[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities? ___________________________________________________________________ Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities? With increasing remote work, are there rural communities where many people are tech workers? Curious globally, but mostly interested in USA/UK. I would like to live a more pastoral life, but anecdotally I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in a city. Author : dkarp Score : 70 points Date : 2022-04-22 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago) | mattlondon wrote: | Silicon Fen in UK? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Fen | bombcar wrote: | Snide answer - look at voting records from the places you are | interested in, and find those that match you as closely as | possible so you don't have to be confronted by anyone different | from you. | kylehotchkiss wrote: | I lived in a Southwest Virginia college town for a few years | after college. | | * Fast and cheap fiber internet. Reasonably priced utilities. | | * A reasonably sized and maintained home with a yard goes for | under $200,000. | | * Small airport with a connection to Charlotte on AA that I | believe had federally subsidized aviation access. | | * Small risk of natural disasters. | | * I did a photography gallery and the mayor of that town stopped | by to see it. | | I enjoyed my time there but after friends slowly moved to bigger | cities, I did too. I can't see myself happy there anymore. I | probably wouldn't be married now and probably would have had a | harder time forward in my career. Even if there was a tech scene | there, it wouldn't be larger than 10 or so people, and the local | tech companies were far less advanced. | | But if I had a choice as a kid where would be more fun to grow | up, I'd say back in Virginia. More room to roam, outdoor | activities nearby without parking issues, yard for hosting get- | togethers, and far less pressure in school/extra-circulars. | | Hope this helps a little :) | CalRobert wrote: | Well, I moved to a village of about 250 people in rural Ireland, | and I've met some other rural Irish tech workers online, but | don't know of any concentrations of tech workers, we're all far | apart. I do wonder if this will change over time as housing in | cities gets less and less affordable. | | It's.... Fine. The locals are mostly bemused. I'd struggle to do | it in rural US where the political divide is much wider. I'm only | here because it's cheap though. | scandox wrote: | How is the broadband? I'm in Dublin and often contemplate | moving out but I run into connectivity issues in many of my | favoured locations. | CalRobert wrote: | Fastest I've ever had, gigabit fibre. | | Not to plug but I built www.gaffologist.com to find my house. | You can choose rural fibre routes as an overlay | scandox wrote: | That's worth plugging. Thanks. | betwixthewires wrote: | Yes, they do tend to be very different, because their needs and | lifestyles are different. If that's a problem, perhaps that's not | a good environment for you. You're not going to find a rural, | small community where nobody is a farmer, these communities exist | on interpersonal, familial relationships with one another. | cdkmoose wrote: | A possible target would be paper mill towns or similar. They tend | to be rural to be close to the wood supply, but having a staff of | engineers means there is a chance for a tech component to the | population. I grow up in a small town in Maine, 1500 people in 45 | square miles. The next town over from the mill town. Our regional | HS had a strong science/math component again connected to the | engineering population I think. Interestingly, cable was so late | in getting to my town that when it arrived it was cheaper to run | fiber than copper, so my parent's have fiber to the house, | excellent internet speeds. I have been able to work very | functionally in my software engineering job from there. | Joey21 wrote: | Why not look to small towns around state universities? Also, in | the USA, look for micropolitan towns. Places that aren't tiny, | but aren't major metro areas along with those kinds of | challenges. Smaller towns can be easier places to afford homes, | shorter distances to truly rural places. The people can be - not | always though - challenging. May be more conservative politically | and culturally. May be resistant to progressive ideas and | efforts. Wife and I live in a smaller university town and love it | here. It is a small community of similarly minded people who like | the town and like technology and/or share similar progressive | ideas. Fortunately we can hop in a car and be in a big city in an | hour or so and enjoy big city entertainment and shopping. That | said, our town punches well above its weight with plenty of | shopping and entertainment opportunities. | sophacles wrote: | Seconded - I live in a university town in the Midwest (usa). | Several big tech companies have offices in town. The university | itself employs a lot of tech folks, and spawns startups. There | are also a few smaller/medium tech firms that are local. On a | normal day, you're never more than 15 minutes drive from farm | fields, and quite a few tech workers live out in the country | and drive into town occasionally or daily for work. | | It's nice, there's enough tech folks to maintain several maker | spaces and co-working spots, and the students are a steady | stream of enthusiastic youngsters to keep things feeling fresh. | Added benefit that I've discovered talking to people in bigger | cities: there's enough going on here that I often want to do | several things in a day, and since much of it happens in the | same 2 mile radius, you don't have to factor travel time into | planning. (For example, I can go to a python meetup that ends | at 7 and get to the theatre to see a 715 show with friends on | the other side of town - a lot of places