6 ms·

Bashing new myths about digital nomads

39 points by ohjeez 4y ago

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
"Bashing new myths about digital nomads" with almost no actual evidence to counter those myths. The quote below is one of the "arguments" from the article. I hope the author can realize the extreme irony in this paragraph: > What we need are real studies measuring the total economic, employment, housing and well-being effect of actual digital nomads on local communities. Such studies would show that digital nomads are very, very good for the communities where they live.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I have very many doubts digital nomads are good for any community except a community they are prevalent in. Nomads, by definition, don’t meaningfully contribute to a community. They don’t create deep relationships, families, or traditions. Instead, they bring outside perceptions and traditions that may either invigorate or destroy the community they are visiting. Is it good for the community’s economy, probably. Is it good for anything else? Probably not unless the culture is at least adjacent to one you’ve lived in before. (IOW, if you come from one strong religious community to another one, or an artistic community to another one, you would be able to recognize what you’re experiencing and fit into your worldview; thus being able to more easily meaningfully contribute to the community)
  - Timpy 4y ago
    I'm abroad right now working remotely, I've had nothing but extremely positive interactions with the culture here and it's about as distant as two cultures can get. The crusades are over, I can't say I've met a ton of other digital nomads but I never got the impression anyone is going around destroying communities they're visiting. Learning more about and experiencing other cultures has deeply enriched my life, I do my best to be a good guest in the country and a lot of people seem interested in learning more about life where I'm from too. I know my argument is anecdotal here, but at least anecdotes are better than your wild and unfounded speculation.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      You haven’t met many so it’s not destructive. Any community or ecosystem can withstand some external forces and pressure, but they can still get overwhelmed. There’s also the difference between a digital immigrant and a digital nomad - the first intends to stay and begins to care about where they are; the second may care but will be gone at a whim.
    - xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
      Curious questions and of course don't answer if it's not safe: do you remit full local taxes? Are they equivalent to a native local worker? Are you paid or employed as a worker of where you are now, or where you're from?
      - z9znz 4y ago
        In most countries you are not technically allowed to work. They don't have a tax arrangement for you. You could not pay taxes if you wanted, because there is no system for you to be working. You are paying taxes to your home country if you're American. If you're from another country and living abroad for enough days per year (depends on the home country), then you won't be paying taxes to your home country. The place you're working remotely from still gets the benefit of you injecting revenue into their area, and you're not taking local jobs away.
        throwaway290 4y ago
        Keep in mind though that a lot of the infrastructure one would be using including public transport, roads, water is subsidized with tax one is not paying.
        z9znz 4y ago
        True, but DNs often pay a premium for many services which locals do not pay. And DNs often spend a lot more than locals do just by virtue of having more to spend. In places which thrive or depend on tourism, working DNs are a blessing. The broke backpackers are less so, as they live on the cheap (which is totally fine for them but offers less to the local community). Also, DNs are a tiny, tiny percentage of public transport riders in places that have public transportation. Likewise, I don't imagine DNs are using vast amounts of water... especially since we tend to buy bottled water for drinking, and we often don't cook at home (so whoever we are paying for food is getting water however they get it). As for roads and road maintenance costs, those should be covered in part by vehicle registrations. If we rent a car or a scooter, or we take a taxi, the costs are part of the fare. Aside from building a local dependency on foreign visitors who splash money around, I don't see much downsides to DNs existing in remote places (assuming of course that they behave like decent humans).
