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The Almighty Buck Technology

Tech Work in the Boonies? 178

Posted by Cliff from the life-and-work-outside-of-the-concrete-jungle dept.
ERIAMJH asks: "I am a tech working in the metro DC area and my wife wants/desires/requires/NEEDS to move out to a rural area. She can't stand the city/suburb living any longer, and I either go along or she goes without me. I've thought of the telecommute option, or maybe start a small business in an under-served area. I've been doing all kinds of tech work for the last 9 years. I've been slowly moving from the sys admin side to software development. I'm now working on prerequisites for a Computer Science MS. I work for a large defense contractor on a government contract. I would love to work on smaller projects with more individual input, but I worry I will end up working construction or plumbing. Have any of you moved from the hustle bustle of the big city to the peaceful countryside and actually found good work?"
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Tech Work in the Boonies? More

Tech Work in the Boonies?

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  • How rural? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by trinitrotoluene ( 713170 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:23PM (#8605925)
    If you're thinking a small town, you could easily set up a small computer shop, and do tech house calls for a relatively large area around the town you're based in.

    If you're really isolated (ie. on a farm), then you will have more problems.

    • How rural?-Opportunities. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 19, 2004 @12:21AM (#8606701)
      "If you're really isolated (ie. on a farm), then you will have more problems."

      Problem's can be made into opportunities. One of my former employers started out 20 years ago, in a barn, and now they're in the fortune 1000. With present day technology(2) and decent roads(1), a high/medium-tech manufacturing business can be started(3). With a local workforce with a good work ethic. Don't forget that the land is cheaper (taxes too), with room for expansion, unlike near a big city.

      (1) Ideal is a small town near a majour highway.

      (2) If you have a business acceptable internet connection? You can sell your product exclusively over the internet.

      (3) One of the hardest things about starting a business, isn't the starting. But what do you start? Use your imagination. You could be the largest maker of coffee novelty mugs, or a board stuffer for a larger customer. Now with interest rates being low, this is the perfect time to start a business.

      BTW Don't forget to investigate tele-work as an option in recruiting employees. R & D could be somewere out in the middle of nowere. OSS too.

      BTW-II Above all else HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN! Even if you decide to not do it now. This will help you make that decision.
      • If you are really rural, I hope you have better luck than I did out in "God's Country" with getting a reliable internet connection. I was so far out that there were NO local ISP's, the local telco only promised 9600 baud (and that is about all I got), wireless internet didn't reach the area, no cable, and satellite is just too darned much money. You don't realize how much you will miss your high speed connection till it's gone......
    • > If you're really isolated (ie. on a farm), then
      > you will have more problems.

      Most farms are closer to one or more small towns than you are to your job in the city.
    • here (and the linked PDF)is a report done on just this topic, recently. It specifically talks about rural Manitoba, but it probably translates pretty well to rural anywhere, at least in North America.

      Many of the case studies in the report are towns under 10 000 people. At least 2 of the towns are under 2000. Is that rural enough for you?

  • Tele-Working (Score:4, Insightful)

    by joe90 ( 48497 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:24PM (#8605931) Homepage
    You could try working remotely - systems admin and code-cutting are two IT related roles that can be performed reasonably easily from a remote location.

    Systems admin can mostly be done via a VPN connection (unless your VPN gateway is the problem requiring tech support), and code-cutting can be performed similarly.

    You might need to check what network connectivity you can get from a non-urban or suburban location, but you should be able to find something reasonable.

    • Re:Tele-Working (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mr. Ophidian Jones ( 653797 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:28PM (#8605962)
      ...systems admin and code-cutting are two IT related roles that can be performed reasonably easily from a remote location.

      Yeah, like India. :(
      • Well, yeah, but I was kind of thinking of the type of work the question submitter is involved in - typically DoD work isn't outsourced to non-US citizens or companies.
      • Indians may work cheap, but they do sleep. And India is 10.5 hours ahead of EST!

        I'm a tech writer, and the latest problem in my profession is: how do you interview an engineer who's never awake at the same time as you are? I suppose that problem is doable (though I haven't actually had to do it yet) but I'd balk at dealing with a sysadmin on the other side of the planet.

    • Re:Tele-Working (Score:2, Insightful)

      by s0m3body ( 659892 )
      every sysadmin needs a trust

      remote sysadmin, needs a triple trust

      do you have it ?

      and frankly ... i don't know your situation; but who is making the living (income) ?
      if it is your wife, then take your chance and do something what you like to do, since she is going to give you a back up

      if it is you, and you still have to make a decision like this, then you have a problem which can't be solved by moving to another place
    • You can get around the problem of the VPN gateway failing by ensuring there is dial-up access as well - more expensive but you only need it if the VPN gateway fails.
    • You could try working remotely - systems admin and code-cutting are two IT related roles that can be performed reasonably easily from a remote location.

