Why I like working as a programmer in Louisville (or why I won't move to work in your startup)
Already some time at the top of my site hangs slogan:
As with many (if not most) of you, recruiters contact me regularly. Unfortunately, they do not know anything specific about me except what they were able to find in my LinkedIn or GitHub . If they visited my site, they definitely didn’t notice this slogan. I am pretty sick of answering tons of identical letters (although they may differ in some ways) again and again, so I hope my blog readers will forgive me for a selfish digression from its main topic.
I’m a software developer in Louisville, Kentucky, and I’m happy here.
A common theme in the community, to which I attribute myself (namely, the Ruby community), is the mood for happiness . It seems to me that for the most part this is due to the fact that the design of the language itself aims to make the developer happy. Whatever the reason, in the same way that GitHub has set up its company for happiness, and Ruby sets itself up for happiness, I set up my daily life for happiness.
Pff, so does everyone - will seem to you.
Maybe. Based on my conversations with other programmers, I have the impression that if they are working on this, then it is obviously much less conscious .
Let's immediately determine: a programmer has one of the most self-sufficient careers in the world. We wake up every morning and start creating, solving interesting problems, and if we do our job well, we make people happy. AND WE CAN DO IT FROM ANY PLANET POINT . This means that we can change our lives and careers in the way that representatives of many professions cannot do. If this does not make you smile, please go to the doctor (who, by the way, gets much less fun at his job than you do).
But let's go back to shaping our lives. Since we can do our job from everywhere, and only a company that is either ignorant or highly distrustful of its employees will insist on the opposite (right? Right? ), We can live anywhere, and this choice affects so many other areas of our life that we first have to choose a place that works for us, and only then deal with the rest.
So why Louisville?
We also have bourbon;)
But to be serious, for the first time I decided to move to Louisville when I was 24 years old. I remember that I was joking about my move: “I don’t know why I’m doing this, because all they have there is horse racing and fried chicken.” I was damn wrong, and since then everything just got better. By the way, you should definitely go here: among other ratings and awards , Lonely Planet called Louisville "The No. 1 Traveler in the USA" .
In addition to horse racing and having a ton of options for a great dinner, there are some other things that are usually expected from a “respected” city:
There is much more to remember, but I wanted to say that Louisville has everything you would expect from a big city. The only difference is that in 15 minutes you can reach any part of the city and get into the village setting. For me, this is a big plus, because ...
Ask any competent programmer how he relates to complex code, and you will surely get a long tirade in return. We have an instinctive and all-embracing dislike for bringing unnecessary complexity into the code, but for some reason we are lousy in our daily life.
I grew up in a village in Pennsylvania. I like the silence, and although you would not know this when you met me on the street or at a conference, I am an introvert. Louisville gives me a lot of work to choose from, but also enough peace and quiet when I need to recuperate. I work remotely, but once I’ve gotten into what we call a rush hour here, compared to other cities, even if I worked in a local office, I wouldn’t spend most of my life moving around the city.
I think I am one of those few people in the country who do not hate their provider . It gives me a really reliable and surprisingly smart cable Internet access (asymmetrical 50/5) for reasonable money in my opinion. This makes remote work easy and enjoyable. This is important because remote work is a key part of my personal optimization plan for happiness.
It is often said, “time is money,” but there is no greater delusion. Time is definitely not money. Some of us have much more than one, but the rest of the day have the same 24 hours. Therefore, I value my time and protect it. When I decide to “spend” time, I try hard to do it by my own rules. Again, Louisville helps me with this.
I have already mentioned that I need peace and quiet for recharging. If to have such a place to rest means to put up with hourly journeys back and forth every day, or long trips every time I want to get something even remotely resembling entertainment, then I do not think I will agree to this.
Since Louisville is essentially a small city with large perks, I can design the simplicity of daily life, which will allow me to save time and energy on those things that seem important to me. Together it all looks very good:
The fact that the cost of your life depends on where you live is really cool in distant work, but your cost to the employer does not change at all ( there is an opinion that this is not quite true for our employer ). Living in Louisville allows my dollar to go much further than any of the “usual places” that recruiters can persuade me to allow.