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    It's like any type of immigration, there are plenty of people visiting and working in countries on short term visas. I don't think there's anything unique about "digital nomads" through that lens.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      There isn't. It's a scapegoat, the failure is almost always with local authorities and governments (e.g. tolerating excessive Airbnb).
      - miguelazo 4y ago
        Those local authorities are under extreme pressure by monied interests (including Airbnb) to accept the commoditization of their housing market for “digital nomads”. Even in places like Los Angeles where most people are renters the local authorities have barely begun to get the situation under control.
        heavyset_go 4y ago
        I'm definitely sympathetic to this argument, AirBnb ruined housing markets. I'm curious how much of the demand actually comes from "digital nomads", though.
        xbar 4y ago
        It is a good thing to be curious about. We don't have good numbers and it really is only a question of numbers. Any community can tolerate a certain amount of tourism or immigration. My take is that most communities are small and have never had to deal with much growth. It would not surprise me if their little boats are getting swamped.
        miguelazo 4y ago
        Fair point. I would estimate digital nomads are less than 10% of the total market. I do suspect they have an outsize effect, especially the ones who are “influencers”.
  - tayo42 4y ago
    Your whole post can describe tourism too
  - scarface74 4y ago
    > Nomads, by definition, don’t meaningfully contribute to a community. They don’t create deep relationships, families, or traditions. Guess how many of those things my wife and I were doing in the suburban neighborhood where we were living before we started our (domestic) digital nomad journey?
- xbar 4y ago
  What could have been a serious economic impact commentary on the impact of digital nomads is, in-fact, a fluff piece to help Computerworld readers justify their presence to the other parents at their kids' school winter pageant in the formerly-charming community they have ruined.
b4je7d7wb 4y ago
I don't think there is any significant difference with a digital nomad and a tourist. So separating them and blaming the other for issues seems weird. The myths blame nomads while the author blames tourists.
- poisonarena 4y ago
  'digital nomads' usually stay the whole allotted tourist visa stay, while injecting the local economy with cash the entire time, and not taking up any sort of social resources or government benefits. anecdotal as an English teacher turned programmer who lived in CDMX 2014-2017 (before large influx of digital nomads and then waves of COVID tourists) Just totally cringing watching my mexican dj friends in CDMX complain about all the gringo tourists ruining everything in cuauhtemoc/roma norte but then posting instagram stories " hey looking for booking in USA/Germany/etc for November or December, also subletting my apartment" (also posting it in English).. It's like living in a Beverly Hills mansion and getting angry at the rich Chinese tourists spending money on Rodeo drive for two weeks.
  - tjr225 4y ago
  - b4je7d7wb 4y ago
    Staying 3 months vs 2 weeks seems like a very small difference. The other points apply to tourists as well. One could argue 6 tourists each staying 2 weeks concecutively will spend more than a nomad, since they dont spend time working. So in this case the nomad would be worse, since he still takes similar real estate to host, but provides less to the economy. Either way I think it's more useful to consider them together with tourists. Many backpackers are probably indistinguishable from nomads.
    - safety1st 4y ago
      The distinction is only meaningless for you because you've chosen to redefine the term digital nomad. One of the original inspirations for the digital nomad movement was the book Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, written by Rolf Potts. Long-term (and its gradual side effects) is really the key here. The differences between a DN and a tourist are: 1) The DN spends many months or years on the road, such that the nexus of their personal affairs stops being their home country, residency becomes an issue they have to think about, etc. - this doesn't happen with a tourist 2) The DN's primary income generating activities continue during this period, such that the labor laws of the countries they visit become an issue they have to think about -- again doesn't happen with a tourist I agree that if someone takes a 3 month holiday and works on their laptop during it, they're a tourist. We don't need to use DN to describe those people, they are not really practicing long term travel as Potts described it. The term more accurately describes the growing number of people who are going to another level and really disconnecting from their home country. DNs in this sense spend a lot of money in the countries they visit - it varies widely based on their income and how much of the year they spend traveling, but most of them spend somewhere between $20K-$200K/yr. Even on the low end this is way more money than most tourists spend.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
