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Great article that really highlights the negative aspects of Digital Nomadism. I work with some folks that do this, and when we talk about it, they can't unders

Great article that really highlights the negative aspects of Digital Nomadism. I work with some folks that do this, and when we talk about it, they can't understand why I would want to just stay in my medium-sized city and travel a few times a year. Like, why wouldn't you want to spend 6 months a year in Thailand? It's such a no-brainer! And for me, it's just sort of mind-boggling that you'd jet set around the world. We own a home. We have friends and family. We have a great dog and probably kids in the future. We've built something here that we like. Yes, I know that the weather is great/everything is cheap/people are nice in City, Country, but the lifestyle just doesn't appeal to me. I like being at home. ---- One thing I'll say though is that the loneliness can extend to the non-Nomad remote worker as well, though. Not that long ago, I worked at a startup in my city where I came into the office every day. I really liked it, I just wanted to do something different. And now I miss the camaraderie, going out to lunch with work buddies, happy hours, and just getting in a physical room and talking through tough problems. Sorry, a few Google hangouts a week does not replace that. Are all those things mentioned above worth sacrificing for the additional flexibility, coming and going when I please, waking up when I want, working on the things I want to work on? I don't know. Some days it feels like it is, some days not so much.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
I've worked for a fully remote startup, and you've nailed all the points. Remote can't replace local community (being a digital nomad sucks once the novelty has worn off, and is impossible to do with a family unless you own your own business) and in-person interactions at work (coffee and lunch with coworkers). I prefer to be at a job that had an office, but still allows me to work remote most of the month. I don't anticipate going back to a full remote org unless it was just myself doing consulting (because fully remote does not always equal schedule flexibility).
- vinbreau 8y ago
  I've been remote for almost 8 years now. I love it and dread ever having to go back into an office. Faking productivity for show when the workload is low was the worst feeling, as if I was wasting my time and life. Plus I have social anxiety and the pressure to 'fit in' was overwhelming. Now I work from home where my wife and toddler are. Being home to educate her is worth more than just about anything. I don't have to drive 2 hours every day just to be an ass in a seat. Two hours where all I do is sit in a car and wish to be home. My productivity has remained high. I take on additional duties happily. I can chat with friends online if lonely. For me there are no cons to working remote. If I did go into an office I would be the only person from my division there, my next closest team mate is a state away, which would make socializing even more awkward for me. My goal is to never have to go into an office ever again.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    To each their own. I found that working remotely pigeonholes you into your role; its much harder to network in a remote org, to find other opportunities within the org when you're ready to explore a new role. My current org has offices around the world; I can work from any of them, or from home. I can apply for other internal roles, and keep my benefits and salary while changing up the work I'm working on. Working from home exclusively does not appeal to me. I also don't want to have superficial conversations with coworkers in other parts of the world on a video chat client; that has no value for anyone. I would love to grab a pint with you though and chat about who you are as a person outside of work. Otherwise, you're just a resource I need to interact with to get my job done. Luckily, the job market is large enough that everyone can have the sort of job they desire (fully remote, mostly remote, full time in office).
    - chrisan 8y ago
      I agree with vinbreau. I've been 100% remote for about 10 years now and echo his comments. > I also don't want to have superficial conversations with coworkers I would argue this is a problem with the relationship between you and your coworkers and/or the size of your company and nothing to do with the means by which you communicate. Some of these people also may just not be your "kind" of person you like. In addition to my remote work mates I have also found remote gaming buddies. Both workers and gamers alike I have found deep relationships with. I know all about their kids, pets, activities, deaths, illnesses, etc. Comparing these faceless friends to friends I regularly see in my area are the same. In some cases the faceless people are deeper because you can chat whenever. IRL friends you have to deal with families and work schedules and a month may go by before we can meetup to grab a drink or movie together, especially when they start having kids. I would bet if you can't find much to talk about remotely you wouldn't find anything more to talk about in person besides the weather and how the coffee tastes today. Just because a person is next to me doesn't mean I like him or will have a deep relationship with him/her. I've sat in an office before, 5 years with a team. Some people just aren't compatible. When I left, I no longer communicated with them, the ones I did develop a relationship with I still talk to to this day.
caust1c 8y ago
> they can't understand why I would want to just stay in my medium-sized city and travel a few times a year. I would except I want to travel while keeping my carbon footprint minimal.
da02 8y ago
