing this, and we're doing remote consulting and
working on new ideas to generate income.

We're living "low-profile" money-wise, and we're pretty happy with it.

A lot more time to give to ourselves and our kid, too :)

------
makecheck
Personally, I think that's a great thing to do, especially when your line of
work uses a computer. Even if you're not working, you can still build your
skills (hacking on open source, iPhone apps, web pages, whatever) while living
almost anywhere. Enjoy life, avoid the stress, it's always worth it.

The main risks I can see are that it may be harder to connect with people in
your industry, and you may find few jobs willing to let you work remotely
(this tends to be available only to very experienced people, e.g. CTO can live
in the mountains if he wants, and the company says OK). Then again, if you're
trying to avoid 9-5, not even having a job for a few months is still good
stress relief.

~~~
cageface
I've been trying to get an idea of how hard it would be to make a living
entirely through remote contract work. I see a lot of job postings along these
lines but I have no idea how well they pay or how competitive the contracts
are. I've been salaried for 10 years now so I have no first-hand experience.

On the flip side though, I'm beginning to see the opportunity costs of a 9-5.
It's hard to find the energy to spend another 3 hours hacking on my own ideas
after working in front of a computer all day and the company I work for puts a
lot of roadblocks in front of open-sourcing any of my work so I'm increasingly
cut off from the open-source community and all the job networking that comes
with it.

My ideal would be to find a way to spend no more than 6 months of the year
working to pay the bills and to have the other 6 months free to work on my own
ideas. I'd happily trade a lot of material comforts for the freedom and time
to follow my own muse.

------
timinman
Just keep in mind that the transition will consume some time, energy, and $$
-- and don't underestimate that you'll be trading friends as well as
surroundings.

------
eam
Anywhere in central California (the central valley to be more specific) is
cheap to live compared to SF. For example Madera, Fresno, or even Clovis you
can rent a decent looking 3 bedroom house with yard for about $1000/month.
However, these cities are mostly agricultural and do lack the "techy" feeling
you'll find in bigger cities like SF or even LA. The summers are quite humid
and hot, but it's nice that it only takes about 1.5 hours to drive up to
Yosemite National Park.

Clovis, CA has a population of about 100k. Recently it has been trying to
bring the technology atmosphere, for example a couple of days of go we had
59daysofcode conference (<http://59daysofcode.com/>). Quite exciting!

~~~
icco
I as well like central California, but I would be wary of the central valley
unless you can deal with heat well. I live on the coast, which I love, but it
is no where near as cheap as the valley, it at least has weather I can survive
in. The other issue is that most large/modern cities are four to five hours
away.

------
augustflanagan
I have two recommendations for places to look into if you plan on only working
for yourself, and not looking for work (unless it is remote contract work).

1\. Oaxaca, Mexico - I lived there for a year while working on a startup and
loved every minute. It's really cheap (my wife and I spent about $1100 a month
in total, and had a great lifestyle). It's a beautiful city, with lots to do,
and is close to some great hiking and only about 5 hours from gorgeous
beaches. It's also very safe these days. The drawback is being completely
isolated from the tech community.

2\. Missoula, Montana - This is a great little college town about 3 hours away
from where I grew up. I stayed a couple of nights there in 2008 and was blown
away by how much it had changed in the time I had been gone. It's super cheap,
gorgeous (great hiking, skiing, biking is all around you), the people are
genuinely friendly and laid back, and there are great micro-breweries and pubs
everywhere. Again, the drawback is being isolated from the tech community.

I hope you find what you're looking for.

------
Qz
I live on <800 a month in Pittsburgh, soon to be <700\. It's actually becoming
a pretty big tech city, all the major companies (Microsoft, Google, etc) have
stuff going on here, and there's a lot of opportunities to make connections to
help with whatever project you've got going. It's right near some great parks,
and the city itself is packed with trees and grass...

~~~
cageface
I hear good things about Pittsburgh but for some reason I picture it as a
cold, dangerous, post-industrial city. Is this just CA bias?

~~~
Qz
It is cold in the winter, but it's also hot in the spring/summer.

It is post industrial in the sense that the economy has moved on from
industrial type stuff like steel manufacturing -- the economy is very
tech/service oriented, with lots of computer/tech/robotics startups and so on,
as well as a large health care sector (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
runs their own health insurance which covers a significant portion of the
entire state of PA). It was one of the cities least hit by the housing crisis
and the economic backlash from that.

As for dangerous -- there are some bad areas, like in every city, but for the
most part it's very safe. Safer than any big city in CA for sure.

------
lovskogen
I love the idea of working from anywhere, spending time at a mountain cabin
with just a cell connection. Fresh air and silence.

~~~
acgourley
Start a Hacker Cabin. Seriously.

------
phusion
I live about an hour north of San Francisco in Sonoma county. It's quiet,
beautiful and in Sebastopol, there are only 7,700 people. You could find a
place on craigslist for not a decent price... you're 10 miles from the beach
and 20 minutes from several parks and beautiful areas. It's at least worth a
look.

~~~
icco
Sebastopol is pretty awesome, And it has a decent tech scene thanks to
O'Reilly Media being based there.