To be honest, conversations like this make me scratch my head. A letter from a recruiter from a very famous New York company:
Well, let's start with the fact that this is a damn pattern! But nevertheless, with a view to general development, I answered as follows:
... and immediately received this answer:
Exactly. Because the cost of moving is exactly what stops me from accepting such an offer.
Let's assume for a moment that I am not completely satisfied with the work at LivingSocial (although I am completely satisfied).
The cost of living in Louisville is 7.6% lower than the national average. The cost of living in New York is 123.8% higher. In other words, I need to make two or more times more money to maintain the same quality of life in New York.
“Well, live in Jersey and ride back and forth,” you say? Then re-read what I said about controlling your own time. Plus, jersey is still much more expensive than louisville.
The same arguments against San Francisco, Washington, and almost any other place that will require a long daily drive in order to make the cost of living at least acceptable. Life is too short to spend most of it on the road between the places where you really want to be.
If you are not a recruiter (to many of whom I will undoubtedly send this page), but a programmer, and somehow got to here without falling asleep from boredom:
Are you happy where you are now? Or would you like to move to one of the “these” places that recruiters offer you? Great ! I will not convince you that Louisville is the best choice for you (although, of course, it is). I just hope that you carefully review all your previous decisions and your previous view of career. Manage your decisions yourself.
I will leave you on this:
I was both inspired and disappointed when I read Chad Fowler’s book The Passionate Programmer . I was inspired by how eloquently and succinctly he was able to summarize many of those things that it took me 15 years to develop as a developer. And I was disappointed because I would like to give this book to a 20-year-old and save those ten years that I spent in telecommunications, being a guy who did things differently than people and opposed any “agile” techniques even before like something about them first heard.
In this book, Chad devotes an entire chapter to investing in his “product,” the product that you and your career are. For many of us who were raised by parents who taught us to work in silence and not to complain, this concept is alien. These are the things that I would teach a 20-year-old self to become my best boss:
No, I do not work in New York, Washington or the valley, and it completely suits me.
As with many (if not most) of you, recruiters contact me regularly. Unfortunately, they do not know anything specific about me except what they were able to find in my LinkedIn or GitHub . If they visited my site, they definitely didn’t notice this slogan. I am pretty sick of answering tons of identical letters (although they may differ in some ways) again and again, so I hope my blog readers will forgive me for a selfish digression from its main topic.
I’m a software developer in Louisville, Kentucky, and I’m happy here.
Briefly about the author and something else
Ernie Miller works remotely at Living Social, a major American startup, as a leading Ruby on Rails developer. About his post, he writes “Build awesome things, and make people happy. That's about it. ”
')
The realities of America and Russia are different in many ways, but try to think about how to benefit from these thoughts for yourself and the surrounding circumstances.
This post back in December last year caught my eye and was well used along with “How do I find time?” .
At the same time, I visited Ulyanovskiy RailsClub'Ulyanovsk , and later visited Prague. And in sharp contrast to Moscow, I clearly understood that much in life can be done differently. The author of the article will try to explain - how.
Useful and enjoyable reading!
')
The realities of America and Russia are different in many ways, but try to think about how to benefit from these thoughts for yourself and the surrounding circumstances.
This post back in December last year caught my eye and was well used along with “How do I find time?” .
At the same time, I visited Ulyanovskiy RailsClub'Ulyanovsk , and later visited Prague. And in sharp contrast to Moscow, I clearly understood that much in life can be done differently. The author of the article will try to explain - how.
Useful and enjoyable reading!
Mood good luck
A common theme in the community, to which I attribute myself (namely, the Ruby community), is the mood for happiness . It seems to me that for the most part this is due to the fact that the design of the language itself aims to make the developer happy. Whatever the reason, in the same way that GitHub has set up its company for happiness, and Ruby sets itself up for happiness, I set up my daily life for happiness.
Pff, so does everyone - will seem to you.
Maybe. Based on my conversations with other programmers, I have the impression that if they are working on this, then it is obviously much less conscious .
Let's immediately determine: a programmer has one of the most self-sufficient careers in the world. We wake up every morning and start creating, solving interesting problems, and if we do our job well, we make people happy. AND WE CAN DO IT FROM ANY PLANET POINT . This means that we can change our lives and careers in the way that representatives of many professions cannot do. If this does not make you smile, please go to the doctor (who, by the way, gets much less fun at his job than you do).