What type of work do your nomad friends do? Freelance design? Copywriting? Programming?
- d357r0y3r 8y ago
  Mostly marketing/copywriting types and designers. Some programmers, although that seems to be rarer - could have something to do with what personalities are drawn to these professions.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    > marketing Ah, yes, that would indeed explain. And it certainly agrees with the accounts I've heard about my employer's Marketing department's abject stupidity.
    - da02 8y ago
      Are you saying the stupidity comes from using remote workers? What are some anecdotes you've heard recently?
      - mmirate 8y ago
        Aside from the usual "we promised the customer we can do X; whaddaya mean you need 8 months to make it happen!?" ... here's one of the anecdotes: * * * The company makes numerous products. Some people in one of our other locations made a new product, and it was being demonstrated at some kind of trade show. So Marketing has T-shirts made for the show, with designs that look like a Beetles album cover, and words to the effect of "Meet the Developers of new product". Except, of the four or five faces on the shirt's design, only two belong to people who actually worked on that product. Another one or two are developers from a different team; and another one is one of the QAs on my team. This particular QA, I might add, has a ... let's say it's an unprofessional-looking face and leave it at that. * * * Conclusion: our Marketing department is stupid, therefore I'm not surprised that other Marketing people are stupid enough to buy into the glamour of digital nomadry.
neokantian 8y ago
You can be part of a community anywhere in the world. I have lots of equally remotely working kick-abouts here.
- philipov 8y ago
  Maybe you can, but not everyone can.
  - murukesh_s 8y ago
    Yea, work buddies can't be replaced by networking.. unless you are sort of born for that (networking)
- eloisant 8y ago
  This is not about living in your birth country vs living in a more "exotic" country, but about nomad vs sedentary.
- acchow 8y ago
  It's a lot harder to be part of a community when you move countries/cities every 3 weeks.
- puranjay 8y ago
  That's the problem, isn't it? With office colleagues, you don't have to go out of your way to find people. They're right there, they're obligated to be nice to you, and you're stuck with them for hours every day. That's just the basic recipe for building relationships With nomad work, the entire impetus falls on you to find a community and build connections. Easy for extroverts perhaps but not so easy for the rest of us
  - brazzledazzle 8y ago
    Depending on the people it's also the recipe for losing your mind slowly over time.
poisonarena 8y ago
this post makes me think you might never have had a chance to visit City, Country. Maybe because you were working towards building where you are. When I was growing up I moved every year of my life because my single mother was always changing jobs, boyfriends, husbands, etc.. It sort of rubbed off on me and now I get depressed if I stay in the same place more than 6 months. I didn't become a remote worker to visit City, Country. I was forced to become a remote worker because of my lifestyle that I can't seem to escape. I know there has to be a lot of others like this
- AYBABTME 8y ago
  Same, single mother child. My mom moved a lot when we were young because she had to start from nothing and build a career on fast-forward when she end up with my brother and I. So she took every opportunity she could and we end up moving every 6 to 12 months. Now as an adult, I grew up so accustomed to change that I feel lazy when I stay in a spot for too long. I think it's a a blessing and a curse at the same time. A blessing because "thriving in change" is a great quality to have. Seeking change also makes my life a bit difficult to reconcile with most other people. As an adult, I took the whole "change" thing pretty far. Went full on digital nomad, moving somewhere new every 2 weeks... or more like every few days. Bought a sailboat and I'm now prepping it to be a work platform. Sailboat is supposed to help me deal with "a need a change of scenery" while providing me with a place that I can feel home and comfy. It's tiring to live in your luggages and having to pack all the time.
- envoked 8y ago
  I had a similar disposition but my desires recently changed. My family moved to the US when I was ten and growing up I lacked a sense of permanence/place and carried the idea that freedom (not being tied down to a location, or a set of traditions) was paramount. I moved often, spent years working at a company aspiring to "belong anywhere" which culminated in me having the freedom to maintain the lifestyle more or less indefinitely. My plan was to continue traveling overland (with an expedition vehicle) for the foreseeable future. Then a year ago, I got this desire to experience a place through all its seasons, really get to know a community, and be concerned with a longer time horizon. I bought a house (which I always viewed as an assault on my freedom) and some land in a 2000 person town. I'm volunteering for political campaigns and planning to become a volunteer fire fighter. It's a simple lesson but desires change. It's great to have the ability/privilege to embrace those changes.
acchow 8y ago
People glorify traveling way, way too much. It's even trickled down into actual work. New grads from college somehow think management consulting's traveling every week is a fancy perk. What?
- puranjay 8y ago
  Consulting companies here sell traveling as a perk. And the new grads lap it up. Personally, flying and airports are just miserable. Traveling is nice but too much of a hassle to do more than once a year.
- GVIrish 8y ago
