The labeling system seems outdated. I live in an area that is rural, yet everyone in a 120 mile radius of me would say I lived in a city. A new classification of "rural city" seems necessary.

The pedantic version of rural America is dying a rather ugly death. There are still nice places in the Midwest, but the further away you are from a true city the bleaker it often becomes.

That said, a village with a hundred people doesn't guarantee rural, The City of London's 10,000 residents for example.

Agreed on the further away from a true city comment, that is whats happening in Western KS.

> It's beautiful out here and I wish more tech workers would consider the Midwest when they decide to leave the Bay Area.

I think you are confused to the core issue. Your situation is relatively difficult to sustain long term and I know of only 1 person (out of 20+) that tried it that have succeeded for 10+ years.

It is a bit anecdotal but, to me, it is pretty clear that the issue isn't "consideration" but "Remote work is genuinely offshored to cheaper IT resources in India/China/etc". Those of us who want US-level salaries find it extremely difficult to sustain a remote work situation indefinitely, particularly as they age into the 40s and 50s.

If I could be certain I'd hold down a job that pays 40% of what I make now, indefinitely, I'd have left the "Big City" 10+ years ago.

The truth is for "average" developers as we age, we get trapped between being "too expensive" (people start trying to negotiate you down except when the economy is at full employment) and the financial obligations a family represents.

To be honest, it is a large part of why LeanFIRE and FIRE communities are so popular with tech folks. Many of us want _out_ but the financial risks involved aren't practical unless we are wealthy enough to be effectively retired in a LCOL location. I doubt many (if any) of such people plan to actually stop writing code.

You should probably also keep in mind that "small town" Kansas (50k+, but not a major city) is not the same thing as "rural" Kansas (where there isn't 50k people in the county spread over a much larger land area than Manhattan, KS).

Demonstrate that you bring unique value to get your foot in the door, deliver on that value to stay in the game.

If you're just starting your career, it's going to be tough at best but if you have a track record and find the right team, it's possible.

Your career in Austin is the exact opposite of what I want. It is the very definition of a "big city" career.

It isn't finding 1 remote job that lets you work from a rural area that is the issue. It is finding 20 years worth of such jobs.

"I can do it so the majority can" is rarely true. Even when it comes to skills I would consider as basic as handling finances intelligently or cooking a decent meal or acknowledging one's limitations.

Be careful about assuming you are exceptional because most people aren't.

If the weather were better, I would seriously consider it, but I tired of suffering through that cold real fast.

https://www.isws.illinois.edu/statecli/cuweather/cu-averages... says the record low temperature for Champaign-Urbana, Illinois was -25F "on four(!) occasions: 9 Feb 1899, 13 Feb 1905, 19 Jan 1994, and 5 Jan 1999."

To be sure, -25F is plenty cold. I've lived one place where the temperature got that cold, and in crappy student housing where we filmed over the windows and you could see the plastic bellowing in the wind, and where a 2L Coke bottle in the pantry froze. Not something I want to do again.

No tourism or things to do that are different.

Miles and miles of miles and miles.....

I might move back to my home state in the Midwest, if they got rid of their own Brownback equivalent... but Kansas... meh.

Sorry!

Poor: "Why should I go to university?"

Ok: "Are you going to university?"

Better: "Which university are you going to?"

Best: "Are you going to X, Y, Z university?"

In other words, how much does the community value education?

Red states as demonstrated by their budget choices do not value education. There may be a few local exceptions. As a general statement, Kansas budget choices has demonstrated hostility to quality education. Kansas has demonstrated that tax cuts > education.

WTC is a small local telcom in the Manhattan area with fiber built out in the nearby small cities and rural areas and they are now bringing affordable fiber with gigabit speeds into Manhattan for businesses to easily out compete expensive fiber costs and contracts from Cox and AT&T: https://www.mhk.business/trending//wtcfibermanhattan

Multiple coworking spaces have launched here in the last couple years: https://www.manhattech.com/spaces.html

Its been interesting to find out about some of the things other people are doing remotely from here.

a) cooperative local government that lets you use the ROW (right-of-way) without a lot of hassle

b) 100% aerial plant, very little or no underground. Aerial is way cheaper.

c) relatively low cost labor for bucket truck construction crews to hang the aerial fiber.

I'd never heard of this WTC / Wamego before, not surprising since I do nothing facilities based near the midwest. But for those who are interested:

https://bgp.he.net/AS19504#_asinfo

Kind of surprising to find an ISP with that much v4 space that hasn't put effort into reaching a major IX point and actually peering with anybody yet... They have BGP sessions with Cox, and HE transit, and that's it.

Kansas City is only a 2 hour drive away to go do bigger city stuff.

We happened to drive through Kansas on the way to a Colorado wedding, during prom season. It was interesting to see all these prom kids dressed up and meeting at truck stops to take pictures or carpool.

P.S. Answered my own question. Information may be out of date, but quite limited coverage residential plans from a couple of companies, and somewhat more but still limited coverage from a few companies business class offers.

Wish I had that many choices. ATT finally dropped a fiber line into our neighborhood, but it's not hooked up yet. Given what Comcast is doing to its cable Internet pricing, here, I'm a bit afraid to see the pricing ATT will offer us. By contrast, pricing out there looks significantly better.

Prior to this, our local copper trunk has been so old/deteriorated that DSL was marginal at best (they wouldn't sell it) and Uverse was a non-starter.

I might not want to be in Manhattan, KS, but I can think of some other towns -- maybe I need to look again.

A coworker told me he was getting symmetric gigabit from AT&T for $70/month so I decided to check them out. I switched from Comcast and everything has been awesome except for the supplied wireless router. My iDevices will not work reliably on it so I added my own.

My bill dropped almost in half and I got away from Comcast's metered, expensive, less reliable crap.

I am in Atlanta so the 'threat' of Google Fiber may explain the great deal I got. Not affiliated with AT&T at all and am honestly surprised at how good the service has been. YMMV

It's frustrating, and there are many places that are far worse off than us.

And the usage monitoring/scraping they keep wanting to do, and the upcharge for "opting out" of that. Especially as more and more online resources block access coming from/through commercial VPN's, AWS, and other convenient means of using a VPN as an individual, to bypass such monitoring.

The risk/frequency isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.