In the current climate it appears remote working will be more common. So where would you want to move too? Or would you become a nomad? Or is current home, perfect?
I may be the only person left who loves San Francisco. Just got back from biking from my house through Golden Gate Park past the De Young and Cal Academy to Cliff House and down Ocean Beach. There was sunshine and people were outside. In different circumstances, there are people dancing on roller skates, learning tango, and skateboarding. Near our house there is a great Russian Bakery, tons of Chinese restaurants on Clement, Green Apple Books, Irish Bars.
Walk North and you are in the Presidio and see the Golden Gate Bridge. Walk West and you are at the Legion of Honor or Lands End and watching the sun set over the Ocean. Walk East and I can hit up a hip hop or funk night at the Boom Boom Room or go to the Fillmore. You can dance at Madrone Art Bar or see an indie rock show at the Independent on Divisadero. Walk a few blocks South and you are in the Panhandle walking by some beautiful Victorians, then stop and catch some jazz at Club Deluxe. Walk a little more and go up Corona Heights or Tank Hill and you have breathtaking panoramic views of the city. Or head down to some of the pubs in the Lower Haight. And that's just within a 2 mile radius. For some reason, everyone focuses on the Tenderloin and SoMa though. The city has major problems, but there is also so much to enjoy.
I have made many interesting and creative friends here who are from all over the world. I get to work on mobile games, but there are many other opportunities around. Among my coworkers are digital artists and painters, musicians, engineers, hip hop dancers, drag show performers, people who party all night in the Castro, a muay Thai boxer, mixologists, and more interests than I can list.
I lived in Seattle, Portland, and Austin over the previous 2 decades -- all great places -- but still find myself happier in SF.
When I got to visit SF, it was a lovely, magical city and it inspired me to buy $300 worth of books related to my interest in someday becoming a city planner (or something similar).
The problem is I can't possibly afford to live there. If you can live there, cool. For many people, it's just too expensive to make it into a nice experience.
All those restaurants nearby are only cool if you can afford the high cost of housing and have enough money leftover to still eat at restaurants without worrying that you are cutting your own throat in terms of retirement savings or something.
In short, it's great if you are wealthy enough. It's not for most other people, even if they find parts of it enchanting.
I feel the biggest city planning lesson you can learn from SF is don't end up like SF where prop 13 keeps big parking lots in the middle of downtown unreasonably cheap, while NIMBYs are empowered to stall new apartments for years/decades.
Those things are great and also why I love SF. The problem is as I’ve gotten into my mid-late 30s those things I enjoyed in my 20s aren’t as magical as they used to be.
Most of this has to do with settling down and thinking more about a family than myself and career. My body also can’t recover from those nights in SF as well as I get older.
SF is a Peter Pan city though, you can stay young there forever and do fine. I know people who still go to the same bars and hang out with the same crowd they did a decade ago.
I bought some book that was a bunch of excerpts from classic urban planning works. I bought a book called "Seeing like the state." I bought a book about the Clemente Course in Humanities (there is a website for this these days).
I no doubt bought other stuff. I also enjoyed "How buildings learn" but I don't think I bought it that day.
I run r/CitizenPlanners and there are some links there to videos and what not.
Personally I found the book a bit long and repetitive: although the examples were varied, each was used to restate the same basic point. But that may be my own problem. After all, if you're trying to support a generalisation using case studies, it's not enough to breeze through one or two and assure the reader that others exist; you need to go into detail about as many as you reasonably can.
If interested in urbanization and the particular problems SF is running into today, I would highly recommend Progress & Poverty by Henry George. Fairly dense at first but it lightens up.
It was written in SF post-gold rush to answer the question of why the obscene wealth generated by the gold rush resulted in abysmal quality of life and skyrocketing inequality in SF. Sadly relevant these days.
If the number of renters exceeds owners statewide [0], Prop 13 will become a victim of it's own success. It helped existing homeowners stay in place so well that growth that otherwise would've occurred did not, and the minority of remaining homeowners will lose their property tax benefits.
[0]: There's a slight tilt towards owners (54%). If property prices continue to become less affordable, it seems reasonable there will be less owners in the future. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/california#housing
The good thing for homeowners is that renters don't vote. On top of that - many renters are also ineligible to vote in CA. (Cause no citizenship)
If prop 13 were to die, you'd think it'd be this year with all the budget problems coming up. It won't though. Politicians would face a mass exodus even if they kept in an exception for primary homes/business-locations. There's no way they'd all stay in office.
> If prop 13 were to die, you'd think it'd be this year with all the budget problems coming up. It won't though. Politicians would face a mass exodus even if they kept in an exception for primary homes/business-locations. There's no way they'd all stay in office.
Prop 13 is a voter-passed Constitutional Amendment and, therefore, can only be repealed by the voters. So, the politicians that would be voted out for repealing it are...the voters.
I wonder if this will have any effect on housing. As it stands, it seems like this will do nothing and only affect commercial real estate. So, likely, a lot of small businesses that have held the property for decades will close shop. I expect to see a lot of expensive commercial real estate be vacant for years if this passes.
It’s a good first step. The effect should be to make property tax for commercial/industrial property much fairer between entities who bought the properties decades ago vs. those who bought recently.
This can (a) raise a whole lot of revenue, relieving local/state budgets so they can hopefully stop needing as many stupid short-term workarounds which have proliferated the past few decades, and (b) allow future commercial property taxes for newly purchased commercial properties to be lower than they otherwise would be, encouraging more turnover, especially for underused properties.
The obvious follow-up would be to also change the law for residential properties owned by large-scale landowners (say, companies which own large apartment complexes or dozens of homes).
I know people who have moved here a decade ago and they are paying 1600$ for a small one bedroom apartment in SOMA. For 700$ it must have been the tiniest of studios.
I just moved out of SF. I was paying $1600/month for 24 sq meters studio in the Tenderloin with no kitchen. My next neighbor was paying under $300, having moved into the building in the 80s with a starting rent of $85/month.
That sounds as if you visited SF for the first time...very good speech for tourism.I have been in Bay Area for 13 years, single, with GF, and now with kids. Good luck with the high real state prices and if you can afford it, is probably overvalued, homeless, drug addicts, lack of good public transportation and Infrastructure (no high speed trains). My take i would live in London.
Bad luck, I moved from London to SF a bit more than a year ago and:
* no, London is much much cleaner than SF. I'd rather take a stroll in London.
* there's very little amount of homeless compared to SF. Again, I'd rather take a stroll in London.
I was paying 1300GBP (so around 1500USD) for a one bedroom apartment in Battersea (so zone2). I am now paying 3350USD for a small one bedroom in Castro.
I don't find London to be dirtier than SF. Also I get the sense that it's a much bigger city in general, and of course your Stratfords will differ significantly from your Westminsters, although this can be said about basically every city.
Also I think London is slightly cheaper. Still, working remotely from London proper is probably a terrible idea given the extent of public transportation. Just live in Croydon and catch overground to London when necessary IMO.
> London is dirtier and just as inflicted with "undesirables"
Are we talking about the same London and the same SF? I went a whole week in London riding the subway several times a day without seeing anything gross.
> I have made many interesting and creative friends here who are from all over the world. I get to work on mobile games, but there are many other opportunities around. Among my coworkers are digital artists and painters, musicians, engineers, hip hop dancers, drag show performers, people who party all night in the Castro, a muay Thai boxer, mixologists, and more interests than I can list.
Being mostly in Seattle for about 6 years now, this is what I enjoyed the most about being based in SF and is what will likely make me return to it.
Seattle feels to be a town now comprised of corporate campuses and the suburban neighborhoods in between. It's also great if you love outdoor hobbies, but I prefer the vibrance of cities. The creative culture here feels substantially more lacking than it is in SF, and it feels extremely challenging to make new friend that aren't in technology. Of course SF has its tech-bro startup culture; here it seems most people that live around me work for Microsoft, Amazon, or Facebook. At least there were easy outs in going to galleries or clubs or art/makerspaces or various meets for non-tech things in SF and I have never been able to find enough of those in the Seattle area. The COVID-19 crisis will likely choke them out further.
> . At least there were easy outs in going to galleries or clubs or art/makerspaces or various meets for non-tech things in SF
I hear the same thing about New York and to that I wonder:
1) Do people actually like these things
2) or are they a just a way to virtue signal their cosmopolitan bona fides to the other graduates of selective universities?
Perhaps I'm just an unsophisticated public school grad, but I've never met anybody that actually takes part in these things even when they live in New York, etc.
I'm sure I'm less sophisticated than you are. I wouldn't consider the university I went to selective by any means. But I have had a lot of friends that are musicians, and with that came a lot of hanging out with them at random venues, and from there going out to hear live electronic music became a dominant theme of most of my life in SF. Whenever I find myself back in San Francisco who's playing there while I'm around is one of the first things I look at.
I love SF as well! I've traveled around the world and lived in multiple US cities that many people consider nice/cool/fun, but SF is still my favorite city. I was in Golden Gate Park today as well and it never gets old - so beautiful, and perfect weather. The streets in my neighborhood are clean, the neighbors are all intelligent, fascinating older people, young families, and just generally really cool people. Granted I never go to the Tenderloin, SoMa, or the Financial District -- if that's your primary view of the city then I understand the distaste, but overall SF is a fantastic city if you can afford it.
Yeah everyone loves those things too, they just don't want to deal with the cost and quality of life from the homeless/drug problem. I walked up to beautiful Corona Heights today and saw all of the amazing views, but then I walked home past the ever-increasing numbers of tents popping up on the street to my overpriced apartment in the mission where I currently have to listen to one mentally disabled homeless person scream profanities at everyone around her. Sure you could move to a different neighborhood, but those problems are difficult to ignore.
Dude you live in the mission, probably the most disgusting part of the entire bay area, other than maybe the bay itself. I didn't last a single week there
There are parts of the Mission that are extremely nice. The Tenderloin is far worse than the Mission and parts of SoMa rival the Mission for grossness.
On my morning walks in the TL, I had brieflly kepts stat on the poops per mile I counted. I decided it was too much work after I saw 3 poops on a single block.
Yes, can confirm the Tenderloin is worse than the Mission. Take a walk down to Eddy & Leavenworth, especially right after all the homeless and drug abusers have cashed their disability cheques (or on the weekends) and try to walk down the sidewalk without being harassed or your nostrils assaulted by the acrid tang of human piss and fecal matter: https://youtu.be/KUtVz2fIhHM
The city has a limited ability to remove them. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Martin v Boise, which held that it was illegal for the city (of Boise, Idaho) to remove homeless people from public spaces if the city has insufficient homeless shelters. This is a binding precedent in San Francisco, which is also in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The city of Boise, Idaho appealed to the Supreme Court, prodded by several cities including Los Angeles, but the Supreme Court declined to see the case.
San Francisco is still held to Martin vs. Boise. They need to either build sufficient homeless shelters for all of the homeless in SF, (lol) or allow them to sleep where they please in public places.
I am not a lawyer, but I got an A in Political Science 101 and I read the news. This is not legal advice, but my personal advice is that cities in California oughta build more homeless shelters.
The people who scream at me in a schizophrenic drug addled haze aren’t going to go away because cheap 1br housing pops up in an affordable neighborhood. They do need help though. They need homeless institutions.
Counterpoint: SROs are the most common location of overdoses in the city of San Francisco. Mentally ill people in housing probably don’t bother you, but that doesn’t mean they are safe and healthy.
Residential housing costs $750k to build per unit in California, and most of those costs are unique to the process of developing infill in NIMBY cities with high costs of labor. We are two orders of magnitudes away from enough funding to solve homelessness with residential housing in San Francisco for the existing population, notwithstanding induced demand. Treatment outside of city centers for people dealing with mental health and substance abuse issues could be built far more affordably elsewhere by saving on the land and labor costs. They’d also be cheaper to operate.
More generally, your comments come across and smug and sanctimonious — everyone has an interest in solving the problem, and falling back to “homelessness is a housing problem” amounts to tautology which is not particularly insightful.
It's a great way to help them share their diseases and fun stuff like that. I went to soup kitchens about six weeks and then began doing everything I could to stay away from that crap.
I'm sad that this is the first thing we're thinking about, removing them. What does it mean, displacing them so that it's somebody else's problem? Putting them in jail? Killing them?
I came from tribal origin with nomadic goat and sheep herders recent ancestors. Life is not easy there but sense of community is strong and lifespans are at par with cities with best healthcare despite not having good healthcare facilities there. Not sure how it compares to people who are homless in cities.
Being from the tribal origin I've been conned by city dwellers a lot before I wised up. In tribe we trust everyone, there is no need to be shrewed and sense of community and living together in harmony is valued above everything else.
Not sure how it compares to people who are homless in cities.
UK data from 2011:
Homeless die 30 years younger than average
The new research found that the average homeless person has a life expectancy of 47, compared to 77 for the rest of the population: a startling difference of 30 years. The life expectancy for women was even lower, at just 43 years.
Well if we built housing for those people they wouldn’t have to live in tents. And if we provided mental health services to all people there would be fewer people who slip to homelessness in the first place.
Yes but do we have to build houses for them in one of the most physically constrained places (partly geographic, partly zoning) on Earth?
There seems to be this strange idea that people put forth that your options are simply between living in the most expensive city in the country or being homeless in the most expensive city in the country.
How about Modesto? I think you would find plenty of support from people who genuinely would like for those people to have somewhere to live. The problem is that the opposition wouldn't accept it. It would come off as some perverse form of gentrification, under the implication that anybody "deserves" to live anywhere. I personally have always found the argument that "I should be able to continue living here, because I lived here previously" to be incredibly uncompelling. What about people who weren't born in fantastic cities?
The fact that the Tenderloin is where it is, in what would probably be some of the best real estate in the city, is absolutely insane. I think you would find that there is all the good will in the world from people, if the proposed solutions make sense. They just don't.
Modesto is not San Francisco. I believe it is reasonable for someone to want to live in San Francisco even if they do not earn many tens of thousands of dollars a year minimum. While there are many units grandfathered in or rent controlled in SF, it seems all new tenants are selected based on wealth. Why should SF be a city exclusive to the wealthy?
The city of Vienna Austria has a fantastic social housing program. The city owns and manages 220,000 units of housing and indirectly controls another 200,000 units of private properties developed under a city-regulated process [1].
This could be done in SF. And then even people who are not very wealthy could potentially move to and live in the city. I reject the notion that individual wealth should be the sole or primary way that we allot housing to people.
Instead of complaining about tents, we could (through our taxes) build these people homes. Instead of stepping over people sleeping on the ground we could make sure every person has a roof over their head. San Francisco is a very wealthy city. We could certainly afford to build this kind of housing.
Homelesnes can be cured only by treating housing as a basic human right. There are plenty of examples of this globally so it's a fact, not a theory or a political fad.
If you prefer more equal ownership of capital there is nothing wrong with that.
But that is completely orthogonal to solving 'the problem' of homelessness. Please don't confuse the two issues.
People are made homeless because housing costs rise arbitrarily high along with productivity. To the market, the definition of “the correct price” for housing is when there is “a little bit” of poverty.
If you happen to earn enough to land above that price then you are paying for your overpriced apartment. If you happen to fall below that line, you are homeless.
The “force” at play is a broken pricing scheme which allows/encourages landlords to continue raising prices as high as they can possibly go, which in a super high productivity area like SFBA or NYC is extremely high.
Housing market and homelesness are two different things.
Places with less inflated housing prices had a 'homeless problem' as well until they made home a basic human right.
Hence empirically I doubt you can 'fix homelesness' by fixing the housing market. You can fix the housing market but will still have homeless problem - until you make home a human right.
Housing prices are set as high as they need to be in order to guarantee at least “a little bit” of poverty.
Everyone being housed is effectively a signal to landlords that rent is too cheap.
We obviously produce enough capital to ensure everyone is housed and fed, yet housing costs simply keep rising with productivity because, well, why wouldn’t they?
Zoning/NIMBYism doesn’t help either, but even with perfect zoning, prices would still rise with productivity.
I've known a number of homeless people with serious mental illnesses who were both much happier and saner once they had an apartment (and, crucially, were helped with getting there).
I lived in San Francisco between 1998 to 2002 and loved it. In my memory it is a Fantastic city. However, almost all of my friends have left saying it has changed dramatically for the worst. I rather hold on to how I remember it, and really hope that when I visit again one day it will match up to how I remember it.
My wife is from the Bay Area or obviously biased, but same thing. I'm from France and we both lived is over 10 cities/countries combined (together and separately) and recently came back to the Bay Area "for good".
Before coming back we tried pretty hard trying to find somewhere else we could go live (and be much wealthier, afford a bigger house, etc) but we couldn't and decided on going back to Oakland.
Another SF lover here. It is an amazing place. What I like so much about it is that you can just wander aimlessly through the city and stumble upon all sort fo cool stuff. Very walkable.
Also, in contrast to NYC, you can easily string together a day where you're in Muir Woods, then hit a winery or two in Sonoma, and be back in SF in time for the Symphony. Sure, I don't do stuff like that all the time, but on occasion when I have visitors in town.
Downsides are the high cost, the absolutely insane homeless and feces filled streets, and the monoculture.
I can hit Muir Woods-esqe outdoors areas (that are much less busy), wineries, and arts in a day in central New York (the state, not the city). Much cheaper too...
I agree with you. Having lived in a number of great cities over the years, San Francisco is my favorite. It's not perfect, but there are a lot of things to love, and being able to work remotely wouldn't cause me to move.
Actually just got back from a very similar bike ride.
Honestly, if SF was a bit warmer, and didn't have all the homelessness, it wouldn't be such a bad city (assuming you have the luxury to afford it). But I'm a bit fed up with the state of the city personally, I don't think I can stay here for long... it is eating your soul to see so much poverty.
I'm really baffled, I have no solutions to offer, I'm just baffled that everyone can see that SF is in a very very bad state and yet nothing is improving.
It's kind of an aspect of the tragedy of the commons. If you yourself haven't done anything to contribute towards a solution then likely it's also what's going on for everyone else.
Basically everyone (me included) is just completely baffled why nothing is improving and just sitting there waiting for something to be done.
I recommend the south bay if you want to escape the poverty, it's not as bad down there.
Another one! I love the weather here too. That's my favorite part, no need for A/C or worry about the snow. I love the fresh fruits and vegetables and going to the farmer's markets to find what's in season. We're so close to everything that you can want to do in life, that I cannot imagine a better place to grow up or live.
I for one am hoping that house prices drop with all the tech people moving out of the Bay Area. That way I can move back to Rockridge (North Oakland) to work remote from there without paying an arm and a leg.
If you think 'homeless people' are one of the bad things, then I think you're part of the problem, and would politely ask you to help come up with a solution.
Considering homelessness to be a serious problem and considering homeless people to be a problem are very different (and to some extent opposed) things.
Advocates for homeless people think homelessness is a problem. People that oppose dealing with homelessness tend to portray homeless people as a problem.
>Considering homelessness to be a serious problem and considering homeless people to be a problem are very different (and to some extent opposed) things.
What doesn't solve problems is creating a false BS dichotomy between "homelessness" and "homeless people" as if there are two major groups of people who are actively combatting two different problems. It's ridiculous. If the people who view "homeless people" as a "problem" aren't advocating helping "homeless people" as solving the problem what exactly are they advocating?? How do you solve the "homeless people" problem without helping "homelessness?" Don't be stupid, these things are one and the same problem with the same solutions.
This is a play on words inserting false malice where there was originally and obviously no malice intended.
Instead the origin of the malice is @dragonwriter intending to use a play on words to start a witch hunt.
I think ultimately a lot of the negative stuff I said about San Francisco pissed off some people who love the city. I wasn't trying to paint San Francisco in a bad light. I was trying to shave off some of the excessive and illusory positivity of the initial post because San Francisco as great as it is, is a city with deep issues and deep problems. To solve these issues and to solve these problems one has to first admit that they exist. Acceptance is hard for many, especially those who have lived here all their lives, and I think this attack was just an aspect of that.
i would wager most would rank the worst homeless population in the country in terms of rampant drug abuse and severe mental illness an unqualified negative
My wife and I live in Mexico. She works remotely, I did that for 10+ years, now I'm building my thing and taking some occasional freelance projects.