Serious question: from my perspective and experience either digital nomads are tourists or they're tax-dodging tourists. If you make enough money to be subjected to any sort of complex tax law (the easiest example is some form of quarterly estimated payments for high-income earners) then you either: - have a designated home for tax purposes, regardless of questionable haven-status - are moving around frequently enough to avoid being encumbered by taxes In either case... a tourist? Leaving aside the nomads who do have some permanent tax residency, regardless of whether or not it is questionable, do most of any nomads actually pay the same taxes that a local would in the places they visit? I am aware of incentivized visas that waive taxes to attract workers, but they do not seem prevalent enough to correlate with the digital nomadic movement on the whole. Outside of one person I know who ended up staying in their destination for a very long time and effectively de-nomading, all the nomads I've met use literal tourist visas that prevent work, and about half of them are dodging taxes.
- roguesherlock 4y ago
  I’m not sure if there’s even a way to easily pay taxes for a foreigner. Nor there are proper visa’s for such kind of travel. I think it’s relatively a very new thing and everyone is just figuring it out.
  - xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. I've had visas that classify me as a permanent resident for tax purposes. Even if I spent a minority of time there, I'd still need to file taxes, dual file and be able to prove my income was taxed in a jurisdiction having a tax treaty. Working on a tourist visa is typically not allowed. At least in my experience it has always been strictly forbidden. So, I agree there are not proper visas for this, because it's not generally permissable.
- hailwren 4y ago
  > do most of any nomads actually pay the same taxes that a local would in the places they visit? No, of course not. The rub is that 0 nomads are employed by companies in the places they visit. If they’re American, they’re still paying US tax (although there is a set aside for your first 100k if you spend 330/365 days outside of the us). Incentivized visas are becoming more widespread, but you haven’t really presented a clear case that nomads _should_ be paying tax. It’s by-and-large legal to not pay tax on the income you earn while on vacation in a foreign country and there are clear prohibitions against working for local companies. If the country your passport is from doesn’t require you to pay income tax when you aren’t residing there, then you haven’t met the requirements for tax in any country that you visited this year.
trashdigitalnom 4y ago
- romanovcode 4y ago
  I'm in top 1% of earners in my western country. Also never had used prostitute and had plenty of girlfriends. After corona wanted to travel around and see the world. Some of us just want to travel around before we're too old and have family responsibilities. Regarding taxes, I won't pay taxes in these ultra-corrupt governments where elites steal 80%+ of tax money. These countries should just add "nomad visa" type of thing where you pay lump sums every 6 months directly to the big man and skip the charade.
bitwize 4y ago
Digital nomads strike me as people looking for low cost of living without having to move to (ugh!) flyover country USA. They can use their resources and connections to wangle living someplace a little more exotic.
- z9znz 4y ago