But let's go back to shaping our lives. Since we can do our job from everywhere, and only a company that is either ignorant or highly distrustful of its employees will insist on the opposite (right? Right? ), We can live anywhere, and this choice affects so many other areas of our life that we first have to choose a place that works for us, and only then deal with the rest.
So why Louisville?
Louisville is more than just horse racing and fried chicken
We also have bourbon;)
But to be serious, for the first time I decided to move to Louisville when I was 24 years old. I remember that I was joking about my move: “I don’t know why I’m doing this, because all they have there is horse racing and fried chicken.” I was damn wrong, and since then everything just got better. By the way, you should definitely go here: among other ratings and awards , Lonely Planet called Louisville "The No. 1 Traveler in the USA" .
In addition to horse racing and having a ton of options for a great dinner, there are some other things that are usually expected from a “respected” city:
- Rich story
- Magnificent skyline
- Love live shows? The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts at your service.
- Are museums yours? There are enough of them here . My personal favorite is the Frazier History Museum (formerly the Frazier Historical Arms Museum), which regularly exhibits part of the collection of The Royal Armories in Leeds .
- Nightlife lover? We have a lot of bars and clubs here .
- Are you a hipster? In Highlands, hipster / student movement is constantly raging.
There is much more to remember, but I wanted to say that Louisville has everything you would expect from a big city. The only difference is that in 15 minutes you can reach any part of the city and get into the village setting. For me, this is a big plus, because ...
Louisville helps me manage complexity
Ask any competent programmer how he relates to complex code, and you will surely get a long tirade in return. We have an instinctive and all-embracing dislike for bringing unnecessary complexity into the code, but for some reason we are lousy in our daily life.
I grew up in a village in Pennsylvania. I like the silence, and although you would not know this when you met me on the street or at a conference, I am an introvert. Louisville gives me a lot of work to choose from, but also enough peace and quiet when I need to recuperate. I work remotely, but once I’ve gotten into what we call a rush hour here, compared to other cities, even if I worked in a local office, I wouldn’t spend most of my life moving around the city.
I think I am one of those few people in the country who do not hate their provider . It gives me a really reliable and surprisingly smart cable Internet access (asymmetrical 50/5) for reasonable money in my opinion. This makes remote work easy and enjoyable. This is important because remote work is a key part of my personal optimization plan for happiness.
Time is not money ...
It is often said, “time is money,” but there is no greater delusion. Time is definitely not money. Some of us have much more than one, but the rest of the day have the same 24 hours. Therefore, I value my time and protect it. When I decide to “spend” time, I try hard to do it by my own rules. Again, Louisville helps me with this.
I have already mentioned that I need peace and quiet for recharging. If to have such a place to rest means to put up with hourly journeys back and forth every day, or long trips every time I want to get something even remotely resembling entertainment, then I do not think I will agree to this.
Since Louisville is essentially a small city with large perks, I can design the simplicity of daily life, which will allow me to save time and energy on those things that seem important to me. Together it all looks very good:
- The availability of a very reliable, fast access to the Internet makes remote work easy and simple, which saves me from having to get to the workplace, leaving me more free time and allowing me to choose a place that will make my life as simple as possible instead of paying a mortgage for the right live in the place where my employer decided to run his business.
- I bought a house next to my stepdaughter's school, and now she can walk to and from school, and moving for extra classes is no problem.
- The same house is 2 minutes walk from Koko Fitness Club . Since they have training programs that fit in 45 minutes, I can walk to the hall at lunchtime, as well as have a protein bite before going home. As I work from home, and until Google Hangouts learns how to transmit smells, my colleagues do not have to suffer from my choices. This one thing has become such a jump in the quality of my life over the past 4 months that it cannot be overvalued. Seriously. Find a way to fit your workout on your schedule, and if you have a Koko fitness club near you, try going there. Their approach is incredibly indulgent bores like me, who love to look at the numbers :)
- I am 10 minutes walk from my place of worship , which also has a great influence on the overall quality of my life, and definitely on my peace of mind.
- Louisville is an international airline UPS. This means that everything that I send (or receive) moves very quickly and without additional fees, which also makes online purchases available to any fool.