      It might help if you move to rural Indiana, but conveniently mistype the address on your business cards and web site as "India".

      But seriously, the cost of living in the boonies can be dramatically lower than some place like DC, giving you some of the same cost-savings advantages of outsourcing services overseas. I've tried (unsuccessfully so far, so may

  • Think Telecom. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:24PM (#8605932) Homepage Journal
    Everybody needs a phone. Even someone in the "boonies". That means there are a ton of small to mid-sized telecom companys sprinkled throughout the "boonies". Usually this telecom is also the local ISP. That means UNIX. That means project development. Since they own the copper, they almost always make a profit. That means they have money to spend. This is a good thing.
    • If you live in the right areas, you can even get high speed internet, either from the DSL via the telecom (or from companies that specialize in rural service like New Edge networks [newedgenetworks.com]), cable, satellite, or cellular.

      Rural may even be better - I live in a suburban high speed black hole - the space between rural services that New Edge and others offer and a major city where everyone offers. There were at least 8 options for internet 5 miles north of me (a semi-rural outer ring but developing suburb, as well as

    • Even someone in the "boonies". That means there are a ton of small to mid-sized telecom companys sprinkled throughout the "boonies".

      It depends on how rural. Rural in the Southeast USA is being 30 minutes from the nearest real city (e.g. over 20,000 people and/or has a Wal-Mart). In this area, there really are not small to mid-sized telecom companies, unless you would consider the craptastic behemoth BellSouth to be small to mid-sized. Local ISPs do exist but they charge enough per month for many peopl

  • No! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Imperator ( 17614 )
    You can't expect slashdot to do your homework for you. Don't expect to just ask a question like that instead of doing the work yourself. That's not what Ask Slashdot is about.

    Oh, wait...

  • Don't move to Kansas. (Score:3, Informative)

    by CycoChuck ( 102607 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:27PM (#8605950) Journal
    Unless you're going to live in or around the Kansas City area, Kansas is pretty much a dead end in tech jobs.
  • What about young people like me, who not only live in small towns, and have the added disadvantage of no work expiriance? I was going to submit this, but it looks like I was beaten.
    • I started working in tech when I was in high school, for the school system. This was in a small town, also. (Though it was a relatively large county). Then again, besides that, a few real shit jobs, the job I'm working at now is my first real job. It pays only a little bit higher than what I got paid at the school system, heh. The one good thing about the school system job was that it wasn't taxed, since it was an educational experience. *shrug*
  • I am in your wifes boat... can't stand being to close to the city... The Dulles area has grown up too much.....

    Broadband ISP out in Bluemount, I noticed a Sys admin out in Hamilton....

    There are large websites running out of Charlottesville.....

    Depends on what and where... I've made a habit of finding the jobs out there... if only my wife would move with me!

  • Lots of defense work in less urban areas (Score:3, Informative)

    by crmartin ( 98227 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:35PM (#8606004)
    I'm doing some Navy stuff, and work with several off hand:
    • Slidell, LA
    • Stennis Space Flight Center in Mississippi
    • Biloxi, MS (Air Force)
    • Monterey, CA (not cheap, but away from the urban stuff)
    • Omaha, NE
    • Colorado Springs (urban, but real country no more than 20 minutes east)
    I've temporarily enabled my email with spam blocking -- get in touch.
    • I've got to add St. Louis and Kansas City Missouri to your list. Both are fairly large cities with real country under a half-hour away. You can live on several acres of land, surrounded by no one, and still drive into the city on a daily basis for work at any number of tech places/defense contractors in both cities.
      Plus, life just seems to move a little slower/more relaxed out here than it does on the east coast.
      • Also, unfortunately, life here is a little bit more parochial. The whole St. Louis "Where'd do you go to highschool?" line cracks me up. I have a foreign accent! I am obviously foreign! If I tell you where I went to highschool, you'll barely recognise the name of the country, not to mind the town or school... and yet they persist in asking.
    • Interesting that you mentioned the Navy specifically, but omitted the Seabee base in Gulfport, right between Stennis and Keesler AFB.

      My uncle was a tech instructor there for years until he retired.