  Different people enjoy different things. For some people, traveling is fulfilling and exhilarating. For other people being in unfamiliar settings with unfamiliar culture and language is much less fun. And even within that, some people can enjoy travel up to a certain point. Might be fun to travel for work once a month, but not for 3 out of 4 weeks. I traveling for my first job where I was gone 60-80% of the time and it was fun, but after a year it got old.
  - acchow 8y ago
    Yes, different people enjoy different things. I'm not claiming that nobody enjoys weekly work travel. I'm claiming that it's overly glorified - something like 80% of people will say "oh you're so lucky you get to do that!" when in reality only a fraction of them would enjoy it and most of them would hate it.
  - emit_time 8y ago
    As someone who plays an instrument, and would like to spend a decent amount of time practicing. This is possibly a thing that is not very possible, and very cumbersome with long term travel. Especially if you would like to practice multiple instruments.
  - redisman 8y ago
    I used to love travel but too much work travel killed my passion for it in all forms. Now I dread flying anywhere and staying even in suites(with points) in hotels is just meh. I'd rather be home with my dog and wife and familiar stuff.
avip 8y ago
You can enjoy home, family and friends, AND work remotely. My "nomadism" allowed me, for example, to take my kids to school in the morning, or likewise meet them @home when they're back.
- jonny_eh 8y ago
  Nomad != remote.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Why does remote work need to be conflated with "digital nomadism"? I have worked remotely almost my entire work life (I loathed working in an office each time I went back), but I've never done the digital nomad thing. It's never appealed to me, nor is it very cost effective unless you want to throw all of your stuff into storage while you travel. I am still perplexed at how companies push offices as some kind of hyper-collaborative space and yet every time I visit those offices, most people have noise-cancelling headphones on because the ambient noise is insanely distracting. Many of the negatives pointed out in this article are present in jobs where you go into a physical office. Just like how you can know two married people that exist in the same physical space and are terribly lonely and barely know each other anymore. Or what about jobs where you go into an office with terrible coworkers that you cannot escape, because you are required to be at the office? Funny enough, I had to leave a co-working space for the exact same reason -- a single person that was beyond annoying and would not be quiet. Every time I get into my car during rush hour, I remember why I work from home. I just talked to a recruiter recently and they were OK with remote, but they required that I go to stand-ups, every Monday, which would be a round-trip two hour commute, mostly sitting in stop-and-go traffic. And that would be time I would not be getting paid for.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bitreality 8y ago
  "Digital Nomadism" is a pretty vague term, most people stop the "nomadic" part of it within a year or two. The need for stability is a realization that everyone must discover themselves. Then the label turns from "Digital Nomad" to "Location Independent". It's great to be able to choose where you live, what your routine will be, and who you surround yourself with. As a remote worker, you are in charge of all these things which would normally be decided by your company. You'd live near the office, your routine would be determined by your work hours, and you'd be surrounded by your colleagues at the office. All pre-determined. However, sometimes when we have so much choice, and we must make these choices ourselves, we can get a bit lost. Without concrete requirements, it's easy to get yourself into the wrong routines and forget to properly plan out what you want to do each day, where you want to go, and who you want to see. It's easy to spend a few days in a row without even leaving your house or apartment. You can end up ordering all your food from delivery apps and doing your shopping online. So it takes a conscious effort to remain happy. It's really a day to day endeavor. You cannot just put in a bunch of effort for a few days in a row and then just veg out for the rest of the week. The brain needs to be constantly stimulated by changing environments and real face to face social engagement.
taurath 8y ago
> I work with some folks that do this, and when we talk about it, they can't understand why I would want to just stay in my medium-sized city and travel a few times a year. I think the biggest problem is that if you DON'T want that, then society really isn't set up to allow you do that at all. Society is entirely set up for you to stay in one place, and begrudgingly gives you a few weeks vacation to see somewhere else. Even in tech, if you want to have a good chance of making industry median money you either need to be very specialized or live in one area. At the same time, even when the butts are in seats, half of meetings involve 2 or 3 different locations anyway. Of course, what you value and want to get out of life may be very different than the average nomad.
bamboozled 8y ago
What I don't like is the way people are conflating work and travel. Sometimes people tell me they go down the beach or a nice park to code etc, I just couldn't think of anything worse. One thing I love about traveling is when I set aside time to "focus on traveling", do I really want to be traveling through some beautiful place while staring at my devices and responding to email? Nope. I have worked full-time remote, from a well setup home office. That was fine.
- redisman 8y ago
  Coding on the beach or in a park? This can't be for a very serious programming task. I've tried it a few times and the glare + lack of ergonomics makes me go to a cafe and then ultimately back to the hotel to bang out actual work lol

