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Relocation: yes or no?

Tina Huynh on July 03, 2022

As the younger generation of developers are now graduates and looking for their full-time jobs, the question of relocation is coming up in conversa...
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Michael N.

I'm from a third world country so relocation is definitely on the table for me if possible, there's a lot of reasons why such as better health care, stable electricity, higher currency value.

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Aurélien Delogu

A big nope for relocation.

I have a family and I hate big cities. Furthermore I worked for several years with remote colleagues or even managing a remote team. Full remote work is handy, it optimizes your time, and your even more productive since there are no parasite conversations along the day. But yeah, you still need to work in a co-working place to avoid being too lonely. Especially when you don't have a family.

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aliona matveeva

haha but relocation doesn't always mean big cities. I relocated from Moscow (around 17 mil people) to Tallinn (400k) and I couldn't be happier :D

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Aurélien Delogu

I live in a french town of 200k people. And that's my hard limit, ahah. Since many jobs are in cities bigger than my actual one, that explains why I don't want to be relocated.

But that's not a problem, there're also many full remote jobs out there!

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Ali Navidi

Definitely relocation, I'm currently living in hell.

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Nicholas Lane

I have found myself asking the same questions! But I am planning on relocating to a different city but in my home country.
For me it really helps knowing one or two people in the place you intend to relocate to, it provides a little bit of a safety net but more importantly might help motivate you to putting in the necessary effort for the move.
In terms of limitations, with remote work it almost seems as if there aren't any at all nowadays!
Good luck!

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Ajay Agrawal

Its the simple decision my mate, take me for an instance. I did my masters from NIT Calicut and moved to Banglore because of campus job offer.
Why I moved to Banglore?

  • I had my 1st job offer + internship
  • I didn't had any boundaries for reallocation

I came back to my hometown due to Pandemic and continued WFH. Then I got fired because tech giant didn't survived. Now I am working on a company on my local town. And I am not willing to reallocation.

Not ready to reallocate why???

  • My father's demise, my mother is my only family

See a simple choice. I was able to do whatever I wanted and reallocate wherever I want until I didn't had my family as my RESPONSIBILITY.

You can also do the same. Assess your situation, is it good move to reallocate, do you have any responsibility like me? And similiar situations.

Have a good day 😶‍🌫️

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HS

For me, it was never a question of if or will it was a must. Coming from a small country you had to go to bigger cities to have a decent job. Although it changed a tiny bit it's still a case as there's just a couple of companies in smaller cities in my homeland. I think it is in a lot of European countries for Dev regardless of now work-from-home begin an option. However it might change more and more. I moved from my country due to other things not work but found the current country pretty same in terms of work-from-home, flexibility, way of work, etc, so I think in software development you might find it pretty much same across the board.

From a personal experience: I found my country unbearable in some cases due to politics and decided to leave. For me it was going from owning a car, living pretty nice and having a vacation as a must at some apartment on the beach to checking if I have enough money to fly there and using a public transport. Why did I "downgrade". Well I didn't I went to a more stable country with high income where my wife's salary can't even cover basic needs here (if she would to work alone - freelance), so she quit, and even with a good single income it's not possible to have it as before due to prices. Did I regret it? No, because I was never fan of too much "capitalism" like big cities rush and such and this country has that to some point but mostly focuses on being laid back and enjoying the nature. Given the climate change here is quite the same as in my homeland while I was a kid back in the 90's so I actually like it more (my parents reported over 30C temperatures for the last month). Everything's far away (shops, cities, pubs...), but I like it as I can go to a lake in 10-15 min by foot. With a bit of luck I'm now working from home always so I don't spend that much money on tickets. If I had to work constantly from the office I would've probably moved to city nearby. However, keeping in mind I don't have kids yet so my wife and I are pretty easily "transferable". I don't have any new friends since I came here (3 years) but I do have work collogues which I met the first day and see them maybe once in two months. If you're social it depends which country you need to move to regarding your job. Nordics are not really too fun for some social people. If you're speaking about cities in the same land then it's like a simple rule: bigger the city less people will interact with you that easily because of time pressure. Most people are in rush and that's doubled by the size of the city.

So to boil it down you need to first have some answers, like:

  • Are you a social person? This answer will limit countries or sometimes even parts of the same country
  • What climate can you tolerate? Same as above.
  • How far from home can you go? Or how frequently you want to visit your familly/friends? In my homeland it was mostly up to 3 hours car drive since we lived quite close by and the country itself is small.
  • Do you prefer capitalist style or socialistic style of living? Not communism or such but more like do you want private or public healthcare/transport and others?

I think it's sometimes too hard for someone even with proper mindset and desires some limitations arise that are out of our control so question cannot be answered fairly unless you add "given a choice without your current limitation...".

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Ishaan Sheikh

Yes, atleast for few years. Cannot say I will settle there for life.
I want to try how it feels like living alone in a different city/country. I have heard mix reviews from people about living alone in a new city. But i want to try it personally. Either way I'll learn something.

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Matt Jennings

I live in the Seattle area (in Washington State) and won't relocate for now, even though the Seattle area is extremely expensive. I have family and friends here and like many of the Washington State laws.

For example USA citizens in Washington State vote by mail as the default and most or all workers in the state can get up to 12 weeks of full or partial salary though the Paid Family and Medical Leave law.

In some states, like Georgia where Atlanta is located, people have had wait in line for over 5 hours to vote.

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Ajith R

I want to settle in Antarctica ❄️. But I need some things

  1. Food ❄️
  2. Water 💧 3.StarLink 📡
  3. Pc 🖥️
  4. Girlfriend 👩🏼
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Prabhat Singh

Relocation: of course, yes
Reason:

  1. Area of interest
  2. Growth Opportunities
  3. Cost of living
  4. Compensation
  5. City infrastructure, be it, healthcare, transport etc.
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Wj

Ain't that unfortunate if you need relocation when it is a tech job (a software one, of course). Work From Home, anyone?