I won't deny there are some horror stories coming from Mexico, but I'm a European and have been living here since 2009. I've never seen or experienced anything even remotely violent. I paid for a mordida once, that's it. I've lived in Mexico City, Estado de México, Veracruz, Cancún, and now near Querétaro. I've travelled to most states either for tourism or work. Although I'm from Spain I totally look like a gringo so I never pass unnoticed.
We live in a little village about 3 hours from Mexico City with almost no crime at all. We only lock our door when leaving town. We have 200Mbps fiber. We rent a 3bdr house with garden for about $500 USD. Life is really good for us.
My wife is Mexican and her mother passed away a couple of months ago so we're now planning to go back to Europe in 2-3 years once my gig starts generating some income. There is not much here for her and I'm a bit bored of Mexico. We also don't like how the political situation is changing with Amlo.
I'm from New Zealand and lived there for 4 years. Same experience. Never saw anything crazy, didn't even know anyone who had. I used to fly up to LA and SF often, and saw crazy shit up there often.
Mexico is safer than the US - some will find that unpaletable. Get over it.
I think crime and especially violence in Mexico are much more unevenly distributed. That is, half the country is really safe and half is quite dangerous.
I stayed in various of the "safe parts" of Mexico for three months and felt much safer than in any of various cities in the US, both experienced as a European traveller.
The United States is the same way. I grew up in the Midwest and I've lived in Washington DC for the past 14 years. There's a huge difference in crime levels between the two.
Your first URL is wrong, and btw you are comparing two different metrics. The Mexico link shows number of murders and the US one murder rate.
Also, even comparing apples to apples those stats don't paint the day to day reality of living in Mexico. Very often murders are from fights between narco gangs, or between narcos and the police/military.
Edit:
It's also true that crime and narco presence is not equally distributed.
I think the general negative stereotype about Spaniards in Mexico is that they're brash and stupid. Mexico's negative Polish jokes demeaning a culture's intelligence would be comparable to Galician jokes, dating from a time when there used to be more Galician immigration into Mexico. Iberian accents don't sound cultured and distinguished to most Mexicans; also, Spaniards more casually use words that sound rude to Mexicans or use words with different general meanings like "coger" ("take" in Spain but "fuck" with sexual meaning in Mexico). It's a funny situation not comparable to how most British accents sound cultured and distinguished to US nationals.
On the other hand, Mexicans use more diminutives compared to Spaniards and have lost the informal plural "you", always using what would be the the formal form of address in Spain. Mexicans often also say "¿mande?" to acknowledge you or request that you repeat yourself, but this more literally means something very servile like "order me" or "what is your command?", a remnant of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. For this reason, Mexicans sometimes sound excessively polite to Spaniards.
Of course, these are just broad stereotypes and it's entirely possible that pier25 has not experienced any of this. Possibly simply due to being foreign and the generally unacknowledged racism we have in Mexico (white is pretty), pier25's experience may have been entirely positive.
Also, pier25 may look like a gringo but he's not a gringo. In Mexico, only people from the US are gringos, regardless of their appearance. Obama is a gringo; Trudeau is not a gringo (other countries use the term "gringo" differently). As soon as pier25 speaks, no Mexican would call him gringo. Gachupín is an older somewhat pejorative term for Spaniards in Mexico, but I think it's rarely used nowadays.
> Spaniards more casually use words that sound rude to Mexicans
Yes, this is totally true.
Also Mexicans generally try to speak properly unless they are with friends or family. They typically shush bad words, use more polite substitutes, or they start a sentence with "excuse me but...".
In Spain nobody cares.
> pier25's experience may have been entirely positive
Yeah, totally. I've lived in different countries so I adapt very quickly to different customs and forms.
> As soon as pier25 speaks, no Mexican would call him gringo.
You'd be surprised. Most people in Mexico associate Spanish accent with Madrid accent (eg: hola como eshtash) and since I don't have that accent they think I'm a gringo with a weird Spanish accent. Dozens of times Mexicans have insisted speaking to me in English even when I was speaking in Spanish to them. Once I even had to insist that I was from Spain and the answer was "¿Pero español de España?" :)
With my wife we've joked about making a t-shirt for me that says "Que no soy gringo joder!".
> Iberian accents don't sound cultured and distinguished to most Mexicans
That's so interesting. I'm from Brazil, and to us Continental Portuguese sounds pompous, much like what a British accent sounds to an American listeners.
Different languages, I know, but interesting contrast considering both cases are related to the Iberian peninsula :)
Outside of touristic zones (Vallarta, Cancún, etc) Mexicans tend to like and be curious about people from abroad. There's actually a pejorative term called malinchismo for this preference for foreign stuff.
I'm from Mexico. I lived in Guadalajara for ~8yrs while in University and the first years of my career before moving to Canada. I go back frequently, sometimes working remotely (a few times even in WeWork spaces, hah!). I love to go back, there's a lot of things I miss, but I'd not raise my kids there given the option (which I now have thankfully), both economy and violence are an issue. I can imagine living as a single or childless expat for a while can be a great experience though. I sometimes think of going back to retire to a town nearby one day.
FWIW, I've been living in Budapest now for a year and is quite nice, I like Europe overall too, but we'll be returning to Canada :-)
Yes the president is betting everything into oil, burning huge piles of cash on useless projects, scaring foreign investment, and stopping all investment into renewables. Among other countless stupid decisions.
With the combination of COVID and the current political situation, Mexico is going to plunge into the worst recession it has seen in modern history. I wouldn't be surprised if Mexico becomes the next Venezuela in a couple of years.
He was hugely popular when he came into office and made some significant improvements the cash subsidy for farming program. Nevertheless, there sure are power-consolidation moves evident.
I would live in NYC, which is where I already live. NYC won't feel like NYC while we have SIP because there are no performances, no arts, etc.
But I'm hopeful that will all return in 18 months.
And so in my idealized remote setup, the balance I want is:
A) Work environment optimized for deep work. I run a company, but I've found a way to do that with very few meetings and very little email. Most weeks I just have one meeting and many days I don't send a single email.
B) Living environment optimized for people and culture. While a lot of restaurants are obviously going to have to declare for bankruptcy, I do think that people working from home are going to crave a social life and so I think the demand for pubs and restaurants will return.
NYC people resonate with me because I experience them as a diverse group of ambitious people. I'm constantly running into people in different industries, but who still share my basic interest/ambition to figure out how to succeed.
In order to make this work you need to have a decent office setup. But I'm sure that coworking will be able to meet the demands of people that want more work/life separation. That's a pattern that people who work for me often use: remote worker at a coworking desk. But I have a nice office setup for myself already even though NYC apartments are small.
(I am coupled, but we are intentionally child free.)
I work remotely and live in NYC. Honestly, I cannot imagine living anywhere else. Present conditions notwithstanding, I believe New York to be an ideal place to base oneself. The connivence to both everyday needs, world-class food, culture, and yes, employers, is unparalleled. And on top of that, there is perhaps no better place in the US from which to explore the world.
People say it's expensive but they act as if you get nothing in return for what you pay, which is certainly not the case.
Can someone please explain what people mean by "culture"? I'm a working class joe, I can't afford to pay for Broadway tickets regularly. What's the benefit here?
Sure everyone will talk about art and food and all of that but culture in my mind comes from something deeper. I live in Brooklyn where I can walk outside and meet people from every corner of the world without leaving my block. The philosophical perspectives that people come from hits you with every interaction you have. The longer you live around it the more you learn about their back stories and why these different groups of people carry themselves differently than you might or dress differently, work differently, eat differently, make love differently and so on. Often times these interactions are small but still impacting, other times they are intense and moving like hearing first hand explanations what it was like to live through atrocities from around the world and what it takes to escape but they all hold meaning and a life lived only surrounded by large groups of the same often leads to everyone eating the same things, enjoying the same art and music and missing out on, or even understanding the things outside of your own bubble. Sure you don't need to fit the mold of the place you live but in a place overflowing with influences it is clear that there is always more to soak. So as a working class joe I can still find myself experiencing things that I would have never sought out myself simply by walking out my front door and having a conversation with a neighbor.
I am not sure what the OP specifically meant, but here goes:
when I talk about "culture" in my city, I am usually referring to how often I will end up at events which broaden my perspectives, simply by tagging along or following the suggestions of friends/acquaintances. For example: wine tastings, art gallery/museum openings, open mic amateur stand up comedy events, [specific thing, e.g. cactus] festivals, and so on. (in my experience many such events are free/inexpensive)
We've lived in NYC both at a time when we had very little money for culture and also now when we have plenty of disposable income. So there is a free/low-cost culture here too, although, generally we now don't hesitate to pay for the more expensive things.
When I said culture I was thinking to myself a lot about diversity. This is a major outpost for movie production, tv production, theater, music, dance, comedy, art, writing. And so we end up with both the high end version of those, i.e. broadway, and also all the supporting versions as people climb the ladder to the big leagues or even just need smaller place to test an idea.
It's so intwined with the city that I run into it everywhere. An element of that diversity is that I experience a lot of surprise. I'll see something or meet someone and learn something that I didn't already learn.
A smattering of experiences:
- My partner has a season pass to an off broadway theater and had Hamilton tickets before it was on Broadway.
- Twice now I've lived directly above major magazine editors. One was the #2 at Real Simple and now is on Medium's internal team and my current downstairs neighbor is at the Atlantic. How do they think about current events and how to best explain it?
- Janene Garafolo is trying to start a comedy club in Brooklyn and it's a very relaxed and easy night out that's only a few blocks from my house.
- I ended up friends with a guy now on the air at WNYC right when he was making the transition into radio. He'd take me to Moth Story Telling Competitions and sometimes he'd win which led to him getting much more serious about audio storytelling. But when I first met him he was dirt poor and sharing a very shitty car with my now girlfriend.
- I ended up at a lot of parties with one of the lead dancers at the Paul Taylor company. She's probably one of the top ten dancers in the world. And this was just a run of the mill house party, maybe ten people sitting around drinking.
- The artist who did Obama's presidential portrait is on the permanent collection at Brooklynn Art Museum and his urban men restyled as Renaissance paintings kind of blew my mind.
- Almost everyone here is up on a current museum exhibition, theater thing, or writing. So culture is just part of the conversation here.
- I was sitting at an off-broadway play and ended up making small talk with the person sitting next to me, Deborah Eisenberg. I had no idea who she was, but she had just had a book reviewed by the NYT. She looked bored because her partner is a famous actor (recognizable by anyone who saw Princess Bride). And so he was fending off a fan and she looked bored. Later I saw her speak at a non-fiction center near our place in Brooklyn and the audience was almost all writers.
- The TV show Dirtbag on Amazon seems pretty well known. (It's also great). I saw her do a one-woman show version of season one. It was about 90 minutes with just her performing. Tina Fey was sitting right in front of us, which is part of the pipeline thing here. Performers are out checking out other performers.
And then on top of that, yeah, I go to the movies and see mainstream movies and what not. Or I used to in the "before times."
I've also been working remotely from NYC - lived here for about 7 years now. Agree with everything you've said. The people and the level of ambition and energy here is unrivaled anywhere else I've been, save for maybe Tokyo or Hong Kong. I'm also optimistic that things will return to some semblance of normal within a year or two. I'm also hopeful that the coming months will provide a bit of a reset with lower prices that will allow residents or businesses that were previously priced out to return.
I loved NYC in many ways. But it's unforgiving. If you make a single mistake, or if anything bad happens to you, you'll be crushed. Lucky enough if you even have the dough to hire a U-Haul to hump your stuff back to the real world.
NYC is great. But keep everything you care about in three suitcases, and be ready to haul ass at a moment's notice. And for heaven's sake, don't sign a lease, much less a mortgage.
> I run a company, but I've found a way to do that with very few meetings and very little email. Most weeks I just have one meeting and many days I don't send a single email.
Agreed. I absolutely love it here. There's still the huge downside of the cost of living. And competition for good school is starting to take a toll. But everything about the people and the energy is like no place else.
My village in Kerala, India. I got a house and I have a small patch of land which is very fertile and plenty of water (there are places with water scarcity). I get to watch the monsoon rains.
The beach is like a couple of miles away. The mountains are also quite close and its very beautiful and its very much untouched nature.
It's also very hot and humid but I am fine with that.
Also, they get fiber so the internet is faster than where I live in the Bay Area.
The only problem was that there were no jobs there but with the Facebook announcement, that hopefully will change for the better.
As a non-Indian I would say most places in India are way up there in the beauty stakes, be it the desert states, the southern tropics, the inland forests, the river deltas or the mountains .. but I think for lifestyle you really can't go past Kerala or Himachal Pradesh. They have it all.
That is Kanyakumari as the other commenter has pointed out. I was born and raised near there. It was such a beautiful place back then with a lot of greenery, ponds and the ocean. I wouldn't want to go back and live there these days, but I do miss the small town vibe I grew up with.
+1 for Kerala.
My native is Kerala, but I was living in Bangalore for job. Due to Covid19, right now I am WFH from Kerala. Only issue I see is, in summer 3 months (March to May), it will be hot and humid here, so AC is required. Otherwise all good.
I live a few hours north of Philly and while there have been bad years, the last ~4 have been generally great. Generally mild winters and only intermittently unbearably hot and humid summers.
I do work remotely, and bounce between Philadelphia and Las Vegas, depending on my mood and the weather. Philly food, drink, art, and music scenes are all fantastic. Additionally, it’s a very “human scale” city. Large enough to support all of the above, but small enough that you can grasp the whole thing in your mind, and travel around it easily.
This is the reason I live in Delaware. I moved from NYC to Delaware with no intention of staying. But because of a lot of the stuff you mentioned I decided to stay. I'm able to be in Philly in a little more than 20 minutes, back to NYC in 2 hours and DC in 2 hours. The COL is just right and plus I'm near family.
It’s true that Philadelphia has all these great benefits, but they’re counterbalanced by Phillies fans, the trashiest in baseball. Head further south to DC and there are many of these same benefits, tons of free cultural activities, and the reigning World Series Champs.
I'm a bit surprised very few people mention proximity to parents, family, and long time friends as a major reason of picking a place to live. The discussion is mostly around beaches, scenery, and climate. It seems that either social capital is not that important for most commenters, or many simply don't realize what they lose when they move to another country for beaches and scenery.
I live in the small city where I was born, so within 30 minute walking distance of my parents, one of my sisters, and a few of my friends.
It's amazing because our kids can play together and we can easily have the proud grandparents come over for help. Plus, friends can come over for a drink and then walk back home.
I did live in Singapore, Vietnam, and the Canary Islands for a while, which was also great, but for different reasons.
I'd say the focus on travel in here just shows that most HN readers are younger than me, so they don't have to plan for kids yet.
I think it is an age thing. If you're younger or at least not "settled"/bound by family obligations you want to see/enjoy things e.g. you didn't or don't currently have in your life - most people prefer exotic places, e.g. "beach".
The importance of family and friends comes once you realize it actually doesn't really matter that much where you live (unless it is downright terrible to live there). Life is what you make off it - this goes for your "place" as well. And for some people, their friends are essential to do that. For others not at all.
I would have never moved for family unless it concerns my household. I only moved once because of "friends"/people I knew when deciding where to study. Wasn't really stupid, just the wrong reason. It is never easier to make friends than as an 18 year old beginning your studies.
I always intended to move after studying to work abroad for a few years. Scandinavia or California would have been awesome.
I prefer not to move at all now because I/we prefer stability in life now as parents. The doctors we know, the shops we know, the handymen we know - and life isn't that terrible where we are and the daily struggles interesting enough. I would work remote to be able to stay where I am right now, just as an example.
Having moved across the continent as a kid I don't fear moving - I just prefer not to unless really necessary. Moving across the country in a few years, to a place I know more "adolescent-friendly" and with "nicer people" to build a house is still an option for me though - but harder for my partner to feel comfortable with.
I guess a lot of people (including my dad) are more adventurous and need to see the "foreign land", but everyone has their own incentives and anchors.
This deserves to be a top comment. Once you hustled your life away and have your life full of regrets that you haven't spent it with your loved ones - you realise that location is a pretty useless qualifying factor for life unless your family and closest ones are around.
There are some nice tax breaks for tech companies on the island. If you freelance or do contract work, it would be best to get a company setup for that.
Not far north of Auckland - Tawharanui peninsula, Mangawhai, etc. On a large rural mansion (preferably with ocean view). All easily achievable with about $1m USD (interest rates are great atm to). The thing to watch out is "rates" aka taxes and maintenance (ocean water does etch a bit). Downside is NZ is quite boring from cultural perspective (but super fun for boating, fishing, hunting, etc - I think most city dwellers don't realise how much of it's here). The other problem is visiting family in Europe means it's nearly 10k a year for business flights. Plus winters here aren't particularly pleasant either. I'd rather be in northern hemisphere for longer days mainly.
Right now we're a in a similar situation, albeit renting sharing with flatmates. Auckland/Airport is just 20-60 minutes away if need to. Marina is just 15 minutes away. Internet is not excellent but 60mbps VDSL is enough. Maybe 5G will change that.
On longer term - offshore cruising. I recon there might be a boom of that once Starlink constellation is operational and finally sat net is affordable for smaller boats. Big decision here is whether it's catamaran (2.5x living area, 3x cost, 2x speed, 2x maintenance, 2x comfort) or monohull (2x safety, 1.5x versatility).
Japan is out there too. They've recently announced visa programme for startups so immigration options might be more feasible. That said I've got spoiled by rural living and Japan is incredibly dense so no idea how big of a house I could find there. Also I'd move far north as summers in Tokyo etc seem unbearable.
I currently live in Kaiwaka not far from Mangawhai and have since Symantec bought out Ghost in '98, as that helped me afford a first house. It's a wonderful place to live. I did a lot remotely back then and once Symantec closed in NZ a decade ago I've been 100% remote from home ever since.
While I don't have an ocean view, and only about 2ha of land, it's a wonderful place to be. However, there are pretty significant drawbacks in getting gigs as there just aren't many local firms doing anything at all intellectually challenging and US firms still just apparently aren't interested in talent in this country who don't want to suffer being forced to relocate to awful places to live.
I don't see that changing, either; the fact is that people who really place proper value on a quality lifestyle tend to be older, and few firms really place much value on older talent either. Younger people are cheaper and more willing to suffer abuses such as moving to unpleasant, expensive metro areas in countries with alien values.
nice, I'd quite like to work remote in a similar location . Currently on the edge of Auckland (Henderson Valley area). I'm hoping with this lockdown more firms are going to be way more open to remote work. Current workplace didn't consider it an option pre lockdown, but might be more open to it now as working remotely has gone pretty well for us (other than the manufacturing side of things).
Anyone from HN who wants to can drop by on the way to a more traditional tourist spot like Mangawhai or further north (although over summer I'm often away at the weekends racing stockcars). The phone number for the library redirects to our house if it's not open.
The cheese shop is fine! I know Keith and Marita who have owned it for many years, they are good people - Ad Clarijs who founded it still occasionally runs cheesemaking classes, his place is not far from mine. Also worth a visit is the amazing Cafe Eutopia next door - https://g.page/eutopiacafe?share - which is a marvel.
It just boggles my mind how US firms don't realise how poor a value proposition - especially to people of an age to have a family or strong community ties, like the roots I have here - they offer to developers in AU/NZ when demanding that people relocate to work for them, and I'm not really optimistic that COVID-19 will really bring any significant change to their corporate cultures. I am hopeful that perhaps more firms in AU may cotton on to the fact that there's a substantial pool of exceptional veteran talent in NZ who are really underutilized, which really represents an opportunity for them if they were to make a serious attempt to hire here and let people work remotely.
I'm in Tauranga -- I have gigabit fibre, reasonable taxes, an amazing Prime Minister and a 3-5 hour time difference with Silicon Valley depending on the season. I am fortunate enough to have a remote job for a distributed company but I hope one of the few plusses to come out of the current state of the world is the tech industry taking its blinders off, finally, to remote/distributed work.
They are, but daylight saving time means that from April to October the time difference is 5 hours (NZT: +12, PDT: -7) and otherwise it's 3 hours (NZDT +13, PST -8). With a few weeks of a 4 hour difference at the edges since the daylight saving boundaries don't precisely align.
