Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

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.

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.

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 ;<(.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

Albuquerque, NM is kind of rural.

It's weird, since at 500,000 people we definitely meet the definition of a big city, but culturally people behave like it's a small town. Additionally, it's feasible to live in the mountains and still live less than an hour away, or to live in one of the nearby villages (Corrales, Placitas, Tijeras) and essentially enjoy the same lifestyle as someone living in rural New Mexico despite Albuquerque being very close by.

And yeah, we have ample numbers of people who work in tech, albeit most of them are connected to the federal government in some capacity, so it's not the "trendy" kind of tech. For that reason, and perhaps also because of the age and general conservative nature of people who work for the federal government, the tech community here might come across as having less energy than a place that's a fraction the size of Albuquerque. You're more likely to find a fellow programmer through a outdoor group than a tech meetup.

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.

To give you a perspective on Britain since most replies are US centric, I now live close to Shrewsbury near Llangollen on the Welsh border. I've a castle at the end of my road and regularly see (& smell!) cows, horses and sheep from my kitchen window who graze on a paddock where just a few weeks ago I noticed a hot air balloon take off.

My barn has wooden beams, four toilets yet cost less than half to buy than the middle terrace apartment in London that came with 1 toilet and only 1 bedroom and a corridor kitchen. It is also ~4x in area. It came with an allotment and 5 generous plots where I like to plant leeks, onions and runnerbeans where I batch freeze them rather than get them wrapped in plastic shipped from Argentina. I have breathtaking scenery, fresh air and countryside walks nearby along with many ofsted outstanding schools.

It is quite tricky to live far from amenities in the UK so expect markets and farm shops aplenty, I can get unpasteurised milk fresh from pasture grazed cow to bottle the same day which I could not in the city. Our island, being smaller than a state it is easy to get anywhere, festivals are aplenty, fishing in Aberystwyth, a blustery night in Edinburgh for instance and a car or short journey to the station can have you on the continent and in Ghent or Bruge, Antwerp, Berlin or Stockholm the same day.

People are generally rational, courteous and kind mannered. I am greeted as I walk past, unlike in parts of London or Birmingham. I do not lock my doors, and my daughter is learning about life in a safe and idyllic environment I can provide and ok ok it is true my neighbours are mostly old dears, it only means I am less likely to disturb them. I don't hear police sirens and ambulances every day and I don't have to stand armpits in my face travelling the tube yet I can still get to a major airport faster than I when I was in east London for a time.

Unless for the nightlife it beats me why anyone capable would want to be near the cities esp. now with remote work becoming the regular experience of many. If you choose the UK and would like to know more feel free to username -åt- gmail me.

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

There is "Programmers village" ("Поселок программистов") 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.

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.)

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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 Zürich[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.

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.

The name is escaping me right now, but I believe there are startups in AZ that are building "artificial communes" - ie a rural kind of community, no cars, everything within walking distance, inhabitants are tech people working remotely. I think their business model is eventually going to be charging some kind of tax on everything that occurs within the community.

I'd try to Google something reminiscent of "AZ artificial community" - I tried Googling that, but couldn't find it. Kind of frustrated that I can't remember the name now!

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.

Silicon Fen in UK? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Fen

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.

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

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.

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.

Two places I have lived that you might want to consider: Oak Ridge, TN and Blacksburg VA. Both are small towns with full-fledged rural areas a short drive away, but both also have tech anchors. For Oak Ridge, it is ORNL and for Blacksburg it is Virginia Tech. There is also Inland Motor corporation in nearby Radford, and maybe a few others (it has been decades since I lived there).

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.

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.

This thread has mostly focused on the US. In the UK, rural life is quite different and it frustrates me no end that there is no equivalent to the local pub even in small towns in the US (sports bars don’t count)…

In terms of specifics in the UK, look west and southwest. Full of fantastic little villages which have communities.

I work as a software engineer for Veterans United Home Loans, their headquarters is in Columbia, Missouri. One of my coworkers lives 20 minutes from work and has a stable and owns horses. It was rated one of the best places to work for this year by Fortune Magazine and honestly as a developer I feel pretty spoiled. I’ll be straight, salaries aren’t going to match what you’ll get working remotely for a job on the coast, but it’s more than enough to live the pastoral lifestyle you seem to be looking for.