make that into an | either-or proposition). | tclancy wrote: | Yeah, here in Southern NH near Portsmouth/ UNH there's a strong | tech scene but you're also close to fairly rural areas. | njoubert wrote: | I grew up in an area like this and it was pretty great! | nextos wrote: | Any examples of micropolitan towns? | glial wrote: | Decorah or Grinnell Iowa, or Northfield Minnesota. | linusgetonskype wrote: | +1 for Chattanooga, TN. Municipal fiber, white water rafting, | Rock City; what more could you want? | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: | I don't know any off the top of my head but I am also very | interested if there are any existing hubs. I assume it would be | somewhere with good internet. | braingenious wrote: | I don't know of any for sure either, but I'd look around in the | area around Chattanooga, Tennessee and similar places with | affordable fiber. | beauzero wrote: | Agreed. Sylacauga, AL has metro fiber/provided by electrical | company. The three counties around Carrollton, GA (Haralson, | Carroll, and Heard) are getting it from now through the next | 6 years from Carroll EMC. Phase 1 has started and is focused | on Haralson and Heard counties first. With a few in more | rural areas of Carroll. Start here | https://carrollemc.com/broadband Carrollton, GA also has | UWG...the cheapest "state" school for tuition in Georgia. | toast0 wrote: | Some of the Seattle 'suburbs' get fairly rural, lots of trees, at | least some lots are a couple acres, a few working farms, lots of | hobby farms, but still have a lot of tech workers. | | If remote work is important to you, check out internet options. | There's a chance of Comcast and CenturyLink, but both get shifty | about actually servicing homes in places (Comcast won't run a | drop to my house even though their cable is on the pole at the | corner of the lot; CenturyLink has run out of DSLAM ports in some | neighborhoods, and some homes are too far from the DSLAM to get | usable speeds); some public utility districts do fiber, but if | your prospective house isn't already passed by their fiber, you | would need to pay actual costs to extend the network plus actual | costs to run a drop to your DMARC (which gets spendy if you've | got underground wiring and a long driveway; I've got a $50k | installation quote which 40% is undergrounding along my driveway | and 60% is stringing the fiber on poles for 2ish miles); but some | counties don't do that. I've seen relatively good reports for | Starlink, but waiting time is unknowable and bandwidth and | latency fluctuate during the day. | CalRobert wrote: | I'm on a train and just went through some charming town south | of Centralia. Wonder if it would appeal to remote tech workers. | countvonbalzac wrote: | Is there bad air quality there from the coal fire? | CalRobert wrote: | Fair, out of context it's unclear. I'm in Washington state. | wollsmoth wrote: | I think you're thinking of Centralia PA? | manacit wrote: | Very much agree with this, I know a number of people that | commuted (pre-pandemic) to the East Side (Redmond/Bellevue) | that live in North Bend, Monroe, Sultan, etc. These are all | cities that are very much part of the 'Seattle area' and are | not really considered rural, but would tick many of the boxes. | | If you want to go farther out, there are plenty of parts of WA | that are really rural - but you might not find things like high | speed internet are very accessible. | | The one thing you won't get moving into any of those places is | lower housing costs, however. These are all priced with the | fact that high-earners are living in these cities and commuting | into Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond and getting paid those salaries. | dogman144 wrote: | Starlink is pretty capable, been running it side-by-side in | that sort of area vs. the local and only big name ISP. For a | month+ of two remote tech workers doing video calls, hasn't | been an issue. | niblettc wrote: | Huntsville, AL, & Chattanooga, TN both have tech communities. | Huntsville has NASA's MSFC and Redstone arsenal, so there's a ton | of tech talent from all over the country there. Companies like | Boeing, Blue Origin, Lockheed all have a presence. They're now | starting to see non government / defense tech companies spring | up, Like CommentSold. Gener8tor is launching a new accelerator | program there. | duxup wrote: | I feel like by the time you have a community that is worth noting | that they're not very "rural" anymore. At the very least it is | then suburban. | | Number of tech worker's that's hard to know. | bombcar wrote: | People's definition of "rural" varies widely. | | Many "rural" people live in small towns/cities where their | nearest neighbor is mere yards away, others would only consider | "rural" to be where the nearest neighbor couldn't be hit with a | high-powered rifle. | duxup wrote: | Yeah that's a challenge. Last article I read about people | "fleeing" San Fransisco was very vague until they mentioned a | family who moved to a "rural community". | | Later they mentioned where they moved it was ... it was the | suburbs. Very much not rural. | | Where I live there's a farm down the road, that doesn't make | it rural either. | shasts wrote: | Would there be a backlash from the local community? I think | unless the said tech community makes a positive impact to the | native society live there, the reception is not going to be | welcoming, I think. | | Majority of the places I have seen tech people move to, the first | thing to happen is increase in prices, be it housing or services. | dkarp wrote: | I do worry about this. It feel like I often hear complaints of | an influx of tech workers leading to higher prices for locals, | especially real estate. I have friends in Denver, CO and Bend, | OR specifically who have made that complaint over the last | couple years | paulorlando wrote: | Thanks for posting this. I grew