A City to Call Home

In a Remote World, Young Professionals are Choosing Manchester

Poll a cross section of Silicon Valley workers and you may find a distinct Granite State feel to the workforce — primarily because New Hampshirebased talent is helping fuel the growth of companies several time zones away. Thanks to videoconferencing, the widespread adoption of a decentralized workforce and talent with a desire for a great place to live, recreate and raise a family, a number of Greater Manchester young professionals are choosing to live here and work elsewhere.

“There’s a huge appeal to living in an area with a great school system and a growing community,” says Bedford resident Barry Baines. “The amenities available because we’re in New Hampshire appeal to us because I’m from Virginia Beach, so I love the beach, and (my wife and I) both love skiing and snowboarding, so it’s great being here for those seasonal activities.”

Baines is a strategic account director for Salesforce — a San Francisco-based customer relationship management platform provider. It’s a role he fills daily from his home just outside of Manchester, which is ideal for someone who can work from home but also has to be available to clients in other cities.

“From my perspective, this is a great location,” Baines says. “I live here, but I work out of New York City. It’s great being close to MHT (Manchester- Boston Regional Airport) or Logan, if necessary, so it’s a great spot in terms of convenience and being able to get where I need to be.”

Baines says a daily 6 a.m. shuttle gets him from Manchester to the Big Apple (and back again) more quickly than if he lived closer to the city.

“I can wake up at 5 a.m., be at the airport by 5:40 a.m., and be in my New York office by 7 a.m.,” he says. “There’s a return flight every night at 10 p.m., which means I can be in my bed by 11:30 p.m., so if I needed to take a day trip, I can do that.”

When the time did arrive to switch to a fully remote workplace, however, Baines was ready.

“The future is the present,” Baines says. “It has to be accepted. Being digital and virtual is now.”

Matt Toy, director of account management for Fastly, a San Francisco-based cloud computing service provider found Greater Manchester to be the perfect place to settle and raise a family, while also having access to innovative tech leaders.

“I had grown up in New London, New Hampshire and when I graduated from New England College in Henniker, I thought it might be time to get out of small-town New Hampshire,” Toy says. “I went to Boston for a few years, but before long my then-fiancee/now-wife and I looked into Amherst, where she grew up.”

As they looked for the perfect location to put down roots, the Toys’ path took them to a few locations, all in New Hampshire, before settling in Amherst, where he and his wife raised a family and he built his career.

“We’ve been here for 17 years,” he says. “The proximity from Bedford to Dyn (his previous job) was great — just one town over. It was an easy drive, and we had all the benefits of living in the southern part of the state.”

York IE’s Joe Raczka, Kyle York and Adam Coughlin.

Every morning Toy gets ready for work by making the commute from the kitchen to his home office. He describes Fastly as “a cousin company” of his former employer, and estimates that roughly 25 of his former Dyn colleagues work for Fastly in a similar capacity.

“There was a conversation between myself and a couple of colleagues about how we have a disproportionate number of people from the Manchester area who work with Fastly,” he says. “We were getting the ball rolling on potential office space here, but COVID-19 halted that.”

The move to fully remote came abruptly for Toy. A flight to London on Feb. 28 was grounded due to engine trouble. While waiting for maintenance, Toy received a message: “All travel has been grounded, go home.” He’s been home ever since. “As a company, we’ve been remotefriendly for quite a while,” he says. “The

move, while disruptive to many, we already knew what the blueprint looked like from an IT and human resources perspective. We were able to pivot pretty quickly.”

While a decentralized workforce has been more common in recent years, the coronavirus forced many employers and workers to adapt sooner than they had anticipated.

“I think Covid is an accelerator, but it’s definitely a trend we’ve seen happening over the years in general,” says Adam Coughlin, managing partner at Manchester-based York IE. “And especially in the tech sector, where I spend most of my time, the access and cultural awareness of remote working is something people have been doing.”