Also it’s a college town so there’s night life and fun to be had, they’re inclusive and while they don’t have things like IKEA Kansas City and St. Louis are two hours away if you really want to scratch that bourgeoisie itch.

I work for them but don’t represent them, but saw your post and thought I’d make you aware of our growing team! I think there’s a few hundred engineers right now.

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.

UK? Pick any county within an hour or so of London. Oxfordshire and Berkshire is full of systems/tech people.

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.

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).

After reading the comments about rural vs suburb you'll probably find it in a suburb/smaller cities.

https://www.ruralsourcing.com/development-centers/

+1 for Chattanooga, TN. Municipal fiber, white water rafting, Rock City; what more could you want?

I had great fun and intense tech time working for astronomers.

Ideally, the telescopes are located in remote areas. This led to the engineers and programmers out there, too, or perhaps the nearest college town.

https://NRAO.edu

I find it interesting that I see a billboard in Carrington, ND for 10Gbps fiber. It is interesting to see if any rural towns would be attractive since some have some amazing internet speeds. Rural electrics like their fiber.

[edit] https://www.dakotacentral.com/services/internet/

BEK is the rural electric I was thinking of https://www.bek.coop/residential/lightband-internet

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.

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.

In my village in England, where I grew up, the house and land prices have increased 10-fold in twenty years, but the average salaries have only increased 2-fold. This makes it basically impossible for me to simultaneously make a living and live there. It makes me sad because I would like to live near my parents, other family and the place I grew up, but am essentially priced out by speculation and city folk from the south.

College towns.

Where I live (Charlottesville VA) has one of the best data science communities compared to other meetups in other major metros. It’s actually easier because things are closer and less spread out, so it’s easier to stay involved. There’s university connections. Also people move here because they historically have been good enough to not need to live in a giant city to have reliable employment.

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.

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.

I'm in a fairly rural area in Alaska. I work remotely and I'm unaware of any other tech workers around here. Which suits me just fine :)

Alaska Developers Alliance – https://www.akdevalliance.com/

Amateur Radio Clubs are pretty common in rural areas. That was my introduction to tech in a fairly small town (5k people).

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.

In truly rural areas there’s not a lot of people period. Small towns are better but you’re still dealing with a small number. Better to find a beautiful place and then find your community online.

I grew up in a small town. People are people, good, bad, boring, strange, theres just fewer to chose from.

I grow up in a small town in a developing nations, and 3-4 of my friends from there work in tech, some remote from there, some elsewhere, some are webmasters.

There isn't many before or after us sadly, which is why I am thinking of helping somehow to change that.

I'm from the sticks in brazil. Know not a single tech worker besides myself. The main benefit is everything is really cheap, you can live quite nicely with like $400/month. Would not come here without knowing the language though.

For the US, I’d look at the Center for Rural Innovation. The have been finding various tech scenes around the country. https://ruralinnovation.us/

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.

Every community is different. Having lived in both communities that could be classified as rural and metro, I will say that they can be different and the same at the same time.

Talk with my friends at Codefi in Called Girardeau, Missouri: https://www.codefiworks.com/

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.

Can you describe a bit more about what you mean by living a pastoral life? do you mean to grow your own food, run a farm etc. or continue your tech career but from rural area?

Another thing you can search for is towns with regional airports. They tend to have a good blend of attributes for not too city, not too rural.

Go to Palmerston North New Zealand. You'll be able to live 15 mins out of town and live on a farm. There are loads of tech jobs there.

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

I’ve always kind of dreamed of starting something like this. A technocentric rural tech community

You might have luck in any one of a number of university towns.

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.

Well, I can't count myself as a community since here I'm almost alone in IT physical community terms, but I'm an ex-urban (from a big city) person who decide to go rural, not much rural, in the sense that I'm still "near enough" to have a certain level of services, good enough connections etc, but still rural in a low-density area (French Alps, ~60Km from Sophia-Antipolis though)...

I do not really live a pastoral life, behind very small scale personal vegetable garden behind the house, but around here there are few agricultural enterprises with some carrots, potatoes, chickpeas, lentils cultivation and (small) herds of cows, sheep, goats, with limited milk, meat and cured meats products. It's still far more a tourist place with a big golf (the highest in the region), crag, canyoning, paragliding, a small aeroclub with gliders and small STOLs etc.

