[AnimalMuppet]

> Outside the city, populations are decaying year after year, and the only chances of benefiting from global economic trends are in the city.

We keep expecting the internet to change this, and it keeps not happening. Why doesn't it? Why haven't remote workers or remote teams spread into the smaller towns and countryside?

[ta1234567890]

> We keep expecting the internet to change this, and it keeps not happening.

Because the Internet has enabled clusters like Silicon Valley or Hollywood to be even more prominent. Before the Internet, if you wanted to do something in tech, you probably would have only looked for local opportunities, but now because of the Internet, you have the impression that SV is almost the only place where you can do something notable in tech.

Big names have gotten bigger and global, a lot of them becoming de facto monopolies.

The Internet makes access to information easier, but at the same time it narrows information sources enormously because it puts all of them on the same playing field, leaving only very few winners.

For example, pre-internet you might have read your local paper to be up to date with the news, now instead you probably read the news at the website of a global news company. It's almost impossible for the local paper to compete with the global company.

Basically the Internet has created a global winner-takes-all market where everyone is competing for attention, and mostly only the big players win, or at least that's what the Internet makes us believe.

[SantalBlush]

With regard to places like Hollywood and SV, they almost certainly benefit from large economies of agglomeration, particularly from having a large and very specialized local labor pool. The network effects via the internet must not be comparable (yet).

[lotsofpulp]

>Basically the Internet has created a global winner-takes-all market where everyone is competing for attention, and mostly only the big players win, or at least that's what the Internet makes us believe.

Numbers such as market cap, net income per employee, and median average salary clearly indicate this is true.

[njepa]

> Because the Internet has enabled clusters like Silicon Valley or Hollywood to be even more prominent.

And bigger cities in general. But I also think people tend to underestimate changes. Small and medium sized cities have been hit hard by the recession and rising housing markets. There are increasingly no good deals to be had anymore. Unless you go to Chiang Mai or something.

[cameldrv]

Because there are only a small portion of jobs that can effectively be done remotely.

A few long-term trends I see driving the move to big cities are:

1. Jobs are becoming more specialized, and so it's more difficult to find every specialty you need for many businesses in a smaller town.

2. There are many more two earner households. In the past, many people would conduct a job search over a wide area and move the family for the man's new job. If the woman already has a job she likes, especially one that would be hard to replace in another town, the couple is much less likely to move for a job opportunity.

3. Businesses know this and have noticed that it has become harder to recruit people to move to a smaller "company town" for an opportunity. They therefore have tended to locate new operations in bigger cities.

[paganel]

Case number 2 applies to my situation, as I’ve been able to work remote for almost half a year now but my gf has to be in the office.

[jandrewrogers]

These locales are severely lacking in amenities that cater to people with incomes significantly above the national median. In most rural and semi-rural areas in the US and elsewhere, the household income is well below the national level, so the goods and services available in those communities reflect that. This puts a very low ceiling on the lifestyle that is achievable living in these locales even if you could afford it as a remote tech worker.

Most people who earn $100+k aspire to more than a lower-middle class lifestyle, which makes most rural towns unattractive. Small semi-rural towns composed primarily of high-income people exist but they are the exception rather than the rule, and the lifestyle in these places often suffers from a high percentage of part-time residents.

[chrisco255]

What goods and services, exactly? Other than a vast array of restaurants and night life to choose from, struggling to see what you mean here. It doesn't have to be a "rural" city in the traditional sense. Plenty of 100-250K population cities out there.

[jandrewrogers]

Access to diverse groceries for eating and cooking. Availability of many types of high-quality clothing. Availability of many types of high-end durable goods. Proximity to an airport. Adequate Internet connectivity, though a handful of semi-rural regions have competing residential fiber options as an accident of history (wish I could get that in downtown Seattle). Availability of social activities outside of a very narrow range that reflect the one-dimensional background of the population. Now, there are also some goods and services available in these towns that you would be hard-pressed to find in an urban city but these are usually on the margin of lifestyle and not a reason to move to these places.

I lived a significant percentage of my life in rural towns across the US. While I really enjoy spending time in rural American towns because it is very comfortable and familiar for me, I am under no delusions about what actually living there entails. The lack of access to goods and services even for those that fit within the economic class of the town (which I did last time I lived in one) is inadequate enough that it is considered normal to drive 50-100 miles each way once or twice per week to get to a "real" city for various errands. You spend a lot of time in vehicles; instead of spending hours each day stuck in traffic, you spend hours covering distance at speed.

