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Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

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Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#471
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha - I hear you - its a treat if you are single or a DINK (dual income no kids) and need some solo social time. Especially if Monday and Friday are travel days. But if you have a family you actually like/love - then a full week away really is a non-starter. Especially if its Sunday night and Saturday morning travel. School plays and parent teacher conferences don't get planned based on the AirBNB week long retreat…

I definitely feel you on the Sun/Sat travel and I'd push back against that.

Although there are sometimes reasons for it (e.g. community-related conferences that tend to span a weekday and a weekend day), for the most part I sorta resent conferences that force weekend travel. Sometimes I want to take the weekend for myself, but I want it to be my choice.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. So everyone that works while traveling is doing so illegally Oh wait

Yes, unless they have the correct visa. No work visa, no working. It really is that simple.

Almost all countries don't even have policies covering a lot of those scenarios and you'd probably win in court anyway

So you can't open your work laptop while on vacation?

You cannot always take the law literally....

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#473
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their fee is some hundred dollars, and on top of that they need to pay local taxes.

I will check it out, but to be honest, I am extremely skeptical. I have been using companies providing similar services for over a decade. Not only they have consistently all been very expensive (35%-45% cut)†, but they all required MASSIVE amounts of paperwork, both from the contracting company and from the "employee". Employee enrolment took at least a month, and this was when the employee was already a resident, a…

That sounds bad, but I have to tell you that I know a bunch of devs here in Spain working through this setup.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#474

Sooo.. w/o getting into my history too deeply, my ex and I left the US in 2006 and worked freelance/remote. Wired did an article about us in 2008 living in a solar van when that was, like, unheard of. It seems like every few years a new batch of people want to try this approach, and it's always popular with the press to write about it. Sometimes it works out. I think it's a great way to live, and it teaches you a lot…

If you're a renter this is squatter bait. You better know the squatter rules before ever considering doing rentals off the books like that.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unless they have the correct visa. No work visa, no working. It really is that simple.

Almost all countries don't even have policies covering a lot of those scenarios and you'd probably win in court anyway So you can't open your work laptop while on vacation? You cannot always take the law literally....

What the law says and what you can get away with are different, yes.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing, I don't think there's a clear duration after which you're automatically considered a tax resident. The thing with these employees was that they never became local hires. So they would get their salary through their home country branch, with taxes paid over there, etc. The whole point is that these companies were trying to dance around the limits of employment law. What they were doing was technicall…

In Poland you are a tax citizen automatically if you have been there more than 183 days[1]. The exact same 183 in Portugal[2]. It is an automatic thing so quite simple. [1] https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/poland/individual/residence [2] https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/portugal/individual/residence

I beg to differ. Those look like the "default" rules. For the example of Poland (picked one of your two examples) it's not so simple.

The "default" rules for tax residency are superseded by a convention between the two countries, and there are a bunch of them, with many countries, on the site of the French government. There are specific conventions with Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, for example, that apply only to people living close to the border and working in the other country. If you take the train from Paris to work in Geneva, it doesn't apply.

Basically, it can be debated. It says that if you have a "permanent home" in both countries, you're a resident of the country "with which you have the most attachments". So for the hypothetical Polish worker who's "detached" in France, it could be argued that the "attachment" is to Poland, because their family is likely there, among other things. In the case of a freelance moving from country to country, who is likely unattached, this can probably be easily argued (though I'm not a lawyer).

Concerning remote-working freelance: For "independent workers", you're taxed in the country where you do business, except if you have a "fixed base" in the other country, from which you conduct your business. In that case, you're taxed in the country where the base is, but only for the part of income that is attributable to the work done from that base.

Source, in French: https://www.impots.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/media/10_conv...

Conventions directory: https://www.impots.gouv.fr/les-conventions-internationales

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#477
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think everyone wins here. Everyone except the cities that have already lost a quantity of apartments and offices that have been repurposed as AirBnBs...

Build more apartments.

This is an underutilized solution in general, but is actually not even close to one at this point in time. Construction is incredibly hard at the moment (at least in the US) due to supply and labor shortages. It’s actually not clear when or even if these will be alleviated.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#478
post #248

I work at a fully remote company. To be honest, I don't like it very much. I like that I don't have to commute, but I pay for it in lost productivity waiting to hear back from my coworkers when I have questions. What would normally be a 5 mins conversation turns into pinging on chat, setting up a meeting, and then chatting at a further time. Collaboration is much harder and the rate of doing work is much slower. If c…

Exactly. Just today in the office there was a coworker who was unfamiliar with a particular internal tool. He asked me, I walked to his desk, and pointed out the couple of buttons he needed to click in that internal tool. The whole exchange finished in one minute. After that minute I went back to coding. I stayed in my flow. But if this request for help arrived via group chat, I wouldn't have bothered to help. It was…

What software do you all use for screen sharing? That seems like something that could be done in a fairly trivial manner in teams. Teammate calls you (1 click), shares screen (1 click), and then you tell him where the couple of buttons he needs to click are.

Personally I've worked remotely and in person, and I'm much more productive at home than in the office. There's a plethora of tools that enable us to get as much done if not even more without all of the distractions that exist in the office. This has been true in my former career working in sales and marketing, and is true now in my career as a software developer.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#479

I like that he specifically mentioned open floor plans. This is the number one reason why I don't want to return to the office. I kinda do want to go back. But I need my privacy and some quiet. I can't do the open floor plan ever again.

On The Media did a great segment about remote work and office design last week: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/promise-an...

I'm in a situation right now where my office is near by and open, but attendance is mostly optional and ad hoc. I find that days when I have lots of meetings are the best days to WFH because it's so much easier to talk over Zoom and not have to rush back and forth to meeting rooms. Having a chat window secondary to the out loud talking is also invaluable. The in-person situation is most valuable when I'm working on some tactical problem (ie coding) and want a second set of eyes or just to complain for a minute. It can be done over Slack, but it's less natural.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#480
post #80

I like that he specifically mentioned open floor plans. This is the number one reason why I don't want to return to the office. I kinda do want to go back. But I need my privacy and some quiet. I can't do the open floor plan ever again.

It always annoyed me that they couldn't even be honest and say it was save rent, they had to make it seem like open floor plan was a positive thing because it "increases collaboration" It's not enough you want to be cheap but you want to make it seem like you're doing it for our benefit.

You're telling me that the reason sweatshops were designed around open floor plans had nothing to do with facilitating serendipitous interactions?! :O
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