toomuchtodo 8y ago

I've worked for a fully remote startup, and you've nailed all the points. Remote can't replace local community (being a digital nomad sucks once the novelty has worn off, and is impossible to do with a family unless you own your own business) and in-person interactions at work (coffee and lunch with coworkers). I prefer to be at a job that had an office, but still allows me to work remote most of the month. I don't anticipate going back to a full remote org unless it was just myself doing consulting (because fully remote does not always equal schedule flexibility).

vinbreau 8y ago
I've been remote for almost 8 years now. I love it and dread ever having to go back into an office. Faking productivity for show when the workload is low was the worst feeling, as if I was wasting my time and life. Plus I have social anxiety and the pressure to 'fit in' was overwhelming. Now I work from home where my wife and toddler are. Being home to educate her is worth more than just about anything. I don't have to drive 2 hours every day just to be an ass in a seat. Two hours where all I do is sit in a car and wish to be home. My productivity has remained high. I take on additional duties happily. I can chat with friends online if lonely. For me there are no cons to working remote. If I did go into an office I would be the only person from my division there, my next closest team mate is a state away, which would make socializing even more awkward for me. My goal is to never have to go into an office ever again.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  To each their own. I found that working remotely pigeonholes you into your role; its much harder to network in a remote org, to find other opportunities within the org when you're ready to explore a new role. My current org has offices around the world; I can work from any of them, or from home. I can apply for other internal roles, and keep my benefits and salary while changing up the work I'm working on. Working from home exclusively does not appeal to me. I also don't want to have superficial conversations with coworkers in other parts of the world on a video chat client; that has no value for anyone. I would love to grab a pint with you though and chat about who you are as a person outside of work. Otherwise, you're just a resource I need to interact with to get my job done. Luckily, the job market is large enough that everyone can have the sort of job they desire (fully remote, mostly remote, full time in office).
  - chrisan 8y ago
    I agree with vinbreau. I've been 100% remote for about 10 years now and echo his comments. > I also don't want to have superficial conversations with coworkers I would argue this is a problem with the relationship between you and your coworkers and/or the size of your company and nothing to do with the means by which you communicate. Some of these people also may just not be your "kind" of person you like. In addition to my remote work mates I have also found remote gaming buddies. Both workers and gamers alike I have found deep relationships with. I know all about their kids, pets, activities, deaths, illnesses, etc. Comparing these faceless friends to friends I regularly see in my area are the same. In some cases the faceless people are deeper because you can chat whenever. IRL friends you have to deal with families and work schedules and a month may go by before we can meetup to grab a drink or movie together, especially when they start having kids. I would bet if you can't find much to talk about remotely you wouldn't find anything more to talk about in person besides the weather and how the coffee tastes today. Just because a person is next to me doesn't mean I like him or will have a deep relationship with him/her. I've sat in an office before, 5 years with a team. Some people just aren't compatible. When I left, I no longer communicated with them, the ones I did develop a relationship with I still talk to to this day.

caust1c 8y ago

> they can't understand why I would want to just stay in my medium-sized city and travel a few times a year. I would except I want to travel while keeping my carbon footprint minimal.

da02 8y ago

What type of work do your nomad friends do? Freelance design? Copywriting? Programming?