I'm in North Shore, which has fibre (100 mbps down, 20 mbps up). 5G is also good. There are cultural activities, but those are mostly in the city.
As a young, unmarried guy, there's no need for me to get a mansion. The homestay family I live with have taught me so much about living with young children, it's been a blessing to learn whether that's a challenge I'd like to take on.
Most people who want to make lots of money moved to Australia, so those left in NZ usually care about more important things in life.
I also have high hopes for Starlink, not just for NZ (we have enough submarine cables) but for other countries e.g. Zambia, Georgia.
I'm from nz as well, I wouldn't get your hopes up for 5g. We have too many trees for 5g, its only really planned in malls, airports, universities ect. Large indoor areas.
I think the bigger issue is oligopoly of cell providers. Puzzler how (reasonably) well Chorus operates, yet cell providers has big money to shelve for licences which is hard for polichickens to say no to.
The new 5G plans are pretty much same as 4G - it's not realistic alternative for broadband. Meanwhile in most Eastern European countries you can get truly unlimited data plan for less than $100 (we've got one for a 100 boat + 8 cameras marina).
Nice. If things really do go reliably in the direction of distributed-first, I'd love to move to Central Otago - where my heart has been since I was a child. I'd love to give my daughter the chance to grow up in Hawea, Bannockburn, or Earnscleugh.
I'd give serious consideration to the Mackenzie Country too - Ruataniwha, Pukaki, and Tekapo are all amazing places.
I live in the main part of Auckland, easy 20 minute bus ride to the Centre of town and Gigabit Fibre for Internet..
What specially you miss when you say "NZ is quite boring from cultural perspective" ?
For me Auckland is about the minimum size (1.5m people) I'd want to live. I have a minority hobby (chess) that barely exists in smaller cities, let alone towns. Similarly as you go to smaller places you lose those other niche things that need a huge population to support. For example outside of Auckland/Wellington most towns have perhaps one Tech meetup group, not one for every topic.
The outdoor stuff is an occasional for me. Living in the Auckland I can get to it in an hour or two dring while having two good bakeries in walking distance for my house.
Well I don't go out much nowadays, especially with newborn. But even then it's festivals and raves are too chill.
People are a bit simple. You'll rarely have discussion on politics, economy or philosophy. I suppose there's a reason - so many here can enjoy sailing, fishing, hiking, golf and much more than us in Northern Europe - things that are sort of luxury. We were bound to stay in deep dark cellars, listening to weird electronic music and eating pills like pacman.
Also housing supplies are a bit ridiculous. Laundry is good example - cold water, horizontal tub that at most gets rid of smell, but not stains. Also what's up with those stainless laundry sinks that every damn house has to have it? Right now we live on a property that's valued over $3m but we ain't got a damn heat pump...
I live in Lisbon. 10m walk from the riverside, 30m uphill walk to the center, gigabit fiber, (currently) 100% remote.
Would only trade for something directly on the seaside, or a little more to the West (Cascais, Guincho) for a slightly cooler climate, but those usually imply driving (which I detest) and lack “big city” amenities (most of which I can’t enjoy right now).
Have zero intention of ever going back to an office (have been remote on and off for years, hot-desked, worked at customers, etc.).
The current situation (despite the pandemic and weird working hours) is perfect for me since (nearly) all my colleagues and customers are outside Portugal.
I love Lisbon! (as a tourist) So walkable and inexpensive, good seafood to be had at the marisqueiras, clean sea air, cool stuff happening in the Chiado and Bairro Alto neighborhoods. I still remember my meals there: sopa de legumes, sardinhas, leitão, percebes, etc.
The tech Scene here is good for the size of the city. Nowhere near SF or even Paris level, but definitely bubbling and growing at the moment with a lot of new implantations. I am the CTO of a 20 people startup with offices there, coming from France. Super happy with the move.
I visited Lisbon twice and I always felt like this was the city to work remotely from. The food is good, the people are super nice and chill and seem to appreciate life, the cost of living was low, and the weather was amazing.
Seeing the answers in this thread, I think people should get out of the US and visit cities like Lisbon to understand what it means to live.
Schools and colleges are pretty decent, depending on location, neighborhoods, etc. Public schools are a bit all over the place where it regards quality, but all around Lisbon you have a lot of private schools (German, French, US-inspired, etc.). Best colleges tend to be public, though.
They are relatively big buildings. Kids go there and receive lessons in different subjects( stuff like Math, History, Geography, etc) from dedicated personal(known as teachers), it is OK I guess. The bad thing is that there is no pledge of allegiance ceremony, you cannot pick your curriculum and you HAVE to vaccinate your kids, but not everything can be good.
Taipei, Taiwan The most underrated city/country in Asia :
- Chill and relax
- Awesome people, polite and clean
- Best place in the world to work from cafes. Many cafes shops welcome people who works for long hours. They also care about cafe ;) I actually prefer to work from cafes than co-working here
- Surrounded by nature, mountain, sea, river are within 45minutes reach. Hundred of trails around Taipei.
- Metro / Bus system is top notch, no car needed, it's flat so you can bike everywhere easily. The bike sharing (uBike) is everywhere. I use it daily.
- People are genuinely kind, friendly, curious. Did I mentioned people 2 times? They deserve a 3rd mentioned, they really are.
- Visa is easy to get if you are employed (aka not freelancing), and earn more than usd5.5k/month, or work in a "trendy" field, you can get the "gold card" visa for 3 years that comes with a work visa, that is not attached to any company! Is any other country has such a perk to attract talent? I'm not aware of.
- Great healthcare (and the best best country that managed the coronavirus)
- LGBT friendly
- Warm (but humid)
- Convenient , 24/7 convenience stores, within 2 minutes walk from everywhere, really often, 2 convenience stores face each other (no kidding)
- Awesome international food scene , you can find any western food , and local food is amazing. Japanese food is amazing, as good as in Japan, but cheaper (it's an old japanese colony, and the favorite destination of japanese people)
- It's a better China (I lived in China for 4 years)
Cons:
- It is so relax / chill that it somehow bugs me. I sometimes worry to become "soft", staying here bc it's too convenenient
- Wish the startup / tech scene was better
ps: if you live in Taipei hit me up :)
pps: People often think Taiwan is China, but it's not. It has a totally different vibe and Taiwanese has a totally different personality. The only thing in common is the language
Hopefully it's not exploited too much, but yes Taiwan is basically perfect place to live with reasonable comfort on the cheap.
I don't think you mentioned gyms. The Taiwanese are an oddly sports-oriented people. Throughout asia I can't think of an equal in terms of availability of cheap gyms. Public sports complexes are also sometimes good enough (but I've also found myself working out in a cramped room with a bunch of senior citizens on occasion :)).
I think you also didn't mention proximity to other countries for visiting. It's a very good location, and EVA is one of my favorite airlines.
Edit: Note that the things that make Taiwan great for living also, almost by default make it a "boring" country to some types of people. #1 for remote work possibly, definitely not #1 for thrill seeking, nightlife-type interests.
Spot on, love the gyms here. They have MANY decent gyms where you pay by the hour, and sometimes by the minutes without any membership. And really cheap, about usd 1,5 per hour .
Nice point on being one of the hub for flying in Asia. It's connected to everywhere within 1 or 2 hours reach(Philipine,China,Japan,Korea, SG etc...)
Yes. In Taiwan for 2 years now from SF and it's amazing. I like to visit around Asia but this is most livable by far. Plus it's really underated so it's a bit under the radar which I think is a good kpi for remote centric work.
Agreed on cons, it's so good it softens you which is an overindulgence if efficiency problem.
Agreed startup scene is hurting. Ironically amazing for hiring and even in high tech. Taida is a serious school and companies like TSMC are here so serious engineering gets done. Ifni was in hardware I'd look to here as a black sheep vs shenzen.
Say hi if in Taipei!
Not to mention zero new local cases a month now! Enjoying restaurants and life daily :). Shhh don't share about Taiwan
I've heard great things about Taiwan and Ben Thompson of Stratechery often talks about living in Taipei.
What I'm wondering is how worried are the people of Taiwan about China encumbering on their sovereignty in the near to mid future? Or is this something that people over there do not give too much thought to in their day to day lives?
I've been thinking about moving to Taipei since I visited you. I wish I could go back to China but 1. pollution and 2. censorship are real deal breakers. On the other hand I'm wondering about how it compares to some cities in Thailand (ChiangMai) or even Korea.
Thailand has become very difficult to stay in over the last decade. Unless you marry a Thai or are employed by a Thai company, you are limited to 60(-90) day tourist visas, which are only available from countries a long haul flight away. Expect lots of Visa hassles and day long trips to immigration to extend your 60 day visa to 90 days.
Chiang Mai has terrible pollution every year Oct-Nov due to burning crop residue. It affects all of Thailand and neighboring countries, but Chiang Mai and Northern Thailand gets it particularly bad to the point of needing smoke masks. You might be better off looking at Hua Hin if you don't mind trading mountains and cooler climate for a beach.
For the Taiwan Gold Card Visa that gives you the right to stay and Work in Taiwan for up to 3 years , you can find a comprehensive list of Questions and Answers on https://taiwangoldcard.com
I am studying master in Taiwan. Chill, cafe, convenience stores are certainly the best three things I loved about. Btw transportation is only top notched in Taipei, so if you are free you should take some time to get a scooter license.
If you apply via salary, you need to be employed by any company. Freelancing income doesn't count. You need to justify it with employment letter, and tax return.
I've been studying Mandarin here for a while after being a software engineer for a few years. Been thinking about what I'm gonna do once I feel comfortable in the language. Working remotely would be great if I could pull it off.
For the last 3.5 years I've worked 100% remotely- an answer which I'm surprised isn't showing up more is: wherever my parents are. I got to spend my mid to late twenties seeing them daily and I'm fortunate for it every day. My girlfriend and I have an apartment on the other side of town and we were happy with the decision. The only way it could've been more ideal is if we could've gone back to our home country, but both of us are starting med school, hopefully, one day.
Sacramento or the surrounding metro (Granite Bay, Folsom, etc.)
I’m not surprised no one has said it but it’s a really great city. I’m slightly biased in that I grew up in Sacramento but it’s really well located. 2-3 hours to everywhere in the Bay or to anywhere in Tahoe. The American and Sacramento Rivers run through Sacramento and there are miles upon miles of walking trails along them.
The rents are significantly lower than in the Bay. Depending on how far you go from Downtown Sacramento, you can rent a 3bd/2ba house in a great area for $2k/month.
The downtown area has really been revitalized since the opening of the new arena. There are a ton of fantastic restaurants in the area and plenty of things to do, and the homeless population isn’t as bad as in SF.
The weather can get really hot (100F/38C+ during peak summer) but those are just opportunities for a day spent on any of the various waterways.
Growing up here I definitely went through the same struggles as the character in Lady Bird- hating the place and thinking there was nothing to do. But it’s really been transformed and since leaving I’ve really grown to love this city. I’m definitely planning on moving back here in the long term future, but if the new WFH policies allow me to move back here sooner than I likely will.
If anyone has questions about Sacramento I would be happy to answer.
Midtown/East Sac is honestly the only place I would live if I were to go back. I have a major problem with the culture outside of the city itself:
1. People are very closed-minded. They're against education, labor, the government, LA, other countries, etc. Anti-vaxxers/homeschoolers are for real in the surrounding metro. I knew very few people who went to elite colleges and institutions from my high school. I just recently spoke with someone who threw a birthday party for their kid, no masks, no social distancing.
2. Homelessness. My barber's neighbor, a hair salon, recently went on Fox News to talk about property damage because the city won't do something.
3. Desperate poverty. You described the nice areas, Granite Bay and Folsom are hella rich. Go to Del Paso or where I grew up playing baseball on Watt Ave. Drugs, domestic abuse, shootings. Prostitution is basically an open secret.
4. Tech is nowhere to be found. I learned to code at the Hacker Lab, a local tech meetup non-profit, and got the hell out as soon as I could. There are literally no employers.
Yes, you can find a "cheap" place but for what you're getting the cost is way too high. I'm glad I left and I'll do my best to never go back.
1. I agree that the opinions are pretty wild in the surrounding metro. It seems that as you get to more of the affluent areas, the politics tend more to the right. I still think that the downtown/midtown areas are pretty liberal. At least from what I hear from friends living in that area.
2. I’m sorry that your barber’s neighbor had to go through that. The homelessness doesn’t really seem all that bad to me compared to SF though. My experiences are from my passing observations and I’ve never really been accosted by the homeless.
3. I didn’t grow up in either of those areas but I did grow up in a middle class area so my biases might be showing here but to me it seems like most larger metros have pockets of deep poverty. Yes, Granite Bay and Folsom are the upper class areas but I think there are more middle class areas than there are impoverished areas. I’m not super in tune with how local government is doing in the impoverished parts either.
4. In the context of working remotely I’m not sure how much this matters besides I guess being able to meet other people in tech. There’s also a decent amount of tech transplants moving to the area from what I’ve heard.
Most of your points here are generally applicable to... anywhere. The homeless problem does seem pretty bad, but again... it's not great in many cities. Anti-vaxxers and closed-minded people are to be found everywhere too.
The tech scene might be "nowhere to be found" compared to the bay, but there are plenty of tech jobs. Folsom is practically founded by Intel, HP has a campus in the area, Cisco has something here, there's an Apple presence in Elk Grove, and there are also plenty of smaller companies.
I faced this decision about 2.5 years ago; I had a remote job for which I could work anywhere, and I had just separated from my wife so I needed to move. I chose Gent, Belgium, and I haven't regretted that decision for a moment. The city itself is beautiful and an absolute joy to walk or bike around in, the people are all very friendly and welcoming, and, being a university city, most people you meet are intelligent and well-educated. I strongly recommend it to anybody who's looking to escape from the madhouse that is the United States these days.
Gent is an awesome city! Beautiful cathedrals and castles, a nice downtown riverside area, good art museums, lots of terraced pubs/cafes with excellent beer selections, plenty of smart people doing PhD work at UGent. And while people speak Dutch most of the time, 99% of people are fluent in English.
That seems unusual for a company to sponsor work visas for the country of your choosing. Care to elaborate on your situation or your suggestion for Americans to follow?
My experience in Gent in 2006 was that it was impossible to get anyone to even attempt Flemish once they heard me say a word, be it English or Dutch. I imagine now it's even more that way. Nearly everyone was at least quad-lingual in English, Flemish, French, and another language, with many also having 5th or 6th languages in Spanish / Italian or German.
Would not recommend for Francophones to end up in the Flemish side of the country unless they also speak English or Flemish - there's some cultural stigma, or was at the time.
I've worked remotely since 1996, living in rural Indiana, Budapest, and Puerto Rico. Now I live on a farm in the mountains of Puerto Rico and all my questionable life decisions have culminated in a very, very tolerable quarantine.
So, answer: slow nomad. It's been a good life, although I've found it difficult to prosper to the extent more connected people can. (But I believe this is more me, than being remote.)
I don't like the idea of bouncing around a lot - a month here, a month there - it feels superficial. On the other hand, between reading and talking to a lot of people, and exploring the hell out of wherever I am by bike, a place can start to feel old... I've been here in Bend, Oregon for 5 years, and have ridden more roads and trails than some who have been here much longer. It's difficult to find new stuff to explore at this point without driving further afield. I kind of miss the sensation of it all being new, yet to be discovered (by me).
Surprised more people on here aren't saying nice, relaxed, sunny places like SE Asia. I'm a white american citizen and I've been living in SE Asia for 3 years having the time of my life while working remotely. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Looking back at the US, I don't miss the jerks everywhere, the value system of work, work, work and more money. Here in SE Asia, they value quality of life, being happy, family, and friends over money and "success" which is what Americans value.
Most (not all) places in SE Asia have air quality that will have health ramifications that aren't worth the upsides of living there. I unfortunately recently had to move my family out of there because of it. Air quality aside, it can be a great place to live.
This. I've been in Bangkok for the past year and the air quality has been really bad. Not as fatal as china but almost there.
other factors
-Food is cheap but novelty wears off eventually and you will want to cook. Apartments are mostly expensive and small [in BKK] so kitchen is small. Western style groceries are expensive.
-Its too hot. Traffic is really bad. Public transport is air conditioned but walking to skytrain etc is tiring because of the traffic, pollution, heat around you.
-Wework or similar remote coworking spaces are not cheap
-Language barriers
-Time difference with clients back home [major one]
I did one month in Hanoi, Vietnam and hated it. Places with infastructure worse than Thailand make it awkward if you have to work everyday 9-5
All of these points are easily resolved by not living in the biggest city in your country. Bangkok is the New York City of Thailand. You could have all the same delicious food, but great air, no traffic, and more if you went to say Chiang Mai
Nope. I moved from Chiang Mai. It has some of the worst air quality in the world for a quarter of the year, and almost consistently worse than in Bangkok.
that's just not truth unless you live in the biggest cities, it's not really an issue in most of the places, for instance I travelled across Thailand for months many times and only place I would consider dirty regarding air quality would be Bangkok
You're absolutley wrong. Air quality is a huge issue in most Asian countries due to crop burning especially Thailand. You should look at the AQI and pm2.5 levels on a trusted app.
I looked at AQI right now and forecast for next few days and don't find there anything extreme, just a little bit dirtier air during rush hours caused by crappy cars and motorbikes without filters, but nothing extreme anyway, slightly above what is considered completely healthy.
KL (my hometown) is great. There's reliable gigabit internet, which is important to remote workers I reckon. Dying to convince tech folks to come here instead of Singapore.
As a citizen you might not see it but Malaysia is tough for foreign developers and foreigners in general. I mean it's tough even for decent local developers, all the good ones get out asap. The only acceptable foreigner workers for most of the population are the ones who will do menial jobs, everyone else isn't wanted there. In SG no one cares about you being a foreigner.
Theres few options available to someone trying to work in Malaysia remotely:
- Get business visa sponsorship for a local job, be treated terribly and earn a bit more than local dev rates which are still lower than what you get flipping burgers in the West and work your remote job on the side.
- Apply for the Tech Entrepreneur visa which is inward looking and needs to either employ locals or be focused on the Malaysian market to be successful.
- Third option is buying a house and getting a 10 year renewable visa from that, the recent situation with the government banning permanent residents from returning home due to covid shows how little value PR actually grants you.
Not really conducive to remote workers moving there to live. Internet is great though and most services are well provided for.
I couldn't live in KL longterm, was there for most of a year and it really wasn't for me, there's some nice suburbs and all that but the pollution and soulless aspect of the city really gets to you after a while, it's so car-centric with malls everywhere being the only place you are encouraged to be a pedestrian.
For someone like me who likes to go out and drink a bit it's incredibly expensive. Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day costs basically nothing though which is amusing as a non-smoker. It's also hard to justify living in and supporting a country where people pay different prices for the same house based on their race along with a myriad of other race based laws, it's very backwards in a lot of ways. Everywhere has problems but these ones seem quite in your face once you live there for long enough. Bumiputera laws are bizarre and counterproductive to any semblance of a healthy society.
Penang is charming though and has a lot going for it, along with a big expat community, fresh air and always close to nature, Langkawi is a cheap 15 min flight away, it was once the "Silicon Valley of the East" but never really capitalised on that, regardless there's still a lot of tech manufacturing and associated industry.
Our homegrown tech scene is nothing to shout about. That's why realistically I positing a case for remote workers of foreign firms instead. Who knows, maybe the "right stuff" will spillover locally after a decade.
The bumiputera nonsense is outside our control, however unless you have to frequently deal with the government, most people won't even notice.
There's so much potential there, Malaysia has a lot going for it from a startup perspective it's just getting the talent, not just in tech either. Energy, rent, taxes are all incredibly low. I guess the same applies to startups but it all comes at a cost.
Homegrown success stories like grab eventually move to Singapore because it's just easier in a lot of ways.
I find it sad, been in and out of the country for nearly a decade and there's some real opportunities to lure in foreign remote workers or startups but there's little political will to do so. The concept that a foreigner could work for a US company from KL will just upset locals who would demand they do the work instead.
