Small town IT
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Small town IT
I thought this article on tech companies in small towns was kind of cool. It's good to realize that there are still places like this that are outside of Silicon Valley where companies are developing useful, and more importantly, profitable solutions. Nothing fancy, a company that builds software to track school lunches and finances. It's a neat solution and one I appreciate since finding lunch money everyday for my kids isn't something I'm good at.
I like the idea of an old house turned into an office, a country atmosphere, after all I do like the country as you can see from the image above. The lower costs and possibly lower salaries can make for an good business model as well. The only thing I don't really like is the comment about uniforms. If I had a small business out in Elizabeth, CO near me, I'd be satisfied if everyone just showed up with a shirt and pants of any sort. Shoes optional, dogs allowed 🙂
While I agree that in some cases it's nice to be building software in a hot area, like Silicon Valley or Boston, where there are great technical schools, other companies and lots of smart people, I'm think it's a bit overrated. There are lots of great places in smaller towns and enough talented people to get the job done anywhere.
I'm not a great entrepreneur, despite my having some success with this site, so I'm not sure I'd start a company and build it up. But with some great partners like Andy and Brian, I think I could do it again. And if they'd move to Colorado, I know there are some great, cheap buildings out in Elizabeth and Kiowa near me. Probably could even have our wives ride their horses to the office and bring us lunch.
I guess I'd just like to be sure that those of you toiling away in some small town, dreaming of working for Microsoft, Google, or some other hot company in Silicon Valley, remember that the grass is not always greener and there are lots of good opportunities in your own hometown.
Or the small town of your dream.
Steve Jones
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Having worked in small town IT for a while I'd have to say that whilst it sounds ideal in some senses the reality can actually be pretty far removed from this. I used to work in a small and very pretty village on the Dorset coast in the UK, and whilst we developed some relatively interesting software it was all very niche and the company was always strapped for cash. Couple that with the lower salary but comparable house prices to places such as Cambridge where I'm now based, relatively frequent problems with power outages and internet connectivity (although we did have a backup generator), and not necessarily having the best tools or equipment to get the job done, lack of business processes (or source control) etc, and you have a less than ideal working environment.
Whereas nowadays I'm fortunate enough to work for an extremely successful and profitable company where if you need something to get the job done, it's not even an issue: you just get it. The problems we're working on are interesting and challenging, and I work with a lot of exceptionally bright people. On top of this I feel like I finally have some job security because we're not VC or grant funded, and we're not reliant on one or two big clients, instead we have many thousands of clients ranging from one-man bands to global corporations who buy our software every month.
My point in all this is that you spend an awful lot of your waking life at work so finding a good company that treats you well and allows you to work on things that are interesting is extremely important to your overall happiness and wellbeing, and I'd suggest that to a fairly large extent this can be more important than where that company is based. In saying this though I should moderate my position by saying that it would have to be a very special company to (for example) persuade me to work in London - Red Gate are based on the north edge of Cambridge and I live in the country about 10 miles away.
Anyway, I need to go and fix some bugs.
Cheers,
Bart
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In all the years that I've been touting the joys of teleworking, this factor has always been a star seller...that location does not matter...wish more people would wake up to this and not stress so much importance on being face-to-face..this could also be the answer to the outsourcing problem...kind of a "local" outsource - an oxymoron but a distinctly workable one that would resolve the issues of rising real estate costs, gas prices, outsourcing et al in one fell swoop...
ps:I'm still laughing at the fantasy of wives riding into the office to bring y'all lunch...mine has always been to retire to a Greek island and have an office nestled amongst the olive groves - a bottle of ouzo by my side - however, your dream can be realized any day now while mine still remains an unattainable flight of fancy...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
I work for a higher education software company with offices in Cambridge, MA (right next to MIT), suburbs of Cinncinnati, OH, and Harrisonburg, VA. If you want the large city, you work out of the Cambridge office. If you want the 'burbs, you work in OH. If you want country - the beautiful Shenandoah valley - you work in the VA office. And we have quite a few telecommuters. Overall, it is a wonderful company to work for. We have good process control and development methodology, a very reputable line of products in our vertical, and great people. And I love living in a quaint little town (Staunton) in the Shenandoah Valley. I have two ski resorts within 45 minutes of my house. 4-Season weather is great (think DC without the humidity), traffic is non-existent (I commute 30 miles in 30 minutes), schools are good, municipal services are quite adequate, and the culture is very laid back, clean, and fun - a great place to live and raise a family. Sh-sh-sh! Keep it quiet. We don't want to start a rush to fill up our valley!
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This reminds me of an article that I read somewhere years ago about "insourcing" jobs to smaller rural areas in the U.S. where the overall costs were cheaper versus "outsourcing" to India and such. The idea was to keep the jobs within our borders, allow for worker satisfaction by getting away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities while possibly revitalizing some communities by offering new technical jobs to dying communities. The problems as noted before are lack of face to face interactions with other software professionals (not as big of an issue anymore with all of the teleconferencing and such), connectivity concerns (again not as big of an issue anymore) and inability to attract major talent to small towns. Having grown up in a small town north of Kansas City, MO (Weston), I would have loved this opportunity versus having to move to KC where things are more expensive and the pay is still not that great.
My ex-wife is from Kiowa, CO and if a tech company had started up out there while we were together, I would have jumped on that in a heartbeat.....but then having to share a small town with my ex, maybe that scenario isn't as attractive after all.
