Dear ACFUG members: First, I'm posting this to discussion because this is not yet a job offering but something I want to discuss and get a feel for.
It's been a while since I've used this list so I hope it reaches all of you. It's been even longer since I lived in Atlanta. Six years ago I relocated from Atlanta to the very famous small surf and beach town in Costa Rica known as Tamarindo. This is the same town as seen in one of the most famous surf movies of all time Endless Summer (Endless Summer II actually). I've been working remotely from this amazing place for 6 years now and I love it so much and it has taught me many new things about life. For starters I was always a surfer. I grew up surfing in Florida so relocating to Costa Rica was much like getting back to my roots and surf life. I also learned how to speak Spanish and live simple and greatly reduced my cost of living and need to acquire assets I don't really need or use (fancy cars, fancy cloths, fancy lifestyle) and refocused my life on the things that matter all while maintaining my web developer career largely based on my ColdFusion and SQL Server knowledge. Free time, family, friends, the beach, surfing community, etc are all things that mean the world to me. So about now you're asking yourself: Why is this guy emailing acfug about this? Well you see, life has just presented a new opportunity to me and several people who I will hire on a contract basis. In the past three years I have developed solutions for a particular client that sells medical information subscriptions and the data is stored in SQL Server and delivered through ColdFusion apps (and some .NET ugg!). The projects were very successful and I now have a budget to actually open a new office and hire a small devoted team of 3 to 5 people. The team would be comprised of a Project Manager (me), a graphic and layout designer, an interface coding guru (html5, css4, jQuery, etc), and one or two application developers (CF, SQL, jQuery, AJAX). The best part is that the office will be in Downtown Tamarindo, Costa Rica in one of the best buildings in town and centrally located to everything. This is on the Northern Pacific Side with amazing nature, beaches, culture, surfing waves, ocean fishing, volcanoes, rock climbing, white water rafting, monkeys, iguanas, and all kinds of other things that make it such an amazing place. Tamarindo also has an amazing community full of culture, restaurants, night clubs, and tour companies all centered in a town where you don't need a car (walk or bike will do). So I thought I would start this adventure today by putting this little feeler email out and ask the acfug community members about how you would feel about taking a 1 year contract position (option to renew would be possible if we have successful launches) which may pay a little less but provide an amazing experience in an amazing place. For example, I would be looking for several top notch developers but I would only be able to pay a basic salary of around 35K with a little relocation help and I realize that is not great pay for a senior developer. However the tradeoff is in the experience of getting to live and work in Costa Rica. There are no special visa requirements because we will not be doing business in Costa Rica. The work we will do are all for a US based client so we'd pretty much be working from a private office with a work hard and play hard philosophy. The work schedule may very well be based around the local Tide Charts and surf reports :-) and surfing would be highly encouraged. How would you feel about this situation? If there's nothing tying you down, would ya do it? Yes, No, Maybe? Any thought? Be sure to Google "Tamarindo Costa Rica" and check out some sites and photos of this beautiful place. Thanks for listening! And as we say in CR: Pura Vida, -- Dusty Hale Email: [email protected] Skype (World Wide): dustyhale CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This transmission and any accompanying information are intended exclusively for the addressee. Information may be proprietary, privileged, and confidential or otherwise legally exempt from disclosure. The authorized recipient of this information is prohibited from disclosing this information to any other unauthorized party and is required to maintain the privacy/security of the information. If you are not the addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this message or any part of it. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender immediately and, unless instructed otherwise by sender, destroy or delete the message and accompanying information completely from all systems and within standards required by State or Federal law.