Respect of the big city, downsides:

- less services, even if there are enough they are not as near and 24/7/365 available, it's not an issue in ordinary life but might be in some cases, like something broke and you need a replacement Saturday afternoon and Christmas Eve or you need to go to the nearby hospital, urgent but not as urgent to justify a chopper transfer, or just an unexpected desire to go to a Chinese restaurant/pizzeria/* and there are almost none nearby;

- little variety of neighbors witch means a still "intensive" social life, since people are far more social than the city, with continuous invitations for lunch, dinner, ... but near-zero "cultural social life" in the sense of meet up with people of similar cultural/technical interests, you can just go to the nearest city/agglomeration for that;

- some services (electricity and connectivity) are aerial so outages are a bit more frequent than the substantially zero I've experienced in cities. That's not a real issue if you are equipped (I have a small p.v. with lithium storage and my connection have a good enough 4G/dummy 5G (700MHz) backups, no data/speed/* caps), they are actually burying many lines but so far I've experienced around two/three time/year 1-10' power outage casually one of few hours, half-a-day casual connectivity outage the new buried FTTH should solve that before next winter.

pro:

- far more relaxed life, commuting when needed is of longer range, but faster, without queues, accidents, parking issues, on still good and well entertained roads (winter included);

- vast selection of activities in nature, if you like them like me: going climbing means just going nearby, hiking? Potentially there is even no need for a car!

- available services are less, but of better quality, like when you go to the Drive supermarket you are the first or at maximum the second served, you can even phone "hey, I see an impromptu offering of climbing strawberry plants, can you put 4 aside? I'll be there tomorrow!" etc

- more freedom of movement by any means, even if for many activities you are tied to a car and it's not "rural" enough to own a cheap old STOL or mosquito chopper to goes around (well, at least for 99% of the residents, very few have small choppers to connect them with the shore).

I've lived in these areas across the US and at different stages of my life, so I can speak to it a bit. I also did it before and after making tech money, and have lived in a tech city while in tech too. There is definitely a scale. Below is describing what its like to live in/around the range of 2k-30k population towns and cities, where 10 mins out of town it gets and stays rural.

- People in tech do it, but I think it is still early. I'm discounting cities like Salt Lake, Nashville, Boise, and even Bozeman - new tech cities that used to be decently rural all things considered, and now are not. There seems to be a low amount of SV/NYC-style techies who are actually living out and around here, even though I think there is a lot of romance around the idea - working for Google and living in Lake Tahoe. Not a lot of people are actually doing it full time vs. 3 months during COVID who aren't Pete Thiel rich. As weak evidence, I knew someone personally who got a job at a good tech company in one of the rural states that people romanticize, and they were the first employee at that company in that state.

- I think what is more common is solid local tech scenes with local tech companies, many of whom "who recruit from people willing to move there" (quote from an engineer at a place like this). For every SoFi (I believe it has a large Montana presence or am I making that up), there are more local C++ agtech shops. There are a great meetups around farming hubs because of John Deere software and what it takes to hack or maintain it. Cool companies, stable income, simple life. I think there is also a growing mass of remote workers sitting in the 90-120 min belt from every tech city now, especially the smaller ones - Denver, Chattanooga.... Far enough way where you're in your own rural world, close enough to a job market to get an emergency in-person job if needed.

- It is definitely perfectly doable. Don't worry, the guy in the pickup truck likely isn't an a-hole. The politics are much more live and let live and revolve around hyper-local environmental, housing, taxing policy decisions. It is also almost a no-brainer financially if you are in the 3+ YoE range in your career, in a job that is safe remote, and past partying years. Do you want to go on your 5th year of bar crawling through NYC while your new "hey I'm finally making it" salary is getting eaten away by everything to do in your neighborhood that you've already done? Or decamp to upstate NY, and that $200k/yr base will set you for life within 5 years of saving. Why is this even more possible? Starlink. It works, it'll likely keep working, and it is going to change things.