------
petervandijck
One pitfall: why charge less? There's really no reason, and it tends to bite
you back. Just charge the same.

~~~
j_baker
On the other hand, why would anyone want to hire someone who works out in the
boondocks? You wouldn't be able ot meet with them in person very easily.

~~~
philwelch
Unless all your potential clients live in the _same_ city, you have this same
problem, don't you? Or do some people only work for Bay Area-based clients or
whatnot?

------
wooster
I hear Boulder, CO is nice. It certainly ticks a number of your checkboxes:
rural, cheap, and next to a lot of beautiful parks and forests. I've never
been, but it's on my short list.

~~~
retlehs
Boulder is nice. I live by Horsetooth Reservoir up north in Fort Collins and
love it. It's cheap and I'm surrounded by Horsetooth Mountain, Lory State
Park, and Roosevelt National Forest/Rocky Mountain National Park.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
Yes, but I'd have to sell this huge house first :-(

I have lived in places at the extremes of size. From NYC to where I am now: a
small farm in Minnesota. It's easy to live on $1.5k in a nice part of
Minneapolis. Even with a mortgage and car payment my monthly burn wasn't much
more than that when I lived there.

I absolutely _love_ it out here and never want to live in a city again. But
have you ever lived outside a city or suburb before? There are drawbacks that
aren't immediately obvious: no or very few good restaurants if there are any
at all; everything is spaced farther apart; if you have an emergency help may
not be close at hand; trivial things like making sure your car has enough gas
become important when there isn't a gas station on every other block.

There is a campaign running now in the Duluth area called "Offshore to the
North Shore" or something like that which plays up that the North shore of
Lake Superior (most beautiful area of the state, BTW) has a low cost of living
and well trained people and can be cost-competitive with offshoring. Maybe
they can offer some relocation literature?

Not to be a booster for my state, but Duluth, MN is the gateway to enormous
tracts of unspoiled wilderness and has plenty of affordable rental housing,
culture, an international seaport and a few colleges. Might be worth a look.

~~~
guiseppecalzone
I currently live in Minnesota and am hoping to get better plugged into the
tech scene? Do you know of any specific groups or places where I can find
entrepreneurs?

~~~
Benjo
Check out TECHdotMN. They have a Google calendar that is full of events.
RubyMN, MinneBar, MinneDemo and CodeCamp are all good events.

~~~
guiseppecalzone
Thanks!

------
j_baker
Dallas and Austin are decent choices. If you want something a little smaller
and less urban, there are plenty of towns of various sizes in East Texas.

If you're looking for something _really_ out of the way, West Texas is a
really good choice. For instance, Alpine, Texas is right next to Big Bend
National Park. If you want something a bit more arid, try Fort Davis.

------
JohnnyBrown
Consider New Orleans. It's a bikeable, walkable city where one can get by for
very little. Not the biggest tech city in the US but loads of culture and if
you're considering moving to the wilderness that's probably not a big deal for
you. As long as you don't mind heat or living near minorities you'll be fine.

~~~
cageface
I'm sure New Orleans is fascinating but I'm leaning towards something way less
busy and urban. For whatever reason being close to nature limbers up my
thinking and inspires my creative side.

------
damoncali
If you go too far out in the sticks, you lose the benefits you get from
interacting with other entrepreneurs in person. Try some 2nd-tier tech cities
like Austin or Denver. More affordable, but you still have access to local
people.

------
mr_twj
There are plenty of opportunities in small towns with < 100, 000 people. These
towns usually have one moderately funded community college at best. This means
you have this perfect imbalance of skilled professionals and untapped small
town business startups in order to conquer the landscape quite painlessly.

If things go sour in my part of the world I will definitely find some small
but rapidly growing desert town to monopolize. Hope this didn't come off too
cynical but it's really not that bad of an idea.

------
albertsun
$1500 a month or less is possible even in NY or SF. I'm doing it with a small
shared apartment in Manhattan. (Roughly. If I ate out less I could push it
down well below.)

------
allenp
I'm going to suggest Washington state. There is no income tax, the sales tax
is reasonable, and you may find the rain helps you stay focused on coding. I
would suggest somewhere around Bellingham, WA - you would be 90 mins north of
Seattle and 90 mins south of Vancouver, BC.

------
mikecane
Just wanted to add this, so you have another option:

Do-It-Yourself Downsize: How To Build A Tiny House
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1281092...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128109273)

------
mitjak
I'm Russian and have immigrated to Canada along with the parents 8 years ago.
Woudl love to hear how viable Moscow is as far as tech entrepreneurs go.

~~~
vl
Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world. It's in the state of
semi-permanent traffic jam, so you'll have to live close to subway. Corruption
level is high.

------
alexkiwi
Texas is awesome. Cheap living, fast internet, sxsw, and plenty of places to
explore.

------
zackattack
please make a blog post once you figure this out AND make it work

------
ahoyhere
Move to Philadelphia.

Or Berlin.

Vienna's pretty great on a budget, too - that's where I live. But Berlin is
cheaper and more "happening" (though Vienna is in every way nicer itself).

