In 2022, we decided to move from Greater Boston area of the US to the country of Georgia. Why Georgia, and what else did we consider? In addition to Georgia we considered: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Switzerland. Each of those countries presented its set of positives and negatives. Due to Covid challenges, Australia, New Zealand and Canada went off the list. Switzerland looked attractive: almost everyone speaks English and it is well-developed. Biggest challenge there would be adopting to local culture and local work \u2013 everything is very expensive, I would need a work visa to work there, and working remotely for US clients would not bring sufficient income to cover very high cost of living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Georgia is a developing country, a lot of modern services and amenities are not available or considerably behind western countries, especially outside of capital city of Tbilisi and other large cities. Instead, it can offer authenticity, deep and unique historical culture that is rooted in thousands of years of history, people are nice and welcoming, we love Georgian music and art, and local food offers diverse assortment of dishes for every taste (including a lot of vegetarian dishes). Nature offers a great variety beautiful views and outdoor activities for a country of this size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the work perspective, a challenge is a lack of local opportunities in IT area where I work \u2013 it is certainly growing, and I hope to contribute to that, but there is not a lot of local advanced IT roles. It seems majority of IT community in Georgia is working for foreign customers, mostly located in EU and US. Since I am a US citizen, working for US customers makes most sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Georgia has very favorable visa policy: citizens of almost 100 countries can enter, live and work from there with no visa required. For those who plan to stay longer, getting local residency is not very difficult and multiple methods are available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2022, we decided to move from Greater Boston area of the US to the country of Georgia. Why Georgia, and what else did we consider? In addition to Georgia we considered: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Switzerland. Each of those countries presented its set of positives and negatives. Due to Covid challenges, Australia, New…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-georgia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t