The whole idea of remote working to arbitrage cost of living falls apart if you are in any way social.
I think that a lot of people banging on about remote work just haven't tried it for an extended period. It works for some, and for those - great.
To me, it's just another step down the 'technification' of everything in which people don't speak to the people around them (because they've been 'removed' from their lives) but spend all of their time in front of screens.
I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere and earn 10x what the average local does. I want the people around me to be roughly on my level and share my interests. That's something that's easy to do in a city.
That's how businesses end up centering in hubs anyway. Who wants to be a startup founder living in the country alone? I'm sure this person exists, but they're the exception not the rule.
I mean, right now, you can look at a place like London and see hyperlocal clustering of wealth, one street will be the 'nice street' and the next one rough. People really care about this.
If you earned a London salary in my hometown you'd be ostracising yourself completely from those around you by virtue of just having none of the same concerns. Yeah, you own the home outright, you can buy a brand new car every 6 months, the price tags in the supermarket may as well be blank, etc. Oh yeah, and you have working hours whenever you want, booking a holiday is telling your boss "I won't be in Friday, guv". Wait until your neighbour tells you again how they're struggling to pay the bills or they've just been sanctioned by the benefits office.
> The whole idea of remote working to arbitrage cost of living falls apart if you are in any way social.
Unless you grew up in the area from which you work remotely, in which case you can be more social because connecting with old friends and family is much easier than making new friends at 30+.
> If I earned a London salary in my hometown I'd be ostracising myself completely from those around me [...] I don't see how that benefits anyone.
I don't see the problem with having more money than most of your neighbors - instead of buying new cars, you could spend it on your neighborhood and lift it up. Seems healthier than what is happening instead - non-techies being forced out of their homes because they can't keep up with techie rents.
Yeah, and all of those guys are skint and you're not. It works to an extent.
Perhaps you don't see the problem because you're theorizing about it rather than having lived experience. As I think most people do.
Imagine that essentially everyone you meet in your age group is far poorer than you are. Not most people but everyone. You need some sort of 'app' to find people to speak to who are on your level.
Your specific example means you're making yourself some sort of local pariah/celebrity/whatever. It's very nice and kind, but what about your peer group? Do they just exist through a webcam?
It's like the FIRE folks. Everyone thinks they want to retire at 30 unless they're in that situation, and then they realise it's deathly boring and everyone else is at work. (Sure, FU money is great).
On reflection, I think maybe you're talking about the small arbs where like, you move from somewhere with 500K homes to somewhere with 250K homes or whatever; i.e. from somewhere with jobs, to somewhere with jobs (that pay a bit less). If you're doing the big arb of moving to an economically depressed area then you have to actually live there.
The limiting example would be like those people that move to Vietnam or whatever and have servants. Maybe it works for them? But even if you're just moving to a poor area in the same country it's still a massive difference.
There is a fundamental difference between having a bit more money and deleting worldly concerns. The FIRE/low CoL idea forgets the idea that if you make yourself 'special' you are now indeed special and weird and not like those around you.
As someone who has actually managed to work remotely in a small city while employed by a major tech firm at normal pay rates, I can definitely say your scenario does not match my lived experience.
1) unless you move to a very small town, there are still plenty of people in your economic demographic. In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k. If you are currently making more then $500k you might be a little more out there, but then you really have no reason to move, do you? (Your techie peers at other companies don’t make that sort of money).
2) “Friends from work” don’t go away when working remotely. We still have “water cooler” conversations and members of my team have occasionally visited each other’s cities outside of work. We also do a ton of socializing when we are physically together for work.
That being said, it does reduce that aspect of social life. What fills it? Other activities- family/children, hobbies, causes, clubs, etc. I’ve lived in major tech hubs before- it did take longer to establish a social network while working remotely in my smaller city, but once established it has been much more fulfilling.
3) I apologize for criticizing, but your concern about not being able to socialize with the middle class sounds bizarre. Some of our dearest friends in this city are solidly middle class- 911 dispatchers, teachers, carpenters, nurses, and sales people. We met through sports, children’s school, and volunteering. We specifically chose to live well below our means (FIREing before the term existed I guess) so our neighbors are a varied lot, and we like them. We can’t invite them to join us vacationing in Europe, but other than that it’s there is little awkwardness.
> In the US, roughly 5% of households earn more than $200k. In a town of 70k, you’d expect there to be roughly 27k households and therefore 1300 households earning more than $200k.
This assumes uniform distribution of household incomes across cities of different sizes, which I suspect is a shaky assumption. More likely, the high earning households are concentrated in a short list of major population centers.
