dennmart

I live in Japan, and last year I bought a GTX 1060 (6GB) for around 32000 Yen (a little under $300). This past weekend I was browsing around some computer shops and I found one shop with the same card I bought less than 12 months ago for 55000 Yen (~$510). They also had a GTX 1070 Ti for 77000 Yen (~$710), which is significantly above MSRP.

Every other shop I visited were sold out of everything above the GTX 1050. Those cards haven't had their prices affected by much during the last few months. There's also no AMD cards in sight besides the super low-end cards.

When I had to commute into San Francisco from Berkeley a few years later, I took BART into the city, and didn't fare much better. While the trains were on time more often than not, there were way too many delays when we were en route. Since the underwater tunnel between Oakland and SF is a choke point - just two tracks - whenever there's a delay in there and you were behind it, it would take at least an extra 15 minutes to get us moving again. The BART strike from 2013 was also pretty bad for commuters.

I lived in New York and have been to Osaka, Japan many times, and I don't mind public transportation at all in those cities - they cover a lot more ground than the Bay Area, have plenty of trains and buses and aren't too affected by delays when it happens.

There were two things that helped me clear my head a bit - going to the gym and focusing on my well-being (a.k.a. actually going to a gym 3-4 times a week) and learning something outside of computers (in my case, learning the Japanese language). I think just focusing for a bit on something more than computers can help you take a step back and gain some of that lost energy back, at least it did for me.

  Me: Do you plan to upgrade to Windows 8?
  Them: No way. Windows 8 is horrible!
  Me: Oh, so when did you use it?
  Them: Not yet... I read a lot of people bitching about it online, though.

Four years have passed and I haven't bought a single thing from the company since then. I've just gotten what I needed elsewhere, either due to price or convenience. The email is nice, but it didn't really do much to make me always want to go to them first.

I'd say you should start approaching companies about a solid month before you're going to move here. That should give you enough time to find a good fit, enough time for your new employer to prepare for you, and enough time to for you to begin preparing for the long move. Best of luck!

If it was Ezra, then this is the official explanation.

I asked one of the higher-ups this same question after being hired, and they said that they scouted my blog, Twitter and Github accounts, among others, and with what they heard over the phone, they felt I was a really good fit in their company. Had I not taken the time to build my online persona, I doubt I would've had been hired. This doesn't just apply to job-hunting in remote locations, but nowadays it should be a big part of it.

Two years later, I got laid off due to economic factors. This led to getting a job in the Bay Area. I had multiple phone interviews and a short programming test before getting the job, but I didn't have to fly over to California once.

The author does raise some good points, though. While I obviously don't have any proof, I have always suspected that some job offers were passed over me due to my location at the time, especially while in Puerto Rico (two prospective employers strongly suggested that I get a visa to work in the U.S. - ignoring the fact that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, making me a U.S. citizen). So while I would say it's a bit more difficult to go job-hunting in remote locations, it's definitely not impossible.