up in a rural area / small town. | I've been trying to get back to that life (main drivers: I have | young kids and like the outdoors more than office buildings). | Happy to discuss this concept or try to help anyone interested. | I've been discussing with a couple groups but they are in EU. | Building this in the US would be a lot more straightforward. | EntropyIsAHoax wrote: | You might be interested in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Digikey | is based there and one of the largest electronic retailers in the | world, but the town itself is relatively small (few thousand | people) | | Afaik they're the only company to work for so it's a bit limited. | But I have a friend who lives there and is one of their many | developers and she loves it. I understood from her that they're | staying permanently remote even after the pandemic, but they | might give you preferential treatment if you're willing to move | anyways. And I know she still has the possibility of going into | the office whenever she wants and has great relationships with | her coworkers. | | Some of their problems are very interesting too, as much of the | software is to run their highly optimized warehouse. Their whole | schtick is that they can get your product out of the warehouse in | just an hour or two, so if you can pay for fast shipping it will | get to you however fast you want. And this ends up being a very | interesting optimization problem with human and machine | components as well. | oblio wrote: | Company towns should probably not count. | sereja wrote: | There is "Programmers village" ("Poselok programmistov") in Kirov | Oblast in deep Russia. | | It is not exactly a rural community: it's just 20 or so families | of remote tech workers (mostly freelancers) living a few | kilometers from a small old town with dirt cheap land and local | labor (like "buy a two-story house with one month's SF salary" | kind of cheap). It was founded before the pandemic by a guy who | used to work as an SWE at Yandex and grew tired of living in | Moscow. | | I wonder if something like this exists elsewhere. | m82labs wrote: | The Raleigh NC area has quite a bit of tech, and if you stay | about 20-25 minutes outside of downtown you can get that rural | lifestyle while still being close to the city and tech companies. | Specifically if you stay south of the city. I have 2 acres and | regularly see cows across the field in my backyard but I also | have a good selection of local tech conferences and reliable | fiber internet. | tcoppi wrote: | Agree Raleigh and the general Triangle area is a good one. | Maybe surprising for most here but Maryland and Virginia is | like this as well. We're more expensive but you can get 1-3 | acres within an hour commute of DC and/or Baltimore with a | relatively robust tech scene, especially if you're willing to | work for the government. Areas like Frederick, MD even have | reasonable rail commutes into DC! | chaostheory wrote: | Isn't this an oxymoron? i.e. the second enough techies converge | in the same location is the same second it transforms from a | rural community into a suburb | Kerrick wrote: | Absolutely not. You'll find plenty of communities in rural | areas: churches, American Legion, quilting groups, hunting | buddies, continuing education classes at the county extension, | etc. | s3233323 wrote: | codingdave wrote: | I live in a rural community. It is a mile to my nearest neighbor. | Many farmers live here, but also many people who just have long | commutes to a town/city. I would not say that they are very | different people - we all have more in common than we are | different. But they do have different backgrounds and skills. | Most of them are pretty sharp and are interested in technology, | but they just don't know much about it. Some of them have tried | to learn some basic coding. Many of them are intrigued by what | tech can bring to agriculture. I think that if you wanted to take | the lead and build a tech community locally, focused on helping | people come up to speed and figuring how it would have direct | benefit to the local community, most areas would be receptive to | such a thing. | greenie_beans wrote: | They're trying to build one in Water Valley, Mississippi: | https://everesthub.org/. No publicly available fiber internet | yet. | | Water Valley (population ~4k) is often described as an artists | community. It's near Oxford, MS, which is also known for its | literature and art. | eatonphil wrote: | There are a lot of tech folks in western Mass and western | Connecticut, both very rural. I've met a few. Grey beards working | remotely for a decade or two. And I've even met a few young | people with kids who work remotely for NYC companies out of rural | NJ. | | Lancaster PA has or had a few tech companies. | | So I'd say probably yes. Pick a county of 500 thousand people or | so and start looking through their Craigslist for job postings. | You'll find them eventually. | ben_w wrote: | Depends what you mean by rural. If you literally want to walk to | the local horse riding club from your front door, my old town was | Cottenham UK, a 20 minute commute from Cambridge science park: | https://goo.gl/maps/yeRNL3Dayu5eXYkx6 | | Also I grew up in Havant, and basically all of the A27 is a thin | strip of urban surrounded by fields -- my childhood home was | almost equidistant between Lockheed Martin and a horse | farm/castle. | | Outside of the U.K., a friend lives on the edge of Zurich[0], has | fields with grazing sheep an arrow's flight[1] from their flat. | | [0] technically not in the city itself, but in a conurbation and | you wouldn't notice the boundary by looking at an aerial photo. | | [1] a bit longer than a stone's throw; specifically 100 meters. | ixfo wrote: | UK? Pick any county within an hour or so of London. Oxfordshire | and Berkshire is full of systems/tech people. | mdasen wrote: | > I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you | find in a city | | In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech. | Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, | lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to | opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass | for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a | religious or racial minority? Do you have hobbies that might be | more unique? Cities have the critical mass for so many groups of | people. | | Before I go further, I want to take a moment to talk about three | things: income, education, and opportunity. Someone lacking any | or all of those doesn't make them a bad person. However, moving | to an area without those things can have an impact on you. In the | US, a lot of services are paid for by property taxes collected by | the municipality and county. If you move to an area where people | are struggling, there isn't the same kind of money for services - | and even if your housing is cheaper, you'll be paying a lot more | in taxes since you might be going from "above average" to "really | rich". Education and opportunity can also be a problem. Do you | end up in an area where many have resorted to meth or opioids? Do | you end up in an area where chronic unemployment is an issue? | Again, this isn't people being bad or anything like that, but it | can cause fear and resentment. | | There was an article (which I can't find right now) about the | unionization drive at an Alabama Amazon fulfillment center. | Amazon came into a town that basically hadn't had jobs and | everyone was living pretty poorly. The article interviewed some | people and the sentiment came across as people thinking that the | place was dying and even if they wanted a union, they didn't want | to risk going back to a place that was a disaster. | | In rural communities with flood risks, FEMA has bought and | demolished properties rather than pay to rebuild them. This ends | up gutting the tax base and leaves the community as a shell of | itself. If the main store in your town and 5-10% of the houses | get bought and demolished, you still have the roads, police, etc. | to pay for with a dwindling tax base - and less reason for you to | be there. | | https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/MapSeries/in... | | Check out the census map and select "Population Change" and then | zoom in one level so it shows counties. Many rural areas have | lost 10-30% of their population over a decade. It isn't fun to be | a part of a dwindling tax base. A lot of expenses don't go down | as that tax base goes down. | | Along with this, I'd argue that there's a | brain/income/opportunity-drain in a lot of rural communities. | People who are richer, have more education, and more access to | opportunity are more likely to leave. Are you buying into a | location where the future isn't on your side? | | If you're thinking about the next 20-40 years of your life, I'd | argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US | will continue to subsidize rural life. If we're going to get | serious about climate change, will that mean $10 gas? Even with | electric cars, the cost will increase. Will we continue to spend | a fortune on roads and other accommodations for rural life? The | US spends a huge amount of money on rural telecom infrastructure | our of taxes on urban areas. Will places like Amazon start | differentiating shipping pricing? It's a lot cheaper for them to | deliver in cities where the distance between stops is small. I | don't expect anything extreme, but if things are getting 1% worse | every year, that starts to add up. | | All that said, I do think that there are some good rural | communities in New England - Central/Western Massachusetts and | Vermont especially. You'll find high educational attainment, a | population that is relatively stable, access to decent towns and | cities, and a liberal enough attitude that won't expect you to | conform to the hegemony as much as many rural places. Many of the | Western Mass towns even have municipal fiber. I think you'd find | enough tech workers around. | | Honestly, it's hard to say whether a place would be a good fit | for you since I know almost nothing about you. Are you white, | male, straight, Christian, etc.? A lot of rural places can become | easier if you tick those boxes. If you don't tick those boxes, | then you might start wondering how you might be treated | differently from living in the city. | | It's also hard to know what you mean by "rural" since the | distinction between suburban and rural is hard in the US. In | Europe, things drop off to farmland very quickly. In the US, | things just sprawl with no clear distinction. Is Saratoga | Springs, NY rural? It's certainly a bit far from things and might | be the "pastoral" feeling you're looking for, but it still has | stuff around. Likewise, there are plenty of locations with very | few people that might be an hour from a city like Boston. | Boxborough, MA is an hour from Boston while covered in forest. | I'd think of it as "suburban", but it might the rural/pastoral | feel you're looking for while still being within commutable | distance to everything. | | Maybe you're looking for a place like Saratoga Springs or | Ashville, NC or Burlington, VT or Charlottesville, VA. I think | those places could be really nice. I would caution about moving | to an area that is seeing a lot of population decline that has a | big lack of opportunity. | dkarp wrote: | I appreciate your point about population decline as that isn't | something I had considered at all. | | Maybe rural doesn't capture what I'm looking for, but I'm not | sure of a better word and it does capture the feeling. I would | like at least 4 acres and some privacy at the very least. Then | the question becomes what I'd have to give up to get that. It | definitely means giving up living in a big city, but maybe it | doesn't