Not as much as you think. I couldn't quickly find the dataset where I looked at this before, but https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Income has percentages of population earning more than $200k by state and MSA. The Birmingham Alabama metro area has 4.03% of its households earning more than $200k, and Alabama a whole has 2.92% of household earning more than $200k (the 5th lowest in the Union, btw). That means Alabama outside its biggest, richest city is still 2.5% over $200k. Sure, those are also probably concentrated in the other 2nd cities in the state like Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, but you are getting really far down the list of US Metro areas by population when you get to Tuscaloosa Alabama.
There are well off people throughout the United State, not only in the top 20 metros.
I think software devs, even remote probably make at least 100k, but I'm just guessing. That's a lot more than median us income of $46k (1) in 2019. Still not that far above dual income families. However they aren't paying as high a wages in rural areas as others pointed out so rural avg probably lower than big city avg.
I'm not talking about some sort of scorecard but the fact that a lot of these low CoL areas have crushing poverty.
If you want to be the one-eyed man amongst the blind, go for it, but not everyone wants that.
Socioeconomic groupings exist in the metro areas too. Senior management hanging out with the workers is relatively rare. Because it's just a pain in the arse to guard yourself in every conversation and not seem like a twat lacking empathy when you talk about some benign thing you did last week.
I don't get it. I have lots of money. I've never had any feeling I had to 'guard' myself in any conversation with people from literally any social demographic. I mean, unless you're some kind of oddball, all you're using money for is buying nicer food, more space, and more time. So nobody's going to get upset because you're eating loads of avocados, even if it did come up in conversation.
If you have never experienced or observed stratification, then you may simply not get around much (in terms of social circles). It's not that strange, I cannot afford it either, I just made some chance acquintances, mostly through my socially far more capabele partner.
Class had become the most useful criterion to distinguish groups to me. It's not about guarding oneself explicitly, or avoiding interaction, but more in happening to frequent different kinds of sports/events, having different types of interest and being able to afford those types of hobbies. You won't see a working class person drive up to the club in his jaguar old timer for a game of golf and going for a Michelin star afterwards with friends, talking over a new investment opportunity. You see what I mean?
I come from the UK, which is pretty strongly stratified in terms of class (to my knowledge, the most stratified, at least historically). My observation was that, as long as you're straightforward and pleasant, people from all backgrounds are unlikely to dislike you if you come from a 'higher' social class. They'll have lots of ideas about who you are or what you're like, but they are mostly positive.
People from richer social classes, on the other hand, typically either dislike poorer classes for a variety of more or less obvious prejudices, or they dislike them because they project their own antagonisms, and thus feel disliked, then become disliked because they act 'guarded'.
My general basis for friendship is common interests and interpersonal chemistry. I think if people assume they have no common interests with people from different backgrounds, or they sabotage interpersonal chemistry by acting guarded, then they're cheating themselves.
Michelin star food is generally not all that much better than other food, golf is no different to mini-golf (aside from being less eco-friendly and less fun), and a jaguar old timer is just a particularly unreliable, unsafe and low mile-per-gallon Honda. Personally, I don't have much in common with people who define themselves by their career success, whether that's shown by fancy sneakers, or fancy cars.
The point is not whether or not the differences are meaningful, the point is the differences exist, and are reinforced by self-selection, conscious or not. Parallel culture if you will. You are right, it doesn't have to be hard to cross the boundaries, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
My point is the differences are backwards. People think that they're disliked by others, but they're actually projecting their own dislike of others. This happens in hierarchical societies because the people at the top necessarily owe their position to the suppression of the people at the bottom, but since they like to think of themselves as nice fellows, they tend to push all of the emotions this entails onto the people they mistreat. So behind many of these stories of boundaries, there's usually somebody from a wealthy background acting like an asshole to some poor sod, all the while thinking they're just struggling with cultural differences.
It's not really the money, it's the level of education and ambition. I worked remotely from Mount Pleasant, Michigan for a year and had a difficult time finding anyone to talk with about things that were interesting to me. The only group on Meetups.com was "Housewives of Mount Pleasant."
Friends are peers that have similar life experiences and values (and humor). Sometimes people like that are hard to find.
IMO when you work remote you can work from a small town OR you can move to other places if you like. For many moving is not an option because the rest of their family is in a place. There are other options other than Mount Pleasant, Michigan and the Bay area
If you have a better definition, I'd like to hear it. I don't have many friends, so my definition encompasses all of them. Maybe if I had a better definition, I'd be able to make more friends.
some shared experiences or some shared values and forget about humour.
FWIW, I'm probably not qualified as I probably have more activity partners, or context friends, than true friends but your definition seemed incredibly limiting.
