Anonymous User asked:

Hi! Apropos of your MBTA post, one thing I've been curious about is that the Customer Technology Department seems to allow remote work except for in a handful of states. I assume there's a legal reason for that - just wondering if you had any idea?

(working on transit seems like it would be fun and way better for society than anything else I've done as a software developer but it's hard to tear myself away from California)

(also the app looks nice! looking forward to a public release)

the contractors in the department are hired under a Massachusetts-wide contract that defines things like which contracting agencies are approved and how much overhead they’re allowed to charge. i think the situation is that none of them are set up to hire people in California and the other states have state-level taxes that would take the overhead beyond the limit, but i may be remembering it wrong.

honestly, even if it was possible, the time zone differential might be rough - occasionally I’ll miss something because it’s been reasonably scheduled at 10AM ET but that’s 8AM MT, and you’d still run into that at 11AM ET working from PT.

you’ve probably already done this, but if you haven’t, i’d suggest checking to see if your local transit agency is hiring, or somewhere in your local government. working in the public sector in general can be really rewarding.


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