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I'm all for this, I might even be able to move to a cheaper country and do the full digital nomad thing. I sort of want to find a way to save a minimum of $100,

I'm all for this, I might even be able to move to a cheaper country and do the full digital nomad thing. I sort of want to find a way to save a minimum of $100,000 per year in order to retire within the next 10 years. I definitely could see the government creating incentives to get people back to work. The big issue of people no longer commuting, is millions of people working auxiliary industries which are getting screwed right now. The guy who works at the cafe next to your office, the landlords who own buildings, even car mechanics. I suspect by the end of 2021, we'll see more 50% work from home, particularly for new engineers.

izacus 6y ago
> I'm all for this, I might even be able to move to a cheaper country and do the full digital nomad thing. I sort of want to find a way to save a minimum of $100,000 per year in order to retire within the next 10 years. As someone from a "cheaper country", a crazy amount of these jobs dries out when they figure that they'll need to deal with your tax/labor law employment situation. There's still plenty of remote work, just make sure you don't go into this completely blind.
- offtop5 6y ago
  Okay, cheaper American city !
  - thatfrenchguy 6y ago
    Sadly most american cities are cheap for a reason, unless you're into suburban life obviously.
    - dudul 6y ago
      One of these reasons is often the lack of jobs. Suburbs are actually often fairly expensive since they try to bring the good of the country (individual houses, bigger lots) closer to the city where good jobs are located.
    - offtop5 6y ago
      Actually I found Chicago to be extremely affordable, and really lively. The absolute friendliest people on earth. If remote work holds up I expect to see San Fran's real estate market, at least it's rental market collapse
      - shinkim0914 6y ago
        The cost of living in Chicago is amazing for a Top 3 metro. My theory has always been that the winter weather discount is baked into the CoL.
        offtop5 6y ago
        Such a great place, I try to tell, particularly young people how important picking the right city is. If you pick a bad City, you're going to end up not being able to afford to live your life will be needlessly stressful, you won't be able to find a partner. But if you pick a good city live can be pretty good
        pchristensen 6y ago
        Chicago has a wealthy, top-tier global city of 500k inside a depressed Rust Belt city of 2.5M. There's significantly less economic and population pressure on the core global city.
        jlaurend 6y ago
        Chicago's a very nice city. There are basically three main factors keeping the cost low currently: 1. Population decline. 2. A very large amount of good housing stock. Chicago's completely flat with solid public transit reaching out to the suburbs. 3. Lower proportion of tech and startups. Similar to how tech has driven up the CoL in many cities, the relative lack of tech in Chicago has kept CoL down. Winter is rough in Chicago, but the CoL in Boston has skyrocketed which invalidates that as being the _only_ reason.
        shinkim0914 6y ago
        Agreed, weather cannot be the only reason. What drives the population decline in Chicago despite the low CoL?
  - LockAndLol 6y ago
    Just curious, why a city? What does a city give you personally that a town doesn't?
    - offtop5 6y ago
      Public transportation. Events and opportunities to socialize. Even if I have a family one day, I still would want my kids to take language classes , etc. I hate driving ( particularly when commuting), so a town wouldn't really work.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > As someone from a "cheaper country", a crazy amount of these jobs dries out when they figure that they'll need to deal with your tax/labor law employment situation. Why not make your laws more friendly?
  - dghlsakjg 6y ago
    Reforming an entire country's tax and employment law to enable a few hundred people to work for companies too lazy to comply with the law is impractical at best. It's an edge case, and many of those laws are there to protect workers anyway. Frequently the issue isn't so much that compliance is extraordinary difficult, it is that there is no section in the HR manual for handling it, and they don't want to deal with it. Most of the time it would take two days of labor at most, and a small percentage of the employee salary to make it kosher. In Canada it is so common that there is an entire industry that will arrange legal employment of Canadians by foreign corporations with no local presence. Most US companies don't even want to hear about how easy it is to comply.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      Just imagine the labor pool if hiring from your country by a US corporation was trivial. I guess the existing rent-seekers wouldn't like it however.
  - izacus 6y ago
    It's not about friendliness, it's about difference. As soon as the legal situation changes, many companies immediately get cold feet.
- zinckiwi 6y ago
