Great article, lots of tools I didn't know of. Can you provide more info about where I can get that 2g chip outside the states? Sounds very useful to use a service like that.
Also, can you expand a little bit more about the slack integrations? I can't imagine something more than simple notifications for services like github, but you described it as it "changed your life", so I'm assuming you found ways to automate your daily life with integrations.
Glad it was helpful! I'm not totally sure where you can get a card similar to the T-Mobile or Google Fi cards outside of the US. I know there are a few "international" sim cards on the market, but I haven't tried any of them myself.
A lot of my Slack integrations these days are powered by Zapier, but for regular dev work + client management, I use simple integrations like Trello, Github, etc. The life-changing part comes from being able to communicate and get updates from the multiple teams I work with in a given day, across multiple companies and groups, in one app that also works on all of my devices.
In my Slack team, I've also set up some private channels where I pipe in things like twitter alerts, flight alerts, etc. so that helps too!
How do you manage the legalities, work visas etc. Many countries are quite strict about entering the country depending on whether you are entering for work or pleasure purposes.
I haven't used work visas anywhere. I'm not going to the country for the purpose of work. I'm there as a tourist and do work while I'm there. Not typically engaging in any business transactions within the country.
If I tell that story at the US border there is a good chance I have to turn around if I may believe reality tv and comments here which is why I go to the US strictly for vacation (usually not even taking a laptop). Is that just paranoia or?
What other education a kid needs than to have parents who can stay with them all day and teach how to work from anywhere in the world?
I think the more important thing is how does the kid socialize?
He's six years old, speaks three languages fluently (putting me to shame!), and is enrolled in school at the moment. Even though I work remote, I do it from a home base, and use that as a jumping off point when we travel during school holidays, summer, etc.
would love to hear more - what kind of work, what is home base like, how does the kid socialize, what age did you consider, how do friends come and go... I'm thinking hard about this.
Web development. Home base has fiber internet and wifi. But I work anywhere where there's wifi, which more and more scuba dive resorts around here have. I'm not a big diver, I've done scuba and snorkeling a lot, but my family prefers island-hopping.
Socialization of kids is a uniquely Western obsession, I think— not an issue here because it's a child-friendly culture with lots of social interaction. The average age in the Philippines is 22, much lower than in the US, UK, or Canada. That means there are children everywhere here my son makes friends easily.
As far as our friends go, we meet up with people wherever we happen to be. Sometimes we're in a place where we don't know anybody, but then we just beach bum around when not working.
I wouldn't touch Karma with a 1,000 foot pole if I were you. They lie to customers and change terms and limits on existing customers. I, and many others, returned our devices nearly a year ago and have still not received refunds. The company's response when pressed for updates on refunds seems to be "shrug, we'll do it when we do it."
Totally agree. I was super excited to upgrade but I'm not sold on the lack of ports + touch bar. Might wait to see what they do with the bitty MacBook. If not, this MBAir and I are together until the death!
That's a whole opus unto itself! In short: easiest way to find clients is through your existing network. Finding remote work...well that depends on what exactly you do, but there's tons of stuff on http://remoteok.io.
> If I could make one improvement to Every Time Zone it would be to have more time zones available and maybe let you create a set of “favorite” time zones
There are corp jobs which pretty much require a lot of travel - doing developer relations has been a great way to see the world for me (and meet all sorts of cool developers).
I've been looking into traveling & working remotely, as I've transitioned into a mobile role...just need internet + phone to get work done, but now looking into logistics/feasibility of sustaining the remote work-life balance.
What sort of restrictions have you ran into?
First, I am not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt.
What part of the world do you live in/claim residency in? The reason I ask, is because I live in the US. If you're in the US or EU schengen zone, you can live and work almost anywhere in that particular area with no legal restrictions. For instance, my mailing address is in California, but I can easily move to Florida or Nevada or some state without a state income tax. Check your company's HR policy, I know there are a few states I'm not able to work from due to my company's policies.
If you work in a foreign country, that's a whole new can of worms. My company doesn't have a problem with you taking a month off and working a few weeks in India, for example, since it doesn't really make sense to fly to India for just 2 weeks due to travel times and jet lag, and you don't want to blow all your vacation at once.
However, if you're thinking of living for half a year in Ecuador, for example, even if the time zones line up, the company probably won't be as cool about it if they know about it, in my case.
The reason is that you're kinda breaking your tourist visa. You're not supposed to be doing any work, and if you are, you're supposed to be paying taxes to the country you're living in.
Now, it's a ridiculous argument, as you're pretty much living as a tourist, not taking a job from a local, and putting money in the local economy. However, if that's how your tourist visa is written, that's how it's going to be.