mean giving up a small city/town. | countvonbalzac wrote: | +1 suburban / rural areas are heavily subsidized by the federal | + state governments. It isn't cheap to maintain that amount of | roads / utilities and I could certainly foresee a future in | which it becomes much more expensive to leave so far apart. | julianlam wrote: | It seems peculiar to me that there is no standard process for | the winding down of city governance when population dwindles. | It's probably just the human element. I don't mean to be | promoting some sort of libertarian "self-governance is great!" | philosophy, just thinking out loud. | | Imagine a city building game where city expenses increase with | each population milestone (due to new positions in local | government, new departments, etc.). One would naturally expect | that if the city population were to drop below a specific | threshold, the appropriate departments would be wound down to | curb expenditure. If there aren't enough people to economically | support a parks department, then (sadly) let the parks go wild. | | Perhaps it's just hard to fire someone because an algorithm | told you to do so. Real life is messy, after all. | mdasen wrote: | You can wind down certain things, but at what point are you | winding down stuff that's more on the necessity side of | things? The US has a lot of crumbling infrastructure that | needs repair and replacement and I don't think people want to | be told "sorry, your house is only accessible by off-road | vehicle now." We're spending over $20B to increase rural | broadband because people in rural areas don't want to be told | "sorry, the population has dropped below a certain threshold | so we're winding down the internet in your area to curb | expenditure." (And before someone talks about Starlink, | SpaceX is looking to get a lot of that money). | | I think it's also not just about the emotions of firing | someone. It's really hard to manage a downward trend - and | not from a touchy-feely standpoint. If you're an uncaring | machine and people leave, you fire a proportional number of | government employees. But that doesn't solve the situation. | Every business in the area now has fewer customers. At some | point, those businesses close reducing tax revenue further | and increasing unemployment more. It's not just the city that | feels the pinch of a dwindling tax base - that dwindling tax | base means there's also a dwindling consumer base. | | An important thing to remember is that cities/towns/counties | often take out debt for spending that will pay off over time. | For example, you want to build a school so you borrow $X and | you'll pay it back over the next 30 years. You need to | rebuild some roads so you borrow and pay it back over the | next 30 years. However, if your population is dwindling, that | can leave the town holding debt it can't really pay anymore. | If you built a school for 1,000 students and then the | population dwindles by 30% over the next 20 years, you're | stuck paying for way more school than you need with fewer | people paying for it. Ok, layoff some teachers - but you have | to lay off more then 30% of the teachers because you're | paying for 100% of the school debt and maintenance costs. So | you fire 40-50% of the teachers, class sizes go up, the | people with the best options (the most educated with the best | job opportunities and most money) leave your town eroding the | richest part of your tax base and leaving lower income people | on the hook for that debt while they escape it...which causes | you to fire more teachers which causes more people to | leave... | | I think it's not just that there's a messy human side to it, | but that it's hard to manage decline. Ok, you wind down a | department. What about the building? Maybe you can sell it, | but probably at a loss since you have a declining purchasing | base. As you wind down a parks department or library, the | richest people are likely to leave. Now your algorithm | requires more cuts. | | And the sad state of it is that it's often not a parks | department. It can be things like roads or safe drinking | water. | | There is also a messy human side of it as well, for sure, but | it's just hard to manage decline. I can totally see the game: | you cut the parks department and the rich people complain, | sell their house for 15% below previous market value and | leave, and your tax base dwindles more. You cut after-school | programs and more rich people complain about the town and | schools and leave - and your tax base dwindles more. You try | to attract new residents to YouVille and cartoon characters | say, "I want a town that invests in its schools," and | "everyone I know is talking about leaving YouVille." | cprayingmantis wrote: | Hey we should talk! The county I live in has pretty good fiber | with a population under 20k. I've been tossing around the idea of | creating a curated list of properties for sale here. There isn't | a tech community here yet but the property prices are cheap | ($325k for a house and 40 acres, also has city water). | | What made you interested in rural communities? What would make | you likely to move to one? It's quite a different way of life out | here but I have no doubts that one could adjust. | Kerrick wrote: | I'm working on founding a nonprofit with the explicit aim being | to foster exactly that, with coworking spaces being the central | hub to collect and train techies (and other remote workers). | | Here's an excerpt from a draft of our organizational plan: | | > When Americans raised in a rural area want to enter knowledge | work or start a business, they're usually stuck with two options: | do something local, which caps their earning potential, or move | to an urban metropolitan area, which exacerbates the problem of | rural brain drain. [REDACTED] fosters and accelerates a recent | third option: work remotely or start an internet-based business, | opening