  PEOs make this... well, not easy, but certainly less onerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_employer_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_employer_organiza...
  - woodson 6y ago
    But international PEOs have such crazy high fees that finding a local tax accountant suddenly becomes much less of a bad idea.
rhacker 6y ago
We need to convert the "ice-cream trucks" of my youth into drive by coffee shops... lol - except without the music, more like an app saying they're coming. Free business idea if anyone is listening. Put your order in on the phone.
- shinkim0914 6y ago
  Yes! Drive-by Blue Bottle coffee trucks please!!
- sensitive-ears 6y ago
  We already have that where I live. It's an espresso machine in a van, they drive by offices in the morning and then stop and parks and other communal spots during lunch
  - dont__panic 6y ago
    Espresso trucks/vans seemed to be a big thing in the EU when I lived there, but don't seem to have much of a place in the US. Maybe it's due to the low walkability of the US and tendency to travel via car? Or maybe it's hard to get the licensing for it?
    - uxp100 6y ago
      I have found coffee carts not uncommon in the US (midwest and california). I think aside from the michoacana guy, food trucks and carts in the US tend to stay put for a long period of time, and really, you don't need more than a cart that you pick up with a truck at the end of the morning. I've seen coffee carts post up at entrances to offices as well as along bike and walking trails.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  I just wish they'd bring back milk delivery, like in the old days, but 24/7. I ran out of cream for my coffee at 3AM in Amsterdam. But of course there's a 24/7 nitrous oxide delivery company in Amsterdam: https://amsterdamlachgas.com/ https://amsterdamlachgas.com/ I'm not a customer, but I would only consider it if they'd actually deliver fresh cream without any nitrous oxide at 3AM, to keep up the pretense that the N2O was actually intended for making late-night whipped cream. But no, they brashly deliver incriminating accessories like balloons and "Slagroomspuit" dispensers. But no cream! Fuck that. https://amsterdamlachgas.com/lachgas-toebehoren/ https://amsterdamlachgas.com/lachgas-toebehoren/ Somebody should start a 24/7 milk and cream delivery service. DeliverMOO! I think you could make a killing delivering 24/7 fresh milk, cream, and dairy accessories like breakfast cereal and chocolate mix.
onion2k 6y ago
I suspect by the end of 2021, we'll see more 50% work from home, particularly for new engineers. I like remote working, and I've done it on and off for more than 2 decades. It suits me. In my experience, mentoring junior devs and new hires on my projects is much harder for everyone involved when you're not in the same office. Sometimes you're lucky and get someone who'll speak up and ask questions when they get stuck, but often (especially with juniors) people will just try to figure things out on their own in order to not look bad at their job or incompetent or something. Some devs would rather spend a whole day on a problem and only bring it up in the following day's stand up than show they can't solve it alone. That is really bad for a project. I find I have to poke the quieter juniors regularly on Slack just to make sure they're OK, but then people get annoyed about being micromanaged. This is something I really want to solve...
- whatshisface 6y ago
  Maybe you should publicly commend the vocal juniors so that the rest can learn from their example. Say something like, "Jim Halpert realized that it would be a good idea to collaborate with me on the A4 project, and together we finished it far ahead of schedule." Phrase it so it ascribes agency to the junior, focusing on how they (with agency) decided to use the resources they had appropriately.
- alexashka 6y ago
  Sounds like you're doing a fine job. One thing you can do is let people flounder and fail on irrelevant small tasks for a week or two early, to help them learn the lesson that they don't know what they're doing. The best way to make someone appreciate guidance, is to have them fall on their face, receive guidance and notice the difference. One suggestion I had was, if you're stuck for more than 30 minutes, ping me. Juniors will almost always be stuck with something trivial you can answer within a few minutes. It gives you a break and it is something they really appreciate. If you communicate to them that they're not expected to know anything and that the first few years on the job is their real world education and a chance to ask questions without raising eyebrows, they'll be far more likely to do it. Juniors are nice in my experience, you can mold them into something half-decent if they've got a bit of a brain and their mistakes are ones of innocence, not cunning or apathy. It's the 'senior' devs who don't know shit that you have to put up with that's almost always a disaster. They'll be well versed in lying and politics, wasting everybody's time.
wikibob 6y ago
Check out Puerto Rico. Only jurisdiction in the entire world where an American tax subject can go and pay ZERO federal income tax.
- dagmx 6y ago
  Plus you get free presidential delivered toilet paper.