Know plenty of expats and nomad types from over the years and even basic things like accommodation is a nightmare. Monthly rentals are rare to come by apart from airbnb and that is banned in many apartments. Everywhere else in SEA you can walk up to an apartment and have a monthly lease signed in under an hour.
When I first moved in for the first week every security guard in the complex demanded to see my lease and accused me of using airbnb, was quite a shock.
Having spent the last few months stuck in Singapore's awful lockdown, I'm pretty convinced it's not the place for me. Can't wait to get back home to HK. I'm starting to miss the smell of teargas.
That said, wasn't the biggest fan of KL when I visited. It gave me "trying too hard to be Singapore and failing" vibes. Was much happier chilling in Langkawi. For a big SE Asia mega-city, BKK or Saigon are far more livable than KL, Manila, or Jakarta (and the associated crime, traffic, etc.)
Langkawi is currently reeling from the virus. They are dependent on the Chinese cruise crowd and that have dried up completely. I expect real estate prices will see a hit.
On the bright side, they're likely to be the first spot in Malaysia to get 5G, so that will bode well for an emerging tech scene.
Expats love it because sin items (tabacco and alcohol) are not only tolerated, but duty free. People buy a house right next to the airport and fly to KL / Singapore for their once a fortnight big-city fix.
Try Labuan, not as touristy and good Internet due to the offshore finance centre. Large number of expats as well as the oil crew from Brunei who come for the tax free alcohol. Regular flights to KL or take the ferry/fly to KK or Brunei.
How do you work remotely from Thailand for any reasonable amount of time? They are incredibly strict about these things. Sounds like an extended holiday and no stable way to live.
Apart from applying for an education visa and learning Thai (unsure that actually grants work rights?) or an actual work visa with associated FT job, you'd be on 1 month tourist visas with repeated border crossings and in legal grey zone at the whim of regulators.
Vietnam you can apply for extensions up to 1 year and everyone leaves you alone if employed remotely or running your own business abroad. Central Vietnam is a beautiful place.
The elite visa is $15k for 5 years if you have the money that's the way to go. It's possible to stay in Thailand about 6 months max per year without risking getting into trouble on a tourist visa.
I've been living there 6 months out of the year the past 3 years and plan to get the elite visa once the pandemic settles down. Vietnam is another favorite spot of mine but Thailand has always been my #1.
There are also special rules/visa (I do not know details but I have a few friends who did it and are still doing it) where you can create a company and hire Thai people, you can stay + pay (almost) no tax. If I remember correctly, the tax incentives expire after 6 or so years, but you can stay there as long as the company exists. One of the friends is there 13 years now and had no issues (besides the paperwork, but he paid someone to do that). But I guess you do need some money; just going there on a shoestring is not great anyway; I would want to be able to leave at any time when I want to (that's emergencies, not leaving for fun!).
Either Seattle or stay in Portland. I'm happily employed in Portland and not looking to change gigs, but if my current job went 100% remote I'd probably move to Seattle. I love the PNW, and Portland's just a bit too small of a city for me.
I did the nomad thing for a couple years and loved it, but I sort of got it out of my system. The lifestyle can be lonely. And at this point in my life I'd rather cultivate a life of my own instead of running around enjoying little bits of life elsewhere. Not that I wouldn't take advantage of the ability to travel much more freely!
My friends in Portland are all intentionally dismissive about it and for that reason I'd never suggest Portland to anybody I care about as a place to live.
I'm dismissive of it for sure. Portland and the PNW in general is so gorgeous and full of great creative people who know how to be themselves. I'm not going to avoid it and live life in fear of something that may or may not happen.
When the big one does hit though, there's definitely a long list of people who are going to be totally entitled to a good "I told you so".
The threat of an earthquake which may happen anytime between now and 500 years from now doesn't bother me. It seems better than living somewhere with frequent flooding, tornadoes or hurricanes like many people do.
The traffic is the #1 reason not to move to Portland. It's a six-lane city that only had three lanes planned for. Sure, the drivers may be better than Florida but at least Florida (outside Orlando) wasn't designed with confusing lanes the width of half a car.
Agreed that Portland isn't a great place for cars. However I think if we grow healthily as a city we can maximize public transportation, expand the MAX and street car, have dedicated bus lanes, and make it so that it isn't a problem.
The suburbs can't escape cars, but I bet we can make Portland proper a utopia for pedestrians.
I already barely use cars. It's wonderful compared to Orlando (where I happened to grow up).
It's so ironic that Portland has some of the worst street infrastructure and yet some of the best rail infrastructure. I agree that expanding MAX would greatly help the situation.
It is not ironic, it is 100% intentional. The city does not want to buy into the "build more lanes" ponzi scheme because it cannibalizes the livability of the city, and communities near large highways shrivel up and die.
The city has a growth boundary and there are a ton of national parks and awesome nature. There is nowhere to expand to, so we have to use the land we have available to us.
The best solution for this is to live in the neighborhood you enjoy and don't travel much. Portland is very walkable/bike friendly and has many vibrant districts all over the city which have everything you need.
Portland is not in the extreme hazard zone, but it will experience sustained (3-5 minutes) of shaking that will be strong enough to reduce much of the city to rubble. The city is predominantly build with unreinforced masonry that will crumble.
PDX is such a lovely airport. I’m always excited to grab a blue star doughnut before my flight. SEA on the other hand... I suppose all of this is moot now anyway, I don’t see myself getting on a plane any time soon :(
Not entirely. When nomading about I did hit Portland and Seattle, but I also lived in Lisbon, Porto, London, Budapest, Marrakech, Vienna, New York for about 3 months each and a bunch of other places for much smaller periods of time just passing through seeing friends.
I haven't seen it mentioned, but Boulder for me. I'm really into outdoors sports all year round, but winter sports in particular. To be able to work in a cool locale that is built around that lifestyle, but also where there are a lot of good coffee spots and restaurants, and where there is a sizable tech population with many major tech companies having offices there, sounds like the best of all worlds. Having a tech population is good for me because I'm social, enjoy tech meetups, etc and don't think I could just live isolated and work from home all the time strictly. Plus a major city, Denver, is right next door.
My current trajectory is headed for the tech side of the avalanche business, and its great. People live all over the mountains, so nobody really cares where you are, everything happens by teleconference anyway.
So I basically hope to find a small house on the Cap of the North and work from there.
I'm still on my master's, so I'm no expert in the subject yet. I did my bachelor's project on remote sensing of avalanches [1] and have worked with the Swedish EPA for the last year building a structured database of remotely detected avalanche activity.
This summer I'll do some work on data preparation for machine learning for the Norwegian equivalent, which will hopefully turn into a master's project.
I think it's a great industry, because there's lot of interesting tech that's relevant to work with (both SW and HW, mostly radio related stuff, but also infrasound and seismologic detectors), it's so small that you work internationally from the start, and the people working are ranging from mountain guides to database administrators.
I've been "remote" for the last 20 years or more. I've done the mobile thing in a van with my wife several times, longest stint was 9 months (including 6 months in the van in Europe). I've lived in London, Cambridge, Heidelberg, Philadelphia, Seattle, Berlin and spent extended stays in Rehovot and Kyiv. Last year, my wife and I sold our home in Philadelphia and set off in the van to check out a list of places were were considering around the US:
* Ithaca, NY
* Chatanooga, TN
* Bend, OR
* Willamette Valley, OR
* San Luis Obispo, CA
* Bellingham, WA
* Santa Fe, NM
Due to circumstances somewhat beyond our control, our first visit was to Sante Fe in February of 2019.
We've now lived in a small village 25 miles south of S.Fe for a year! The village itself is ridiculously packed with famous artists and writers (the guy that designed the Kindle, too, at least some of the time). It's beautiful, incredibly dry, endless sunshine, amazingly friendly people. It's also "Disneyland for the 65+ crowd", gets invaded by Miller Moths in May (ugh, this year was so bad), there are wasps and other pests constantly bugging the house, and there are not many roads for cycling. Lots of poverty in NM, and poor education.
Before the virus hit, our village was incredibly social ... now this aspect of life here has taken a backseat, and I'm not quite sure how it comes back.
Developing software and living here in general is pretty wonderful, but it's hard to know what the future holds. My wife misses water, and maybe (amazingly) even humidity. If I could afford somewhere in southern CA, I'd probably have picked that, but it's just absurd.
I live in Cambridge and its perfect for my needs, for now. Small university town, everything at bikeable distance, cosmopolitan: if I want to meet a person from any country or experience their cuisine, eveything is available here. London is just an hour away by train. And companies like Microsoft, Apple and IBM have their offices here. The only problem is that in UK its extremely hard to get a sense of community and make new friends - especially with the native Brits, who prefer to be aloof and not really interested in connecting beyond the surface
I lived in Cambridge for 18 months in 1987-88. You should be very very glad of the tech companies there, because there's now a community to be a part of that isn't the university. When I was there (working for Schlumberger out on Madingley Road), there was almost nothing happening in town that wasn't university-related, and if you didn't have an inside connection, you weren't a part of it.
I have a sort-of-cousin who lives there now, and he loves it , though he did find a way into the university crowd anyway.
Shame it's so astronomically expensive. I don't think I could ever afford a nice family house there. Don't really understand where all the lecturers and tech workers live.
True! I think it gets inexpensive very rapidly as one moves away from the centre - and thats where most workers live. I am single so I can afford living near the centre for now.
I found that when I first moved to the area, but it's not too hard to get involved with groups like Makespace, Cambridge Wireless or Cambridge Network, CSAR or the Centre for Computing History to expand your circle.
I don’t think you are missing out, since in my experience you usually only find “pub” friends to drink with, who often have unhealthy drinking habits and don’t become actual friends (albeit I’m faux British: in New Zealand!). Any activity (sport, hobby, work) where you hang with locals gives you the chance to make healthier relationships.
For anyone looking to make friends in a pub, you want to find a pub that is social. Some signals to look for: (a) a very wide range of ages that go there, (b) casual drinkers who are there to socialise rather than get drunk, (c) a single woman can drink at the pub comfortably without getting hit on, (d) not heaving full but rarely empty, (e) no loud music - or even better no music - if any live music it is quiet enough to talk over, (f) not a “popular“ place but a place for locals, and (g) it “feels” like someone’s house rather than a bar. That style of pub is dissapearing, and they are hard to find in large cities, but they do exist and they have a completely different culture.
Edit: if anyone from the Isles can comment on their take on this, I would appreciate it.
True in the past, but a non-issue these days, especially with younger colleagues.
> Also, being "white" helps, I think
Maybe in very provincial communities in parts of the country but not in the major cities - at least not since the 90s onwards. If anything I'd say the UK is one of the more open minded countries I've seen.
Another thing I just remembered. The British have a great love for volunteering. I had a friend who moved to St Albans due to work and volunteered at the de Havilland air craft museum and got good friends of all age groups in the area from that and got to help out on restoring planes.
Kinda living it already; Taiwan. Love it here. Close to Japan and Korea, and my remote company is in Japan.
I would like to try living in Europe someday ( Switzerland would be awesome ) but I don't make enough money to do that yet. And there are visa issues too.
If I were forced to live back in the states, probably Boulder, Co. Maybe Brunswick Maine.
Honestly though, health care keeps me from moving back to the States.
I was in Kaohsiung from 2014-2018, which city are you in? I worked for OSE in the Nanzi Export Processing Zone, making USB, SD card, DRAM - so many good memories.
There's a good community of hospex (was CouchSurfing, now hopefully BeWelcome), including weekly meetups in Taipei, Hsinchu, Chiayi, Tainan, and Kaohsiung.
I'll be based in Taipei for the next few months as a refugee of SG's repressive lockdown. A frequent visitor on quick trips, will be an interesting experience to get a bit more of the local expat experience.
I grew up in the Nashville area. I've thought about moving back there from the West coast. I have nostalgia from my childhood, but I'm also hesitant to move back for a few reasons:
1. Weather
2. Transportation
3. Discrimination
The climate in the Nashville area was very hot in the summer and damn cold in the winter. My family wasn't very well off. I had a Wal-Mart coat that wasn't so great. I remember freezing my ass standing at the bus stop every morning to get to school, and being a dumb kid, I thought that was "normal", as in, I didn't know that you can have warmer jackets or clothes to stay warm.
Growing up in Nashville (K-12), I literally believed people of my skin color and origin were actually inferior to white people. The South can be hospitable, and I don't mean to generalize. Regardless, the folks who don't want to welcome you are very clear about that and have the loudest voices. One of my best friends in high school wasn't allowed to come over my house. I certainly won't accept my children having to deal with that non-sense. In grade school and middle school, I was bullied often and being the only non-white and non-black kid, it was sort of like being treated as a pariah.
This was all back in the 90's to 2000's. I don't mind living in the West coast, and I think my current city is amazing except that housing is extremely expensive.
Nashville and the surrounding areas are a beautiful place. I assume they've become more progressive in the past 25 years, but I don't know. Unfortunately, the "God fearing Christian/Real Americans terrify me.
I've lived in Nashville for the past 4 years and am from a smaller city also in the south. The summers can be pretty brutal if you're out strolling around however the winters have been relatively mild while I've been here - little to no snow not many sub zero days I can remember typically it stays in the 20-30s at the worst.
The transportation system is pretty shitty, traffics pretty bad and theirs not any plan in place to improve it beyond making the roads bigger.
The discrimination I'd say is still here honestly. Some areas are more diverse like east nash but on average I dont know if I could say its improved since you lived here, but than again I'm white and have only lived here for a few years.
If ya got any questions about how its changed or what its like living here just lmk i'd be happy to answer
I moved to Nashville in 2018 from San Francisco and love it here. Yes, the weather and storms are absolutely insane and still shocking to me. Thunderstorms, sheets of rain, summer heat and the occasional tornado. However the people, southern culture and hospitality, outdoor activities and lifestyle are much better suited to me than SF.
I own and run a DevOps consulting company, so the lower cost of living and zero state income tax is all just gravy. What area of Nashville did you grown up? I am in Germantown.
I grew up near Old Hickory Blvd and Nolensville Pk close to Tusculum Rd. At least back when I was growing up, it was a lot of African Americans, Hispanic folks, and Iraqi Kurdish immigrants that lived in the area.
There was a phase of my life where I felt a nomadic existence would be ideal.
Later I went through another phase in which I imagined finding the perfect place and establishing an amazing existence there in an environment uniquely suited to my temperament.
In the current (perhaps final?) phase I realized that everything I want to do and which is important to me is connected with the place I happen to be.
I've often said to people "There's no such thing as paradise. Everywhere has its issues and problems. What matters is whether you care about those problems or not."
When I lived in Seattle in the 1990s, I cared about the problems I saw/knew about in the PNW. When I lived in Philadelphia for 22 years, I really didn't care about the problems. Seattle felt like paradise. Philadelphia just felt like a place to live.
In an ideal world, I would live in New Zealand, probably, though I've heard many things have changed in the 15 years since I lived there.
I work remote and live in Los Angeles, despite all the drawbacks of living in California, because of family, friends, and my overall support network. Moving somewhere else would mean having to start all over again.
I left NZ in 2011 and came back recently. It's still more or less the same place I remember. If you are an active outdoorsy type, I don't think there are many places in the world that compare to NZ. Where I live I can be at a surfing beach within 10 minutes. Rock climbing in the hills in 10 minutes. Skiing in the Southern Alps in 2 hours. Hiking a beautiful trail in 2 hours (with warm modern huts available for 5 NZD/night). All while having access to free healthcare, and a decent disposable income thanks to a relatively low living cost (Auckland is an exception).
Downsides are poor public transport (cheap Japanese imports mean everyone chooses to own a vehicle), expensive food compared to EU or USA, and few jobs outside of the tourism & service industries.
I pretty much avoided auckland public transport for a long time, then a few years ago, I started taking the train, and that's actually been pretty good and its faster than taking the car, pretty reliable. I've noticed in the last year or so a big increase in usage. NZ Tech industry is growing steadily and was on track to become 3rd biggest industry (not sure what the lockdown fallout is going to be like) and tends to be quite diverse with various niche companies. Just not many companies (at least prelockdown ) were remote friendly.
That's funny, because I found the transportation in Wellington to be lightyears better than what we have in LA. Granted, the trains were older at the time(I think they've since been replaced), but I remember being able to get everywhere pretty easily by train and bus, and walking was a cinch. But I guess all public transit elsewhere seems pretty good when you're coming from LA. haha
It's great, but the immigration process is very difficult and slow. I applied for the Skilled Migrant Category in February 2019 and haven't even got a case officer handling the application yet.
I'm surprised at that. My wife and I became permanent residents in 2007. It must have changed a lot since then as it took us under a month from application to residency.
Yes, it has got harder since then. I graduated in 2011, and came to NZ on a Working Holiday visa. People told me I should try to get PR, but I didn't have the years of continuous relevant work experience.
I went to a few other places, then stayed in Taiwan for 4 years. At first it was going to be 2 years, but at year 1.5, NZ changed their rules to requiring 3 years. Then 2016 happened, with all the political problems in the UK and US. Everybody from English-speaking countries is trying to move here, and the waiting times have gone up dramatically. The 4th year in Taiwan is because I met my girlfriend. She also wanted to come to NZ, but she couldn't even get a Working Holiday visa (there's only 600 per year for Taiwanese).
Now I'm losing hope that it'll ever be possible. I've put in so much: emotionally, financially, and in time, towards this dream. If it does fail, I will be devastated and probably never be able to settle anywhere. (I have nationality issues and can't just "go back to your country").
That's the year that I applied and got permanent residence. It didn't feel out of reach, besides the long month of waiting.
The background check was pretty epic, though. I had to prove that I was indeed in a relationship with my girlfriend, who was a New Zealand citizen. This was probably because I didn't have a job lined up or a degree or skills to offer. We turned over about a year's worth of letter's we had mailed each other, many of which were pretty intimate. Supposedly someone flipped through them. Then I had to get a chest X-ray and some other medical exams, along with a drug test, to make sure I wasn't just coming over to freeload off their medical system or sling dope.
I imagine it would have been much easier if I had the skills and income that I have now. I was actually kinda shocked that I got permanent residency as easily as I did. From what I was told, I should have been pessimistic.
I'm European; So I can live anywhere in Europe essentially.
I'm pretty sure it would be Talinn, Estonia. Everyone there has a high competence with English, the entire society is built with "online first" and usually offered in three languages.
It has a good economy, is friendly and has reasonable social policies and a lovely wilderness.
I lived in Estonia and worked for their government for a while - it's not so online first for foreigners unless you're resettling indefinitely. Also, it's rather expensive especially when comparing the salary level locally. Personally I enjoyed it but having lived in SF, San Diego, Berlin, London, Berlin, Tallinn, and Shanghai I would definitely go with Berlin. It has an optimal mix of being relatively cheap, a good tech scene but not a dominant one, enough english speaking you can get around, and great quality of life. But I do still want to try NYC, DC, Lisbon, and Nairobi
I lived in Helsinki for a short period, and genuinely it's awesome.
It was too expensive to live central in Helsinki so I lived in Vantaa.
This was not a problem as the public transportation is not over-capacity and is very punctual. When I lived there though, there was only one underground "Metro" line- not sure if that changed.
Getting to Vantaa requires an overground inter-city train.
As for the experience: everything felt very "human"- like it was designed for comfort and ease. I didn't speak any Finnish (and the little I did I could not pronounce well enough to be understood) but otherwise it was truly lovely. I even lived through the Winter there and it was still quite nice.
The only Barrier to going back is that, as I said, it's rather expensive :(
> everything felt very "human"- like it was designed for comfort and ease
When I was in Helsinki, I could tell the entire place had been designed to take care of people. When we first arrived, we tried to buy train tickets, and were then told that families with strollers ride for free!
I didn't see any homeless people, and the one sort of "off-balance" person was clearly still getting food and health care.
The entire place just seemed like a place where everyone cares about everyone else's well being.
RE homeless people - when I went (several times as I lived across the bay in Tallinn) the only homeless people I saw were refugees or pretend refugees (someone told me it was an organized crime thing but I have no knowledge of whether that's true or not) and I'm not even sure those people were truly homeless or just panhandling
There’s a similar organised crime thing in Sweden. It’s not uncommon to see some homeless person being berated by someone of the same race in a high end luxury car that has been modified.