up the earning potential formerly only available to those | who chose to move to the big city, while keeping the people | rooted in (and thus their earnings circulating through the | economies of) their rural home. | | > While the first thought to unlock aforementioned internet-based | earning potential for rural Americans might be universal | broadband on the scale of the rural electrification of America in | the mid 1900s, there are two specific advantages that focusing on | coworking as a complimentary solution provides. First, coworking | spaces can be built as a centralized service for all citizens of | a county, like a university exchange or a courthouse, when | broadband internet service is available in part of a rural county | but not to most of the citizens at home. Second, coworking spaces | continue to provide value and foster economic potential even once | every rural home has broadband internet, as evidenced by their | success and popularity in cities across the world. | davidw wrote: | Pre-pandemic, Bend, Oregon where I live was already a hot spot | for remote work: | | https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/bend-is-u-s-capital-of... | | It's a city of 100K people though, so I don't think it's what I | would call 'rural' if you live in town. | maestroia wrote: | If you're into medtech or healthcare, Rochester, MN. Rochester | itself is around 80-100K, but in the middle of rural SE MN with | several smaller communities around it. | fasteddie31003 wrote: | I live in Breckenridge, CO. I'd love to make this more of a rural | tech community. The harsh winters here make for great skiing and | programming weather. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | I'd _love_ to live in Breckenridge. (One of my favorite things | is feeding the trout in the dredge pond.) But... there 's no | way I could afford to live there :-< | scarecrowbob wrote: | I'm in DGO. It's a great place to do all the outdoor play. | | I like that there are better paying jobs able to be out here on | the edge of the desert, but it's really hard to live in places | where short-term rentals are combining with folks like me | moving into the community. I will never be able to afford a | place in town for sure. | techsolomon wrote: | Alaska Developers Alliance - https://www.akdevalliance.com/ | AnimalMuppet wrote: | I'd like to know, too. | | My guess: You need at least a town with a state college. (Do you | consider Fort Collins, Colorado to be "rural"? It's about 110,000 | people. Decent tech scene there.) | mminer237 wrote: | This is basically Champaign-Urbana, Illinois too. You have the | university, Wolfram Research, Volition, tech startups, etc. | downtown. You drive two miles south and it's just corn galore. | brightball wrote: | I don't know if it qualifies for your standard but Greenville, SC | and its surrounding areas (Traveler's Rest, Simpsonville, Easley, | Greer) have a blossoming tech community over the last 10 years. | I'm one of the admins for our main tech Slack group and there's | about 1,400 of us in there at last count. | | Beautiful downtown area around a waterfall, tons of biking, near | mountains and 3 lakes. | | House prices are through the roof right now due to the influx of | people though. Stories of bidding wars that used to be unheard of | in this area. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZA252lotHM | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | There's a small village (250 people) in rural New Mexico that | until recently was home to both the 2nd programmer at Amazon and | the main inventor of the Kindle. That was close to 1% of | residents, but the kindle guy left :) | | More seriously, I'd say that I love doing "tech work" out here. | Almost none of my neighbors know anything about what I do, and | most of them don't want to know. Suits me fine. I'd rather talk | about tech stuff online with people who know, and about | everything else with my neighbors. | | I also like that my village is more of an artist community | (famous, and not so famous) more than a tech community. Generally | more interesting people for own personal tastes. Also, living | around the corner from my cookbook idol (to the extent that I | have cookbook idols) is both interesting and intimidating. | rmason wrote: | In Michigan there are software companies in small rural towns but | no where I know about is there a concentration. | | I used to live in a small rural town West of Lansing when I | worked as an agronomist in a past career. I left to do a SaaS | startup and stayed local because this small town became a test | site for cable Internet. Note this was a time when neither | Lansing nor Grand Rapids had a broadband Internet option, | everything was dial up or ISDN if you were lucky. | | My new office was across from city hall. I advocated to the city | father's that they spend a fraction of the money promoting it's | empty industrial park (every small town in Michigan has one) to | lure software companies to town promoting it's then rare | broadband Internet. They treated me as if I was advocating | building a spaceport for aliens. In fact if they saw me coming | they'd cross the street. | | I found out years later that quite by accident a startup had | moved to the town specifically for the availability of broadband. | Now they only have around 25 employees twenty years later but in | a town of less than 3,000 I think that is still pretty good. But | with a small amount of effort they could have had a dozen such | companies ;<(. | pineconewarrior wrote: | Traverse City is becoming very techy. Over the course of the | pandemic I have witnessed a lot of folks coming in from | Chicago, etc, to work remotely, or to do tech work for one of | the decent web/it/finance/insurance/medical companies here. | | P.S. we are hiring web dev and analytics/data engineer if you | know anyone in the area! | rmason wrote: | Traverse City is