New England (not a state, but let's not get too specific here,) but off the beaten track. Small town with a big University. There are really only about four companies around here who could credibly offer me offer me a job doing something I want to do at a rate I want to do it for.

That's a double-edged sword. On one hand I have to be pretty careful not to burn bridges or hop jobs, cause if I want to stay around here I'll run out of both quickly. On the other hand established developers around here all know each other, pretty much, so the network effect is very, very strong.

And that even means easy intros to people who work remotely for interesting companies elsewhere (which seems to be more and more a thing.) Just in the last month I've met people, through my local network, who work for places like Trello, Circle, etc.

The Circle guy in particular- well, he came up to introduce himself after a talk I gave, and some of what he's doing for Circle is very much up my alley, so if I wanted a different job or a remote job (I don't at the moment) I might hit him up.

I live in RI and there are tons of jobs to fill with Navy engineering contractors. I just so happen to be a software engineer with an Ocean Engineering degree so it fits my mold better than most.

if you're a programmer, you can move anywhere in the midwest and get a job easy and the hours are chill too compared to east and west coast