The nature of the argument does imply that they know each other.
I'm currently in Helsinki, and it is a really great place to live - speaking as somebody who moved from Edinburgh, Scotland.
The public-transport is first-class, with a single system for the local rail, trams, and busses. Even in winter they're almost always on-time, and in good-shape.
The place is clean, the people are generally helpful if you need assistance, although the stereotype of Finns being "closed" and noncommunicative is pretty true, in general.
The city feels well-run, and well-organized, and the child-care is first-rate. Where I live I'm two minutes from the sea by foot, and the back of our apartment block faces a large park which contains our allotment on the far-side.
Many of the apartment buildings have children's play-areas, sandboxes, swings, etc, in them, and I guess we're lucky that where we live there are about ten children ranging in age from 1 year to 7 years. So there are always neighbours to chat to, and company for the children.
I have no idea how you can even say that. It's not even CLOSE to London. If you compare how close you can be to the city center, the rent prices are completely different. I think even Malmo city center rents are higher.
I hear it can be hard to make friends in Estonia if you weren't born there. Just wondering if you and anyone else had any experiences being part of the community in northern Europe?
I've been working remotely and I feel that the best option is: moving around every few years.
I found that 2-3 years is the sweetspot where you can absorb the culture, learn the language and start to get kinda bored of your surroundings - so that's exactly what I've been doing.
I feel that digital nomad doesn't really work as you can't really get to know the place you're living at in few weeks or even months and staying in a single place for longer than 3 years is a severe underutilization of remote benefits.
I've done this for the past 10 years and had a great ride, but I'm getting tired of it; after leaving one place, I start to missing the friends made in the last place.
Assumptions: Timezone matching isn't a constraint. Political administrations within a nation oscillate, but in general little substantive changes as people pick between two similar options. Proximity to other specific humans isn't a constraint (this seems to be a common requirement expressed in this thread). Alternatively - assume international travel is restored to normalcy.
Rationale: southern hemisphere is desirable for air quality. Politically stable (relatively). Good soil - volcanic, non-polluted. Low population density. Affordable & sizeable parcels of land - sufficient to generate food and maybe income - within commutable distance of a sufficiently large & sophisticated metropolis. Within those criteria, also easy to obtain a location at least 10m, preferably much more, above sea level. There are other considerations but they make me sound a tad paranoid.
It's smaller, for sure. The population of the whole of Tasmania is 500k, with Hobart just under half of that. Compare the 4m in Melbourne alone (6m through the state of Victoria). NSW has similarly dense population around its capital.
At some deep level, the less centralised approach appeals to me.
I've worked in Melbourne for weeks at a time, but never really lived there. (I've lived in Sydney most of my life, and did 5 years in London.)
Everyone has their own list of things they want around them - that's why I included my rationale. If given the choice to live anywhere the idea of choosing to live in a city would be anathema. But I'm probably in the minority there.
Hobart is great. I live in Melbourne but have family in Hobart so we are down there quite a bit.
There is a really good food and arts culture, they get test matches and 6 or so AFL games a year, good coffee in the city and an amazing array of outdoor activities a 45 min drive from Constitution Dock.
Real estate isn't as cheap as it used to be and some things can be hard to get (eg Ikea style furniture, whenever my relatives get the boat to Australia, they nearly always go to Ikea and fill the car up with flat pack things)
Hobart is somewhat cosmopolitan with a great music and arts scene. Outside of that, every small town is about as bogan as a comparably sized town in rural mainland.
My wife and I moved from Solana Beach California to Sedona Arizona (in the mountains, two hours north of Phoenix) in 1998 and it was a great decision. We did close up our house twice for a while and left town when I worked at Google and Capital One, but Sedona has been our home most of the time.
Work wise it has been OK remotely consulting, but that only worked because I usually enjoy whatever someone is paying me to work on. I also write some books, but that is mostly for fun, not revenue.
In the last 22 years, I think I have averaged about 15 hours a week working, which seems like a good compromise between career and spending time with friends and family.
Do you live in actual Sedona or do you live next door in Cottonwood or Cornville? I found Sedona beautiful, but a bit too tourist focused, whereas the other cities were actually much better to stay in. Also they have all the wineries :)
We do live in Sedona, and usually stay around home on weekends when our town fills up with tourists. I also really like the "old town" part of nearby Cottonwood but my wife prefers Sedona and I am happy here.
I know a lot of people who make their living off of tourism, so I tend to look favorably at tourists and will often halt a hike for 5 minutes to talk with tourists on our hiking trails.
Salary is not an issue because I worked for 20 years, doing 32 hours a week, and saved money before moving to Sedona. Over the long term, spend less money than you earn and save some.
EDIT: I did do a full time onsite gig 2018-2019 managing a small deep learning team. My wife and I saved a good fraction of that income, and I still support that company for the 100+ US patents I worked on.
Wife and I quit our jobs in Sydney and took six months to circumnavigate Australia en route to a new life of unknowns in sleepy Cairns, up in the north of the country (home to the Great Barrier Reef and also the oldest rainforest in the world). Was expecting to work remotely once we arrived, but am now back working in tech (non-remote) in definitely the most interesting job I've ever had, where I even get to dive for work at least once a month. Jigsaw falling into place.
We passed through so many beautiful places on the trip though, places that you immediately felt an affinity with and could see yourself living. From Jervis Bay to Tilba Tilba or Eden in NSW, all of the beautiful bays in East Gippsland. Anywhere in Tasmania, but particularly the west along the Pieman river - the forests there are older than birds and the air is the cleanest in the world. To the outback farms around the Grampians, the south eastern wine region of SA and the desolate Beachport, Kangaroo Island, up to Wilpena Pound. Esperance and Denmark (wow!) in southern WA, I took sand from every beach I visited and Cape le Grand was the whitest. It is like snow. The epic surf beaches from Hamelin Bay to Margaret River (and route 250, in my top five short drives in the world!) Way up north to Exmouth and Ningaloo Reef, home of the whale sharks, and then onto the sweet smells and rich colours of tropical Broome and the otherworldly Dampier Peninsula. The interior is possibly less-livable (but then I'm an ocean lover), but it is remote and beautiful, so it ticks boxes.
The world is an amazing place. More power to those who choose to test the boundaries a bit.
I though this when I did a long trip once. I'd rather spent the whole time in New Zealand, instead of hopping from one place to the next for a short time.
I live here already. The mountains of Utah, 30 minutes from BYU. My house was very affordable on my salary alone and is 5000 square feet. I have a whole acre of forest for a backyard and I'm a short walk from trails into the mountains that I can explore for hours.
BYU being close is great because the town has an amazing food and music scene for it's size. BYU has a great art museum and does concerts regularly. Bands you've heard of like Neon Trees, Imagine Dragons, and Kaskade all got their start in Provo.
I think there are probably countless places that are 30 minutes from a large University that would check all these boxes.
I lived in SLC for a bit and loved it there, I can only imagine how great it is further out from the city. Utah seemed undiscovered at the time, and since leaving our house value has skyrocketed near Liberty Park, and tech has exploded. It seems the local term is "the silicon slopes", which is creative.
I’ll just mention that I personally like SLC better because it’s less dense than Utah valley. Things are getting pretty crowded there. But this is coming from a guy who’d live in the middle of rural nowhere if I had a remote job and access to internet :)
I would love to live in the South England countryside. My parents live out in the country near Windsor, and it's nice and quiet, but still pretty close to the city life amenities that we enjoy.
Unlike living in Silicon Valley, where even when I'm walking distance from a major downtown, that getting around is a nightmare, the UK is way easier for commuting.
Too late to become a nomad, I’m a middle-aged divorcee with kids; but as soon as the little devils are of adult age, I’ll likely say bye to England and fuck off back to Italy, probably the South-East - where the weather is nice, the beaches are sandy, and life is fairly cheap.
Moscow or Saint Petersburg. I'm ethnically Sri Lankan, born and educated in Toronto and I've spent quite a bit of time in the Bay Area, but I've become disillusioned with the West. It just amazes my friends that you can live a comfortable middle-class life in Russia on $800 per month. But aside from being cheap, I just feel like it's a place of great opportunity and future power. There's that immense energy of Russian patriotism, determined to "stick it" to a world that has sanctioned them. The vibe I get in Russia now is what I imagine it must've been like to strike it out in America in the 60s. There's definitely a place for the young, broke, lonely and bold. And unlike China or other rising Asian economies, it has that strictly European lifestyle that I love - a baroque Old World appreciation of the fine arts that is now lost on the West.
Granted. However I've spent the last 8 months living in Ukraine, including the war-torn areas close to the Russian border, and I absolutely loved it. Found it easier to make friends, build a life, and move up in society than I ever did in the West.
You can live well for that cheap in Moscow or St. Petersburg? I'm surprised, I figured they were a bit more expensive. How is it for speaking English (or do you speak Russian?), making friends, etc.?
Learning Russian is a must. Yes you can live for that cheap, if you like the older Soviet-era grungy apartments further from the metro (I love them). It's hard to make any kind of meaningful connections if you don't speak Russian. And there are gangsters who can be openly hostile to non-Russian speaking people - but if you speak Russian and know how to carry yourself like a native you'll be fine, no matter the colour of your skin. Few people speak more than a few words of English, though there is a small native-English-speaking expat community in Moscow. I've been studying Russian for 6 months part-time, and I speak enough to make friends, though I definitely plan to dedicate another year of full-time studies to become fluent.
This is exactly the image that Putin's power wants to project to foreigners - did you travel to russia or know people actually living there?
The country is still extremely corrupt and opportunities might be more scarce than you think. A lot of people would move out of there if they could.
No doubt that as a tech worker you can make a decent living pretty much anywhere, and I guess you are lucky enough to not be a woman or fall under the LGBT umbrella to be able to see the uprising of "family values" as a good thing.
This is exactly the image that the West wants to project about Russia - did you travel to Russia or know people actually living there? The West is extremely corrupt and opportunities are only for the rich, well-connected or tech workers. A lot of people would move out of the West if they knew an alternative existed.
I am russian and grew up there, this is why I genuinely wonder.
Of course my experience in the West might be wildly different than yours. In the same way, maybe your experience in russia will be wildly different than mine, because starting as an expat right away instead of navigating russian society from the inside might be extremely different.
I am curious to know and interested to hear your side of things.
Russia has changed a lot. The Soviet collapse and the subsequent 20 years were not easy, for sure, I can understand why you left. But now I'm reading a lot of reports and historical analysis written from inside Russia, like by Bill Browder, Gilbert Doctorow, Dominic Levien, and other Westerners with deep knowledge of Russia. There is a very different energy now since 2014 (the Crimea situation). And I've spent last 8 months living in Ukraine, including Mariupol and other areas close to the Russian border. I loved it.
And as a person with the same "family values" and traditional Orthodox Christian mindset as Russians, I have an immediate affinity with them. I can understand why you wouldn't like Russia if you didn't have similar values.
There are some Russians who look at Russia through Western eyes, and therefore they only see the bad. And indeed most of the world looks through Western eyes because of Hollywood, and that's why they see Russia as a pariah.
I see your point. For sure, the country's situation changed a lot since the 90s.
It is also very common to dismiss any russians who are critical of power to have "western eyes", as if you couldn't be russian and have issues with your government.
This mentality was already present in soviet times.
You seem to say that you gain immediate affinity with russians for having the same "orthodox" mindset, yet you are ready to dismiss any russian that doesnt think like you expect them to as "not really russian". People in russia are varied, just like everywhere else, there is just one voice which overpowers all the discourse.
Edit : I don't think people who criticise their country see "only the bad". They criticise because they care, so they probably see the good as well, what do you think?
I just meant to say that the majority of the world is tuned into the Western media machine, including Russians, so they have a tendency to evaluate every country based on Western metrics such as GDP-per-capita and LGBTQ-friendliness. I think these statistics are misleading because they fail to capture a lot of the nuance and quality of life that is found in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world. But sure, there is a lot of rah-rah Russian patriotism, just like there is a lot of rah-rah American patriotism.
But there are also blatant lies in the Western media narrative about Russia. For example, the West claims that Putin's "regime" suppresses all alternative viewpoints. However, from spending a lot of time watching Russian media, including official TV channels like Russiya-1, and YouTube standup comedians like Данила Поперечный [1], and seeing memes on Russian social media, I see a lot of diverse anti-government voices in the Russian landscape, which are NOT suppressed. Actually, I find the Western landscape to be more suppressed. Try to be pro-Russian, for example, and see what happens in America.
I find the Russian political landscape, including social media, to be more educated, informed, reasonable, diverse, and intellectual compared to the Trumpian world of American politics.
I personally evaluate Russia using metrics that they value, such as family values. I am not even Christian, I am Muslim, but I have very similar values. But I find that even Russians who are not Christian are still more understanding of my family values than Westerners who look at me like a backwards idiot. In that sense I actually find greater tolerance in Eastern Europe.
This is interesting, I can definitely see how being muslim in the West can lead to being judged negatively, and the parallel whith how eastern europe tends to be perceived sometimes.
I have been myself quite surprised by how Americans or Europeans seem to think that eastern europe is backwards on every level based on how they judge russian government.
One stupid example is : someone believed that all soviet made devices were bad quality, when actually a lot were manifactured without the idea of planned obsolescence built-in, which made them very durable.
But they had a bias for everything russian being shitty because it is supposed to be a backwards country, and didnt consider different metrics to evaluate things.
I largely agree that there is a huge amount of caricature being made about russia, but I would also argue that the government is partly at fault for that because of the monolithic image they try to project. They erase all nuance about russian people and life in the country on purpose.
Moscow is a great place to live/base, but $800/month for a comfortable middle-class life here is definitely an underestimate. I'm from the US - lived in NYC, Boston, and LA - and have been based in Moscow for the past year; it's hard to overstate what an amazing city this is, though it's important to note that there is a massive difference between Moscow (or St Petersburg) and the rest of Russia. I've traveled to many places within Russia and they might as well be different countries when compared to this mega-city. Speaking of Moscow specifically: it's incredibly beautiful, it has the best metro system I've seen in the world (to the point that some metro stations are actually tourist spots), world-class international food, plenty of museums, shows, theaters, active nightlife, plus all the conveniences you'd find in the West. And of course there's the comfort of a European feel to the city, with the excitement that comes with learning about the Russian/Soviet culture and mindset of some people (esp. the older crowd, whereas the younger educated muscovites are basically European). Flights to the main European, US, and Asian cities are cheap and frequent: a roundtrip nonstop flight Moscow-NY is usually ~$300, London can be as cheap as $15 (yes, that's fifteen dollars), and I've even booked a flight to Hong Kong the day before flying for like $200 direct. The people are super friendly, and although the majority do not speak English, it's fairly easy to find English-speaking Russians or expats if you hang out in the center or know the spots (I have many expats friends who've been here for 2-3 years and don't speak a word of Russian beyond saying "thank you", yet manage to live very active social lives).
Having said all of this, however, I am also very aware that my experience here is very different from the average Russian. Being an expat, from the US, speaking English, and being able to afford a comfortable lifestyle in the center give me a much rosier perspective than if I were a low-income worker having to commute 1+ hours to get to work. I'm ethnically Latino and look obviously not-Russian, so people here are curious about me and act extra nice - especially when they find out I'm American. It's not uncommon for someone to approach me on the street, a park, or a bar just because they heard me speaking in English. On the other hand, however, immigrants from ex-Soviet countries (particularly Central Asia) face discrimination and racism, as do non-European Russians (eg: Russians from the Caucasus region, or the east of Russia), and it's not uncommon when looking to rent an apartment to see the words "FOR SLAVS [white Russians] OR FOREIGNERS ONLY", something that would be completely illegal in the US. Don't get me wrong, as an expat from the West I find Moscow to be just about the perfect place to live, but I totally understand the perspective of many Russians or some immigrants that criticize it harshly. I love this city, and I think loving it means also being aware of its shortcomings.
You can get a 3 year multi-entry tourist visa to Russia which allows you to stay for up to 6 months, leave the country for a day, and then re-enter for another 6 months, etc, for the entirety of the 3 years (yes, legally). Funny enough, the US is the only country for which such a permissive visa is allowed, Russian tourist visas for other countries are usually restricted to a single-entry, one month maximum, not sure why we get such good treatment (just like the multi-entry 10 year tourist visa for China, which I think only US and Canadian citizens can get).
I don't think they're issuing visas rn due to the pandemic, but I imagine they will resume consular services this year, and then you can just apply through your local embassy/consulate, just look up the required documents and submit them, it's fairly straight-forward and does not require an interview, proof of income, etc.
I'd live more country-side, where you get a lot more house and land for your money. Preferably near a forest and a small lake. I want to get away from the city, but I'd still like to have a town nearby for schools for the kids so that they can have friends to walk/bike to. I'd just like the space to build a fire, build a pizza oven and not bother anybody. And I never want to hear anybody else's outdoor speaker ever again :) (All this in the Netherlands.)
Also I'd like enough rooms to have a proper office (big desk, many screens, drawers filled with Raspberry Pi's, I love computers), now I work in my sons room. I'd also like to have the space to put something like a car wreck on my land, so the kids can explore it. You know, create a rich learning environment, outside and inside.
Edit: Just like Deanna and Riker on Nepenthe [0] but with other people within walking distance ;)
I think I’d still prefer living in a city on the East or West coast. I’m in the LGBT community, and I like living in a state with explicit legal protections against housing, healthcare, and employment discrimination. On top of that, the LGBT community has a lot of history in these cities, and lots of social groups to connect with. I also just enjoy city activities more!
A lot of people underestimate how important this is for us. So many countries in which I'd love to live are ruled out immediately, and we simply don't have the flexibility to only take into consideration cost of living, natural beauty, family, etc.
Relatively speaking, are very few places in the world where you can live a "normal" life as an LGBT person.
Seattle, exactly where my family lives now. I didn't move for work all those years ago, though it obviously helped that I could move somewhere and have a job.
Living in a city is awesome for us; we don't have to drive, can walk to almost everywhere we want to go on a daily basis, and have super close access to all of the nature, culture, and the like we could ever want.
I would repatriate to a quiet fjord in northern Norway, code outdoors in the summer with Grieg echoing through the fjord. In the winter I'd code in the sun room while the northern lights swirled overhead.
That would be my dream at least. For those that have been to northern Norway, you'll get this. For those that haven't, you'll just scratch your head.
I've been as far North as Molde/Ålesund. I hated it.
Yeah, the fjords are desperately pretty. I had a great time driving around Geiranger and the Atlanterhavsveien. Trollstigen would have been nice if it weren't rammed with caravans.
But otherwise, no thanks. It's extortionately expensive, there's nothing to do there, it's a breeding ground for billions of mosquitoes, and there's nothing good about such extreme seasonal differences in day lengths.
After having lived in Scandinavia for seven years, I think there's an enormous delta between expectation and reality when it comes to Scandinavian Winters.
Well, Molde & Ålesund are west, not north ;) Tromsø is proper north and very different from Molde/Ålesund. There's a lot more culture there, as well as being the right place for sitting in a fjord and watching northern lights. I know people who have moved there temporarily and really liked it.
But it's definitely the case that whilst the Scandinavian lifestyle often features as best life satisfaction/happiest/whatever, it's definitely down to personal preference. These countries also tend to score low on happiness/life satisfaction for immigrants, which shows that the benefits are only perceived/received by some.
I think in summer you might find the mosquitoes too annoying to be outside with, and in winter -- you have to keep in mind its not just a shorter day, its also permanently sunrise/sunset on sunny days (depending on your latitude, it could also be just really dark) and mostly slate grey skies anyway so the concept of a "sun room" doesn't really make sense. I quite like Scandinavian winter (I'm in Sweden), but its not for everyone.
It is very beautiful up in Norway though, and the Norwegians
are nice people.
Yup. Somewhere in or above the lofotens. I lived in Norway for 2 years; 7 of the months in or above Narvik/Harstad. I don't recall the mosquitos being problematic. And yes, pretty much night from late October to February.
My answer is currently basically the same, but with local wilderness. Somewhere in the norther part of southern ontario or the southern part of northern ontario. I.e. wilderness, but not so wild that I have to fly in on a float plane.
