Lori
04-07-2004, 10:55 AM
Thanks to technology, more American white-collar workers can engage in what we'll call Geographic Arbitrage (GeoArb). Let me explain. If you move to a small city like Bismarck or Biloxi and then insert yourself into the local salary structure, you really haven't gained much. You'll have lowered your cost of living, true, but more than likely your paycheck will also shrink.
But what if you could enjoy the best of both worlds — live in a small town and get paid like you're in a big city?
That's precisely what Christian Renaud, a Cisco Systems manager, chose to do. Renaud's job at the Silicon Valley telecommunications giant is to find new, offbeat markets for Cisco technology. Wireless routers for delivery trucks came out of his 30-person group.
But Renaud doesn't live or work in Silicon Valley. Nor does he live or work anywhere near Cisco's East Coast technology development center in Raleigh, N.C. No, Renaud rises in the morning and pads across the carpet to his home office in Johnston, Iowa, ten miles northwest of Des Moines.
As Renaud explains: "My wife, Janeen, and I met at Cisco. We lived in an 800-square-foot condominium in Palo Alto, which was fine while we were childless. But in 2001 we had a baby girl, and Janeen didn't want to go back to work. Suddenly our 800-square-foot condo seemed like a closet."
Read more... (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4669455/)
But what if you could enjoy the best of both worlds — live in a small town and get paid like you're in a big city?
That's precisely what Christian Renaud, a Cisco Systems manager, chose to do. Renaud's job at the Silicon Valley telecommunications giant is to find new, offbeat markets for Cisco technology. Wireless routers for delivery trucks came out of his 30-person group.
But Renaud doesn't live or work in Silicon Valley. Nor does he live or work anywhere near Cisco's East Coast technology development center in Raleigh, N.C. No, Renaud rises in the morning and pads across the carpet to his home office in Johnston, Iowa, ten miles northwest of Des Moines.
As Renaud explains: "My wife, Janeen, and I met at Cisco. We lived in an 800-square-foot condominium in Palo Alto, which was fine while we were childless. But in 2001 we had a baby girl, and Janeen didn't want to go back to work. Suddenly our 800-square-foot condo seemed like a closet."
Read more... (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4669455/)