  • Telecommute (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fished ( 574624 ) <amphigory@gmail . c om> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:42PM (#8606048)
    I work for a company in the Northern Virginia space and live 90 minutes out in Louisa, VA. Very small town. Basically, I telecommute and come to work once a month or so. Been doing it for four years now, and seems to work pretty well. FWIW, I'm a rather senior UNIX sysadmin - fortunately, I'm in a team where other people do hardware, so I can mostly focus on the software aspects of my job.
    • I love that part of VA--it's so beautiful. Hell, in Louisa, you could commute to Charlottesville or Richmond, too if pressed.

      How far are you from Goochland?
      • I guess I'm about 20 miles from goochland - I haven't had much occasion to go that way. Part of my Evil Plan includes driving to Richmond or UVA for Ph.D. work eventually. :)
  • there are plenty of rural areas within commuting distance of the northern virginia hub. a lot of loudon county is still very rural with the biggest towns being mere hamlets. even the mountains of west virginia near harpers ferry are technically within the 'DC metropolitan area'.

  • Like heights? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by texchanchan ( 471739 ) <ccrowley@gmail . c om> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:51PM (#8606105)
    You might look for wireless ISPs in your new or prospective location. Most WISPs are very small companies, so you'd probably get a chance to do some of everything--network admin, programming, tech support--not to mention tower climbs in snowstorms. Read up about this new and absolutely fascinating industry (to me anyway, since I work at a WISP) at the Broadband Reports [broadbandreports.com] WISP professionals' forum [broadbandreports.com]. --C. Crowley, Wiacomm, Inc. [wiacomm.net]

  • Me too! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RabidMonkey ( 30447 ) <canadaboy.gmail@com> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @10:55PM (#8606128) Homepage
    I moved to Toronto 6 years ago now to get some IT experience and get off the helpdesk circuit. That has since failed and I'm not back to the helpdesk circuit. I'm making just over $30k a year and paying $700/mnt for a small apt on the edge of town, driving a beat up car and living from paycheck to paycheck.

    And I've just given up. Toronto, while full of companies, just isn't hiring. I can't find an IT job .. there is ALWAYS someone else applying that knows more than me. I apply for a junior admin job, and theres an out of work senior guru that applies just because the job market sucks. so who gets it? not me.

    I've started looking around, trying to figure out what I'm going to do with life. I've debated giving up IT and moving to a small town. I've debated doing as some suggest, opening a small shop and dealing with residents. I've debated doing the telecommute thing or the long drive into a city. But anyway you look at it - life is going to change unless you have a golden horse shoe wedged up your arse. Moving into the boonies is going to change your career for good ... you aren't going to advance like you would in a city. You aren't going to make as much (or spend as much).

    Perhaps it's time to consider a new line of work. Someone suggested telecom ... try hitting up one of the *Bells around and see if they need techs. Perhaps it's time to go back to school .. put your technical experience towards an electricians degree or something logical but different.

    I understand what you're going through .. best of luck. I'm really hoping to find something and get away from the city, but in doing so I may have to give up my career for something else. I hope not, but in the end, I think it's worth it to get away from the city and live around trees again.

    good luck!
    • I understand what you're going through .. best of luck. I'm really hoping to find something and get away from the city, but in doing so I may have to give up my career for something else. I hope not, but in the end, I think it's worth it to get away from the city and live around trees again.

      If you're already in Ontario, why don't you move to Kitchener-Waterloo, or failing that, Ottawa?

      There are tons of tech companies in KW, and the rent's a hell of a lot cheaper than Toronto (I'm paying $810 and sharing
      • yeah, I couldn't find anything in KW after about a summer of living at my gf's, so back to T.O. I went..

        Rent's so expensive here, but everything's very convenient.

    • Perhaps it's time to consider a new line of work. Someone suggested telecom ... try hitting up one of the *Bells around and see if they need techs.

      In case you didn't notice, the telecom industry imploded about the same time the dot-com industry did. The big companies, both network gear as well as network operators, have been shedding jobs ever since. The remaining Baby Bells, at least in the US, have been trying to sell their rural operations. There may be opportunities with some of the smaller compa

  • I am in San Diego, Here there is everything from very rural to downtown urban. San Diego is very very spread out. The north county has lots of country areas, orange groves, avocado groves, and still be under an hour from downtown. Valley Center, fallbrook, parts of escondido and san marcos all have very back country areas. then the suburbs, which can be fairly spaced out, large back yards, then of course theare are the more urban areas with lots of aprartment condo types. I am sure there are other areas li

  • How flexible is she on location? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krisbrowne42 ( 549049 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @11:12PM (#8606240)
    If she's not looking at a specific area, look for jobs at way-out-of-the-way school districts that need a technician. Most IT people seem to prefer city jobs, with broadband and all, so you may find a position if you're willing to move anywhere.

