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comment by romeostevensit · 2024-05-03T02:08:51.170Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Finding a loan to move to somewhere with jobs is probably your best bet. This may devolve to begging amongst any social circles as well, which is a big pride hit. Many probably won't believe you will wind up with the means to pay it back. Minimizing the cost of the move by getting rid of non essential belongings. It is probably somewhat easier these days to line up a far away job via zoom interviewing. Quantity over quality.

One thing that I think is non-obvious: if you lay out the case for the loan in detail, that demonstrates intelligence and conscientiousness and will increase people's sense that you are doing something useful and thus willingness to lend. Basically, treat it as a business case, but the business happens to just be getting you and your partner employed. Show past cash flow, expected future cash flow given salaries of the sorts of places you are applying to, estimates of how many jobs you can reasonably apply to, how much of a monthly payment you could pay back, etc. Use chatgpt for help with outlining this.

comment by Brendan Long (korin43) · 2024-05-02T19:03:13.002Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm not sure if you have the setup for this, but call centers tend to pay reasonably well, and some are online now and don't care where you work from.

You could try using your partner's connections to get a signing bonus or early-payment of his first few paychecks, then use that to cover moving.

It might be worth getting him to where the work is with a cheap one-way flight and the cheapest hotel you can find (or stay with friends if possible), then follow later when you have enough saved for moving. Or do something similar in Arizona (find a job that's too far to drive and stay in the cheapest motel you can find nearby until you've saved enough to move).

Some jobs provide transportation, room, and board, like cruise companies. If you can get one of those jobs, they'll get you where you need to be and provide somewhere to live during the season. This includes both people on the ships and some people on land (i.e. they don't expect employees to live year-round in Skagway, AK).

comment by DaemonicSigil · 2024-05-07T03:15:01.829Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Other people have mentioned sites like Mechanical Turk. Just to add another thing in the same category, apparently now people will pay you for helping train language models:

https://www.dataannotation.tech/faq?

Haven't tried it yet myself, but a roommate of mine has and he seems to have had a good experience. He's mentioned that sometimes people find it hard to get assigned work by their algorithm, though. I did a quick search to see what their reputation was, and it seemed pretty okay:

Replies from: Tigerlily
comment by Tigerlily · 2024-05-08T20:33:50.688Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks, I have done DataAnnotation already a few months back. It's true that it's difficult to get assignments there after you finish the first one or two. They supposedly have tons of work for people who specialize in certain tech roles, but that obviously won't apply to most people. There is also virtually no way to contact anyone who works at DataAnnotation if you have questions. But I have made a few dollars there.

comment by Viliam · 2024-05-03T11:22:14.859Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Just some random thoughts:

  • are the some kind of summer seasonal jobs? perhaps you could try looking for those
  • find opportunities to meet local people, then ask them if they know about a job
  • is there anything you could make at home and try to sell?