izacus 6y ago

> I'm all for this, I might even be able to move to a cheaper country and do the full digital nomad thing. I sort of want to find a way to save a minimum of $100,000 per year in order to retire within the next 10 years. As someone from a "cheaper country", a crazy amount of these jobs dries out when they figure that they'll need to deal with your tax/labor law employment situation. There's still plenty of remote work, just make sure you don't go into this completely blind.

offtop5 6y ago
Okay, cheaper American city !
- thatfrenchguy 6y ago
  Sadly most american cities are cheap for a reason, unless you're into suburban life obviously.
  - dudul 6y ago
    One of these reasons is often the lack of jobs. Suburbs are actually often fairly expensive since they try to bring the good of the country (individual houses, bigger lots) closer to the city where good jobs are located.
  - offtop5 6y ago
    Actually I found Chicago to be extremely affordable, and really lively. The absolute friendliest people on earth. If remote work holds up I expect to see San Fran's real estate market, at least it's rental market collapse
    - shinkim0914 6y ago
      The cost of living in Chicago is amazing for a Top 3 metro. My theory has always been that the winter weather discount is baked into the CoL.
      - offtop5 6y ago
        Such a great place, I try to tell, particularly young people how important picking the right city is. If you pick a bad City, you're going to end up not being able to afford to live your life will be needlessly stressful, you won't be able to find a partner. But if you pick a good city live can be pretty good
      - pchristensen 6y ago
        Chicago has a wealthy, top-tier global city of 500k inside a depressed Rust Belt city of 2.5M. There's significantly less economic and population pressure on the core global city.
      - jlaurend 6y ago
        Chicago's a very nice city. There are basically three main factors keeping the cost low currently: 1. Population decline. 2. A very large amount of good housing stock. Chicago's completely flat with solid public transit reaching out to the suburbs. 3. Lower proportion of tech and startups. Similar to how tech has driven up the CoL in many cities, the relative lack of tech in Chicago has kept CoL down. Winter is rough in Chicago, but the CoL in Boston has skyrocketed which invalidates that as being the _only_ reason.
        shinkim0914 6y ago
        Agreed, weather cannot be the only reason. What drives the population decline in Chicago despite the low CoL?
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  Just curious, why a city? What does a city give you personally that a town doesn't?
  - offtop5 6y ago
    Public transportation. Events and opportunities to socialize. Even if I have a family one day, I still would want my kids to take language classes , etc. I hate driving ( particularly when commuting), so a town wouldn't really work.
908B64B197 6y ago
> As someone from a "cheaper country", a crazy amount of these jobs dries out when they figure that they'll need to deal with your tax/labor law employment situation. Why not make your laws more friendly?
- dghlsakjg 6y ago
  Reforming an entire country's tax and employment law to enable a few hundred people to work for companies too lazy to comply with the law is impractical at best. It's an edge case, and many of those laws are there to protect workers anyway. Frequently the issue isn't so much that compliance is extraordinary difficult, it is that there is no section in the HR manual for handling it, and they don't want to deal with it. Most of the time it would take two days of labor at most, and a small percentage of the employee salary to make it kosher. In Canada it is so common that there is an entire industry that will arrange legal employment of Canadians by foreign corporations with no local presence. Most US companies don't even want to hear about how easy it is to comply.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Just imagine the labor pool if hiring from your country by a US corporation was trivial. I guess the existing rent-seekers wouldn't like it however.
- izacus 6y ago
  It's not about friendliness, it's about difference. As soon as the legal situation changes, many companies immediately get cold feet.
zinckiwi 6y ago
PEOs make this... well, not easy, but certainly less onerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_employer_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_employer_organiza...
- woodson 6y ago
  But international PEOs have such crazy high fees that finding a local tax accountant suddenly becomes much less of a bad idea.