I'm currently in a similar situation: I'm working from a MCOL area and remote from the home office. I don't love the city, but it's a nice city for other people. (I am here because of my academic spouse - he wasn't offered a job in a technical hub.)
We end up saving amazing amounts of money, relatively speaking, but our social life has been difficult to fill in. College vibe helps, but there are vast benefits to large cities and I'm certainly missing those.
Yeah sure and that's where you decide to have one settlement spot where you can spend few months every year.
I am only pointing out that you are restricting yourself by not choosing remote work. Some people can't self restrict or enact behaviours required for it to work. I can still choose to settle on one place forever.
All it would take is the teller at the local bank telling her BFF that you're one of the richest people in the county (which she shouldn't, but she did), and suddenly you're being hit up by every hard-luck case for miles around. You'd be their lottery winner next door.
edit Not to mention the target of every drug user and petty criminal.
Seriously, tech has got to have some of the most inflated egos on the planet. Do people in this thread really think there aren't plenty of other people making 150-200+ outside of the major tech hubs? Do they really think they are going to be Mr. Monopoly Man because they have a 150k remote job in Des Moines?
The OP's scenario is over the top, but if you had a 150k USD remote job in my hometown you could buy half a street. You would have a very different life to those around you and it would be challenging socially as a result.
I fail to see what this has to do with ego - it's not an assertion of superiority, it's just a factual statement. It's nothing to do with technology - working as a lawyer for remote clients would be the same.
If anything it's the opposite I would think. Ego would be rocking up and flashing the cash.
Remote work is international. I know a couple of great engineers who earn $150-200k remotely while living in the area where $3600 is considered a decent salary. That's $3600 annually, as in $300 monthly.
This is a cartoon-like scenario you have cooked up. You really think random people are going to be contacting you for money because of your mid-rate tech salary?
I think this depends a lot on whether your hometown is in rural Iowa or rural India. Some people here come from very poor areas, where $300k can be 100x what others are making instead of 10x.
> I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere and earn 10x what the average local does. I want the people around me to be roughly on my level and share my interests.
You're clearly not a camper or a bow hunter, and you clearly have no particular attraction to pickup trucks.
Point being, your generalization is actually pretty specific to your set of interests. Other folks couldn't imagine not owning a car, getting rid of their dogs, or having to plan a special trip to go fishing.
Very insightful. I grew up in upstate California and you've pretty well described my kin. I would love to leave the city and move some place similar but to do so would drastically limit my options of employment. The irony is I work in a satellite office where I'm one of 3 on a 20 person team whose located at the company's HQ. My job would be no different if I were physically located some place else.
That's been my experience as well. I've worked remote for a few years and love it because I'm fine without the social aspect of work, but most of the people I know left their remote job in under a year because it felt lonely and isolating. Anecdotally, it seems like married people and homeowners tend to like remote work because they have extra free time and a spouse to talk to, whereas the single people I know would quickly start doing their remote work at Starbucks or pubs with free WiFi because it's the only way they'll see another person during the work week.
As a married dude with three kids I love the fact I can drop them off at school and wait for the at the bus stop and do all the dad things most dads miss out on. It helps my company is 100% remote so our culture supports it. Honestly they could give me a pay cut come raise time and I would still stay.
> The whole idea of remote working to arbitrage cost of living falls apart if you are in any way social. [...] I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere and earn 10x what the average local does. I want the people around me to be roughly on my level and share my interests.
I don’t really prefer to make all of my friends within the tech/academic bubble that I work in. I would feel weird if I didn’t see my coworkers, but I’ve made a point of finding activities that bring me into contact with a range of different people, and I think that makes my social life more interesting.
I was lucky enough to choose a career (medical physics) that takes place everywhere, but I could see remote work being effective for people in other fields.
I agree and feel the same, but there are limits somewhere.
Prince Harry isn't seriously going to go down the pub for regular meet ups with his friends from the ex mining town. They might get on if they have a chat, but that's not the point.
I'm specifically referring to the big CoL arbs, not the situation in which someone just lives like, further out from a major metro because they don't have to commute.
I think you’re using extremes to support your argument, but it falls apart when the “arbitrage” is even slightly less immense.
I moved from the Bay Area where my 1300sqft rental house would have cost me $1.2M, to work remote from a high-income community in Michigan where my 5000sqft house cost me $700k.
My neighbors are not poor, the schools are great, people are in a wide variety of professional and educational backgrounds (not just tech), and best of all, I live minutes away from my family and several of my best childhood friends, who I see every week.
You don’t need to move to the middle of nowhere for remote work to be a good idea, just anywhere even slightly more sane than the Bay Area. There’s loads of places all over the country that can strike a good balance here.