  This is really enlightening to read. I had no idea people held such notions about digital nomads. I started my DN life 14 years ago while living in the US. In my company we had a number of remote workers around the country, and servicing clients around the world. Working from home, I realized I didn't have to stay in one place with bad air pollution. So I moved to a ski resort area in Colorado. Initially it was just for a month, but then it became 3 months, and then it became 3 years. You don't have to go to Bali to be a DN. And using "resources and connections to wangle living someplace" is not necessary. You are free to go as long as your current boss doesn't object. Do you think this is some kind of special treatment only afforded to a certain group of people? Even if your boss or company does not explicitly allow you to work from abroad, you can often do it without even being noticed (or as they say, ask for forgiveness instead of permission). If you do your job well, who cares where you are at the moment... Regarding cost of living, hell yes. In the spirit of capitalism, it would be irresponsible to not live where your money serves you best. If you lived in SF, earning 250k, and paying 3k/mo for an apartment, you could instead live well on the beach in Thailand for 3k in total (less actually). Think of how much you could save if you still earned that 250. And imagine the great food, every day massages, friendly happy people! who don't shoot you, and fantastic weather! I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It's better for us DNs if the rest of you stay locked in your US lives. And for those who want to talk about taxes, I have to file in two countries, and I pay 45% total tax rate. Even so, when I work remotely in SEA, I get a lot of quality of life for my work (and I work only a few months at a time, then take a few months off).
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Somewhere between 3 months and 3 years you left off being a digital nomad and became a digital immigrant (or as we used to say, you moved to Colorado). And the reason companies will start to take notice (I agree they often didn't back in "the day" especially if you still returned "home") is that governments will start to take notice; if you're in Colorado then Colorado wants your company to establish a nexus and correctly withhold Colorado taxes. And that begins to apply to other countries as well. We're still ahead of the curve and many countries can't really determine tourists vs digital nomads, but they'll start getting better at it. And hopefully that'll make it easier for people to take advantage of it.
idontwantthis 4y ago
I used to be a digital nomad, but I never called myself that. Only other people would when I told them I worked remotely. I would respond that I preferred the term “Asshole with a Laptop”.
z9znz 4y ago
This is a fluff piece. While there probably are some people making the claims he refers to, it's not a common thing. If you go anywhere, you can probably find some people making some stupid and wrong claims about some other group. That said, he is wrong about Myth 3. Digital nomads are more remote than most remote workers. Most remote workers are just working from home, still likely within commute range from their jobs. But digital nomads are often much farther away (sometimes literally on the other side of the world).
- nottorp 4y ago
  > Most remote workers are just working from home, still likely within commute range from their jobs. If you have to mention distance from work is it still remote work?
  - mgbmtl 4y ago
    The topic of timezones and jurisdiction does tend to come up often in my field. (jurisdiction: because of handling of personal data)
kkfx 4y ago
Digital nomads are typically young people who want to see the world and have a happy life, so the best prey of modern capitalism. They typically have little means and depend on third party services for anything, without "buffers" so they are tied to their genitals normally not thinking/knowing that until the the leash is pulled. That's why they are well pushed in modern narrative. It's not much different than histories about "influencers" who apparently get rich doing very little (regularly not showing the backstage) just accepting being tied to a platform. That's the real "myth" IMVHO. If we can work remotely we can WFH, perhaps a comfortable home, perhaps with savings and investments to being able to be job-less for a long period of time, to being able to choose jobs instead of living day-to-day just to eat and sleep. So such kind of workers are not that interested for modern capitalism, they are too choosy since they can, they can't be pulled much throw an economical leash and they also have a network of friends and acquaintances in the physical world so they are far less vulnerable. Good to have some "stable" high-quality professionals but not good for the lowest end of the pyramid. I'm curious if someone is able to dismantle such "myth"... Oh, please no, do not tell about the casual billionaire who live traveling the world with a big yacht. Yes, they exists and they are nomad, but they are VEEEERY few respect of all other "digital nomads", use them as a model is like using a lottery winner as a model to justify spending on lotteries.

