Even though the Denver metro has gone up the last couple years, it's still a bargain if you're a software dev in terms of cost vs. what you get vs. what you'll make.

You can buy a nice, < 15 year old single family home in the burbs for $250k. That same house would be 3x - 4x that in any of the coastal "tech cities".
(That goes up the closer to the foothills/mountains you go. Stay east of I-25 and it's completely true, west of I-25 and you're going toward the $350k range).

A Sr. Engineer is going to start at about $130k, a mid-level probably just north of $100k. Unless you go to work for one of the big guys (Google, Oracle, HP, Twitter, etc) in which case it's actually more.

The city, area, and people are wonderful. Denver is *like* a big city, but it's really not at all - the entire metro area has maybe 1.5m people (I think Denver proper is at about 700k). Great music scene, great restaurants, museums, etc, etc. And if you're into the outdoors at all, this is the place to be.

As a transplant from Washington D.C. (been here 8 years) I can tell you you'd have a very hard time dragging me away.

Basically, you'll get paid almost as much as you would on the coasts, and your cost of living is half. No, it's not as cheap as but it's still a great bargain for a real metro IMHO.

The companies worth working for have engineers do the interviewing and hiring. HR schedules things and does the paperwork.

Indeed we are.

http://bashojobs.theresumator.com/

We make Riak :)

You're correct that we didn't evolve with digital communication. We also didn't evolve with telephones, but everyone seems to have figured those out.

The company for which I work is 100% remote when it comes to pretty much everything but C-level, and that's working pretty well for us (We just opened new business offices in Tokyo and London). I work with people in ... 7 timezones? Something like that anyway. The nearest physical office to my home is ~ 1800 miles away.

The trick is you have to hire people capable of working that way. As you say, we didn't evolve with digital communication, but humans have a remarkable ability to learn new things (well, at least some of them). Can you have that guy that needs constant micro-management and someone asking "What did you do today, Bob?" ? No, you can't (although I would make the argument that you really don't want him in an office, either). You also can't have the typical bad mid-level manager that thinks someone sitting in a chair within close physical proximity to them from hour X to hour Y = productive. Or anyone who thinks talking to someone face to face is more effective or productive than the myriad of ways to communicate digitally. I often find great humor in the irony of people building software that allows people from all over the world to communicate and interact with each other ... need to be in one physical location to do so.

In short? Best. Job. Ever. I've always found that I was more productive outside an office due to the constant interrupts and constant stream of often useless "facetime" meetings. Having a job where I do that all the time is simply awesome and I have gotten more honest, real work done in the last year working here than probably any time elsewhere (while it's hard to quantify that when talking about software engineering there is a sense of getting things done and doing so effectively).

I will say, however, that having *everyone* remote is far different than having most people in an office and a couple people remote. This is where you run into the problem of them "not being involved". While not impossible to manage and again the right people make this work, it is more difficult for most people because it's simply that "out of sight, out of mind" problem when it comes to the remote workers. In general you also don't have an environment and tools in place to facilitate those remote people being included because it's not your normal workflow.

Not to mention that often you're charged a restocking fee by your distributor and it counts against your account purchase totals (which grant you perks such as line discounts, better rates overall, etc).

When I was running my business our main distributor would allow a 6 month restock, but with a 15% fee. We'd simply put inventory that wasn't moving that we would have returned on "clearance" at (or up to the 15% below) cost to get rid of it. It was only things that we literally thought we'd never get rid of that we'd return.

You are absolutely correct.

The difference, of course, is that you would need physical access to the keyfob in my pocket. Even if you managed that feat without me noticing, you'd destroy it in the process of extracting the information you need thus alerting me that something was amiss.

Define "people".

Individual investors were chumps from the start (pretty much every analyst had said not to buy it) and allowed the financial institutions to make a nice 20% profit in a few minutes, selling their shares @ $42 - $45 when it opened.

If you're a financial institution ... it's a long term investment that you believe will pan out. They thought $38 was the correct valuation and are in it for the long haul.

How do you think K-12 gets funded? ::Looks at property tax bill:: ::Looks around and notices a distinct lack of progeny::

I pay for for my neighbor's kids. That's how it works. Because it's *better for our country and society* that they get an education.

Exactly.

I also just bought a U3011. It's worth *every frigging penny*, because I sit in front of it at least 8 hours a day (telecommute gig). I have a 6 year old 22" 1680x1050 rotated to portrait next to it.

The average joe user? $180 = TN 16:9 1920x1080.

You'd be amazed at what good gear and being a good rider (e.g. not a squid) can do for you.

I've been riding for over 20 years. I generally put ~ 10k miles a year on my bikes (combined).

Ducati 1098.
0-60mph in 2.9 sec.
35 - 40mpg while being ham-fisted on the throttle.

My other bike is a Triumph Thruxton and it gets 50mpg.

I ride ~ 7 months out of the year here in CO.

VA has had this for over 20 years -

http://arlingtondrafthouse.com/ (celebrating 25th anniversary)

I always loved going there when I lived in the area.

Not to be pedantic (ok, I am) but one per day was never mentioned.

I watch people at work make multiples of such purchases daily ($4 coffees, $2 cinnamon buns, etc) then complain that they don't have money to buy things ... like a new(er) car.

$10/day buys you a Versa on a 6 year loan at a low interest rate with a minimal down payment.

I worked as an engineer at a company the professed to be "agile" (the quotes are because really, not so much). They started judging performance by "cards closed per week".

You'd be amazed at the number of cards that will be created and closed under those conditions. Our productivity *soared* (according the graph that showed productivity as a measurement of cards closed per week ... ).