  • Pork Barrel Politics (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pulu ( 662388 )
    Umm, you might want to wander around in some rural areas, because most of the ones I've lived in are almost always surrounded by defense contractors or military bases big enough to have a civilian workforce.
    I know when I lived in Flagstaff, AZ [flagstaff.com] there was a W.L. Gore Factory [gore.com] there that did a bunch of things, some of them "top secret". High paying, too.

    Similar stories in Utah, Idaho, Missouri, and eastern Washington state.
    Maybe it's just an "out west thing?"
    Oh yeah, nuclear power plants (maybe any power plan

  • We did (Score:5, Informative)

    by ccarr.com ( 262540 ) <chris_carrNO@SPAMslashdot.ccarr.com> on Thursday March 18, 2004 @11:14PM (#8606249) Homepage
    My wife and I (both techies) spent the dot com boom days in NYC and we had all the work we could handle. Though there is much that I loved and still love about NYC, I really had to get myself and my son to a more rural setting. So my wife reluctantly followed me to a rural New Hampshire town (population under 2,000) in 2002. We had saved enough to get by for about a year.

    After a few months, she found a job as a DBA about a 30-minute drive away (better than a Manhattan commute) and I've secured enough freelance contracts to keep us comfortable. We're not doing as well as the boom days, but we're making about double our pre-dot com incomes and I suspect we'd be doing no better had we stayed in the city.

    All of my contracts so far have come directly or indirectly from contacts I made in the city. I have clients in NYC, France, California, and Brazil, but not one in New Hampshire.

    I don't know what to offer by way of advice. I followed my wife to the city many years ago for love, and when I couldn't stand it any more, she followed me to the woods also for love. We didn't have a specific plan when we came here; I had faith that it would work out, and she had faith in me (most of the time :). There certainly was the prospect that I'd be washing dishes or plowing driveways -- I was prepared for that, but it didn't come to it in my case. Still I think you should be prepared for it and ask yourself whether she's worth it.

    My wife and I are very different from each other. I can't really explain what makes us compatible. There's a wide gulf in culture, interest, experience, and opinion between us. By rights we should have split years ago, but somehow the differences keep it interesting rather than get in the way.
    • Kind of offtopic here, but your relationship sounds similar to me and my girlfriend (whom I will marry one day...)

      We both have almost nothing in common, but we always find a way to share time and enjoy each other's company. I don't think I'd like someone that was a "perfect match" for me -- variety being the spice of life and all.....

      And, as far as moving out of the city, I'd do it in a heartbeat if I hadn't racked up so much debt in the past 5-10 years. Oh well, you live and learn, eh?

    • The bottle. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      It occurs to me that New Hampshirites have it both ways. They're close enough to the tech centers in Mass to get some of the jobs, but rural enough to satisfy the rustics. A good place to go if you're trying to satisfy a city-hating spouse.

      I have to comment on "I can't really explain what makes us compatible.". If you figure it out, you should bottle it and sell it. That would be the end of your money issues!

      • I have a friend that commutes 2.5 hours EACH WAY from NH to Boston for work. What does she do for work? She's a recruiter for a tech staffing firm on Boylston Street.

        2.5 Hours each way is 25 hours a week in cummuting alone. My commute is 50 minutes door to door (walk to local train, wait for train, ride train, walk from N. Station to office, take elevator to floor, enter office, look at clock)

        However, she says that it's all worth it when she gets home and can see the stars and hear the wild life. I couldn
      • Really, there's a lot of places where you can do this type of thing. The last 2 cities I've lived in have had 'rural' areas reasonably close to the city center.

        Albuquerque, where I'm at currently, is still a small enough city that, if you drive more than 30 minutes in any direction on the freeway (and it conveniently has both major N/S and E/W ones) you're outside of town and pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

        Before Abq, I lived in Seattle and there, too, you could find places that were plenty rural (
        • Really good points, And I seem to recall that Albuquerque is not that far from Santa Fe, which is a cultural mecca of sorts.

          I wasn't considering leaving Silicon Valley [pbs.org] when this discussion started. But now I'll have to give it some serious thought!