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I dont know about the horse back lunch delivery, but we'll see!
I do think the challenge of small towns is when you need to look for work. Moving there because they have a job is good, it's what happens when it's time to move on for whatever reason where it can be challenging. I would also say in fairness it's not just a problem in small towns, even here in Orlando (a pretty good sized market) I'd be restricted to some degree by traffic/drive time.
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Another great challenge of the small town is when it comes to customer site travel. We are 1 block away from the local airport (largest within 2 hours of our location) but we only have maybe 4 flights a day to chose from. All come to us on 20 seater prop jobs. Go small town WI!
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I agree with Small town IT. I have recently begun working for a company in a small town and gave up the larger salary and endless commute to and from the city. Granted, I may have taken a 50% paycut to do this, but the other benefits are great. I get home at a normal time. I'm able to attend my kid's school functions whenever I need to. I don't have to get up at an ungodly hour to get to work. I am now less than 5 minutes from work.
I'm lucky in the way that the job I have now utilizes all my skills and then some. They are paying for ally my training towards certification, they are truly family oriented and greatly involved with the community. I am their IT Specialist for all Microsoft products/environments and anything that is web and database related. I am also getting more involved with networking and security.
The pay may not compare to my city salary, but this company is definitely moving when it comes to technology. The opportunities that have arisen for me to learn has been great, since I feared that it would be pretty stalemate.
Though I do miss the money, I enjoy the benefits that I have now. I love being able to be there more for my kids and family!
Cheryl M - Missouri
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Is it difficult to attract good programmer to a small town especially if both husband and wife working on different fields? It is not easy to find a job if only one big company in the town. Also these days family pays a lot of attention to the school district. If it is not a school district, the family may not want to move there.
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This article really hit home for me. My wife and I both work in IT and we are lucky enough to have stable, decent paying jobs here in Tampa. The problem is that neither one of us enjoys the city. She has a 1.5 hour commute and mine is about an hour. Couple that with a 10 hour work day and it makes life pretty miserable. What makes it worse is that we really love the outdoors. We travel to NC as much as possible to go camping, hiking and mountain biking. We both have discussed moving to a more rural area but the dearth of job opportunities has prevented that. Both of us would take a major pay cut to be able to live somewhere where we can enjoy the outdoors.
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Small is what exactly? We've experienced both good and bad about "small town IT". It's a matter of priorities.
I'm in Bryan/College Station - "metro" population about 110,000 including 46,000 students at Texas A&M.
We suffer from underemployment - namely pay is low, qualifications are very high from all the spouses and students.
On the other hand, housing hasn't ballooned like it has in Houston and Dallas. If you rent it's another matter but overbuilding is starting to moderate rents.
- We have massive bandwidth and are 1.5 hrs from both Austin and Houston.
- We are 3.5 hrs from D/FW and San Antonio.
- My commute is 45 minutes if I drop BOTH kids off and 12 if I don't.
- My kids are 15 min from school (only because they are in private school till we move across town).
- Our overall cost of living is about .8 on that national scale (DC is about 1.8, NYC 2.2).
- No pollution and a traffic jam is when TAMU staff leave at 5pm to go home.
- Crime is VERY LOW (well violent crime, small theft is about average).
I've started 5 businesses in this town, and two of them made it past 15 yrs. None were all that profitable, in some cases we were happy to walk away with a percentage of our original equity and a happy banker. My last surviving business is an evening, internet gig (http://www.advancedgaming.biz) and that only needs bandwidth - something we have PLENTY of.
Our problems were growth and travel.
Growth - wrong town. Sure talent wasn't our problem - customers were for the IT Service firm. Our competitors made it - as we refused to sell hardware and they did - so they made it to 20yrs and we shut ours down at 17yrs.
When we tried to expand to Houston - too much local HUNGRY competition and the travel was killing us (yeah, we may be in TX but for me, driving 2 hrs for an appt or even 8 hrs on the job is simply NOT acceptable). We also refused to live out of a hotel. A big trip for me is 4 nights. The local airport is very good and has decent connections (it was better before 9/11 of course).
At this point, I grew up (well just a bit), and took at job at Texas A&M as a SE Manager. I do commercial grade software with student programmers (http://esl-seg.tamu.edu). It is a niche job to be sure, but I'm pretty good at it (20yrs practice) and there is certainly plenty of opportunity in this town.
Bringing all of that together, my wife and I made a choice early on to live with less in order to live here and raise a family. We do everything very conservatively (yeah we are cheap) and that has a lot to do with our success. But that is a choice we made early on. It works for us.
Your mileage may vary.
TXAggieSE
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I work in large town in Vermont. Yes, that is an oxymoron. The difficulties are if you find yourself in an unpleasant work situation it can be difficult to transition out to another firm because of scarce opportunities. The cost of living here is pretty high, but the life style is pretty nice. I live on a 14 acre parcel in a hardwood forest in the Champlain Valley. However, I drive a 50 mile roundtrip and spend an hour and twenty minutes a day in the car. My employer is small and cash strapped and am seriously worried that layoffs are around the corner again and I am going to be pink slipped. I have been here two years and have recieved absolutely no training.
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I think working in a small town has to be something you want to do, or because you want to go back home where you grew up. Moving somewhere small for a job or to move there I think would be hard.
But there's lots of opportunities to start a business if you're up for that.
I definitely like the small town feel and while I like being close to Denver, I'd just as soon live 50miles away in a smaller town, like Kiowa, and drive in when I need to.
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