- Decamping rural will start catching on I think, and it may profoundly change the Rust Belt, rural West, everywhere similar. The asymmetry of the opportunity vs. risk is just too much. Financially, it opens up near FI/RE outcomes without much effort. Move out, save up, move back to SF to do a cash purchase plus savings. For normies, it opens a peaceful stable life with a spouse and little league and $300k homes, while a tech salary flows into your local credit union and your kids' future crushing college debt is no more - now you're in the generational wealth category depending on your job. Right now it is more the contrarians doing it, but I think that will change, and these towns will go through some growing pains because of the income asymmetries hitting non-vacation towns. I don't think state governments are ready for it especially culturally (all that tech into Austin means tech donors in TX now), but also it'll help save their finances. If you look through rural appalachia, 1GB fiber is everywhere, there are mountains, there are funky college towns, and there are cheap homes. The worse the grind, inflation, everything gets, the more insane it is to sit on >$120/yr with a remote job and not step out of the geographic race for a while while staying in the career race just fine. You can leave SF at 27, come back at 31 a notably well-off person, and keep working for SF companies.

To your question, life out here isn't too different. People are people. The main differences are as follows.

- You'll get out of your levels.fyi tech pay bubble very quickly when you get an idea of the local incomes. You are walking wealthy, up there with the surgeon in the hospital. Some concerns you have will be very different from the "locals," but also it's up to you to become "a local" because the ethics of doing it aside, these communities are too small to avoid it. There are lots of ways to approach this - in short be a good person, be conscious of the opportunities you have, be modest, and volunteer.

- Local governance/government is hugely relevant - there are tangible ways to get involved in your community with possibilities for outcome that are otherwise hypothetical to the SF resident trying to run for local city council with layers of special interests and government above them to wade through. Here, it's a small town govt, a county govt, local strong interests, and a federal agency outpost somewhere in the 100 mil vicinity. For someone looking for tangible results from their efforts, that's a cool opportunity. Similarly, a small business is both affordable,in a friendly regulatory environment, and therefore not insane to try to do like in NYC. Take 3 years of vesting and start a bakery on main street.

- The main and surprising difference is you might empathize more with the militias/anti-Fed/anti-Big Govt. State government is certainly more of a thing, and Federal government isn't really a thing (at least visibly and per the who is coming to help me in a "help me in 60 minutes or less" judgement of authority). The geographical features of life here force more self and local reliance. Cell phone service drops out 10 miles out of town and its another 30 miles to drive. A broken down car and no water is dangerous. The culture here has survived in an environment that requires solving their own issues due to the nearest hospital/garrison/police station/fire department/anything being 60 minute drive away. Neighbors, local orgs, local ranchers - these are the positions of authority and help but not because of outdated ways. Rural Red and Urban Blue are stuck on opposite sides of this barrier: "what government?" vs. "the government is here to help and lets fund it more," // "why in the hell do I need a gun" vs "the local PD is 90 mins away... I should buy a handgun in case, seems crazy not to?" are all equally true.

- If you work in tech but hate the impacts of retail adtech, this is the world for you. QR codes, Seamless, Instagram - it's just not out here in the same way it's jumped the digital barrier into everyday life in cities. That noise is way turned down, and it's the best part of things here.

- The presence and role of corporate america and globalism is profound and weird. There isn't a federal government office for 2 hours, but there is a Walmart usually. It'll employ, but also is a faceless node. If DuPont poisons water in WV, it can get away with it for years, and delay the resolution for years. Similarly, there are good odds an Amazon Warehouse shows up around here at some point, and when that happens, the pros/cons get hyper-local with huge impacts. Nothing is theoretical this local.

- Human connections matter much more than they do in the cities. The protocols, handshake deals, politeness, earnestness, lack of snark, trust-first - all still present. This is a wonderful aspect of life here, and I think some of the friction points from my last bullet stem from this: two worlds colliding. But beyond that, if you're wondering where normal life went, it went out here.

I've come away from this with a central belief that perspective is everything, and geography has a lot to do with it. The lives of Bob on E 91st in Manhattan and Steven in Bridger, MT are significantly different for good reason, and it is hard without living in both dynamics to understand just how different they are, and what it implies I certainly have more empathy. Similarly, people are people, and there's magic to going rural and tying into that community. Critically, we all have the same passports. This part of the country and it's views can't just get written off. Our flour, fuel and beef depend on it, for one.

> 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.

you should go check out Epic Systems in Verona, WI