It's becoming more and more likely that my next job will be remote. First, let me qualify: I love my current job, and I don't want to leave it. I have no immed

It's becoming more and more likely that my next job will be remote. First, let me qualify: I love my current job, and I don't want to leave it. I have no immediate plans to send my resume around to companies looking for remote employees. And when I do decide to go remote, I'll attempt to convince my boss to let me be a remote employee of this company before I start looking elsewhere (this is feasible: we have other remote employees, including technical ones, I have VPN access, and I do 99% of my work over ssh to servers located in a datacenter somewhere). As for why this is coming up, the short version is that I'm transgender, I'm a Texan, and the Texas state legislature has been promising up and down that next spring they're going to ram through a transphobic bathroom bill. If they make good on that promise, I will have no choice but to either leave the state or kill myself, and I want to live. So I'll likely end up having to find work elsewhere next spring, unless I can convince my employer to let me go remote here. I've lived in my hometown my entire life. I'm not sure where I want to move yet, and I'm not looking forward to travelling for interviews. In order to interview for a non-remote job in another state, I'll have to burn every ounce of PTO I have, plus I'd have to fly in order to interview, which is something I'd rather avoid because the TSA is notoriously hostile to trans people (they've been known to detain, abuse, and otherwise treat as criminals passengers who have both breasts and a penis, as their scanners flag us). I'd also be in a position of not really be able to choose where I move to. I have limited PTO and I'd have a pressing need to get out of the state ASAP. I can't afford to travel somewhere for an interview and then turn down an offer if I get one. So my only option will be to apply at as many companies in as many cities as I can (limited to cities in blue states, because burn me once...) and then take the first offer I get regardless of where it is. But all that changes if I seek remote work instead. First off, interviewing will be less painful: I might be able to do phone interviews at lunch to avoid burning PTO, and even if I did have to take some time off, it might just be an hour or two in the morning instead of having to burn an entire day. Second, if I seek remote work, I can secure a job that won't require I stay in Texas first and then figure out where I want to move to. Hell, if my remote job pays enough to afford large amounts of travel and lodging costs, I could even try out different cities. I could take my laptop, spend a week in one city, and work out of my hotel room. A week or two later, I could repeat the process with a different city, and so on until I make a decision. Hell, aside from trying out different candidate cities, I could also use it as an excuse to visit my relatives who are scattered all over the country.