          The only downside I see to living in New Mexico is that when you travel to the rest of the country, you keep having to explain to geographical ignoramuses that you're not a furrener. I believe that's why New Mexico is the only state that puts "USA" on its lice

  • Moving is not your problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) * on Thursday March 18, 2004 @11:26PM (#8606346)
    Sounds like your wife is the problem.

    If she wants to escape her current locale so badly that she's going to ditch you to leave, you have a marriage problem.

    If anybody ever gave me an ultimatum requiring me to drop everything, abandon my livlihood and move hundreds of miles away, I'd be out the door before nightfall.

    Marriage is a two way street. Take care of that problem before you move 1 foot.
    • If anybody ever gave me an ultimatum requiring me to drop everything, abandon my livlihood and move hundreds of miles away, I'd be out the door before nightfall.

      It may not be that simple. From the facts presented, we don't really know how much she has sacrificed for him. Marriages is, as you say, a two way street. We don't know who has been doing the lion's share of the taking up to this point.

      He needs to look in the mirror and ask himself (a) whether she's worth it, and (b) the effect that such a mo
    • Jeez dude. The guy asks for help relocating, and you lecture him on his choice of mates? I'm trying to figure out whether you're insensitive or just plain stupid.

      Interesting definition of "two way street". The guy's problem is to advance his career, the woman's is to make the sacrifices necessary for him to do so. How's your marriage, I wonder?

      Couples often have to make difficult choices when one partner's needs conflict with those of the other. Does her problem with urban living rate with his problem f

      • The telling statment is that he said his wife will leave him if he did not follow. The grandparent is absolutely correct that there could be a major problem with the marriage. If he does not want to go, but decides he must, he will resent this, especially if his career suffers. A good friend of mine followed his wife back to her birth country because she could not handle USA. In a few years, he came back alone.

        This need to run by the poster's wife should be looked at very carefully. If she is running
    • What hasn't been mentioned is how much resistance he put up before deciding to move. If he hadn't put his foot down before this, it wouldn't have been an ultimatum by her. Now he's found himself making a compromise, which you're right, is what marriage is about. Her wanting to move to a rural area overrode any importance the city held for him.

      As my suggestion, even a local college needs a CS professor. If you're gonna be in the CNY area, UC just lost their long-time dept. head! ;)

      Otherwise you can alw

  • Here's my experience. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Deagol ( 323173 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @11:34PM (#8606395) Homepage
    Define "rural". :-)

    18 months ago, I moved 150 miles from my employer, which is a large state university in the state capital, to a rural town with 698 people (2000 census). I'm a unix admin, and I can do 95% of my work via ssh and screen over 56k modem. For that other 5% I drive into the office once a week to physiclaly handle machines, eat pizza with my peers, and try to stay somewhat in tune with what's going on.

    While I haven't taken any local work (other than helping a neighboor retiree with his PC in return for his grandson mowing my lawn), I suspect I could drum up some work doing basic fixing of Wintel boxes. Heck, the owner of the wireless ISP provider the next town 5 miles over was needing someone of my skills, but I didn't jump on that (rural wages -- going down to $8/hr -- did not fit my lifestyle at the time).

    I just recently picked up a half-time job (evenings) telecommunting to a place 500 miles away in another state. I wasn't even looking for a 2nd job -- it was a friend-of-a-friend kind of referral. I've never met -- and don't ever forsee meeting -- my co-wokers there in person. Nice. Easy extra money to facilitate my next move.

    In a few months, I'll be moving 200 miles even further -- 20 miles from the nearest blacktop and 15 miles from the nearest utility pole. I'll be using satellite internet/phone from this location.

    While researching the nearest satellite internet installer to the remote location, the owner of the dealership sounded very interested in having someone with my computer background available to him for regional installs (farms, ranches, etc. -- I live deep in the West).

    The point of my rambling? Well, firstly, your current employer may be receptive to keeping you on from a remote location. Next, without even trying too hard, I found several good potential employment opportunities, even in my very rural area. If you put in the time and effort, I'm almost certain you can round up a living wage wherever you end up.

    I guess all I'm trying to do is offer you hope, rather than specific advice. I feel your pain, as my wife sounds just like yours -- she can't stand living in a city or the 'burbs. If she can't have her chickens out on the lawn legally, she won't live there.

    And if you find the slower rural lifestyle fulfilling, there's nothing shameful with things like construction or plumbing. Hell, the plumber out here can command more per hour than I can fixing PCs. There's even nothing wrong wth talking a significant pay-cut, if that's required. If your wife is worth keeping, she'll realize that the two of you can't (easily) maintain a big-city lifestyle in a rural area.

    Good luck.