amazing, but you already know that ;<). | However I have problems dealing with winter in East Lansing | so I can only imagine how bad it would be up there. You | better like snowmobiling or skiing. But for seven months out | of the year it's absolute perfection. | coward123 wrote: | I live in a town of 35,000 people, where the economies of several | counties in each direction are based in agriculture. There are | tech people here - and I expected there would be a lot more by | now - but it is very slow growth. Internet service isn't bad, | there is a small co-working space or two, but the bigger issue is | one of demographics. We have a lot of retirees coming for | sunshine and a perceived more affordable lifestyle, but younger | people are slow to want to bring their families here even if they | could be remote workers. There are a couple small tech firms | (like under 10 employees), but none of the biggest issues is that | there are really only two smallish employers who can offer any | kind of competitive compensation. That risk - that you are | reliant on remote work - keeps a lot of people from being willing | to move here. | ryandrake wrote: | Not to gatekeep the word rural, but: Problem with some of these | replies is they're pointing out small cities, not rural areas. | When I (and maybe OP) think "rural/pastoral" I am thinking | villages with less than 500 people. A house on 2 or more acres | where you can't see your neighbor is considered a small property. | _That's_ rural. Not Asheville or Fort Collins. Those are just | small cities. | wildrhythms wrote: | Every time threads like this come up it humbles me to realize | how many people have never actually seen, much less lived in, a | rural setting. Yes this is gatekeeping, but it serves a purpose | to set a realistic perspective. See below for folks who think | 'rural' means a suburb of a major city. | [deleted] | dkarp wrote: | The difficulty for me is that I've been to very rural areas, | I've stayed in rural areas and I've had friends/family in | rural areas. And I do mean actually rural areas away from | towns and cities. | | I've never lived there though and it is hard to get a feel | for what would actually bother you until you've spent a | significant amount of time there. | datavirtue wrote: | I live in a blue collar neighborhood in Cincinnati where a | lot of the people dream of one day living in a rural setting. | kodah wrote: | I'm curious why HN is continually so confused by the word | "rural", certain subjects almost always fall apart on this | website because of folks confusion over the word. | majinuub wrote: | I'm thinking that its because many HN users live in or close | to medium to large sized cities. So they have no perspective | when it comes to a place that's truly rural. They just see | that some small city has no high rises or large companies and | just assume "that must be a rural town." | mgarfias wrote: | Its because most here have never really been rural. Rural is | a place to drive past or fly over on to something | interesting. | Dracophoenix wrote: | It's confusing because the Census Bureau's definition quite | doesn't capture the essence or totality of what makes an area | "rural". It only operates on numbers and self-reported | designations, neither of which encapsulate what OP would | expect. | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | I'd agree with this, and through it would suggest having a tech | community, or indeed any interest based community would be | unlikely with that few people. | hitpointdrew wrote: | I hit on some of those where I live. 2 or | more acres: Yes can't see your neighbor: No | Less than 500 people: No, just about double that at 1k | | I consider where I live pretty rural. In my town there isn't a | lot of "tech" people that I know of but 15 min away there is a | small "city" with about 15k population that has an active co- | working space that is all tech people (its like 20ish person | group). | | Even in the "city" that is 15 min away, there is never any real | traffic, not like what you get in a major city. I never worry | about hitting traffic, I can come and go to the co-working | space at will without ever a thought of "I better leave before | rush hour hits". | rayiner wrote: | > I would like to live a more pastoral life, but anecdotally I've | heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in | a city. | | You don't even have to get that far out of the city to get away | from city people. I'm just an hour from DC, in a part of Maryland | where there are still quite a few farms within a 5 minute drive, | and it's like night and day compared to the city. And I even have | fiber internet! Strongly recommend it. | binarysolo wrote: | Short answer: depending on your definition of rural, yes, there | are def pockets of tech folks in rural areas. | | These rural areas with tech folks tend to be outer suburbs of | cities and/or niche touristy/outdoor places -- basically work- | remote tech folks who live at an area to enjoy the other aspects | the land can offer. | | I run a remote-first business around Lake Tahoe in Nevada and | there's def large pockets of CA tech expatriates here settling | down here, but this area isn't exactly rural, it's a big tourist | town. As you go east you end up in the desert and it gets pretty | rural, and there's def a tech segment out there though it's | highly correlated with a communal/art scene courtesy of Burning | Man (art hippies that happen to tech). | prettyStandard wrote: | After reading the comments about rural vs suburb you'll probably | find it in a suburb/smaller cities. | | https://www.ruralsourcing.com/development-centers/ | prettyStandard wrote: | I've had a few friends work there, and interviewed as few | times. It's pretty meh. | | One time they gave me an offer for exactly what I told them I | was already making. I would not go there unless I had to. | rel2thr wrote: | Getting a bit pricey now but lots of tech workers in the small | towns 1-2 hours from Austin . Like Bastrop , liberty hill , | Lockhart , etc | scarecrowbob wrote: | I started my career as a programmer out in Fredericksburg. | | I think that it was good to be able to be able to get into | Austin/ SA for meetings and then live in the sticks. I'm in | Western CO now... there are a lot of tech workers in the small | town where I live. | hax0rbana wrote: | Co-founder of Hax0rbana here. I now live in a metro area of about | 120K. Prior to that, I lived in the DC area and LA before that. I | mention this for 2 reasons: 1. I don't know if you consider my | situstion to be rural. The town is surrounded by cornfields, but | I'll leave that to you to decide. 