By the way, a 250k population city (i.e. larger than e.g. Geneva, Switzerland) is a very different animal than your average rural town, which is more commonly thousands to tens of thousands of population. I find cities in this range (also lived in these) to be the worst of both worlds, being neither as rural or intimate as a small town while also having few of the benefits of a real urban city. Of course, this is a personal preference.

[AnimalMuppet]

To me, the ideal is something like Fort Collins, Colorado. It's maybe 120,000 people. It's an hour north of Denver, so when you need an international airport, or a big city children's hospital, or a professional opera company, or whatever, they're available - at the cost of some time. But when you don't want them, all that big city isn't in your face.

Fort Collins is also a college town, and has a fairly educated population.

And if Fort Collins is too big for your taste, there are a ring of smaller towns (Loveland, Ault, Windsor or Westminster or something to the north) maybe 10 miles away.

Note well: It is my impression that this is my ideal. I've never lived there.

[ghaff]

What you describe is the case to greater or lesser degrees with a lot of large cities. Head an hour out of the city and you have the option of various flavors of semi-rural/suburbs/smaller cities with varying degrees of affordability depending upon the town. The geographical constraints of the Bay Area (together with the magnet of tech) means that you really can't commute out of high housing prices in an hour. That's not the case with most other cities.

I live about an hour west of Boston which is certainly close enough to go in for a tech event or theatre/dinner for the evening. But my house is a lot cheaper than it would be in the city or a more expensive near-in suburb and you simply wouldn't be able to get the land I have near-in.

I get a lot of the advantages of a semi-rural lifestyle while still living close to decent supermarkets and having access to pretty much anything I would want within an hour.

[munificent]

> What goods and services, exactly?

Good schools.

Many HN readers don't have kids so they don't realize what a profoundly important factor this is when choosing where to live for many people. Once you have kids, their well-being and opportunity in life typically becomes the dominant attribute you're trying to maximize.

Parents would live in an active lava field where it rained urine every afternoon if the schools in the area were top notch.

Schooling is generally expensive. Nothing compares to one-on-one attention from a skilled, experience teacher and that doesn't scale, so to have a better school, you really need to simply have more money to put into hiring more and better teachers. In the US, a lot of school funding comes from local taxes, which means the amount of money schools have varies widely [0].

You could argue that this shouldn't be the case and that schools should be funded more equally out of larger pools. But if you are a parent with some money, it is your logical incentive to want to use that to improve your own child's schooling, so money naturally tends to flow towards schools that have more wealth children.

Many of those local taxes are local property taxes, so often the places that are affordable to live are by the very same process places that don't have great schools.

There's a nasty feedback loop here. You want your kids to go to good schools. The best schools have lots of rich parents. Those parents can afford expensive housing. Thus, most of the places with good schools have expensive housing.

Good government can and does push against this instinct, but it is a difficult, uphill battle.

[0]: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-school...

[lotsofpulp]

>Schooling is generally expensive. Nothing compares to one-on-one attention from a skilled, experience teacher and that doesn't scale, so to have a better school, you really need to simply have more money to put into hiring more and better teachers.

Teaching is important, but I would argue that even more important are the goals and resources of the other students, which correlate nicely with wealth/income of their parents, and hence the neighborhood, and hence the school they all attend.

This is all barely noticeable when everyone is not so far apart on the wealth/income ladder, but over the past few decades, as that gets wider and wider, the data gets clearer and clearer about the consequences.

[chrisco255]

There's diminishing returns on quality of K-12 education. There are A school districts everywhere. Between parenting your child right and giving them an above average education, combined with natural talent, they would have no trouble getting into state university (assuming they don't want to do perfectly acceptable blue collar work like plumbing, carpentry, firefighting, etc) I never took AP classes, for example, but make much more than many of my HS peers that did.

[CM30]

Are most good schools in large cities in the US? Because I definitely heard about how different neighbourhoods have different quality schools there based on the income of the people in the area, but I haven't heard anything about whether that correlates to the area's overall population.

It certainly doesn't seem to here in the UK, where quite a few of the top schools are old fashioned 'public schools' located in rural/semi rural areas.

[paganel]

I’m not American and don’t live in the States but as a guy who works remotely I can say that I highly value the coffee shops from the city I live in (an Eastern European capital) so much so that whenever I visit other European cities I always compare them to my city in this respect: I was happily surprised to find out that Madrid has coffee houses almost as good as ours, I was unpleasantly surprised when a friend of mine told me that Milano doesn’t have the same quality of coffee houses.