rhacker 6y ago

We need to convert the "ice-cream trucks" of my youth into drive by coffee shops... lol - except without the music, more like an app saying they're coming. Free business idea if anyone is listening. Put your order in on the phone.

shinkim0914 6y ago
Yes! Drive-by Blue Bottle coffee trucks please!!
sensitive-ears 6y ago
We already have that where I live. It's an espresso machine in a van, they drive by offices in the morning and then stop and parks and other communal spots during lunch
- dont__panic 6y ago
  Espresso trucks/vans seemed to be a big thing in the EU when I lived there, but don't seem to have much of a place in the US. Maybe it's due to the low walkability of the US and tendency to travel via car? Or maybe it's hard to get the licensing for it?
  - uxp100 6y ago
    I have found coffee carts not uncommon in the US (midwest and california). I think aside from the michoacana guy, food trucks and carts in the US tend to stay put for a long period of time, and really, you don't need more than a cart that you pick up with a truck at the end of the morning. I've seen coffee carts post up at entrances to offices as well as along bike and walking trails.
DonHopkins 6y ago
I just wish they'd bring back milk delivery, like in the old days, but 24/7. I ran out of cream for my coffee at 3AM in Amsterdam. But of course there's a 24/7 nitrous oxide delivery company in Amsterdam: https://amsterdamlachgas.com/ https://amsterdamlachgas.com/ I'm not a customer, but I would only consider it if they'd actually deliver fresh cream without any nitrous oxide at 3AM, to keep up the pretense that the N2O was actually intended for making late-night whipped cream. But no, they brashly deliver incriminating accessories like balloons and "Slagroomspuit" dispensers. But no cream! Fuck that. https://amsterdamlachgas.com/lachgas-toebehoren/ https://amsterdamlachgas.com/lachgas-toebehoren/ Somebody should start a 24/7 milk and cream delivery service. DeliverMOO! I think you could make a killing delivering 24/7 fresh milk, cream, and dairy accessories like breakfast cereal and chocolate mix.

onion2k 6y ago

I suspect by the end of 2021, we'll see more 50% work from home, particularly for new engineers. I like remote working, and I've done it on and off for more than 2 decades. It suits me. In my experience, mentoring junior devs and new hires on my projects is much harder for everyone involved when you're not in the same office. Sometimes you're lucky and get someone who'll speak up and ask questions when they get stuck, but often (especially with juniors) people will just try to figure things out on their own in order to not look bad at their job or incompetent or something. Some devs would rather spend a whole day on a problem and only bring it up in the following day's stand up than show they can't solve it alone. That is really bad for a project. I find I have to poke the quieter juniors regularly on Slack just to make sure they're OK, but then people get annoyed about being micromanaged. This is something I really want to solve...

whatshisface 6y ago
Maybe you should publicly commend the vocal juniors so that the rest can learn from their example. Say something like, "Jim Halpert realized that it would be a good idea to collaborate with me on the A4 project, and together we finished it far ahead of schedule." Phrase it so it ascribes agency to the junior, focusing on how they (with agency) decided to use the resources they had appropriately.
alexashka 6y ago
Sounds like you're doing a fine job. One thing you can do is let people flounder and fail on irrelevant small tasks for a week or two early, to help them learn the lesson that they don't know what they're doing. The best way to make someone appreciate guidance, is to have them fall on their face, receive guidance and notice the difference. One suggestion I had was, if you're stuck for more than 30 minutes, ping me. Juniors will almost always be stuck with something trivial you can answer within a few minutes. It gives you a break and it is something they really appreciate. If you communicate to them that they're not expected to know anything and that the first few years on the job is their real world education and a chance to ask questions without raising eyebrows, they'll be far more likely to do it. Juniors are nice in my experience, you can mold them into something half-decent if they've got a bit of a brain and their mistakes are ones of innocence, not cunning or apathy. It's the 'senior' devs who don't know shit that you have to put up with that's almost always a disaster. They'll be well versed in lying and politics, wasting everybody's time.

wikibob 6y ago

Check out Puerto Rico. Only jurisdiction in the entire world where an American tax subject can go and pay ZERO federal income tax.

dagmx 6y ago
Plus you get free presidential delivered toilet paper.