    • Re:Here's my experience. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Etyenne ( 4915 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:13AM (#8609107)
      There's even nothing wrong wth talking a significant pay-cut, if that's required. If your wife is worth keeping, she'll realize that the two of you can't (easily) maintain a big-city lifestyle in a rural area.

      You may also want to take into account the fact that housing cost in rural area is often much lower, which in turn cut down your living expense. If you are one of those who pay an insane 500K$ mortgage to live in CA or NYC, this may make a world of difference.

    • ... there's nothing shameful with things like construction or plumbing. Hell, the plumber out here can command more per hour than I can fixing PCs.

      I had a plumber out here about a month ago and I footed a $690 bill for about 4 hours of work. Granted it was a shitty job to do (pun intended) but that's still well over $150 an hour. Even worse, when you need a plumber, you NEED a plumber. I'd also say he's pretty safe to assume his job won't be outsourced to India any time soon. There are licensing rules

    • Re:Here's my experience. (Score:4, Funny)

      by pixel_bc ( 265009 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:20PM (#8616840)
      > Define "rural". :-)

      When your dog runs away and you can see him running for three weeks.

  • What you really need to do is to redefine boonies.

    I live in Kansas City, a decent sized (about 1 million in the metropolitan area) midwestern city. The nice thing about this city, as well as many others in the midwest is that it's not shoulder to shoulder with the next big city. What this gets you is some fairly large stretches of undeveloped area and small towns not more than 20 miles outside of the city limits. I have coworkers who live in these rural areas, and make the 20 - 40 minute commute every

    • I can second this -- Kansas City is somewhat amazing in that you can have a very rural existence (not suburban, but rural -- farms everywhere, towns with populations in the 2,500-and-under bracket, no sprawl), and yet you're only 30 miles away from the urban core.

      I live 38 miles from downtown KC, and although I work at home now (PR/marketing with a graphic-designer spouse), I commuted into the city for a few years.

      Kansas City has more lane-miles of highway per capita than any other metro area in the nation;

    • What this gets you is some fairly large stretches of undeveloped area and small towns not more than 20 miles outside of the city limits.

      Pittsburgh has a similar situation... my wife and I live on a 56-acre farm that's only 30 minutes from downtown. Privacy, back to nature, and 10 minutes away from a Borders bookstore :-) The local tech economy is starting to come back into swing, and there's quite a bit of work outside of the pure tech field... Alcoa, USX, Mellon Bank, etc. Not to mention CMU, Pitt, an

  • Jobs everywhere, find them... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Thursday March 18, 2004 @11:59PM (#8606552)

    I'll bet there is a newspaper serving nearly every area, and the printer isn't too far away... find them and apply, someone has to run their computers. Telephone was mentioned elsewhere, another good place to look.

    You don't have to stay in computers. Could you sell tractors? Drive truck cross country? (You would rarely be home, but it is a common job for those who do live in rural areas which should tell you something) Do AI on cattle?

    There is always commute. Telecommute jobs are hard to find. Get a VW TDI (anything with good gas milage), and move 1 hour drive from the city, and work non-peak hours. Won't work in California (or NY?) but most cities in between have plenty of land 1 hour away allowing you the best of both worlds. (Not to be confused with suburbs which are the worst of both worlds)

    Last, re-evalutae your life. Do you really need as much income as you are making? lower your standard of living and you might find that waiter at the local cafe takes care of all your needs.


    • There is always commute. Telecommute jobs are hard to find. Get a VW TDI (anything with good gas milage), and move 1 hour drive from the city, and work non-peak hours. Won't work in California (or NY?)

      NYC? It takes over an hour to drive through NYC, forget about getting away from it. An hour's drive from Manhattan would still leave you in a very dense "suburban" (maybe demi-urban would be a better term?) area.

  • Well maybe not bad news, but read anyway. I am a terrible person...