I also highly value being able to watch non-mainstream movies in a real cinema and I also very much like being able to physically touch and purchase books from a real bookstore. All of these things are impossible for me to do were I to move to a small town.

[mperham]

90% of high earners will have kids. A great school district becomes a top 3 criteria, typically this is only found in affluent clusters in each state.

[lotsofpulp]

This is the big one, in my opinion. "It's not what you know, who you know" makes it very consequential to choose your kids' school district properly.

https://www.opportunityatlas.org

[chrisco255]

You're going to be much bigger influence on your kids than their school ever will be, besides the fact that A level school districts are scattered all over the country. It's also not going to matter that much until college, to the extent that such networking matters, as there are plenty of successful life paths to take without being in the upper echelon of the socially connected.

[lotsofpulp]

It’s all about playing the odds, and statistically, there’s not many better bets than picking a high achieving school district (for achieving economic security).

[nightski]

Personally I feel that "great schools" are not nearly as important as people think they are (many bright individuals I have worked with came from smaller cities/towns). I also think that you find a lot of great teachers in smaller communities. Lastly, I find the "great schools" thing to be a cop out for piss poor parenting because the parents are too busy with big city jobs with crazy commute times. In reality great parenting and time with kids will get them very far in life vs. the perfect school district.

[derekp7]

I can second this. But it also fits in real good with households that can't afford a lot too, as that creates more educational / bonding opportunities. For example, my dad always worked on the family vehicles, where I learned a lot about basic auto mechanics (even just handing a wrench when needed, taught me about fractions (what's the next size up from a 5/8th?). When the parents have to do many domestic chores themselves because they can't hire it out, it is natural for the kids to be involved (anything from car mechanics, to cooking, deck building, renovating the bathroom, etc).

When both parents work a high end job, chances are the car gets dropped off at a mechanic to change the oil or for a tuneup. And many meals are carry out or in restaurants.

[gizmo686]

Schools are a central part of a childs life; far moreso then a workplace plays in an adults life.

[dillonmckay]

You named 2, also a selection of retail stores, besides Walmart, is also nice.

[AnimalMuppet]

There are a lot of things that you get anywhere that FedEx delivers. Of course, the delivery charges may eat into the rural cost-of-living advantage...

[dillonmckay]

Sometimes it is nice to try on clothing or shoes before you buy them, or not have to wait at least 2 days to receive something you may wind up returning.

[chrisco255]

How often does one purchase clothing that necessitates living within 10 minutes of a major shopping district? As others have said, it's perfectly reasonable to find satellite cities within an hour's commute of a major city that you can have your cake and eat it too.

[thorwasdfasdf]

i guess he's talking about food desserts. there's many parts of the US that don't have food available, only food-like substances: packaged stuff, etc.

[seanmcdirmid]

Amenities and education for your kids, mostly. Big cities have more than just jobs.

I think resort communities might do better, like Bali, Jackson Hole, Bend, Gulf Shores, but not Hawaii, COL is just too high. Also, decent schooling for kids is still a problem in those areas.

[AnimalMuppet]

When you said "education", I first thought that you meant college. That's not so much a problem - kids go away to college all the time, and there's online if they don't want that. But primary/secondary schooling... yeah, that could be a concern. On the other hand, that's a concern in the city, too, unless you can afford the suburbs. Even there... we lived in the suburbs, and the elementary school in our area was ranked in the bottom third in our state. My wife called the vice-principal there, and asked why we should put our daughter in their school. He said, "Well, going here can toughen kids up." Becoming tough was not our priority for our daughter, and we didn't put her there. (We homeschooled, but I recognize that most people won't want to go that route.)

[seanmcdirmid]

You have options in the city. Make a lot of money? Private school is an option. I live in the Seattle area, according to Zillow Seattle schools are ok, nothing special but definitely better than Spokane or Walla Walla schools. And then there is Bellevue, mercer islands, north lake WA, and so on that are all 10s. Works well enough.

I can see it as a huge problem if one lives in Chicago, I guess. The Midwest isn’t a great place for that kind of thing.

[debaserab2]

Actually I think it's exact opposite - the midwest is great for k-12 education. Illinois is ranked #7 overall in k-12 education (washington sits at #19 for comparison). Most other midwest states are somewhere in the top 20 [1].

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/p...