d357r0y3r 8y ago
Mostly marketing/copywriting types and designers. Some programmers, although that seems to be rarer - could have something to do with what personalities are drawn to these professions.
- mmirate 8y ago
  > marketing Ah, yes, that would indeed explain. And it certainly agrees with the accounts I've heard about my employer's Marketing department's abject stupidity.
  - da02 8y ago
    Are you saying the stupidity comes from using remote workers? What are some anecdotes you've heard recently?
    - mmirate 8y ago
      Aside from the usual "we promised the customer we can do X; whaddaya mean you need 8 months to make it happen!?" ... here's one of the anecdotes: * * * The company makes numerous products. Some people in one of our other locations made a new product, and it was being demonstrated at some kind of trade show. So Marketing has T-shirts made for the show, with designs that look like a Beetles album cover, and words to the effect of "Meet the Developers of new product". Except, of the four or five faces on the shirt's design, only two belong to people who actually worked on that product. Another one or two are developers from a different team; and another one is one of the QAs on my team. This particular QA, I might add, has a ... let's say it's an unprofessional-looking face and leave it at that. * * * Conclusion: our Marketing department is stupid, therefore I'm not surprised that other Marketing people are stupid enough to buy into the glamour of digital nomadry.

neokantian 8y ago

You can be part of a community anywhere in the world. I have lots of equally remotely working kick-abouts here.

philipov 8y ago
Maybe you can, but not everyone can.
- murukesh_s 8y ago
  Yea, work buddies can't be replaced by networking.. unless you are sort of born for that (networking)
eloisant 8y ago
This is not about living in your birth country vs living in a more "exotic" country, but about nomad vs sedentary.
acchow 8y ago
It's a lot harder to be part of a community when you move countries/cities every 3 weeks.
puranjay 8y ago
That's the problem, isn't it? With office colleagues, you don't have to go out of your way to find people. They're right there, they're obligated to be nice to you, and you're stuck with them for hours every day. That's just the basic recipe for building relationships With nomad work, the entire impetus falls on you to find a community and build connections. Easy for extroverts perhaps but not so easy for the rest of us
- brazzledazzle 8y ago
  Depending on the people it's also the recipe for losing your mind slowly over time.

poisonarena 8y ago

this post makes me think you might never have had a chance to visit City, Country. Maybe because you were working towards building where you are. When I was growing up I moved every year of my life because my single mother was always changing jobs, boyfriends, husbands, etc.. It sort of rubbed off on me and now I get depressed if I stay in the same place more than 6 months. I didn't become a remote worker to visit City, Country. I was forced to become a remote worker because of my lifestyle that I can't seem to escape. I know there has to be a lot of others like this

AYBABTME 8y ago
Same, single mother child. My mom moved a lot when we were young because she had to start from nothing and build a career on fast-forward when she end up with my brother and I. So she took every opportunity she could and we end up moving every 6 to 12 months. Now as an adult, I grew up so accustomed to change that I feel lazy when I stay in a spot for too long. I think it's a a blessing and a curse at the same time. A blessing because "thriving in change" is a great quality to have. Seeking change also makes my life a bit difficult to reconcile with most other people. As an adult, I took the whole "change" thing pretty far. Went full on digital nomad, moving somewhere new every 2 weeks... or more like every few days. Bought a sailboat and I'm now prepping it to be a work platform. Sailboat is supposed to help me deal with "a need a change of scenery" while providing me with a place that I can feel home and comfy. It's tiring to live in your luggages and having to pack all the time.
envoked 8y ago
I had a similar disposition but my desires recently changed. My family moved to the US when I was ten and growing up I lacked a sense of permanence/place and carried the idea that freedom (not being tied down to a location, or a set of traditions) was paramount. I moved often, spent years working at a company aspiring to "belong anywhere" which culminated in me having the freedom to maintain the lifestyle more or less indefinitely. My plan was to continue traveling overland (with an expedition vehicle) for the foreseeable future. Then a year ago, I got this desire to experience a place through all its seasons, really get to know a community, and be concerned with a longer time horizon. I bought a house (which I always viewed as an assault on my freedom) and some land in a 2000 person town. I'm volunteering for political campaigns and planning to become a volunteer fire fighter. It's a simple lesson but desires change. It's great to have the ability/privilege to embrace those changes.

acchow 8y ago

People glorify traveling way, way too much. It's even trickled down into actual work. New grads from college somehow think management consulting's traveling every week is a fancy perk. What?