I really do want to visit Norway though, and it might well sell me on switching the dream to there.
I can't imagine wanting to use satellite internet as my daily driver. A quick search says that the physical limit for latency is around 500ms? That's unplayable for most video games, and would make things like SSH'ing to a server pretty annoying.
But I imagine you'd probably go there to get away from things, and just rely on internet when absolutely needed.
Starlink will be a LEO (low earth orbit) satellite network. Satellites travel at much lower altitudes resulting in much lower latencies (I think easily below 50ms was what I read before).
And, in practice, the latency will actually be better than fibre. So instead of a 240msec ping to the US from NZ, it'd be closer to the theoretical minimum of 25msec, but by how much, who knows? I could see a realistic 50-80msec perhaps.
FWIW I've been using conventional (geo-stationary) satellite for the past 7 weeks. SSH is surprisingly not horrible, though it could obviously be snappier. RTT for servers that are physically ~250 km away is ~600ms. (Obviously you really shouldn't be ssh'ing into your servers anyway - that's what configuration management tools are for.)
No one wants to use satellite as their daily driver, but almost by definition some of the best places on the planet are necessarily a long way from a) people, and b) modern infrastructure. Everything is a tradeoff.
Most video games are perfectly playable -- but I suspect you meant most multiplayer video games, and yes, that latency's not going to work for you.
Why not Far North instead - the county of never ending summer?
I'm too excited for Starlink capabilities for offshore sailing and working (though sailing is involved enough that working on the side didn't work well for me before).
However, if you're earning a good salary, I would suggest Lake Hawea if you want to still be part of society. (and you should still be covered by the nations gig fibre network there)
Not quite all of them - I'm out in Rakaia Gorge, no fibre for me :)
But I have a 5gz wireless connection from Netspeed that works just fine for video conferencing and collaboration. It's more expensive than fibre and it comes with data limits, but it lets me work from where I want to live, so I consider the extra cost to be worth it.
This is the dream for many of those who left their relatives in another country from the lack of opportunities, and are seeing people they love getting older far away from them.
I would certainly take the first flight to my country and try to stay close to those I love the most before it is too late.
As someone who "chose to be born" in the US, I'm so sorry my country is making things more of a hassle. It's already tough living in another place in many ways without the hassle of an uncertain legal status that makes planning more difficult.
I'd probably go back to Japan; possibly Fukuoka, Hokkaido or somewhere relatively close from Greater Tokyo, possibly the Shonan area (Kamakura/Zushi).
One of the reasons I came back to the UK was that work/life balance seems to be a bit more of the norm then it is in Japan. The nature over in Japan is really something else, though. Miss it almost everyday.
I just moved to a small town in Michigan from San Jose this week.
I love the lack of traffic, my giant backyard and deck, how completely quiet and pitch black it is at night and that I have yet to meet a software developer. Nothing against devs, but getting out of the tech bubble is nice.
I can go to Detroit, Chicago, the Great Lakes and many other places if I need a change of pace.
Of course it’s only been a few days at this point, but very optimistic. We lived in San Jose for 5 years and it just was not for us despite trying really hard to learn to like it.
I live in Chicago, and to be honest, it's not that bad if you own a car. (Chicago is relatively car friendly).
Winters are harder for those who don't own a car -- and many don't, but they manage fine by just bundling up.
Anecdotally one hears of people leaving Chicago for a warmer climate, but it's more common for people to leave the city to move to the suburbs (better schools) or to neighboring Indiana (lower COL) -- where there are no weather advantages.
For most of us who live in the northern parts of North America, winter is something we're used to and is not the push factor so many believe it is (those who do see it as a push factor tend to be outspoken about it, so their voices are amplified, which skews perceptions).
If winter was indeed that terrible, the northern North America would have been depopulated. But if you talk to the locals here, many would tell you they prefer to live in the north. (of course some won't but not as many as you would think)
I live in rural Northeast so I’m fairly familiar with the weather. We had snow two weeks ago, which is just disrespectful. But I guess it’s all a matter of taste.
I used to live in Western Michigan and the winters are surprisingly mild due to the winds from the West being warmed by Lake Michigan.
It snows a lot, but it's often hovering around 32F, so the snow on the roads melts fast. A really cold day might 15F, but it's not that common.
Summers are gorgeous and I miss them living in SF. Being able to go out in the evening in shorts while it hovers in the high 70's is fantastic. Super lush and green.
I'm curious as to why you moved back to MI. Was it a desire to be around family and/or friends? While I'm not a software developer, I feel that my options here are limited, and will be looking to potentially make a move next year.
We wanted a quieter, slower life. We researched a lot of places in the Midwest and south and Michigan came out ahead for us. We’re also right in the middle of my parents and wife’s parents. I plan to work remotely for the rest of my career, focusing on freelancing.
I'd like to go nomad, let's travel! I am french, but I think that if I want to settle, I will go Taiwan : mountains, beach, city, good foods. And the life there is a mix between innovations and traditions, it's really nice.
If it's for a short term, I will go back to Philippines, the life is really sweet and enjoyable there.
My parents are actually from Taiwan and taiwanese, but me being born and raised in CA, I would still hesitate to live in Taiwan due to the language barrier.
I'm curious why someone like you, who likely speaks even less mandarin than me would want to live there?
Language wouldn't be a really problem to you in Taiwan if you choose a more modern and bigger city to live. You probably would straggle to speak English to old people in some counties, such as Yunlin and Chayyi, but younger adults would try to speak English to you at their best effort and whether who they are and the level of their English ability, they would be very friendly and warm to treat you.
I was in Kaohsiung from 2014-2018. There's a good community of hospex (was CouchSurfing, now hopefully BeWelcome), including weekly meetups in Taipei, Hsinchu, Chiayi, Tainan, and Kaohsiung.
Just don't dare to speak up about the air pollution. It's bad, but trying to do anything about it could get you in trouble.
The multiculturalism there makes for good food and interesting people, and as an intellectual milieu it's not bad -- lots happening on University Ave. I don't mind the weather at all.
I'd prefer Ottawa myself. Visited last year and really loved the experience. I hate hot weather with the fire of a thousand suns (live in Austin right now). I'd love to live somewhere it's never hot. Plus my wife and I really loved the atmosphere in Canada in general.
So Ottawa does have a tech industry -- QNX, Corel, Shopify, etc. were all founded there, and a bunch of big name tech companies have engineering offices there) -- but just so you know, Ottawa does get hot and humid in the summer. Not as bad as Texas, but it does get hot.
When satellite broadband internet becomes a real deal, I'm thinking about buying a sailboat (or catamaran) and travel around Europe: Scandinavia and Netherlands in summer, Spain, Italy and Canaries in winter.
My dad had a friend who did this in retirement and sailed the entire Caribbean, Mediterranean, and then was doing the Great Lakes last I heard. I'm right there with you on this though. I would love to sail the Pacific and see all the small islands between the US and Japan.
Realistically, I'd stay right where I am (in Nashville). That's where my friends are, and it's close enough to family.
Take friends out of consideration, and I'd either go back up to Louisville (where I grew up) or somewhere up in the Pacific Northwest. I'd need to do a little more visiting up there to decide exactly where, though.
If I could move overseas? Edinburgh. Wasn't able to spend anywhere near as long there as I would've liked on my last UK trip, but it seemed lovely. Although I'd probably need to do a little more European and Australia/New Zealand travel to be absolutely sure. So, maybe I'd go nomad for a while before choosing where to settle down (don't really have any interest in doing the nomad life long-term, though).
Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Italy, Spain, South France, etc.
Maybe Tunisia or North Morocco.
Depends on which culture makes the best impression, and after that, I would settle down for 5-6 years.
My 2nd choice would be the Carribean, but the countries are more hit and miss, small islands means everything is expensive, and hot weather year round sounds nice in theory, but I'm sure I'd get tired of it within 3-4 months. I like seasons.
nah, Mediterranean is huge. Many affordable places there. If you look at the well advertised "brand" places then for sure it's expensive. Greetings from Cyprus.
South Korea, I have family there through marriage, and have spent a bit of time there over the years. I wouldn't want to work in a Korean company, but working remote for a U.S. firm and at U.S. pay would be pretty swell. I find it to be a great country to stay in and the pace of change keeps it constantly interesting. Cost of living isn't bad, and if in Seoul you would get to live in a world class city. In all the years I've been going back and forth there, I've never run out of interesting things to see or do, or taste.
At the moment at least, the government is moving the right directions, and their recent performance for COVID-19 was astonishing from a public health perspective.
Not remote really but I'd like to live in Austria and run tours for Japanese anime fans who want to see towns that look like the European towns they've been shown for years. :)
Asheville NC. My wife and I moved here in early March just before the shutdown. Beautiful. I pinch myself everyday that I get to live And work (from home) here.
All of my family lives in Brevard and I mountain bike a ton, so I would move there in a heartbeat (I live in Raleigh right now). In fact, I'm already remote (and have been for 4 years), so why haven't I done it?!
What's the tech scene like there? Are there interesting nerds building things? Hackathons? (of course, before COVID). We spent 2.5 months in the area during COVID, so we didn't get a great feel for how nerdy the town is.
I'm here too, living with family. Not sure if it will be a permanent move or not. I couldn't get over how amazing it felt just sitting outside last night. The air quality out here is kinda amazing sometimes. Even my cynical husband has admitted he is afraid he might not want to leave.
I still consider Asheville home although I've been in Austin for 15 years now. I would move back in a heartbeat (provided I could convince my wife). Luckily, family is still there, so I get to visit regularly.
Depends on what you enjoy. If you're into beer, the brewery scene here is pretty great - Asheville, Charlotte, and the Triangle all have great options. Live music scene depends on the city and the type of music you like. Lots of hikers and outdoorsy people and amenities for that sorta thing. But the cities here all feel pretty small and spread out when compared to northern or west coast big cities. But it's easy to hop in a car and drive to the beach or mountains or to touristy towns for a change of pace. Flights aren't very expensive, but you often have to transfer in Atlanta.
Its different if you are 20s and single vs having a partner with a regular job and children in a good school district. For the latter there really aren't that many good locations around the world. Most of those places already have high house prices. Will be nice to have a summer house though to spend a big chunk of the year.
Easy: Los Angeles, where I already live. Most multi-cultural place in the country, best weather (fantastic for mental health), and since I'm remote: zero of the traffic that most people associate with LA.
A ton, for every appetite and style! This is exactly why LA rocks, it's got a little something for everyone. DM me on Twitter @aloukissas and I can share some stuff. Pie 'n Burger in Pasadena though is insanely good.
Singapore. Quality of life is far superior than the western world. They have a “Mac” govt - it just works :) the govt actually has a Legal helper program in place you where you can get live in help at a very reasonable cost (which before you get judgmental helps uplift a lot of people out of poverty from neighboring countries). Imagine US having that for their tired masses who barely have any time between both parents working and a school system that is at complete odds with the economic system (work is 8/9-5; schools are 8am to 2 or 3 pm and the govt just expects the kids to manage themselves from 3-5/6 when parents get home or wait you spend more money to have them kept. The masses also don’t demand a change and carry on with this broken system. Cooking cleaning groceries etc is all on top of that. Imagine the quality of life if this sphere could be outsourced for a reasonable amount. Sheep like masses also don’t demand any change but what can’t they do they just don’t have any time. On top of all of that we have con in chief running the country, electoral system from the Middle Ages and partisanship that has started an overall decline of american life at least for a generation before it can get better (at best). Anyways I digressed )
East is where the new opportunities are. Singapore provides developed world life in that part of the world which being extremely safe, high quality of education and a lot of overall convineice of life.
It'd really depend on the income. I currently live in San Carlos in a very small workshop that was converted into an in-law unit from the 1930s. I'm not at it yet - but if I was guaranteed to get bay area FAANG level of pay - I might consider moving elsewhere. Until that happens - I'm staying within the region. I don't see a point to leave since pay will scale with where you go frequently enough and in most places - it's just not enough on a single household income. (Even here - it's almost impossible to buy a home in the peninsula on senior software engineer FAANG level of single income)
Even then - I did like San Francisco a lot but only the parts you could get a nice place in. There are many areas of San Francisco that I don't like because they're just not nice. (Lots of crazy people yelling in the street, trash everywhere, bad smells, crime, loud in general, etc.) If I was able to afford living somewhere like Twin Peaks - I'd consider it... But last I checked, I'm a few million short.
So, even if I was remote and made a lot of money, I'd probably still choose SF if I could while I didn't have kids. If I have kids and stop going out - I might like to live somewhere on the coast like Pacifica or Santa Cruz (Opal Cliffs). I want a very large workshop at some point - so I might have to move into the mountains. I've spent some time in a nice house there on a cliff in Santa Cruz - wouldn't mind that... But, again, missing a few million...
I would definitely become a nomad if I were single. I tried to do it when I was single and first starting out in '99, but it was just too hard. The tech just wasn't there yet.
But now? I'd probably stay right here in the Bay Area, only because my wife's family is here. I wouldn't want to take my kids away from their cousins.
Although my wife's brother has been pushing for the entire family to move somewhere cheaper. He keeps pointing out that if we all sold our houses in California we could buy a mega-compound in Oklahoma.
> Although my wife's brother has been pushing for the entire family to move somewhere cheaper. He keeps pointing out that if we all sold our houses in California we could buy a mega-compound in Oklahoma.
I've seen first hand how the frothy Bay Area property market has caused founding families in the area to completely disperse.
My wife's family are all from San Jose and San Francisco. Been there since at least 1830 - there's even a road named after one side of the family tree.
Today, not a single member of the current generation lives there. Not a single one. It just boggles my mind that the entire clan have dispersed across the US to cheaper states.
I'd say another 20-30 years and there won't be anyone from the family left there at all.
Really depends on what phase of life, but right now one of:
* Most likely: somewhere between Austin and San Antonio TX.
* Alternate: ~45 minutes southwest of Denver, CO.
* Wildcard: Minneapolis, MN.
* If U.S. adopts laws like what Hungary just did WRT LGBT people: Iceland.
Enshrining legacy views of the world not supported by research so politicians can pander to conservative religions is a bad sign in general and harmful to many of my friends in particular.
I'm personally considering starting the nomad life now at 24 or next year at 25. I'm South African and Greek, so I get the EU passport benefits. Grew up in both, been studying & working in SA for almost 7 years now. SA has a decent climate and stunning natural beauty, but government and other factors here make it a bit unpalatable.
A good way to describe Cape Town is San Francisco Lite - The same tech, central rental price, homelessness & drug problems (with crime too!), just cheaper. Pretty place, but not sure I want to keep dealing with that. Then there's also the general wanderlust. Ideally, I want to do the digital nomad thing while traveling through Europe, then decide on a "permanent" place to have as a base, then maybe keep traveling and see what else there is. Currently eyeing Amsterdam, Lisbon (local salaries are only slightly higher than CPT though), Talinn. Athens also has quite an urban flair to it as well, and coming back to it with a fresh pair of eyes for a few weeks last year made it enticing to go back. But alas, I'd rather not waste 9 months of my life in conscription.
I moved out for the work opportunity, to a city a mere 6 hours away door-to-door over air travel, or 12 hours by car. It's been 10 years now.
I visit frequently, about 5 times a year. I spend summers there every year, at least 15 days straight, sometimes 25. I'm happily married with a son. I made new friends.
Yet, I very much miss the frequent contact with relatives and longtime friends.
I'll be working on moving to Vancouver, BC in the next few years. Small house not near people. I'd like to heavily customize the interior - a thing that I don't do while I don't own.
My family is Scottish, though I've been in the US since I started primary school. Several of my dad's school friends split time between the UK and various European locations with better weather (south of Spain, etc). That sounds pretty much perfect to me.
But, within the US? I'd be tempted to buy a plot of land in the Appalachians, maybe outside Roanoke VA, build a little chalet, and just chill out. Money no object, I can fly to NYC or London when I get the itch to do culture.
Edit - in DC metro now. It has a lot going for it, but some massive flaws too. I'm an hour from the mountains, which I love. 3-5 hours from several beaches - I could live without them, but it's nice to have the option. The city itself is pretty good for culture and dining. True four seasons, to keep it fresh. But, August is miserably humid. And while not that far north, by the time February rolls around, I'm ready for long summer evenings. Traffic is terrible. But, I walk to work.
I'm in DC Metro as well... and being from Idaho and going to college in Utah... the Blue Ridge mountains don't seem very mountain-like to me. Around northern Utah, the mountains are RIGHT THERE. You can see the snow at the top for most of the year and the skiing is excellent.
DC just seems a little boring after you visit the museums a few times. No skiing, the beaches are too far, etc.
Any fun ideas? I guess maybe my life is different having a family of four, but DC just seems like it doesn't have much of a real culture to me.
It's basically the Silicon Valley of Canada with plenty of opportunity, beautiful trails, light rail transit, amazing food from all around the world, and a burgeoning event scene.
Plus, it's a 40min drive to Toronto, and <2hr drive to beautiful sandy beaches on 3 great lakes (e.g. Wasaga Beach, Long Point, Goderich).
I'm going to stay right here in San Francisco, I was born in this city and I've gotten lucky enough to be able to afford to live here, so I'm in for the long haul.
I'm going nomad for a while and going to live in a travel trailer. I'll probably buy multiple air cards from different phone providers to make sure I have a good connection. This way I can visit the communities I have roots in for extended periods of time while still exploring other places in the U.S.
Switzerland. My family left in the 17th century to avoid religious persecution, but it is the perfect blend of everything I like - small villages, cosmopolitan cities, natural beauty. Where I live now gives me about the closest approximation that I could create in the US.
Once the kids are gone, we are likely to become nomadic.
You'll pay lower taxes than, say, in America. But it's expensive for many things and it can be hard to make friends. That said, it's a stunningly beautiful place to live.
Atlanta, GA or Raleigh, NC. I like the climate and trees in the American Southeast. Also, house prices are very reasonable while enjoying the amenities of big cities.
Not like Atlanta, but surprisingly active considering the metro size. You might have to go to the surrounding cities to realize the full potential of the region (also known as the "Triangle" because actually includes 3 cities - Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill - each with their own contribution to the social/cultural scene).
We live about an hour east of Raleigh and spend a lot of time there. I was commuting, but now fully remote. It’s a fantastic city. Gives you enough of the city amenities without the big city problems.
Austin. Lots to do outside, no state income taxes, great food/nightlife, significantly less homeless than San Francisco. I feel like everything is new and clean in Austin. It gets hot in the summer but personally I prefer hot than cold. Also lots of tech jobs. Kind of a no brainer for me.
Ideally, it'd be my home-base to afford a good amount of nomading. Low taxes, low cost of living, excellent food scene (UN City of Gastronomy), and a great craft beer/wine/whiskey scene to boot.
It's not perfect, though. You can acclimate to the summer heat if you put the time in, and you'd be rewarded with our amazing monsoon thunderstorms.
Our college sports team is seemingly in a constant downward spiral. But the University is second only to Raytheon/Air Force in power and influence.
There's a fair amount of gentrification happening; as the case with anywhere, there are good spots and less so great spots crime wise.
But having lived short-term in various places around the country, Tucson is always my home. Happy to answer any questions you may have.
We're currently trying to figure out how to relocate to Port Townsend, WA from Seattle. It's a small(ish) town that's semi-rural. Lots of agricultural activity in the local community, hacker / maker spaces, festivals, etc.
My wife and I found that we would frequently vacation outside of cities after living in them for about 10 years; so we figured we might as well try to live where we find relaxation (especially since we rarely take advantage of the perks of urban life).
The only real downside is the lack of good broadband. There are a few local providers (DSL, Cable, etc.) - but I'm fairly unimpressed. Right now my hope is to build a hobby / side-business delivering Internet in the "just out of reach" areas around town.
I've been working almost entirely remote (some occasional short periods of going to a small office with clients) for about 12 years.
For most of it, I've been living in Thailand (almost 8 years). Lifestyle here is pretty laid back, but you need to be more aware of your own/your family's safety, in a whole lot of different ways. It's also not particularly easy on foreigners if you want to run a company here, but it's doable. I believe Americans will have a slightly easier time with this, due to an agreement between the countries.
