arnaudh 32 points 1 day ago*

Sorry, but no.

Do you really think paying me twice my SF-based company's salary is going to motivate me to relocate to a Dakota or Wyoming or Oklahoma? Fuck no.

I get these job offers in my inbox on a weekly basis. Jobs to work for some bank or consulting firm in a flyover state. Why the fuck would I sell my house and relocate my entire family there? Some people don't like California, but it offers a lot beyond that competence cluster that pretty much guarantees me to find a new job easily. Nice weather. Diverse activities, ranging from boating to surfing to snowboarding to mountain biking to hunting to wine tasting to whatever I fucking please. I can find quality sushi and burgers and gourmet food within a 30-minute drive, and more like 15 if I still lived in the burbs (I now live in rural Cali). A sense of community beyond the local churches. No weird looks because my stepson is browner than me, or because my gay friends are pushing a stroller.

What if the job doesn't work out? Do I have other options? Or do I have to pack my shit and move to another place where they never heard of my previous employer based in Montana?

Seriously - some places like California (it's not the only one) combine that talent/competence clustering with quality of life, which is very hard to replicate somewhere else.

]calibrated 1 point 23 hours ago

Guy working in tech in Silicon Valley here. Unless a company was willing to pay me enough to let me retire early and live comfortably back in California, here's why I wouldn't take a job in a rural state even if I were paid a lot more:

access to great restaurants and bars
access to places like museums, galleries, and concert halls
my wife has a good job, too
our friends are here
my family is nearby
lots of opportunities in other businesses and industries here
similar values to people here (except for those damn anti-vaxxers in Marin!)

AuntieSocial 1 point 1 day ago*

You'd literally have to be paying me enough money to leave, because that's what I'd do as soon as possible. I've lived in these places for many years, and I intentionally moved to a place with double or triple the cost of living without commensurately higher wages because living in a hick backwater piece of shit nowhere was literally driving me insane from lack of anything even remotely resembling a life - no decent restaurants, no culture, no art, nothing but rednecks, farmers and desperate poverty-line-aspirants as far as the eye can see. Got to a point after a few years that I told the hubster that if we were leaving by any means necessary, and that included me putting the cats in a backpack and WALKING halfway across the country if I had to (and I was straight-up serious - if it had been my only option, I would have done it). I would literally rather be homeless where I live now (Asheville, NC) than go back to SE Missouri with a guaranteed good job.

As to your further-down suggestion of making tons of money for plane tickets to interesting places? I hate travel, and from what I've seen and people I know, I think a lot of tech people do, too. Not to stereotype the techies too much, but nothing quite horrifies the aspie mind like mass-transit travel - hours of physically uncomfortable situations stacked up like cordwood next to random and often excruciatingly chatty muggles carrying god knows what sort of germs, combined with 24/7 overstimulation on all sensory channels topped off with mandatory genital touching from TSA agents. I haven't flown in years and then only when I had no choice (work), hating every second of it. That's why I moved to my ideal "vacation spot" - no more travel ever to go where I want to be. I haven't even gone back to see my family in Missouri for so many years they're starting to worry about whether or not older family members are going to die before they see me again. Because travel. To Missouri. shudders (Yeah, there you have it - I hate the midwest demonstrably more than I love my family.)

Nope, money would never be enough for me, nor I imagine for most others who have tasted the heady nectar of decent restaurants, art, locally-brewed ciders, locally-grown meats, gigantic farmer's markets and more amazing music than you can shake your booty to. Midwestern living is literally my childhood nightmare. Been there, done that, have the PTSD to prove it. The only way I'd even be able to consider it would be a guaranteed super-high-dollar project contract with a short-term, non-extensible, non-optional end-date. Get in, get filthy stinking rich and get out before it would register that I was there.