puranjay 8y ago
Consulting companies here sell traveling as a perk. And the new grads lap it up. Personally, flying and airports are just miserable. Traveling is nice but too much of a hassle to do more than once a year.
GVIrish 8y ago
Different people enjoy different things. For some people, traveling is fulfilling and exhilarating. For other people being in unfamiliar settings with unfamiliar culture and language is much less fun. And even within that, some people can enjoy travel up to a certain point. Might be fun to travel for work once a month, but not for 3 out of 4 weeks. I traveling for my first job where I was gone 60-80% of the time and it was fun, but after a year it got old.
- acchow 8y ago
  Yes, different people enjoy different things. I'm not claiming that nobody enjoys weekly work travel. I'm claiming that it's overly glorified - something like 80% of people will say "oh you're so lucky you get to do that!" when in reality only a fraction of them would enjoy it and most of them would hate it.
- emit_time 8y ago
  As someone who plays an instrument, and would like to spend a decent amount of time practicing. This is possibly a thing that is not very possible, and very cumbersome with long term travel. Especially if you would like to practice multiple instruments.
- redisman 8y ago
  I used to love travel but too much work travel killed my passion for it in all forms. Now I dread flying anywhere and staying even in suites(with points) in hotels is just meh. I'd rather be home with my dog and wife and familiar stuff.

avip 8y ago

You can enjoy home, family and friends, AND work remotely. My "nomadism" allowed me, for example, to take my kids to school in the morning, or likewise meet them @home when they're back.

jonny_eh 8y ago
Nomad != remote.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

Why does remote work need to be conflated with "digital nomadism"? I have worked remotely almost my entire work life (I loathed working in an office each time I went back), but I've never done the digital nomad thing. It's never appealed to me, nor is it very cost effective unless you want to throw all of your stuff into storage while you travel. I am still perplexed at how companies push offices as some kind of hyper-collaborative space and yet every time I visit those offices, most people have noise-cancelling headphones on because the ambient noise is insanely distracting. Many of the negatives pointed out in this article are present in jobs where you go into a physical office. Just like how you can know two married people that exist in the same physical space and are terribly lonely and barely know each other anymore. Or what about jobs where you go into an office with terrible coworkers that you cannot escape, because you are required to be at the office? Funny enough, I had to leave a co-working space for the exact same reason -- a single person that was beyond annoying and would not be quiet. Every time I get into my car during rush hour, I remember why I work from home. I just talked to a recruiter recently and they were OK with remote, but they required that I go to stand-ups, every Monday, which would be a round-trip two hour commute, mostly sitting in stop-and-go traffic. And that would be time I would not be getting paid for.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bitreality 8y ago
"Digital Nomadism" is a pretty vague term, most people stop the "nomadic" part of it within a year or two. The need for stability is a realization that everyone must discover themselves. Then the label turns from "Digital Nomad" to "Location Independent". It's great to be able to choose where you live, what your routine will be, and who you surround yourself with. As a remote worker, you are in charge of all these things which would normally be decided by your company. You'd live near the office, your routine would be determined by your work hours, and you'd be surrounded by your colleagues at the office. All pre-determined. However, sometimes when we have so much choice, and we must make these choices ourselves, we can get a bit lost. Without concrete requirements, it's easy to get yourself into the wrong routines and forget to properly plan out what you want to do each day, where you want to go, and who you want to see. It's easy to spend a few days in a row without even leaving your house or apartment. You can end up ordering all your food from delivery apps and doing your shopping online. So it takes a conscious effort to remain happy. It's really a day to day endeavor. You cannot just put in a bunch of effort for a few days in a row and then just veg out for the rest of the week. The brain needs to be constantly stimulated by changing environments and real face to face social engagement.

taurath 8y ago

> I work with some folks that do this, and when we talk about it, they can't understand why I would want to just stay in my medium-sized city and travel a few times a year. I think the biggest problem is that if you DON'T want that, then society really isn't set up to allow you do that at all. Society is entirely set up for you to stay in one place, and begrudgingly gives you a few weeks vacation to see somewhere else. Even in tech, if you want to have a good chance of making industry median money you either need to be very specialized or live in one area. At the same time, even when the butts are in seats, half of meetings involve 2 or 3 different locations anyway. Of course, what you value and want to get out of life may be very different than the average nomad.

bamboozled 8y ago

What I don't like is the way people are conflating work and travel. Sometimes people tell me they go down the beach or a nice park to code etc, I just couldn't think of anything worse. One thing I love about traveling is when I set aside time to "focus on traveling", do I really want to be traveling through some beautiful place while staring at my devices and responding to email? Nope. I have worked full-time remote, from a well setup home office. That was fine.

redisman 8y ago
Coding on the beach or in a park? This can't be for a very serious programming task. I've tried it a few times and the glare + lack of ergonomics makes me go to a cafe and then ultimately back to the hotel to bang out actual work lol