    Why does your wife "need" to get away to a rural area? Is she crazy? Easily distracted? Do YOU want to live the rest of your life in the middle of nowhere? What the hell is that? You have a job, you're working. You probably enjoy going out once in a while at night. WTF is it w. moving to the "boonies?"
  • I work for a county agency in a fairly small town in central California. It's not totally in the middle of nowhere, but it's close. I am basically the only IT person for the agency (it's county-wide, but a small county).
    It's a nice big-fish-little-pond ego-boosting job.
    I think as long as you are not too far from civilization (does Fresno count as civilized?) it's not bad. I have good job security, because few techies would probably want to live out this far.
    I have done quite a few repair jobs after work, as
  • I would look around Middle Georgia, Robins Air Force Base is pretty big (biggest employer in Georgia) and employs a whole lot of civilians, and then there are all the contractors, but if you go 30 min. out of town you are in amongst the farms, or there is alot of suburbia if you would rather that. If you are good it should not be a deal to get a job on base or with a contractor.
  • You could live anywhere and try to get gigs from sites like ITMoonlighter.com [itmoonlighter.com] (recently acquired by guru.com, or RentACoder.com [rentacoder.com], etc., except you may be competing with programmers in Bulgaria and India willing to work for $1500/mo or less, but if the hiree wants an American or someone more local that would give you an advantage.
  • Dude, do you have any idea how much a good plumber makes?

    Scary.
  • Make sure you have something set up before hand. Even then, scout around where you'll be first. I came to a small town in '99 for contract work (Big mistake), a 3 year contract which wound up being cancelled 18 months in. I was caught flatfooted, and wasn't financially prepared to move back to the larger city I wa from. So I did Service and custom programming for a year, right until September 10, 2001. It seems there was a little event on 9/11/2001 that caused the economy to go a bit soft, and when that hap
  • Don't think that just because you're moving out of the city and into a rural area you're going to be forced to find a job in a rural economy. There are plenty of places in the US that are not the massive sprawl of urbanization that you find out in your part of the country. There are quite a few decently sized cities where you can get out in 'the boonies' with a drive of an hour or so (for example, you can drive from one side of Albuquerque to the other in about 20-30 min in light trafic).

    Considering that

  • Define rural (again) (Score:4, Informative)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @09:07AM (#8608543) Homepage Journal
    As another poster asked, define "rural". I live 10 miles outside of Wichita, KS. Prior to 1997 the 2 acre lot my house is on was a wheat field. I have DSL, yet heat with propane, use well water, and have a septic field rather than city sewer. Rural enough? Yet I have a 9 minute commute to work.

    I work at a leading communications test equipment company [aeroflex.com] doing DSP, embedded software, and UI design in TCL/Tk. I get to play with 10 million gate FPGAs, 60MSample/second digitizers, microwave comms gear, and stuff that I am not allowed to talk about.

    Check out our job offerings - you might just fit.

    Now, just up the road (I35, to be exact) is Olathe, KS - a suburb of Kansas City, (KS|MO), wherein there are SEVERAL high-tech job centers.

    Down the road is Oklahoma City - again, a city with a fair number of tech jobs, wherein one may live outside the city yet commute without too much difficulty.

    Beleive it or not, not all tech development goes on on the coasts. Do a bit of research.
  • "but I worry I will end up working construction or plumbing"...
    Hell, you'd make a damn good living as a plumber and maybe it's the change you need. See here. [slashdot.org]
    -psy

  • Regional libraries can be a good job (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brigc ( 30780 ) <brigc@bcmccoy.com> on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:25AM (#8609217) Homepage
    I've spent two separate five-year stints with regional libraries in Kansas doing automation work... running around consulting with tiny libraries helping them figure out how to get the most bang from the small amounts of money they have to spend on computers.

    It's a nice lifestyle... the pay isn't that great compared to what you can make in urban areas, but the cost-of-living is much less and there's a certain amount of non-tangible rewards working for libraries. ...brig
  • To Stepford, you'll love it, your wife just might not.
  • No seriously, or rather, a town outside of a college town. I go to a medium sized student public university in western North Carolina in the mountains. Outside of the town, it's an hour+ drive to anything, but because of the colleg,e there are all sorts of technology related things.

    Several Hi-speed ISP's
    The local cable co
    The (shudder) university it dept.
    And other stuff
    Now, you aren't going to find a software development firm, but theres plenty of other stuff.
  • Hello:

    I used to live and work in Des Moines, Iowa and in Leavenworth, Kansas. I was a programmer and consultant in both places, and found the work interesting and mostly cutting edge, with some exceptions. If I didn't want to live in an urban / suburban school district, I could have moved a whole 10 miles out of town and gotten a nice farm with horses, a field, etc. Of course, horses require maintenance too, so beware of extra jobs you take on if you move to a "farm" and have 'pets' of cattle, goats, sh

  • Rural areas near DC (Score:2, Informative)

    by cyoung1035 ( 539131 )
    If you don't want to leave the DC area, consider looking around the Pax River (MD)/Dahlgren (VA) areas. Both areas are basically swarming with defense contractors, most tech related, but there are still lightly-populated areas nearby. Southern Maryland is building up quickly, but is still considered rural (we don't even have a 24-hour Wal Mart or grocery store, or a mall!). Same with the area of Virginia just south of the Nice bridge. Close enough to the big city to enjoy the good things (or commute --
    • I too was a tech worker in DC. While I loved the city, I wanted a little more space and decided to move to Chesapeake Beach in Calvert County. It is rural. Nascar, drive through liqour, shotguns in pickups. I just couldn't stand the suburbs.

