Programs allow adventurous employees to spend up to a year living abroad
echnology has brought new meaning to the term nomad and has helped usher the lifestyle into the 21st Century. Thanks to laptops, Wi-Fi and a host of communication apps, entrepreneurs and employees canwork fromnearly anywhere, anytime.
The idea of the “digital nomad” started to take shape in the late 1990s as the internet gained mass adoption. Today, the digital nomad has fully evolved. Nowthere are programs such as Remote Year, Hacker Paradise andWe Roam that bring together nomadic professionals and set them up withworkspaces and accommodations.
These programs, which range from one month to one year, are gaining momentum. Participants in the Remote Year program, for example, spend a year exploring 12 cities, which can include London; Prague; Valencia, Spain; Sofia, Bulgaria; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; ChiangMai, Thailand; Hanoi, Vietnam; Bogotá, Colombia; Lima, Peru; Santiago, Chile; Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Mexico City. Other cities also are available.
The downpayment for Remote Year is $5,000 and the monthly cost for the first 11 months is $2,000. Travel and accommodations are included. The program says more than 25,000 people applied for the inaugural year’s 75 spots, which started in June 2015.
So what do you need to think about before uprooting for a year andwhat can you expect to gain froma year abroad?
Do your homework to find the right program for you and make sure you are armed with all the information your company willwant to knowbefore giving you the green light.
Sean Tierney, director of sales and marketing for Phoenix-based Pagely, who left this spring for his Remote Year, provided some other insights:
Q. What inspired you to take part in thework abroad program?
A. Iwas alreadyworking remotely for Pagely. When I learned about the Remote Year program, the logicwas fairly simple: “If I’m already remote, I might aswell be seeing theworld.”
Q. Howfar in advance did you have to plan?
A. I didn’t actually learn about the programuntil mid-March 2016 when a friend of mine who had already been accepted askedmy input on it and about my current remotework arrangement with Pagely. While hewas describing the program, I becamemore and more fascinated with it. I applied immediately, was accepted about a month later and left for Prague in lateMay.
Q. Howdid you decide what to bring with you?
A. I overpacked, against all advice (fromprevious nomads). ... I ended up bringing ridiculous stuff like awater purifier ... that seem silly nowin retrospect, but I come froma core-survival tools mentality.
Ultimately, I boiled everything down to a hiking pack and a hard 28-gallon suitcase. I’m intending to shed a bunch of gear when I go back home over Christmas. The items I’ve been really happy with areTRXworkout bands, a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad that allows me to make a standup desk wherever I go and a pair of pants that morph into shorts via zippers.
Q. Has distance or time difference been an issue with your home office?
A. Our business is already entirely virtual, so it didn’t change much froma work-flowperspective. The time zone offset took some getting used to at first, but it’s actually been nice to have the mornings for exploring the citieswe visit. I switchedmy call hours for sales prospects to East Coast time andwork late, which isn’t a problem since I’m a night owl by nature.
Communication internally has been unaffected. We use Slack and Google Hangouts as our primary methods of communication. I opted to get a local SIM card in each place as a backup in the eventmy phone carrier’s service had issues. There’s an element of safety in numbers when you go with a group this large— so many people depend on having fast internet towork effectively and the program knows that, so it’s highly motivated to vet things ahead of time and ensure connectivity is solid everywherewe go. They even provide backup cellular-based hotspots in the event the connection at theworkspace goes down.
Q. Howhas it affected you personally and professionally?
A. Iwas able to attendWordCamp Europe, which is a big conference for our industry, this year because it coincided withmy time in Prague. But other than that thereweren’t any direct strategic advantages to being located abroad. If anything the timing of the call windows has required some adjustment, so it’s taken somework to make this arrangement fly.
The biggest thing it’s done, though, is inject inspiration intomy daily routine. I typicallywork from2 p.m. to 10 p.m. (Europe time), which leaves the morning to explore some of these amazing places I neverwould have gone otherwise. You can go river rafting or see a world-class museum all before lunch, then go about your day.
The other element it has added is the tribal community aspect. Working remotely tends to be a lonewolf existence, butwe’re nowa band of 75 people all in the same boat, often sharing a common workspace. You can imagine the level of camaraderie that naturally develops among travelers roaming as a unit, being exposed to all these unique cultural experiences for a full year.
The decision to participate in this program has been, hands-down, the best thing I’ve done this past year.