... but money is good too
The fact that the cost of your life depends on where you live is really cool in distant work, but your cost to the employer does not change at all ( there is an opinion that this is not quite true for our employer ). Living in Louisville allows my dollar to go much further than any of the “usual places” that recruiters can persuade me to allow.
To be honest, conversations like this make me scratch my head. A letter from a recruiter from a very famous New York company:
Hello Ernie,
I work in the development department, in the company ***.
Today I searched for people with Ruby experience and noticed your profile.
The company *** is always interested in communicating with good specialists.
I would like to assign a short call to talk about the opportunities that we can offer you in ***. Could you set a time and give your contact number?
Well, let's start with the fact that this is a damn pattern! But nevertheless, with a view to general development, I answered as follows:
Does vacancy imply a mandatory relocation to New York?
... and immediately received this answer:
Yes, we will fully ensure your move .
Exactly. Because the cost of moving is exactly what stops me from accepting such an offer.
Let's assume for a moment that I am not completely satisfied with the work at LivingSocial (although I am completely satisfied).
The cost of living in Louisville is 7.6% lower than the national average. The cost of living in New York is 123.8% higher. In other words, I need to make two or more times more money to maintain the same quality of life in New York.
“Well, live in Jersey and ride back and forth,” you say? Then re-read what I said about controlling your own time. Plus, jersey is still much more expensive than louisville.
The same arguments against San Francisco, Washington, and almost any other place that will require a long daily drive in order to make the cost of living at least acceptable. Life is too short to spend most of it on the road between the places where you really want to be.
Intangible assets
- Time and money are easy to count. So here are some other reasons why I like working in Louisville:
- We have relatively mild winters, but the change of seasons is noticeable. I grew up where there was snow and I would not like to live where it does not go (my wife does not agree with me on this).
- People here are simply nicer. It’s good to live in a city where people still sometimes say “Hello” to you on the street. I didn’t understand how unusual it was, until during my travels I didn’t receive suspicious glances in response to “good morning”, as if telling me “who are you?”.
- I was frustrated by the lack of a powerful rubist community here, but lately ( OpenHack Louisville , Code Retreat Louisville and even Code Louisville ) I began to find ways to help the community grow from nothing, and the opportunity to follow the true local Java / .NET-centric guys. A lot of good things happen on the technology scene of Louisville, and I am part of them.
Think with your head and be your own boss.
If you are not a recruiter (to many of whom I will undoubtedly send this page), but a programmer, and somehow got to here without falling asleep from boredom:
- Congratulations!
- And since you're here, I'll take a couple more seconds from you.
Are you happy where you are now? Or would you like to move to one of the “these” places that recruiters offer you? Great ! I will not convince you that Louisville is the best choice for you (although, of course, it is). I just hope that you carefully review all your previous decisions and your previous view of career. Manage your decisions yourself.
I will leave you on this:
I was both inspired and disappointed when I read Chad Fowler’s book The Passionate Programmer . I was inspired by how eloquently and succinctly he was able to summarize many of those things that it took me 15 years to develop as a developer. And I was disappointed because I would like to give this book to a 20-year-old and save those ten years that I spent in telecommunications, being a guy who did things differently than people and opposed any “agile” techniques even before like something about them first heard.
In this book, Chad devotes an entire chapter to investing in his “product,” the product that you and your career are. For many of us who were raised by parents who taught us to work in silence and not to complain, this concept is alien. These are the things that I would teach a 20-year-old self to become my best boss:
- “Guarantees” is a myth created by large companies to lure you into the trap of boring, hopeless work. At any job, you sign a voluntary employment agreement .
- If you are doing your job well, then be sure that when there is a need for work, you will find (or create) it in a very short time. These are the real guarantees.
- Try to feel blunt. If you do not regularly feel uncomfortable because of some things that you do not know, then you are not working well enough on yourself. Do not settle in the comfort zone. See item number 1.
- No need to get a job (or stay on it) just because you like people. If you are a decent person, then you will find people who will like you (and who will like you) at any job. And more importantly, if you really like them, you want them to invest in your “product”, even if it means that they will no longer work with you. Find a job that makes you jump out of bed in the morning. If this does not exist, then create it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/167011/
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