There is a somewhat-formed plan for us to move back to Australia at some point, and we'll almost certainly end up somewhere outside of the major cities, probably one of the larger towns in Victoria.
Highly recommend Warrnambool as far as regional Victorian towns go, but the lack of humidity, constant wind and freezing water would take getting used to after Thailand. The Sunshine Coast or Cairns have a similar vibe but warmer weather.
Torquay/Ocean Grove may be more your style. The weather isn't as consistent as QLD but beats Warrnambool by being a couple of degrees warmer. It's near Geelong but you still get the ocean. And it's only about 1.5hrs to Melbourne if you avoid peak hour.
I get your point about Queensland. Maroochydore might be slowly modernising. They're building a new city centre from scratch on what used to be the golf course. They've recently connected to the Japan-Guam-Australia South submarine fibre cable and the council are marketing that pretty hard. Saying that, it's still largely seen as a place to retire; evidenced by one of the largest contributors to the local economy being healthcare (which includes nursing homes).
How exactly does the submarine cable connection affect things realistically? I’d have thought the point of contention for most people in Australia would be either the last mile with the boondoggle that is FttN or the distance to other countries. Does skipping a bit of terrestrial fibre backbone really make that much difference?
Brisbane is a 10ms ping away, Sydney is 20ms and 90% of the sites people use have a least a Sydney based CDN; but we can't let facts get in the way of real estate sales.
Yeah, not much difference to the end user but I think the council are trying to attract businesses. That could be the good mix up the economy needs. The future will tell whether it works or not.
The old growth forest parts are amazing and you used to be able to camp some places in there and even take along the dog. I live within walking distance of a comparable waterfall but can't take the dog due to its park classification.
Haha - you'll find half of Queensland is just ex-pat Victorians. Just don't wear Victorian plates on your car - first day there after driving up from Victoria I got abused by some Maroochydore bogans.
Portland is nice, but Port Fairy is possibly the best little town along the West coast. I grew up in Warrnambool, but spent a few months house sitting an old whalers cottage there.
I actually have a place I want to go: the village in the Andes that both sides of my wife’s family have called home for generations.
On top of a job that is truly remote, I am also waiting on my wife to trust that we could live there safely. That day may never come, despite anything I say.
I am a warm weather person who loves to play beach volleyball and dance. SF Bay Area beaches are too cold. Miami could be a good start. I once spent a few months in Southeast Florida near Miami and it was fun. You haven't lived until you danced at an outdoor club in Miami at 3am under rain with a beautiful woman. The rain feels like a hot shower. I also loved South Carolina.
This is a difficult decision to make, not the least of which because of tax concerns. I am already a nomad, having not paid any rent since 2015. Right before the pandemic hit, I was preparing to change tax domicile to South Dakota. As soon as I no longer have a financial reason to stay linked to California, I am resuming my plan.
A few years back, I identified a triumvirate of my favorite places: Denver, Austin and Portland. If it was to be an urban place, those are my choices. They all have become fairly extreme as far as traffic and housing prices, though.
For something more rural, I like Taos, New Mexico and a few cities in the area north of there in Colorado, the San Luis Valley. The entire area is rich in natural beauty, inexpensive and not very crowded. The drawback is that due to my fairly disturbing collection of serious illnesses, and worrisome history of having to go to emergency rooms, I would be better off being close to a really good hospital.
I have been working remote from home as a dev/sysadm from a small tropical island in Asia for the past 7 year while having a employment contract with a company in Northern Europe. I will keep staying here.
On a small sailboat outfitted with batteries and solar panels. Ideally I'd dock only once every few days to take meetings/sync my data/connect to the internet, and then head back to open waters.
This is my fantasy as well. We are so close to reliable cheap satellite internet, the only thing you'd need to come to shore for is groceries/ water/ fuel.
Healthcare and social safety nets would be my reason. Even people who thought they had adequate healthcare can go bankrupt, and every time I see a Reddit post about one doctor being "out of network" leading to a large bill I'm glad that sort of thing doesn't have to occupy any of my mental space at all. I had a hard enough time picking car insurance.
The social safety nets is not so much for myself, but being surrounded by others who are struggling is unpleasant but also leads to societal issues overall (crime hotspots, etc).
I long ago decided that settling in the USA would be great if I ever magically become rich, but until then since I have no roots in the area it's nice to visit but I'm not sure I'd stay. One definite benefit though is that the states vary a lot in culture and feel so you can probably find an area that suits you.
I've been working remotely for years. I live in Port Ludlow, WA, which is on the Olympic Peninsula. It's motto is "A village in the woods by the bay". It's mostly retirees, but has miles of hiking trails, the climate is moderate, and the neighbors are nice. What it doesn't have is night life or shopping, but we are close enough if we want either.
And to make you SF folks jealous, I bought a 2200 SF house, on 1/2 acre, with a view of the bay, for less than $500K.
FWIW for those considering relocation: I grew up in the Seattle area and spent part of my career in Portland. I made a move to eastern Washington ten years ago, to do the remote worker thing. There are sacrifices you’ll make, but the cost of real estate is so much less than the coasts, it’s not that hard to get to either place for their respective amenities, and the whole not having a commute + access to the outdoors is overall a good trade off for the downsides of small town life.
As a lifelong resident of the Seattle area, eastern Washington would be very high on my list. Arguably better weather (less rain, not too cold in the winter, and not extremely hot most of the summer), much cheaper cost of living, lots of natural beauty and outdoor recreation. Depending on where you locate, you're not that far from Seattle for when you want to get the big city cultural experience.
It's a 45 minute / $75 flight from Walla Walla to Seattle. Spokane and Pasco both have flights all over the country. So it's super easy to live here and still get all the amenities of Seattle. As you note, the drives to Seattle and Portland really aren't that bad for about ten months of the year.
If I were single I'd love in South East Asia and work for western countries.
The cost of living is next to zero. It's relatively safe for an emerging economy. Still reasonably safe. You can get a 3 month Visa each time you fly in and out. So a quick trip to a neighbour country and you're set for another 3 months.
Do that for 3 years. Live like a king on less than $10k a year living cost. Return home with 3 years salary minus taxes and 30k living costs.
Plus it's a great part of the world. Very fun to explore.
Probably stay where I am in Dublin, not that I’d want to work remotely permanently. Very much looking forward to being back in an office at some point.
EDIT: Though, at the moment the sun doesn’t go down til 22:00. I may have a different view if asked during the miserable bloody winter when the sun barely bothers rising at all. I am now wondering if it’d be practical to work remotely from Barcelona or somewhere from November to January...
I can live anywhere with 1000/1000 fiber connection. Preferably outside a big city (biking distance, 20-30 km or so) and with alternative source of power (solar with battery backup). If a shtf situation arises we will at least have a better chance to survive for a while or ride out a food crisis because we are surrounded by food (farm country). Not many people live around here in DK. This is perfect for me.
Probably closer to my family in general, which currently is situated in the south-east of the US. I live in the PNW and absolutely love it, but I don't think I'd stay here too long if it wasn't for my job. If I could somehow get the rest of my folks to move out here, I would definitely pick either the PNW or Massachusetts. I originally grew up in the north-east US and loved Massachusetts.
Before the pandemic hit, my wife and I were planning a 3-6 month period of traveling, mostly in Southeast Asia (China, Thailand, Indonesia). I don't know if we'd live there long-term, but we've enjoyed our shorter, 3-4 week trips in the past. Both our jobs were fairly flexible even before this, so we're looking forward to being able to travel more again.
I'm happy in Madison WI right now, but there are not very many places in the US where I'd want to live, and I'm not sure the US would be my first choice of country if I didn't have roots here. I have family from Berlin, and might like it there. I liked the people in Scotland.
It needs to be a place where there's a good music scene that I can participate in.
My wife, and I live in Brazil, and work remotely already, but are planning to move to Brasov, in Romania. If everything goes wrong, and it turns out we cannot get a visa to live there, Bariloche, in Argentina, is our plan B.
I would love to move to Japan instead, but the chances of that working are slim to none, and the wife does not really like the Japanese culture anyway, so.
I live in Montevideo, Uruguay and i’m really interested on why would you like to live here? I was born here and think it’s a nice little place but would like to have the perspective from someone from the “outside”.
How is it living there? I'm from Buenos Aires, but I'm seriously thinking of leaving. Being close and much freer Uruguay is a natural choice, but I'm not entirely sure. Would you recommend emigrating to Montevideo?
Definitely! It has a much slower peace than BsAs, but quality of life is pretty good plus it’s quite stable economically and socially speaking. If you are in the tech industry you will have plenty of work, and if you export software you have some nice tax exceptions. Judging from the outside and being your neighbor, i’m quite worried about the direction Argentina is headed right now.
It's pretty worrysome. And it's not just the economy that's tanking. The way the government is limiting more and more freedoms every day is quite concerning. I think you guys have a much stronger tradition of upholding freedom, so I might move there once restrictions are lifted.
This next year or two might be your chance to get a home for a good deal. Vegas and similar cities are projected to have a very hard landing due to them being so dependent on tourism, boom and bust cycles, etc.
Home. And for me that is a small town in the middle of India. It's a remote village. A single lane road connects my village to the nearest town. We source our foods from nearby farms mostly distributed bi-weekly at a Haat. I have 24 hrs electricity and 250 MBPS internet. Lots of serenity and peace. I guess that's all one needs.
I'm European but live in Paraguay, my wife is from here. I always work remotely, that is, when I find a job. I would like to life in northern Brasil and my wife wants to live in the US. But we very likely stay where we are as it is much more important with whom you stay than where, and we both would miss my wife's family a lot.
Basically any place with seasons and cheap land, something with a forest on it of usable timber for firewood and woodworking projects. PNW has lots of land with doug firs. I enjoy shooting sports, so a place I could safely have a 500m range would be wonderful. At least a small above ground stream, perhaps a pond/lake.
I grew up in San Diego, work for an unfunded startup with low pay currently, so I moved right across the border to Playas de Tijuana. Its not actually totally ideal because some days it smells bad. But I live a block from the beach, the weather is just as perfect as San Diego, and my cost of living is like 70% less.
There are three places I would consider, two more practical than the third:
1. Los Angeles, where I am from. Slightly cheaper and I would be close to family. Even though there are plenty of beaches in the Bay Area, they are not as easily accessible as they are down here.
2. Mammoth/Eastern Sierra. When I was in grad school and working as a consultant, I lived there for two years summer and winter, despite not being a skier. I wouldn't mind spending a few weeks working remote here and there (I have a place there), but I couldn't live there again. It's tucked away, snow is a pain, and you get sick of the tourists really fast.
3. Hawaii. I love Hawaii. But, it's a long flight to get home and the Bay Area is already far enough away for me. It's also expensive and I imagine it would get boring quickly since I am mostly into biking and hiking rather than water sports.
I'd split my time between where I live now - Tokyo, in a suburb surrounding Shibuya - with a second place out in the countryside, or perhaps near the Seto inland sea. Tokyo with a bicycle is pretty much as good as it gets for me, and the inland sea is one of the prettiest places I've been in Japan.
I'd like to try Berlin or Barcelona; as a young LGBT person I've loved these areas when I've visited. Though Barcelona certainly has better weather.
The only wrinkle is that I do like my legal weed; going to a store and buying a nicely packaged edible or a preroll is leagues above buying it off the street.
Weed is basically legal in Barcelona. It’s not quite as legal as California, per say, but there are shops you go to (membership required) which sell over the counter
Weed is essentially legal in both cities. In Barcelona through membership. While personal consumption is tolerated in Berlin most places cigarettes are.
> going to a store and buying a nicely packaged edible or a preroll is leagues above buying it off the street
If you want to fit in in these cities you need to drop this American fixation with commercialisation and bubble-wrapping every experience to make it "comfortable".
The focus is not really on the "commercial" part of it but the part where I don't necessarily have to do everything from the flower stage. In a similar vein, I don't think that Berliners and Barcelonians are churning their own butter because there isn't a shop selling butter already made, or knitting every sock they own because nobody sells socks. The US marijuana sector isn't even really heavily commercialized, there are no major regional or national distributors or sellers of weed, but you can buy products made from flower all the same.
The smell from making my own edibles in an apartment would probably not endear me to my neighbors, and sometimes I would rather use an edible than roll a joint.
You'll only find in NL, and even then, it's only (priced) for tourists. You have to accept that most facets of life aren't quite as convenient as in the states — but most European's hold that as a positive, not negative. Life is more authentic.
Making oil is a serious hassle and in some places life already has more than enough authenticity to go around.
I don't think this is about some broader cultural thing around convenience, is it? Isn't it just about legality? Some people actually depend on marijuana on a daily basis, and for those of us that do it's really annoying to have grind up, dry, decarb, cook, strain, etc. every few weeks.
Mhmm. I would expect secondary products to only pop up once comprehensive legalization of recreational marijuana was achieved, since investing in the ways to make it at even small scale would only really make sense that way. After all, you can buy CBD products, and THC products are not that far removed.
I'm an American but I'm lucky enough to have lived in six countries. The winner for me is Nice, France. It has it all: culture and history, swimming and endless fun in the summer, skiing in the Alps in winter.
I lived there for six years and I can't imagine another place I would want to live.
You're right, that is funny! I was thinking after I wrote that comment that I should have put a caveat about the target group for my comment. I don't think it's a great place for singles in their 20's -- exactly for the reason you mention: it's heavily populated with retirees and is a bit slow-paced. We were a young family and that's what we were looking for, so for us it was perfect.
Colorado. I'd move up to a smaller mountain town somewhere close enough to a bigger city that you can still drive down for the evening. But the weather and the mountains up there have been in my heart for years. In the summer it's just all green and blue, sunny but 75 degrees.
That was a bit of a joke, but I remember it in the 1970s. It really was "almost heaven"--excuse me, Rocky Mountain High. Lots of pleasant, niche towns and out of the way places.
But now, no real human can afford to live in Boulder, and many other wonderful places are either deserted and dying, or overrun by strip malls. Bah.
Doesn't seem like many. It's almost saddening knowing how much you have to rule out, or how difficult moving would be - accounting for schooling alone. We make up for it by travelling a lot, sometimes within school periods.
I would love to go back to Berlin. I'm originally from SF and lived a few places in the US and Europe (SF, SD, Reno, London, Tallinn, Berlin, Shanghai) but Berlin blows them all away. It's got a good mix of people - not dominated by tech or art or anything so you don't have to get the quintessential SF experience of everyone you meet working on a startup idea. Centrally located, you can (or could) jump on a quick flight anywhere else in Europe and many neighborhoods feel small so you can still get the small town vibe even in a big city. Plus, in Berlin your freak flag can really fly and no one cares - SF I think they claim that but people actually are very homogenous and you get penalized for not following the unwritten codes
I've made a pretty long list, and here are my faves:
- Auckland
- Taipei (Taoyuan and Kaohsiung are very close by HRT)
- Sydney
- Helsinki
- Stockholm
- Oslo
- Amsterdam
- Copenhagen
- Toronto
- Dublin
- London
- Paris
- Berlin
- Barcelona (or Madrid)
- Lisbon
My criteria were things like Gini coefficients, diversity, democracy indexes, gender equality, and LGBTQ rights. Most places in Asia got bumped because of poor LGBTQ rights, and the US got bumped for poor gender equality (representation in government is a big component of the formula). Diversity is just generally difficult to find, even in major cities, and when you do de facto segregation is almost certainly an issue.
I used to live in NYC but left--the COVID-19 outbreak didn't make that easy--and have been plotting on where to settle for hopefully forever. Toronto's at the top of the list, but it's hard to say no to Europe, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. What a privilege to have options like that though, what a time to be alive :).
Most of the tropics give a summer like experience. Typed from Klong Dao Beach. Though I think you might get a bit bored being here year round - it's kinda quiet.
I wouldn't mind if I had someone to share the shack. Unfortunately, I'm very single now, but hope it won't be for long. Klong Dao seems a lovely place.
I want to move somewhere where I can go to an office and make great stuff with a team I love face to face. Have lunch with them. Talk them to about more than just work. Socialize with them outside of work.
Some people (and some cultures) value their time with co-workers.
I decided to stay in Seattle. Sure, we have our issues (homelessness, high rents) but we also have some perks (close to nature, beautiful weather 8 months of the year, fast internet, cheap power, roughly sane state government).
I know its not a popular choice, but there's a real benefit as a tech person to actually being "socially compatible" with people you meet in everyday life.
Other than traveling? I would probably setup west of Fargo, ND. I like ND, so it fits. Far enough west to get the faster internet, but close enough that's its a short drive into town. Taxes are ok, Fargo has good health care options. If I'm working remotely then the worst winter days don't really matter, and I've started thinking about these barn or Quonset hut homes. I do like the really modern interior with a fool the people driving by exterior. With solar, wind, and probably a heat pump, you can really cut down the utility costs. Obviously, backup power is a must. Plus, its much cheaper to build than most other places.
I do work remotely, and I live in the beautiful Pacific NorthWet. My wife always wanted to live here, and so now we do. I love it. My ultimate would be to be able to snowbird down to AZ or NV for the winters, but I'm content here :)
Hualien, Taiwan. That said, since cannabis has become legal where I live, moving to a place where it isn't has lost a bit of appeal. Of course, this is just a thought experiment because of the state of the world at the moment.
Wow, surprised to see Hualian! I lived there for a year learning Mandarin and loved the nature and cost of living. But what about community? I found that part tough.
A lot of people have decided on Bend, Oregon where I live. One of the Oregon state economists - who lives here and works for the state of Oregon remotely - compiled some numbers showing it's the remote work capital of the US.
Until there is a sufficient market of remote jobs, I'm going to live in consideration of the risk that losing a remote job will require compromise and returning to work in an office. Job turnover cannot be ignored.
I've done alot of time in Manila, PH and love it, and across some USA Cities - Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Tampa, NYC and they're great but it's still the USA.
I have been a nomad for the past 2 years, kinda but I position myself down for 2 months at a time because it's hectic to get anything done if you do it every week/few weeks or worse - weekend.
I find that I need a solid week to a week and a half to get used to an area, even if I know it pretty well. Airbnbs are all over the place and no true area is the same as another.
Can you recommend an area in Manila or elaborate what you like about it? When I was there for two weeks I experienced it as a suffocating concrete block. I love big, vibrant cities but couldn't really get the hang of Manila.
Sure, it depends on what but if you rent a nice condo in the south starting from taguig and going down it is nice.
Bonifacio Global City is a great starting place, 25,000 pesos should get you a one bedroom.
Then On the highway south, Alabang, Las Pinas, and such easy enough.
I love Manila because of the ease of networking, making friends and then the raw nature, hiking once you're out of Manila itself into the northern provinces.
It's really a LCOL city, if you know how to handle yourself and minimize on electronics purchase - some big purchases I would suggest a flight to HK which was as inexpensive as $1000 round trip.
You can purchase a car in Manila/NCR area for about $3000 USD/150K pesos, they're low mileage for older examples and you should know how to work on a car for best value (I got an older CR-V that I'm not worried about the resale value at all vs a new car which can't go offroad at all.)
Most Filipinos don't know their own history or travel out of NCR (from NCR of coure) so I always enjoy trips where I can agument USA history to PH history, though it's always fun to learn something new - but it's great to see all the quotes of "those who don't know history end up repeating it" and general ignorance because... the country is ripe for opportunity but the overall level of ignorance is extreme and you can make parallels easily to USA and other parts of the world. It really reshaped my way of thinking.
So that's why I enjoy it. Easy of connectivity to locals, easy to do arbitrage of retail products once you hang the hang of things and low out of pocket and more emphasis on your conversational skills to get things done - so self reliance.
I work remote and it all comes down if you are single, with girlfriend or with children.
If you have children then obviously you can't be nomad and cheap places like southeast asia are out of question, because you want your children to have best education, healthcare, enviroment etc. (which is reason why I moved from China ASAP after my first child was born)
If i were single young and healthy I would consider Southeast Asia - still externely cheap, good or reasonable internet, good cuisine, pleasant weather, you can find private hospitals with travel insurance, though you can get fed up with locals long term because of different culture (if you are from west)
Since I have children and I am EU citizen obvious choice was return to EU, my original intention was Vienna regularly winning surveys as one of most livable cities in Europe/world, though my budget didn't allow me to buy apartment without mortgage plus it's not that easy to find English speaking jobs there and I am not strong on my German (the one company I interviewed there offered me instead job in US, which I politely declined) and I have to consider also my wife's employment options in future, so I went for poor man's Vienna - Prague. Still extremely safe, quite reasonable prices.