And while it has been widely accepted since most people began working remotely, it wasn’t always that way. When he was starting York IE, CEO and Managing Partner Kyle York was told by a West Coast entrepreneur that if he didn’t move to Silicon Valley, he wouldn’t succeed. And now?

Below: Amherst’s Matt Toy, director of account management for Fastly.

“I tend to start a lot of my phone calls with ‘How you like me now?’” York says, laughing. “Seriously though, I make jokes about it with a lot of the folks we collaborate with in major cities — Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London — and it’s funny because when I talk to these people, they’re not in those places.”

“It’s been a very large topic of conversation because so many folks that would’ve challenged that six months ago aren’t even in those places now. They’re in vacation homes or visiting relatives or renting long-term housing and learning that their productivity isn’t as harmed as they thought it would be. In some instances, they’re more productive.”

Ashley Oberg, director of business administration at York IE, says the company was always set up to work remotely, making the recent shift easier.

“Throughout my career with Kyle (York), he has said since day one that he doesn’t care where we’re working, as long as he can get in touch with us,” Oberg says.

While that is the case, Oberg has had a front-row seat as businesses not set up for remote access work to adapt. In addition to her work at York IE, Oberg is the owner of Barre Life NH, which offers, ideally, an in-person experience. The business is based in an Elm Street studio above Bonfire Restaurant and Country Bar, and it’s there Oberg teaches the low impact, ballet-inspired workouts based around small, repetitive movements using yoga and Pilates moves, among other techniques.

Barre Life NH Owner Ashley Oberg has put together a library of more than 165 pre-recorded exercise classes for clients who access her Elm Street studio remotely from around the country.

“It’s been quite the learning experience,” Oberg says. “One of my instructors was pregnant, and she was asking me if we could talk about going remote so she could still teach. I met with her a couple of times and we figured out Zoom and the technology, and we were prepared to launch in April.”

The pandemic, however, had other plans, causing a statewide shutdown in March.

“We were more prepared than most places, but then of course we had to train the rest of the staff via text and email,” Oberg says. “We faced our challenges, but the clients were super understanding as the whole world went through it at the same time.”

Barre Life NH has a library of 165 recorded classes, available 24/7, and has allowed clients from as far away as New York and Florida to take advantage of the workouts.

“It forced us into uncomfortable things we wanted to do, but weren’t necessarily prepared,” she says. “It was scary, but I’m glad we did it.”

Throughout the effort, Oberg didn’t consider relocating her business.

“I’m a native,” she says. “I was born and brought up here. I love that all my family and friends are here. I love the downtown business community, the weather, the seasons, being close to everything. I feel very connected to Manchester.”

Coughlin says that historically, people would relocate to cities where work was available. Now, it’s the opposite — people can choose where they want to live based on quality-of-life issues and where they may want to put down roots — and then take advantage of a remote work arrangement.

“Places like New Hampshire will always be places people choose to live,” he says. “Then you can find employment within the state or outside of it. People are finding that quality of life is just as important.”

Despite opportunities elsewhere, York, Coughlin and a third founding partner,

Joe Raczka, found themselves back in their hometown after some time away. All three grew up in Greater Manchester, moved away to college, started careers in other places, but found themselves drawn back to their hometown. When it came time to start York IE, there was no doubt where it would be based.

“You have two sides of the coin,” York says. “You have the obvious New Hampshire advantages as they relate to housing and quality of life and the diversity and versatility of our environment that we talk about all the time — a small city with access to Boston, the mountain, the lakes and the ocean. People want to live in a place with clean air and more space.

“On the business side, what an opportunity. There’s always talk about how the best innovation comes from economic downturns. It’s a catalyst for people to bet on themselves, to accelerate ideas and business opportunities. Greater Manchester and southern New Hampshire is an ideal area because we’ve got some of these awesome buildings, a walkable downtown, access to a growing talent pool that’s discovering working remotely successfully here. And all of them crave working for a great company — here. I think those things, the remote side mixed with the accessibility and balance of this place are a big catalyst for the city and state going forward.”