Now, if you're working for yourself as a freelancer, they probably won't go after you too hard, mainly because the upside is so limited. You can only squeeze so much blood from a stone, and they'll probably spend more money prosecuting you/doing audits than you'll pay back taxes.
However, since you and I (appear) to be working for large corporations, they have much more of an incentive to sue you. They can tack on penalties, and threaten a huge accounting/legal team to "discover other irregularities" in the company's HR policies in hopes of a large settlement. If that's the case, you gotta keep the fact that you're spending longer periods of time overseas to yourself.
I've worked remotely for HP going on 4 years now, I'm based in Ireland with 2 other also remote team members. Our groups "HQ" is Seattle, so it's about as bad a timezone difference as possible while keeping at least 1hr crossover.
My manager is also in Seattle, along with our entire reporting chain being US based.
It's worked brilliantly. Our group is probably an outlier though, as we have people scattered all over world, and for most of my time here, we've been focused on open source projects like OpenStack and Cloud Foundry.
In short - yes, even mega corps can handle remote workers.
I agree with the author that the T-Mobile simple choice plan works as advertised. They only guarantee 2G but I have almost never seen that. The slowest has been 3G and in my places in the EU are LTE speeds.
They had a 4G promotion in Europe over the summer which was FANTASTIC. I didn't realize how slow 2G felt until I had 4G back. Another reason I switched to Google Fi.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] threadHappy to answer any questions!
A lot of my Slack integrations these days are powered by Zapier, but for regular dev work + client management, I use simple integrations like Trello, Github, etc. The life-changing part comes from being able to communicate and get updates from the multiple teams I work with in a given day, across multiple companies and groups, in one app that also works on all of my devices.
In my Slack team, I've also set up some private channels where I pipe in things like twitter alerts, flight alerts, etc. so that helps too!
Essentials for me: Trello, Slack, GitHub, Dropbox, AWS, VirtualBox, Feedly, Pinboard, ExpressVPN, Skype, Adobe Creative Cloud, Toggl, Gusto, Mint
Enjoyed the article though, Karma was new to me and looks interesting.
Socialization of kids is a uniquely Western obsession, I think— not an issue here because it's a child-friendly culture with lots of social interaction. The average age in the Philippines is 22, much lower than in the US, UK, or Canada. That means there are children everywhere here my son makes friends easily.
As far as our friends go, we meet up with people wherever we happen to be. Sometimes we're in a place where we don't know anybody, but then we just beach bum around when not working.
Don't take my word for it. Better Business Bureau: http://www.bbb.org/new-york-city/business-reviews/internet-a...
Plus dig into comments on their facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/getyourkarma/?fref=ts
The remote options are better than local except in SF, LA, & Seattle.
I'm going to sound like a grumpy old man saying this, and maybe I am. Please, dear god, stop this war on thickness. I want my ports back.
That's describing one of my favorite sites World Time Buddy https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/.
What part of the world do you live in/claim residency in? The reason I ask, is because I live in the US. If you're in the US or EU schengen zone, you can live and work almost anywhere in that particular area with no legal restrictions. For instance, my mailing address is in California, but I can easily move to Florida or Nevada or some state without a state income tax. Check your company's HR policy, I know there are a few states I'm not able to work from due to my company's policies.
If you work in a foreign country, that's a whole new can of worms. My company doesn't have a problem with you taking a month off and working a few weeks in India, for example, since it doesn't really make sense to fly to India for just 2 weeks due to travel times and jet lag, and you don't want to blow all your vacation at once.
However, if you're thinking of living for half a year in Ecuador, for example, even if the time zones line up, the company probably won't be as cool about it if they know about it, in my case.
The reason is that you're kinda breaking your tourist visa. You're not supposed to be doing any work, and if you are, you're supposed to be paying taxes to the country you're living in.
Now, it's a ridiculous argument, as you're pretty much living as a tourist, not taking a job from a local, and putting money in the local economy. However, if that's how your tourist visa is written, that's how it's going to be.
Now, if you're working for yourself as a freelancer, they probably won't go after you too hard, mainly because the upside is so limited. You can only squeeze so much blood from a stone, and they'll probably spend more money prosecuting you/doing audits than you'll pay back taxes.
However, since you and I (appear) to be working for large corporations, they have much more of an incentive to sue you. They can tack on penalties, and threaten a huge accounting/legal team to "discover other irregularities" in the company's HR policies in hopes of a large settlement. If that's the case, you gotta keep the fact that you're spending longer periods of time overseas to yourself.
My manager is also in Seattle, along with our entire reporting chain being US based.
It's worked brilliantly. Our group is probably an outlier though, as we have people scattered all over world, and for most of my time here, we've been focused on open source projects like OpenStack and Cloud Foundry.
In short - yes, even mega corps can handle remote workers.