39 points by ohjeez 4y ago

"Bashing new myths about digital nomads" with almost no actual evidence to counter those myths. The quote below is one of the "arguments" from the article. I hope the author can realize the extreme irony in this paragraph: > What we need are real studies measuring the total economic, employment, housing and well-being effect of actual digital nomads on local communities. Such studies would show that digital nomads are very, very good for the communities where they live.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
withinboredom 4y ago
I have very many doubts digital nomads are good for any community except a community they are prevalent in. Nomads, by definition, don’t meaningfully contribute to a community. They don’t create deep relationships, families, or traditions. Instead, they bring outside perceptions and traditions that may either invigorate or destroy the community they are visiting. Is it good for the community’s economy, probably. Is it good for anything else? Probably not unless the culture is at least adjacent to one you’ve lived in before. (IOW, if you come from one strong religious community to another one, or an artistic community to another one, you would be able to recognize what you’re experiencing and fit into your worldview; thus being able to more easily meaningfully contribute to the community)
- Timpy 4y ago
  I'm abroad right now working remotely, I've had nothing but extremely positive interactions with the culture here and it's about as distant as two cultures can get. The crusades are over, I can't say I've met a ton of other digital nomads but I never got the impression anyone is going around destroying communities they're visiting. Learning more about and experiencing other cultures has deeply enriched my life, I do my best to be a good guest in the country and a lot of people seem interested in learning more about life where I'm from too. I know my argument is anecdotal here, but at least anecdotes are better than your wild and unfounded speculation.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    You haven’t met many so it’s not destructive. Any community or ecosystem can withstand some external forces and pressure, but they can still get overwhelmed. There’s also the difference between a digital immigrant and a digital nomad - the first intends to stay and begins to care about where they are; the second may care but will be gone at a whim.
  - xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
    Curious questions and of course don't answer if it's not safe: do you remit full local taxes? Are they equivalent to a native local worker? Are you paid or employed as a worker of where you are now, or where you're from?
    - z9znz 4y ago
      In most countries you are not technically allowed to work. They don't have a tax arrangement for you. You could not pay taxes if you wanted, because there is no system for you to be working. You are paying taxes to your home country if you're American. If you're from another country and living abroad for enough days per year (depends on the home country), then you won't be paying taxes to your home country. The place you're working remotely from still gets the benefit of you injecting revenue into their area, and you're not taking local jobs away.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        Keep in mind though that a lot of the infrastructure one would be using including public transport, roads, water is subsidized with tax one is not paying.
        z9znz 4y ago
        True, but DNs often pay a premium for many services which locals do not pay. And DNs often spend a lot more than locals do just by virtue of having more to spend. In places which thrive or depend on tourism, working DNs are a blessing. The broke backpackers are less so, as they live on the cheap (which is totally fine for them but offers less to the local community). Also, DNs are a tiny, tiny percentage of public transport riders in places that have public transportation. Likewise, I don't imagine DNs are using vast amounts of water... especially since we tend to buy bottled water for drinking, and we often don't cook at home (so whoever we are paying for food is getting water however they get it). As for roads and road maintenance costs, those should be covered in part by vehicle registrations. If we rent a car or a scooter, or we take a taxi, the costs are part of the fare. Aside from building a local dependency on foreign visitors who splash money around, I don't see much downsides to DNs existing in remote places (assuming of course that they behave like decent humans).
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  It's like any type of immigration, there are plenty of people visiting and working in countries on short term visas. I don't think there's anything unique about "digital nomads" through that lens.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    There isn't. It's a scapegoat, the failure is almost always with local authorities and governments (e.g. tolerating excessive Airbnb).
    - miguelazo 4y ago
      Those local authorities are under extreme pressure by monied interests (including Airbnb) to accept the commoditization of their housing market for “digital nomads”. Even in places like Los Angeles where most people are renters the local authorities have barely begun to get the situation under control.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        I'm definitely sympathetic to this argument, AirBnb ruined housing markets. I'm curious how much of the demand actually comes from "digital nomads", though.
        xbar 4y ago
        It is a good thing to be curious about. We don't have good numbers and it really is only a question of numbers. Any community can tolerate a certain amount of tourism or immigration. My take is that most communities are small and have never had to deal with much growth. It would not surprise me if their little boats are getting swamped.
        miguelazo 4y ago
        Fair point. I would estimate digital nomads are less than 10% of the total market. I do suspect they have an outsize effect, especially the ones who are “influencers”.
- tayo42 4y ago
  Your whole post can describe tourism too
- scarface74 4y ago
  > Nomads, by definition, don’t meaningfully contribute to a community. They don’t create deep relationships, families, or traditions. Guess how many of those things my wife and I were doing in the suburban neighborhood where we were living before we started our (domestic) digital nomad journey?
xbar 4y ago
What could have been a serious economic impact commentary on the impact of digital nomads is, in-fact, a fluff piece to help Computerworld readers justify their presence to the other parents at their kids' school winter pageant in the formerly-charming community they have ruined.

b4je7d7wb 4y ago

I don't think there is any significant difference with a digital nomad and a tourist. So separating them and blaming the other for issues seems weird. The myths blame nomads while the author blames tourists.