      Now I'm 45 minutes to DC. From my door to the US Capitol. 38 if I speed a bit. Those commute times aren't much worse than Dulles to DC I should note.

      For what it is worth, I bought a home here and a condo in DC for LESS than it would cost to buy a house in a good
  • I have been doing some consulting work lately with a large software company that is headquartered way out in the boonies. Jack Henry & Associates [jackhenry.com] is a developer of banking software that does a ton of software development in Monett, Missouri [monett-mo.com]. Believe me, it's way out there. If you can get hired there, it would be very hard to lose the job -- they have a no layoff policy. You'd have to screw up bad to get fired.

    Needless to say, they have a difficult time finding programmers willing to move to Monett

  • Rural Louisiana (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sean Clifford ( 322444 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @09:06PM (#8617282) Journal
    During the bust, I managed to land a good gig at a small company in the piney woods of Louisiana about an hour away from the town I was living in. I make about half of what I could pull down in a major metro (and turned down a six figure salary to come here), but the cost of living here is low. The hours can be long, but I really enjoy my job, work with a great team of people, and have much less stress that I would experience in a big city. I started out as the "computer guy", though I'd been doing software development work for the previous few years - web development. Now I'm the IT Director with a growing staff and the inventory management web app I built has turned into a good source of revenue for the company, having been purchased by seven other companies. I've since relocated to the little town (am posting from work on a late Friday night) to cut 10 hours out of my week and be less than 5 minutes from home. I don't care for the "big city"; never have, probably never will. I've been with this little company for nearly three years and hope I'll be here for the next twenty. The downside is that it's hard to find good IT folks willing to relocate to the sticks. I'm trying to hire a developer or two right now.

  • Wal-Mart's HQ is in what many here will consider a rural area. They have a sizeable IT staff.

  • I lived and worked in Ithaca NY for a couple of years, and it definitely meets your requirements for rural living. Ithaca is a small rural town in the finger lakes region of NY (think wineries and dairy farms) that is also the home to Ithaca College and Cornell University. The area definitely has the rural "feel" to it, but because of the two schools it isn't totally backwards, technologically speaking. Finding work in your field shouldn't be an issue, either through one of the universities or through a

  • I live in the boonies (Score:3, Insightful)

    by macdaddy ( 38372 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @01:12PM (#8621339) Homepage Journal
    at present. How rural are you talking? This town has 231 people in it but we're practically out of town too. You could very well set up a computer shop in a larger town, one that at least has a dozen store fronts. Realize one thing though. Once the local population has a computer, they probably won't buy one from you again for many years. You won't have much recurring business. You could offer classes of course. One of the biggest money makers is to offer internet access in a town that doesn't already have it. My local telco owns about 2 dozen exchanges here in rural Kansas and Nebraska. They also handle the cable TV. Since they of course own the lines they can easily provide fancy smancy Internet options that other rural places could only dream of. This town with 231 people in it has DSL. The neighboring town doesn't get it's phone service from this company but they do get their cable TV from them. That town has cable modems. My folks' new house north of town 5 miles is going to be on with long-range Ethernet soon. They've offered dialup since 96 or so. I was their second helpdesk person hired at the time. I now keep their servers running like clockwork and have had a hand in some of their networking over the years. That's another possibility. Get on with a local telco/ISP. They can always use a good programmer/sysadm. Learn to set up custom applications to handle all types of user data and billing in databases. Make user info available via LDAP. Things like that. It may seem rudimentary to you and I but I can assure you that few small town ISPs have this. Everything they do now is replicated in multiple locations and is very disorganized. Learn to provide this functionality. If you want to learn a trade that ISPs will always need, hone your spam-filtering and security skills. These are two skills that will always be needed. Also, give your local school district a try. Perhaps you could work for them part-time to keep their servers running or provide them with custom-built machines with support. There's lots of options in the sticks. You just have to look for them. Me, I want to live miles and miles from the nearest person and yet have very high speed Internet access. I also want to be able to get to town quickly for supplies and entertainment. This is why I plan on getting my pilot's license. :) Best of luck.

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