2. It's clear some people | answering are clearly city folks. That's fine, but they only know | the stereotypes about rural folks being uneducated, straight, | poor, etc. | | Urbana, IL has a University of Illinois campus. In other words, | it's a college town. To give you an idea of the culture, churches | have pride flags painted on their signs and hang black lives | matter banners. The main event at annual engineering open house | is robo brawl, a scaled down version of battle bots. We have art | scattered around town, made by local artists. The Independent | Media Center has things ranging from a Makerspace, to a bicycle | repair community, to books to prisoners. If you show up wanting | to learn something, people will be happy to share what they know. | | For amemities, we have gigabit fiber run by a regional company. | If you want Comcast, they're here to. We have one of the best | public transit systems in the country. | | This doesn't describe all rural areas/smaller towns. | | When we were selecting a city to start our hacker co-housing | project, we factored in many things: cost of living, having smart | people around, weather, taxes, civil rights, and of course the | town's culture (with bigotry being the primary concern). | | I think the main takeaway is to choose the location carefully. | Not all rural areas are alike, just like not all big cities are | alike. Think about the things that matter to you, and measure | potential destinations based on those criteria. If it's critical | that you have a goth club or something like that, you'll probably | end up in a bigger city. | khaled_ismaeel wrote: | Innopolis, Russia, is such a community. It's a small city built | around a university and tech complex. The population is around | 3,000 or something and the nature is exquisite. | stevenking86 wrote: | Asheville NC seems to be turning into a "work remote" tech hub. I | moved here during the pandemic and have met many tech workers | just walking around my neighborhood. Technically it's a city | (looks like ~90k population), but coming from NYC it certainly | feels like nature to me. There are streams and mountains and back | yards. | solumos wrote: | you should go check out Epic Systems in Verona, WI | severine wrote: | Have you heard about CORI or the Rural Innovation Network | communities? | | _The Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit | organization partnering with rural leaders across the country to | build digital economies that support scalable entrepreneurship | and lead to more tech jobs in rural America._ | | https://ruralinnovation.us/community-impact/rural-innovation... | | https://ruralinnovation.us/ | | Not affiliated, just found it prompted by your question, looks | very interesting! | rich_sasha wrote: | Uk Oxford and Cambridge are bona fide tech hubs, and towns of | ~150k people but in either you can totally live in a village with | a 20-30 min bike commute. | | We're talking cows in pastures and dark skies. Hell, I know | someone who helped raised some cattle on a common in return for a | share of the meat... while actually within Oxford City | boundaries. | TheGigaChad wrote: | [deleted] | stickfigure wrote: | I live on rural property about an hour from SF. My neighbors | aren't techies, but they really aren't that different. Lots of | older/retired people, plenty of maker-type people. Out here | there's space to have shops, tractors, and physically large | projects. I can't discuss programming with my neighbors but | welding, electronics, gardening, and construction are fun topics. | | I still see many of my Bay Area friends; weekend parties at my | place are way more fun than parties in their tiny city | houses/apartments. And we still keep in touch remotely. | | Not every rural area is the same; I also lived for a year in | eastern Kentucky and the people are indeed a bit different there. | But I still made friends, and I'm not a major extrovert or | anything. | dogman144 wrote: | This is an area I'm looking to move to, from Santa Rosa up to | Ukiah but way east Bay looks interesting. | | What is the fire risk like? I'm comfortable with everything | else via Starlink, remote job that'll stay remote, and similar. | njoubert wrote: | Wow! Which direction from SF?? | AnishLaddha wrote: | probably north, marin county is beautiful. | ISL wrote: | Here's everywhere reachable within about an hour's drive from | SF. | | https://app.traveltime.com/search/0-lng=-122.41991&0-tt=60&0. | .. | mgarfias wrote: | Yes, we are very different. I live just outside a small town | (800people). We are definitely not a "tech" community, but we | have a fiber network thats getting upgraded to 10Gbps sometime | this summer. | | I'm about 3mi outside of town on 5 acres of trees, and I care | barely see my neighbor. Its pretty quiet except for the | occasional truck driving up the hill. Oh, and the neighbors (or | me) occasionally shooting at something. | | I highly recommend it, if you can deal with the lack of people | and the generally conservative lifestyles/beliefs. If you're a | libertarian, just leave me alone, type, it works just fine. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-22 23:01 UTC)