poisonarena 4y ago
'digital nomads' usually stay the whole allotted tourist visa stay, while injecting the local economy with cash the entire time, and not taking up any sort of social resources or government benefits. anecdotal as an English teacher turned programmer who lived in CDMX 2014-2017 (before large influx of digital nomads and then waves of COVID tourists) Just totally cringing watching my mexican dj friends in CDMX complain about all the gringo tourists ruining everything in cuauhtemoc/roma norte but then posting instagram stories " hey looking for booking in USA/Germany/etc for November or December, also subletting my apartment" (also posting it in English).. It's like living in a Beverly Hills mansion and getting angry at the rich Chinese tourists spending money on Rodeo drive for two weeks.
- tjr225 4y ago
- b4je7d7wb 4y ago
  Staying 3 months vs 2 weeks seems like a very small difference. The other points apply to tourists as well. One could argue 6 tourists each staying 2 weeks concecutively will spend more than a nomad, since they dont spend time working. So in this case the nomad would be worse, since he still takes similar real estate to host, but provides less to the economy. Either way I think it's more useful to consider them together with tourists. Many backpackers are probably indistinguishable from nomads.
  - safety1st 4y ago
    The distinction is only meaningless for you because you've chosen to redefine the term digital nomad. One of the original inspirations for the digital nomad movement was the book Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, written by Rolf Potts. Long-term (and its gradual side effects) is really the key here. The differences between a DN and a tourist are: 1) The DN spends many months or years on the road, such that the nexus of their personal affairs stops being their home country, residency becomes an issue they have to think about, etc. - this doesn't happen with a tourist 2) The DN's primary income generating activities continue during this period, such that the labor laws of the countries they visit become an issue they have to think about -- again doesn't happen with a tourist I agree that if someone takes a 3 month holiday and works on their laptop during it, they're a tourist. We don't need to use DN to describe those people, they are not really practicing long term travel as Potts described it. The term more accurately describes the growing number of people who are going to another level and really disconnecting from their home country. DNs in this sense spend a lot of money in the countries they visit - it varies widely based on their income and how much of the year they spend traveling, but most of them spend somewhere between $20K-$200K/yr. Even on the low end this is way more money than most tourists spend.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago

Serious question: from my perspective and experience either digital nomads are tourists or they're tax-dodging tourists. If you make enough money to be subjected to any sort of complex tax law (the easiest example is some form of quarterly estimated payments for high-income earners) then you either: - have a designated home for tax purposes, regardless of questionable haven-status - are moving around frequently enough to avoid being encumbered by taxes In either case... a tourist? Leaving aside the nomads who do have some permanent tax residency, regardless of whether or not it is questionable, do most of any nomads actually pay the same taxes that a local would in the places they visit? I am aware of incentivized visas that waive taxes to attract workers, but they do not seem prevalent enough to correlate with the digital nomadic movement on the whole. Outside of one person I know who ended up staying in their destination for a very long time and effectively de-nomading, all the nomads I've met use literal tourist visas that prevent work, and about half of them are dodging taxes.

roguesherlock 4y ago
I’m not sure if there’s even a way to easily pay taxes for a foreigner. Nor there are proper visa’s for such kind of travel. I think it’s relatively a very new thing and everyone is just figuring it out.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. I've had visas that classify me as a permanent resident for tax purposes. Even if I spent a minority of time there, I'd still need to file taxes, dual file and be able to prove my income was taxed in a jurisdiction having a tax treaty. Working on a tourist visa is typically not allowed. At least in my experience it has always been strictly forbidden. So, I agree there are not proper visas for this, because it's not generally permissable.
hailwren 4y ago
> do most of any nomads actually pay the same taxes that a local would in the places they visit? No, of course not. The rub is that 0 nomads are employed by companies in the places they visit. If they’re American, they’re still paying US tax (although there is a set aside for your first 100k if you spend 330/365 days outside of the us). Incentivized visas are becoming more widespread, but you haven’t really presented a clear case that nomads _should_ be paying tax. It’s by-and-large legal to not pay tax on the income you earn while on vacation in a foreign country and there are clear prohibitions against working for local companies. If the country your passport is from doesn’t require you to pay income tax when you aren’t residing there, then you haven’t met the requirements for tax in any country that you visited this year.

trashdigitalnom 4y ago

romanovcode 4y ago
I'm in top 1% of earners in my western country. Also never had used prostitute and had plenty of girlfriends. After corona wanted to travel around and see the world. Some of us just want to travel around before we're too old and have family responsibilities. Regarding taxes, I won't pay taxes in these ultra-corrupt governments where elites steal 80%+ of tax money. These countries should just add "nomad visa" type of thing where you pay lump sums every 6 months directly to the big man and skip the charade.

bitwize 4y ago

Digital nomads strike me as people looking for low cost of living without having to move to (ugh!) flyover country USA. They can use their resources and connections to wangle living someplace a little more exotic.