[JamesBarney]

> Hawaii, COL is just too high Yeah nobody goes there anymore, it's way too popular.

[pchristensen]

Hawaii had the 7th worst out-migration in the nation in 2016.

From "Census data shows that Hawaii has the highest median home value in the entire US, at $617,400. CNBC also ranked Hawaii as the state with the highest cost of living in 2018, with the cost of a half-gallon of milk coming in at $3.64."

Citation: https://www.insider.com/the-top-10-states-people-are-moving-...

[JamesBarney]

Thanks, today I learned something about Hawaii. I assumed with the high COL it must be really desirable. But I guess tourists are pushing out locals?

Oh and there's a lot of housing regulation.

[seanmcdirmid]

Nobody moves there unless they have a few million up spare or are just naive.

[manfredo]

> We keep expecting the internet to change this, and it keeps not happening. Why doesn't it? Why haven't remote workers or remote teams spread into the smaller towns and countryside?

Because there are benefits to living in the city even if your job can be done in arbitrary locations. It's easier to deliver goods and services (on a per capita basis) in dense population centers. It also means that people have much more options for entertainment, dining, socialization, dating, and plenty of other advantages. Really, the only disadvantage is space but that's mitigated by skyscrapers (effectively multiplying the surface area of a city). Urbanization is directly correlated to educational attainment, income, and other quality of life metrics. Urbanization is also nothing new. Humanity as a whole has been on an continuous overall trend towards urbanization since the industrial revolution. Really, the only reason why we weren't urbanized until now is because postindustrial societies couldn't function without >70% of their population working in agriculture.

[tehbeard]

Ignoring internet access issues in rural areas, What is there to do in your free time in smaller towns and the countryside?

That's the reason.

[switchbak]

I've got gigabit fibre running to my house, and some of the best natural beauty and outdoor activities available anywhere just minutes away. Mountain biking, climbing, white water paddling, kite surfing, trail running, sailing, hiking, etc.

Let me assure you, there is plenty to do if you're into this lifestyle. Don't knock it just cause it's not something you're into.

I think as more people get good remote jobs that many of them will realize that living in nice small towns is really desirable.

[0xffff2]

Lucky you. I have a house just outside a small town of 700, about 30 miles outside a town of 30,000. I can't even get DSL; I'm stuck with terrible satellite internet when I'm out there. I really can't wait for Starlink. If it works as promised, I'll finally be able to ditch my Silicon Valley apartment and go full remote.

[fzeroracer]

There are plenty of cities where this is also the case however. You're also not locked into the local area only (where the nearest airport might be hours away) and your options for everything else other than leisure aren't limited

Living in small towns is incredibly stifling for people that prefer to use their feet to get around, at least in America. It always seemed fittingly ironic that people move to small towns so they can drive out to their outdoorsy hobbies.

[rb808]

> there is plenty to do if you're into this lifestyle

I wonder if there are fewer people that like the outdoors lifestyle now. New generation prefers xbox and eating at restaurants and doesn't like yard work or hiking.

I'd love to move somewhere quieter but my wife would kill me.

[rootusrootus]

That sounds wonderful. Can I be your neighbor?

Edit: Ah, I'd have to move to Canada. Not a deal killer :)

[arethuza]

Garden, walk, cycle, fish, run, hunt, sail, ride horses, keep bees, kayak, swim, view historical stuff.... [I'm just naming things that people do within a couple of km from where I live].

NB Personally I garden, walk and look at mysterious old stuff. But plenty of people doing the others.

Edit: Until 2 years ago I lived in the very centre of Edinburgh - which is quite a nice place to live. So far I've never regretted moving out of town to the country.

[tdb7893]

Ride horses, hang out with friends, play video games, go hiking, pay music with friends, cook food, shoot guns, watch Netflix, play poker with friends. My wife grew up in a small town and she always found stuff to do, it's really not that hard depending on what you like.

Edit: to add some more specific flavor my wife liked to ride horses, play her guitar, swim, and watch TV. Her parents were pretty busy but they would hang out with friends and liked to cook and play in what was essentially an Irish folk band in the area.

[nostalgk]

Exactly, all of these things. The notion that city living is the only way to live and that smaller towns are simply flyover communities is pretty ignorant. I love visiting the city as well, there are excellent opportunities like restaurants and events, but the culture is different and I am always happy to return to my small town hobbies.

[landryraccoon]

I don't think the problem is not having stuff to do, the problem is finding people to do it with.

