About to do the same thing in Chiang Mai where my wife will be teaching English. Really enjoying Bangkok so far, but want to check out some of these remote islands sometime soon.
Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
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Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#62I've always dreamed of having a company (that was making money) where I could relocate my team once a month every month to a different place on the planet. London, Tokyo, Singapore, China, San Francisco, Iceland, France, Germany, Russia, Australia, India, Canada... We could be a travelling startup. That would be so cool!
Good luck being productive and forming important/lasting relationships (i.e. networking) while doing this. I've been working remotely from different countries over the past couple of years, and while it's a great life experience, it's just not practical for work. The wife and I are now looking for a home base.
We actually met a couple of people from HN on Koh Samui ;-)
And yes, I agree it doesn't make sense to be there permanently, but traveling once in a while to the big business hubs in the world and spending a month here and there helps.
What I personally don't want to do though is to permanently live in a city that is crowded with people. So doing those time-limited remote experiments is a nice change of perspective and a very good way to recharge your batteries while still staying productive.
Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#63$20 helmets hmm, I guess it's better than nothing.
Those were already the best they had available on the island ;-)
Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#64Is what they're doing legal? I'm pretty sure a tourist visa means you can't use it for work (activities for which payment is received or capital is gained), even remote work. I'm told that the Thai government is pretty harsh in punishing such things.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/125980/thai-immigration-offici...
That article just confuses me. It says it is ok and then contradicts it a paragraph later. Eg:
"Digital nomads – people working remotely or running online businesses – in Thailand can legally work there on tourist visas"
But one paragraph down:
"It is unlikely that travellers will be granted a re-entry stamp after two or three visa runs. If your passport is stamped “O-I” (out-in) upon arrival, it is unlikely that you will be able to re-enter the country again should you decide to do a visa run"
Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bah, everyone's in their 20 with no family!
The more time I spend here, the more I suspect that HN is populated with single 20 year olds with no friends or family. Thus, they create a "work family" to fill their social needs. The result is insular teams with mandatory beer pong tournaments.
I am not in my 20s and I do have a family, but that's a feeling I get here too! There also appears to be a strong dislike of older proven languages (don't ever mention the word C++) and a faddish obsession with newer younger languages. Perhaps it goes with the crowd?
Or are my conclusions inaccurate?
Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#66[deleted]
Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bah, everyone's in their 20 with no family!
The more time I spend here, the more I suspect that HN is populated with single 20 year olds with no friends or family. Thus, they create a "work family" to fill their social needs. The result is insular teams with mandatory beer pong tournaments.
My experience here is that the community is somewhat schizophrenic on work - anything that smell of old school hierarchical structures, fixed hours, clear preference for onsite over remote work etc are evil - but at the same time, if you work a single minute more than 40 hours a week without overtime pay, you're being exploited. If you have a work laptop or cell-phone, it's a trick to make you work more, for free - not blatantly obvious tools to enable remote work which further enables flexibility. If there's free food or showers, it's a trick to make you work more, for free. If there are social events or people otherwise claim to "enjoy work", it's a trick - they've obviously drunk the Kool-aid. Mandatory beer pong!
I think a lot of people here are very keen on experimenting quite radically with what work itself looks like. Like all experiments, they are not for everyone, and nobody expects any single radical experiment to just stumble upon the final answer to work, but they may learn a thing or two that the rest of us can benefit from.
Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol, 8am Pacific Time. If the developers I worked with were in by 10am scrum I was surprised. I called it CA time. Roll in at 10am, 1.5-2 hour lunch, surprisingly most everyone gone at 5pm because kids or something else. My coworkers would ask me how many hours I was working, to which I'd reply 40. How many are you working?
I am a developer in SF and work in finance. We are all in the office before 6am PT to be ready for the market-open at 6:30am. No one leaves for lunch as the market is still open. These things change quite a bit industry to industry, shop to shop. It's not necessarily a developer thing, just a business culture thing.
That actually sounds terrible :/ Quality of life and all that jazz.
Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#69Re: Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand
#70I've always dreamed of having a company (that was making money) where I could relocate my team once a month every month to a different place on the planet. London, Tokyo, Singapore, China, San Francisco, Iceland, France, Germany, Russia, Australia, India, Canada... We could be a travelling startup. That would be so cool!
Yeah but then you'd need a team who'd travel with you. And few people can just pack up and move every month. If you have kids, you'll want to keep them in the same school. Or you might be tied down to care for a family member. I would never leave my area for long because it's where all my friends live. It's simpler to have a remote company. Then you can take all the trips you want, and your team can work from whereve…
Also, add some budget to allow your remote team members to fly to meet each other. I mostly work remote, but one of my clients had funds to fly me over every few months and meet their team for a week each time. It's a fantastic way for the team to get to know each other, far better than just Skype interactions.