z9znz 4y ago
This is really enlightening to read. I had no idea people held such notions about digital nomads. I started my DN life 14 years ago while living in the US. In my company we had a number of remote workers around the country, and servicing clients around the world. Working from home, I realized I didn't have to stay in one place with bad air pollution. So I moved to a ski resort area in Colorado. Initially it was just for a month, but then it became 3 months, and then it became 3 years. You don't have to go to Bali to be a DN. And using "resources and connections to wangle living someplace" is not necessary. You are free to go as long as your current boss doesn't object. Do you think this is some kind of special treatment only afforded to a certain group of people? Even if your boss or company does not explicitly allow you to work from abroad, you can often do it without even being noticed (or as they say, ask for forgiveness instead of permission). If you do your job well, who cares where you are at the moment... Regarding cost of living, hell yes. In the spirit of capitalism, it would be irresponsible to not live where your money serves you best. If you lived in SF, earning 250k, and paying 3k/mo for an apartment, you could instead live well on the beach in Thailand for 3k in total (less actually). Think of how much you could save if you still earned that 250. And imagine the great food, every day massages, friendly happy people! who don't shoot you, and fantastic weather! I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It's better for us DNs if the rest of you stay locked in your US lives. And for those who want to talk about taxes, I have to file in two countries, and I pay 45% total tax rate. Even so, when I work remotely in SEA, I get a lot of quality of life for my work (and I work only a few months at a time, then take a few months off).
- bombcar 4y ago
  Somewhere between 3 months and 3 years you left off being a digital nomad and became a digital immigrant (or as we used to say, you moved to Colorado). And the reason companies will start to take notice (I agree they often didn't back in "the day" especially if you still returned "home") is that governments will start to take notice; if you're in Colorado then Colorado wants your company to establish a nexus and correctly withhold Colorado taxes. And that begins to apply to other countries as well. We're still ahead of the curve and many countries can't really determine tourists vs digital nomads, but they'll start getting better at it. And hopefully that'll make it easier for people to take advantage of it.

idontwantthis 4y ago

I used to be a digital nomad, but I never called myself that. Only other people would when I told them I worked remotely. I would respond that I preferred the term “Asshole with a Laptop”.

z9znz 4y ago

This is a fluff piece. While there probably are some people making the claims he refers to, it's not a common thing. If you go anywhere, you can probably find some people making some stupid and wrong claims about some other group. That said, he is wrong about Myth 3. Digital nomads are more remote than most remote workers. Most remote workers are just working from home, still likely within commute range from their jobs. But digital nomads are often much farther away (sometimes literally on the other side of the world).

nottorp 4y ago
> Most remote workers are just working from home, still likely within commute range from their jobs. If you have to mention distance from work is it still remote work?
- mgbmtl 4y ago
  The topic of timezones and jurisdiction does tend to come up often in my field. (jurisdiction: because of handling of personal data)

kkfx 4y ago

Digital nomads are typically young people who want to see the world and have a happy life, so the best prey of modern capitalism. They typically have little means and depend on third party services for anything, without "buffers" so they are tied to their genitals normally not thinking/knowing that until the the leash is pulled. That's why they are well pushed in modern narrative. It's not much different than histories about "influencers" who apparently get rich doing very little (regularly not showing the backstage) just accepting being tied to a platform. That's the real "myth" IMVHO. If we can work remotely we can WFH, perhaps a comfortable home, perhaps with savings and investments to being able to be job-less for a long period of time, to being able to choose jobs instead of living day-to-day just to eat and sleep. So such kind of workers are not that interested for modern capitalism, they are too choosy since they can, they can't be pulled much throw an economical leash and they also have a network of friends and acquaintances in the physical world so they are far less vulnerable. Good to have some "stable" high-quality professionals but not good for the lowest end of the pyramid. I'm curious if someone is able to dismantle such "myth"... Oh, please no, do not tell about the casual billionaire who live traveling the world with a big yacht. Yes, they exists and they are nomad, but they are VEEEERY few respect of all other "digital nomads", use them as a model is like using a lottery winner as a model to justify spending on lotteries.