3 ms·

Personally, I think that's a great thing to do, especially when your line of work uses a computer. Even if you're not working, you can still build your skills

Personally, I think that's a great thing to do, especially when your line of work uses a computer. Even if you're not working, you can still build your skills (hacking on open source, iPhone apps, web pages, whatever) while living almost anywhere. Enjoy life, avoid the stress, it's always worth it. The main risks I can see are that it may be harder to connect with people in your industry, and you may find few jobs willing to let you work remotely (this tends to be available only to very experienced people, e.g. CTO can live in the mountains if he wants, and the company says OK). Then again, if you're trying to avoid 9-5, not even having a job for a few months is still good stress relief.

cageface 16y ago
I've been trying to get an idea of how hard it would be to make a living entirely through remote contract work. I see a lot of job postings along these lines but I have no idea how well they pay or how competitive the contracts are. I've been salaried for 10 years now so I have no first-hand experience. On the flip side though, I'm beginning to see the opportunity costs of a 9-5. It's hard to find the energy to spend another 3 hours hacking on my own ideas after working in front of a computer all day and the company I work for puts a lot of roadblocks in front of open-sourcing any of my work so I'm increasingly cut off from the open-source community and all the job networking that comes with it. My ideal would be to find a way to spend no more than 6 months of the year working to pay the bills and to have the other 6 months free to work on my own ideas. I'd happily trade a lot of material comforts for the freedom and time to follow my own muse.