Small towns and nature have no end of things to do. But it has way fewer people. I think modern society has a bigger problem with loneliness than with not having enough entertaining activities.

[circlefavshape]

This. I live in the countryside, 5km from the nearest village (<1000 people). It's a very pleasant village, and I know plenty of people in it, but the population is too small and sparse for me to find a group of people like me. To hang out with my real friends I need to go into the city

[thrower123]

A whole lot more than you can do if you are stuck in an urban area or worse, a suburban hellscape. At least if you like doing things outside, or want to do more worthwhile things than mindless consumer hedonism.

Go fishing, go hunting, go hiking, do some trailriding on an ATV or a snowmobile or a horse. Plant a garden or an orchard and tend to that. Have a barbecue with the neighbors. Get involved with the community. Work up your firewood. You can read books, or watch TV or engage with the internet just as easily as anywhere else, and you can get anything in the world delivered to you with two-day delivery from Amazon. You can look up at night and see the stars, rather than just washed out orange halogen haze.

[madengr]

Guns Archery Model rocketry Ham radio Fireworks

[kawfey]

+1 for ham radio, HF is much better in rural areas since it's farther from manmade electrical noise, however VHF+ is boring due to lack of people (and typically line of sight range) unless you're into satellites, sporadic-E, and tropospheric ducting.

[madengr]

Even then, getting a decent satellite station the the suburbs is problematic. I’d like nice rotor setup with dual band, dual polarized yagi.

I have a active loop for HF RX, which does a good job of rejecting local noise, but would still be better in rural area.

[PerfectElement]

It depends on what you like to do. Countryside living is appealing to many people.

[neom]

Except then your best friend moves to San Fransisco and now you have no friends, so you move to San Fransisco and then you live in San Fransisco (I'm not bitter or anything....) :(

[seanmcdirmid]

Technologists are probably not typically the ones that find it appealing.

[nostalgk]

On the contrary, most of my peers are either living in the country on their own land or saving to do so. Especially if it's within driving distance of a city.

[ghaff]

The Bay Area is something on an exception in that you really can't easily drive out to reasonably priced exurban/rural housing quickly enough to go into the city for an evening. With many other popular cities, an hour outside the city can get you into the countryside (and many employers are well outside the city in any case).

[seanmcdirmid]

That’s anecdotal, but I’m willing to bet the typical technologist is not like your peers.

[nostalgk]

As is your claim. What is the typical technologist? My peers, along with me, live outside of one of the biggest cities in the Midwest, and work remotely or commute to and from. I would consider us part of the prevailing technological culture.

[sudosteph]

Plenty of introverts who like building things (the stereotypical technologist) are into it.

More income savings to spend on new gadgets, space to build things (plus No HOAs to say you can't run a business or put up a big antenna on your property), and relative peace and quiet in your environment are quite appealing. I know some brilliant technologists who work remote and wouldn't trade their life-style for any salary in a big city. I'm a city-lover myself, but easily understand the appeal of working in tech while living in the country.

[ghaff]

What do you think is so special about technologists that they uniquely prefer urban (or suburban) living?

[seanmcdirmid]

It really isn’t a mystery: they like tech obviously, they probably went to a big university with lots of diversity and eat out options, they feel a strong need to network. All hint toward city living rather than country side living.

Also, many techies in the USA aren’t even Americans, they are even less likely to be craving for the countryside lifestyle.

[ghaff]

I think you're projecting your preferences and those of your circle. The significant majority of the people I work with at a fairly large tech company live in exurbs/suburbs/country. Relatively few live in the nearby major city.

[icebraining]

Why do you say non-Americans are less likely to crave countryside lifestyle? As an EU developer, that's not been my experience at all; small town developers get dragged to our bigger cities for the jobs, not because they prefer the life. Some have pretty long commutes just so they can keep living in a non-urban area.

[hutgu]

For anyone who isn't into highly social hobbies the countryside is usually at least equally good. Apart from restaurants and larger selection of food in stores, city life has not changed my free time much at all.

[e40]

Why haven't remote workers or remote teams spread into the smaller towns and countryside?

Because when you live in an area you become entrenched. I would love to move out of the Bay Area for cheaper everything, but all my friends and family are here.

This is the element that people forget about in these discussions.

[AnimalMuppet]

> but all my friends and family are here.

Ah. That explains quite a bit, actually.

But it doesn't explain everything. It explains why people who are there stay there. It doesn't explain why people have to move there to make decent money.