My other options would be Bratislava, which is basically nontouristy small town suburb of Vienna less than hour way, Budapest is quite OK, but since Orban is at power that's not an option and we already see for years which direction they are hading, maybe Berlin (very cheap real estate to buy) although Germans are for my taste already too brainwashed with leftist/eco stuff and way too many non-adaptable migrants from different cultures.
Other EU countries have way too different culture for my taste with too many illegal migrants, not so safe and also not affordable or too socialist (micromanaging your life) for my taste.
I traveled the whole world for years, including a RTW and Antarctica trips, somehow while I was still formally employed but my managers never thought remote work would be productive. Now that finally I work 100% remote, for real and not just during pandemics, I cannot be nomadic as I had always wanted because now I have a big sweet german shepherd dog that requires special care. She's everything to me I am okay with just working remote from my place in the very city where I've lived for 15 years. Life is weird :-)
Honestly, I don't know why this isn't mentioned yet -- I wouldn't live anywhere. I'd be a nomad, spending a week maybe in a place, ideally ones cost friendly (see https://nomadlist.com for some ideas).
When you get older, or have pre-college kids you have to think about a nest somewhere. If there is one thing this COVID-19 crisis has shown me as well it pays to live near good medical systems. But for now I want to wander!
I'm semi nomading at the moment - got a flat in London and airbnb it and go off when I feel like. Thailand at the moment, airbnb not working presently due to viruses.
My wife and I talk about leaving Seattle to go somewhere. Except both of our extended families are mostly here, we have extensive social networks, our kids are deeply integrated, and we got major homesickness when we moved from an island on one side of the city to a suburb on the other.
I'd love to go spend a year teaching software engineering in Costa Rica or New Zealand. Settling permanently? I dunno. I've ripped up what roots I've had multiple times now, and I don't really want to do it again.
Meanwhile here I am debating about doubling down on Seattle with cheap real estate - or Florida.
You should go out and travel! I'm planning on doing so because a home purchase is not overnight - and even then I could never really settle down somewhere. The world is accepting remote work - take the opportunity and worse comes to worse you have a family in the area.
I've traveled a lot. I lived in Switzerland for some years, in New York, I'm from Virginia (my extended family relocated to Seattle). My sister lived in the Bay Area for some years, and I visited her quite a bit there. I've spent significant time in Italy. The rest of my wife's family lived in Guatamala, Puerto Rica, and Miami. Seattle is where I settled.
Upper Hudson valley of New York. Near the Shawngunk mountains. They're some of the best climbing in the US, I've got family reasonably nearby, and it's a beautiful area.
I moved around a bunch when I was younger and hope to avoid having to move again in the future. Where we live now suits us fine. Working at home now, and it’s mostly going okay.
I have been working from home since the 90s and that allowed us to move around wherever we wanted; I don't like to live in cities so we live (and lived) mostly in mountains and forests in southern/eastern EU (currently Portugal) and SE Asia. I would definitely recommend both. I did the nomad thing (as in; a lot of travel) but that's really not good for large stretches/focused bouts of work, at least not for me, so now moving is actual moving.
I currently do remote work. That allowed me to leave California more than 2.5 years ago, move to a small town in Washington and get back into housing.
I was just looking for cheap rent, decent internet, a grocery store and a few eateries, basically. The town is a lot nicer than I expected it to be and I've really enjoyed living here so far.
I can certainly imagine scenarios where I would relocate, but my preference would be to shape this town into more of what I would like it to be.
I've often joked that there are only three choices of where to live: near your family, near your partner's family, or New York. In our case, we were able to use the fact that I went remote to live closer to my partner's family in New England. For many of us in relationships, being remote doesn't offer the flexibility to live anywhere in the world, but it means we're tied to a particular region by only one job instead of two.
I'd LOVE to work from an apartment in Surfers Paradise or Broadbeach in the Gold Coast (AU/QLD) with ocean views. Not necessarily a super cheap area but the lifestyle is great (to me at least) and the views are AMAZING if you can get them.
Property prices are the killer, but the actual cost of living isn't really that high over there and the public transport is fantastic so you wouldn't even need a car.
Honestly, if it were not for the rent, I'd continue living in SF. It's just so lucky geographically.
If not SF, I'd move out of the US entirely to avoid the healthcare disaster and increasing anti-intellectualism.
With these criterions and bay area pay, I'd move to a coastal town in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia or India. All cheap, all developing countries and all with decent internet and healthcare.
Hadn't heard of that term and looked it up. Wow, didn't know this was common. Most Brazilians I met seemed proud of their country. But maybe I'm meeting the rich ones overseas who can avoid the problems?
Is Portugal possible? You already speak the language.
I like where I live currently but probably I'd move from the city to a town nearby.
I don't have many reasons to live in the city but because it's really comfortable as I don't have the need to commute. If I could work always (or 3-4 days / week) from home I'd move to a town. More peace and a better house, instead of a flat, for the same price at the city.
Current home is lovely in Vancouver, but don't come here. I've been a nomad living out of my car as well, and that was cool. I'm from Central Canada and it's a miserable place most of the time. Hoping to move abroad soon, but would like some physically social aspect to it, because work seems like an impediment to good travel.
Amsterdam. I got to go there last year, and it was amazing. I'm tall, and there I feel normal (and get talked to in Dutch occasionally, although I don't speak a word!). I also love how matter of fact they are, I'm the same way! Although I would probably want to visit a number of places or cycle like a snowbird.
I've enjoyed numerous trips to the Netherlands, but one thing I did NOT like is that, as a 5'10 guy who dresses like a typical American (i.e. not so well), I felt even shorter and less attractive than the very well dressed, handsome, and uber-tall Dutch men. I know it's silly, but it does create an inferiority complex.
It wasn't as bad living in German, but it still made me realize that there is a huge advantage to being bigger, stronger, than average.
When I lived in India, not only did I enjoy the benefits of being white, but I was also taller and far 'bigger' and stronger than most other males, due to 30 years of eating more protein.
Which is kind of interesting now that we're all talking about our dream locations. I would definitely choose somewhere where 5'10" is taller than average and caucasians / Westerners get an automatic status bump. It does make life easier.
That's really interesting, thanks for the insight. I think I have the same issue that you do, only in reverse! ;) I'm a 6' tall woman flat-footed, so here in the states, I feel like some kind of redwood tree.
I currently live in Seattle, and I'm seriously considering somewhere in Idaho or Montana.
But on top of the corona situation I also have some pending life stuff that's still to be resolved. Depending on the outcome of that and my company being cool with full remote (no reason not to bring it up), I really wanna move somewhere cheaper.
We recently made the move to western Montana. Working remote and loving it. If we had to go back to a population center, Seattle is on the short list, but no plans on ever doing that.
I would try to buy a place in southeast England. Maybe nrear Ashdown forest or similarly wooded areas. I've never been to the country but it has a rich history and culture that I would like to explore.
When I need to retire back in my native land I will stay where my grandpa farmed. Last house on the electricity line, birds everywhere etc.
* good to high abidance to rule of law
* little to no speculative investments in real estate
I'm still searching.
Main issues I have right now is low quality of existing indexes, and lack of anecdotal data for potential candidates. I'm not just talking about countries, but specific areas also.
I'm moving to my wife's home city to work remotely in a couple of months (unrelated to covid). Raising kids, so support from their grandparents, a smaller city to deal with, the opportunity to own a house at some point, all make sense to us.
I've always wanted to make this move but I never cared for the nomad life.
I really love where I am currently living (Würzburg, South Germany) I'd really love to spend a couple of years in the Provence (South France) I love the food, the landscape and the sea and I really like the climate.
But I'd probably come back pretty soon after leaving, because I just love my hometown
Great business idea: time-shared schooling across two locations.. Spring/summer in northern places and winter in south where it is warmer, without disrupting children's schooling and social lives.. Sort of like two home families, it would dramatically improve lives of families who can afford it.
I work remote now (well I run my own software co), and with nothing tying me down I settled on San Diego a few years ago. Love it here, but it's very expensive (looking to buy soon) and I miss the mountains (and green stuff)... so I'm planning to move to Tahoe as soon as the restrictions lift.
I would work remotely from a small town, away from the fast life of urban areas. Property costs are significantly lower, as with crime and traffic. Possibilities include somewhere on the DelMarVa peninsula. Constraints include 50+ Mbps internet and a newer house without asbestos/lead paint.
I live in Florida; I don't particularly care for it, I don't see the charm. But my life is here, well established: wife, children, parents, in-laws, friends. My life is here. My work is only a part of that, and not the biggest part; it certainly doesn't keep me from moving.
Some little college town that is not being flocked to, and not about to be overrun by a nearby metro area. In Colorado, Boulder, Fort Collins, and probably Greeley are out of the running, nice though they are. I almost did say Greeley, but it's near the other two and Denver.
I already work remotely. We live in a small California suburb because its close to family (sister in law is 15 minutes away one way, mother in law is 15 minutes away another way), houses are "affordable" (for California), and it has decent enough schools.
Japan,
But the work culture there and lower pay can't help me justify it. Right now its better for me to just take 2-3 month long vacations at a time there instead. Would have to start my own company there or get hired by a western firm and get sent there.
it's only an issue if you're outside the big cities. I spend a pretty significant amount of time there, my minimal japanese has gotten me around on the country side too. but moving there would mean dealing with the local government bureaucracy like registering with your local city to pay taxes, which is still very foreigner unfriendly (though they are trying to improve it)
I'm only in Melbourne because the jobs are here. There's not much I particularly like about it, and I don't think I'll ever be able to afford a house. I'd prefer to live somewhere prettier and cheaper. Maybe in Queensland or Tasmania.
I grew up in Melbourne and thought about moving back, but yeah the housing prices are out of control. And can't earn much in tech there compared to US.
What don't you like about Melbourne? I feel it is usually over-hyped.
It's a bit too urban and dreary for me. I'm from the US and it doesn't match my ideal of Australia; feels too much like a coastal Atlantic city. I'd prefer to be closer to nature, beaches, etc.
I work remote. It means I live with my wife in a country that is neither of our homelands. Unfortunately, visa policy in our respective countries is especially unpleasant for married couples. I would rather work in an office tho. I hate working remote.
If I could, I would move to the South Indian coast. Lots of forest and a beach close by, while still being close-ish to a major town or city for shopping and all that. Like Chennai for example, or (as mentioned in a thread here) somewhere in Kerala.
I currently live in in Tokyo but have visited Kobe many times and loved the more relaxed atmosphere and smaller size of the city compared to Tokyo. You are also very close to Osaka and Kyoto and even getting back Tokyo is easy with the shinkansen.
Becoming a nomad looks like a good solution for people who do not like a single routine. You go to any new place and it will become the same as your current after you live a decade there.
Grass always seems to be greener on the other side!
I'd probably move back to my old home town. Most of my and my wife's family lives there, the community is amazing, and it's approximately 1/5 the cost of living of where I currently am (where I relocated for work).
Nashville is the place I would plant myself. Lived there for a large chuck of my life and miss it dearly. Great city with plenty of great neighbourhoods, good schools, lots of Universities in the the area, and truly livable city.
Everywhere. Me and my wife would love to just travel, staying in a place until we feel the urge to move on. Not being tied to one specific location. When my kids are older and self sufficient we'll probably do just that.
I can work remotely, and I choose to live where I love living. For me, that's Hong Kong (with all its problems). If I wanted to save money, there are a lot of great options in Southeast Asia like Vietnam and Thailand.
I wonder why so many people wishing to live in rural locations pick places with brutally cold winters, rather than the tropics. If you want to live off the land you'll have a much harder time of it in cold places.
I think the issue is that everyone already lives in the warm places. You have what -- Southern California (high taxes, very populated), Florida (it ain't cheap and gets wiped off the map by hurricanes every few decades), Hawaii (expensive), the deep South and Texas (not that warm in the winter really), the desert southwest (it is very nice in the winter, but it's 110 every day in the summer).
There just aren't a lot of places in the US that have nice winters. Those that do are already overflowing with people. Part of the reason that the bay area is so expensive is because the weather is so nice. People are on to your little scam of avoiding winter ;)
Hawaii is not very expensive unless you want to live in a country club neighborhood and survive on imported products.
You left off Puerto Rico.
I know many Americans who have moved to Central/South American countries without much trouble. Costa Rica is so popular they're worried about gentrification. Ecuador is up and coming for expats.
These are people who are living remotely. It's probably better than they pick a place where the land is less productive, since they intend to live off their coding skills. They can leave the productive land to the people who need it.
I'd be more interested in working fewer hours, or fewer days, or having more vacation time.
Although I wish I could change cities more, living 2-5 years in each place. But that's not how life works.
There is a very nice site called digital nomad and it's all about discovering these kind of places. I frequently spent many hours there. I think I would like to try Spain and especially Barcelona
I thought there might be some interesting answers to such a broad question but everybody is talking about San Francisco which is the least interesting answer I can think of.
I went full remote last year and moved from Orange County, CA to Phoenix, AZ. It's awesome. The low taxes and greater freedom is just something I couldn't give up.
Arctic Norway, it's absolutely stunning, deeply peaceful. I went before lock-down on my own, stayed in an airbnb in the middle of no where and I never felt better.
I've lived a long time in the SF Bay Area, and it would be my first choice given the ability to live anywhere. Very close second choice would be Seattle area.
My foreign exchange term in Tokyo was magical. I would have loved to stay there again for an extended period of time, if I could still work for my current employer
I can't, and even if I could, everything else I do is in the city. As much fun as it would be to live out in the boonies, it'd mean having to spend hours commuting every day. There's things I hate about living here but it's just not practical to live anywhere else right now.
The same place I do now since I already work remotely. There are plenty of remote opportunities available.
As an aside, I am shocked how many of the responders here effectively say they will willfully violate local labor law in one or more countries and get their employers in potential legal trouble.
Probably somewhere warmer like Austin or Dallas, Texas or Florida like Miami or Orlando area. Kinda also think it'd would have been cool to have a cabin somewhere in Tennessee like around the smokies.
Full time RVing has been an interest of mine too, but with the COVID thing and RV parks closing and some RV people feeling a bit misplaced. So seems owning land somewhere could be beneficial... Full time RVing seems to have it's pros and cons, but I think maybe part time RVing would be a little less stressful.
Also if you lived somewhere with cold winters, maybe RV a bit in the warmer months for a month or two then during the winter head off to Arizona or something... Like I think Utah would be a cool place to vacation in the summers since a lot of beautiful places to visit like Zion, go off-roading, mountains, etc... But probably not the first choice to live year around since I'd love to escape cold depressing winters but if I did could use the RV to do a bit of snowbirding to like AZ, TX or FL. Otherwise I think Utah is a near prefect state as an outsider prospective in general and sounds like in the future they might attract more tech but if more and more companies go remote then moving to an area based on jobs but other things in life you care about is a bonus, and might even make other places compete more for gaining more residents who are looking to find a new home town.
I think snow is pretty but haven't had much snow lately just cold and after a while it gets old quick... Always wanted to try snowboarding too. There's someone from Utah I like, so that kinda makes me change my mind a bit, and seen that Salt Lake City is on some list for startup hubs haha but I don't think they are as successful as say maybe Austin, Texas is at this point.
I kinda want something different, since bored of where I'm from and not as much opportunities as I'd hoped, seems to be a problem in the midwest in general and people call it the brain drain problem. Like there's a company in Philadelphia I'm a fan of and thought of relocating since they even offer a bonus but seems almost the same stuff just another state over...
If you could get decent internet, working from cruise ships sounds interesting too! But I think being a nomad and working a regular 9 to 5 job online wouldn't be enjoyable and hard to balance work and play... That might work better if you manage your own company remotely or some other passive sources. I know there's world cruises that are like half a year along that sounds fun, only have to unpack once and see the world but some sea days multiple in a row so that'd be some downtime to get some work in since being a longer cruise you'd probably already seen most of everything the ship has to offer anyways.
Late to the party here. Been working remote since 2006. In 2009, I moved to rural western oregon. However, I'm getting sick of the damned rain, and being a libertarian leaning person, I'm awful sick of the state of the state government.
I'm currently planning an or-exit, but it'll be a few years. At this point in time, the wife and I are thinking Arizona (somewhere Payson-ish, up high where the weather is nice).
Biggest hit I'm going to take is giving up my 1gbps fiber connection for at best starlink. Maybe I'll win the lottery and will be able to pull in my own fiber connection. While I'm wishing, I want a race car and a pony.
We're visiting the Scranton area right now, to see if it'd be a good fit for us to move to. Anything you'd recommend for two techy people to check out? (Tell us all the hits, even if you think they're closed for COVID)
I moved to Australia when I was 19 from the UK and I'm surprised more people haven't said the same. I don't work remote though the tech company I work for, I imagine that'll change shortly.
Currently live in Brisbane but i'd love to live in the middle of no where for months at a time any where in this country if I didn't need to be anchored any more.
I'd love to bounce between the Kimberleys, Tasmania, rural Victoria and everything in between given the chance. They'd be a lot of appeal of doing the same to New Zealand and South East Asia too given the chance.
Close to Denver. High elevation town at 8200 feet, homesites to 9800 feet elevation.
Adequate internet.
Cheaper than Evergreen, and a bit higher.
High elevation is good for health.
Wildlife (deer, migratory birds, elk, foxes and the occasional Black Bear).
Small town but has what is needed. (Grocery, vet, medical, dentist, car repair, chain saw shop)
Same distance from ski areas as Denver.
Lots of snow in winter, and mild sunny summers.
After leaving SF in 2018, I have worked from Oxford/London/Mexico City/Istanbul. I would totally avoid Istanbul, I have been harassed by police officers way too many times in attempt to get bribes.
If I were to work with an American company as an engineer then London/Oxford is really good. The timezone difference is quite appropriate to take meetings without asking for too much rescheduling and adjustments, and the London food is way better than any city in the US, plus the location is quite appropriate to travel anywhere within Europe. It's not cheap, but city life is worth it. I don't quite like Oxford, but my family lives in Oxford, so it's kind of nice to be home and everything is taken care of yourself.
If I was in meeting heavy role like Product Manager, then Mexico City is impeccable. Good food, bay area weather, reasonable cost of living, just a quick flight away from bay area if you have to visit and easy to get visa as well. It's not at what you see in the news, and there are more starbucks on Reforma than they on Market St. in SF.
Are you looking for major cities/tech hubs? California is huge, plenty of very nice and affordable areas if you are ok with being away from a major hub.
Brisbane and surrounds get decent weather. Wollongong avoids the crowds of Sydney but stays mild into winter. Other places depend on how warm you want winters to be; the capitals wouldn't get winter conditions like parts of the US shovelling driveways. If there are two snowflakes where I live, it would make front page of the paper.
Walk North and you are in the Presidio and see the Golden Gate Bridge. Walk West and you are at the Legion of Honor or Lands End and watching the sun set over the Ocean. Walk East and I can hit up a hip hop or funk night at the Boom Boom Room or go to the Fillmore. You can dance at Madrone Art Bar or see an indie rock show at the Independent on Divisadero. Walk a few blocks South and you are in the Panhandle walking by some beautiful Victorians, then stop and catch some jazz at Club Deluxe. Walk a little more and go up Corona Heights or Tank Hill and you have breathtaking panoramic views of the city. Or head down to some of the pubs in the Lower Haight. And that's just within a 2 mile radius. For some reason, everyone focuses on the Tenderloin and SoMa though. The city has major problems, but there is also so much to enjoy.
I have made many interesting and creative friends here who are from all over the world. I get to work on mobile games, but there are many other opportunities around. Among my coworkers are digital artists and painters, musicians, engineers, hip hop dancers, drag show performers, people who party all night in the Castro, a muay Thai boxer, mixologists, and more interests than I can list.
I lived in Seattle, Portland, and Austin over the previous 2 decades -- all great places -- but still find myself happier in SF.