Completely agree with you here. I think I should have been more clear in the original post as a whole bunch of commenters seem to be talking about situations in which you _could_ have got a local job, it'd just be a bit less well paid.
I'm talking about working remotely to escape a locally depressed job market which is very different (because in that situation you are relatively unique).
You can work remotely for competitive wages and live in a major city... which is what I do. So no sacrifice of social capital.
More employers should embrace tools that let their workers work fully remote. It's started creeping in with more work from home days at most white-collar employers. But you'll have to start judging people by their productivity, not presence in the office. Video chat on demand is just as good (arguably more communication imo, as people no longer have to get up and walk to talk to you).
Remote work doesn't mean home office. You can rent part of a shared office and still have colleagues for lunch.
You don't need to move to a place where you will be 'the rich guy'. It's your choice. Even with your big tech salary you won't be better off than the local business owners in a place with around 20k inhabitants.
You don’t have to be that remote.. you could work in another city or even in a cheaper suburb. With video conferencing I think some of the social parts are maintained.
Get out into the country proper, and you'll find plenty of rich people to hang out with.
They don't tend to live in villages or towns, and they don't socialise with "townies", and they certainly won't share any interests with some nouveau-rich tech worker who thinks they're wealthy
Sure, but then you're not taking advantage of cost of living differences (first line of my post).
You seem to have this idea that everyone here thinks they're uber wealthy or whatever. It's just relative to the locale. If you move to a depressed northern town with the idea that it's going to be some utopian bliss in your massive house then you are in for a shock. That's what is being discussed.
Obviously there are nice places outside of metro areas. They have a price tag to match, or not, the land isn't for sale.
You're also illustrating the other side of it - it's not easy to slot into a different social class (upwards or downwards).
I've lived all over the UK. I think Cardiff was the hardest to "slot into" - an English accent in Wales can prompt some interesting interactions ;) Though small-town England is also a nightmare of "if you didn't grow up here, fuck off".
Social class in the UK is all about where you were educated, it has nothing to do with your income (same for Australia, but apparently not the USA, though I think that's changing). Your accent, your manners, whether you call it "dinner" or "tea", whether you go to the toilet, the lavatory or the bathroom. If you actually care about social class, these are the things that matter. Income doesn't.
But attitude is the big one. You can fit in and make friends anywhere with an open attitude. People are people. Friendships can easily overcome class and income differences if there's mutual respect, empathy, and a desire to be friends.
The US Midwest and South have a dozen relatively cheap cities to live in where it isn’t depressed.
Housing supply/demand balance is a prime contributor to CoL, and the south/Midwest generally doesn’t have the draconian housing restrictions that the coastal cities have.
As someone currently having moved from the southwest, to bay area, to northeast, and now living in the south, you underestimate the cultural changes. I have relatively little in common with people who grew up here. They're fine people, but they're not people who I can talk to past small talk.
And in a fair number of these places, there's the same hostility to people moving in as the bay area.
You seem to have no friends/family or attachment to a particular social circle; which makes the physical connections with your co-workers valuable. If you have a very active social circle, you won't probably care that much about joining your co-workers for an after-work.
The point of remote work is that you don't need to move to Silicon Valley to get a good job. And unless you are living in the middle of no-where, small communities still have very wealthy people who are probably wealthier than you'll ever become. Why didn't they move? Because they have roots there.
Living in relatively poor/clean community is and co-working is still a good thing. You can then afford to have a family, something most people don't and you'll be able to buy more services. Then, you are helping the locals out there and reducing inequality.
I think that a lot of people banging on about remote work just haven't tried it for an extended period. It works for some, and for those - great.
To me, it's just another step down the 'technification' of everything in which people don't speak to the people around them (because they've been 'removed' from their lives) but spend all of their time in front of screens.
I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere and earn 10x what the average local does. I want the people around me to be roughly on my level and share my interests. That's something that's easy to do in a city.
That's how businesses end up centering in hubs anyway. Who wants to be a startup founder living in the country alone? I'm sure this person exists, but they're the exception not the rule.
I mean, right now, you can look at a place like London and see hyperlocal clustering of wealth, one street will be the 'nice street' and the next one rough. People really care about this.
If you earned a London salary in my hometown you'd be ostracising yourself completely from those around you by virtue of just having none of the same concerns. Yeah, you own the home outright, you can buy a brand new car every 6 months, the price tags in the supermarket may as well be blank, etc. Oh yeah, and you have working hours whenever you want, booking a holiday is telling your boss "I won't be in Friday, guv". Wait until your neighbour tells you again how they're struggling to pay the bills or they've just been sanctioned by the benefits office.
I don't see how that benefits anyone.