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Working from Home on a Tropical Island Paradise?
CarrotLord asks: "I've recently returned from a holiday in Bali, and I liked it far more than I like London, where I live and work. With the growth of telecommuting and outsourcing, surely it should be possible for a technology worker to relocate to a cheaper, more pleasurable location such as Bali, and work from there, living an enjoyable life, working less, earning less, but still being able to afford a good standard of life. Personally, I would take an 80% pay cut quite happily to live there, and I'd still be financially secure. Surely, someone could set up a company, employing skilled workers in locations of their choice, to do remote outsourcing work at a relatively low price? Does anyone do this? Has anyone thought about doing this?"
Oh man, I would dearly love to do this.
One major problem though is that people love to be in direct control of those who are working for them. Furthermore, they do not trust what they can not see. If they can not walk by your cubicle and physically see that you are working, then to them, you are NOT working.
This pretty much cuts out hourly or salary work. There is contract work though...
I would find it an interesting challenge to gather up cheap (pricewise) but quality talent gleaned from people who are living in their version of paradise and create a contracting company based upon this premise. Happy people generally make great quality code. There are two very large show stoppers still.
I would need to write contracts that were highly prejudiced against the worker in order to protect myself from slackers and thieves. What this means is that I would be able to cut you at any time and deny you pay for time worked. Would you trust me enough to sign a contract like that? Of course, I would be honorable and continue paying all of those who come through; otherwise my business would falter... but seriously, I wouldn't trust a boss with that kind of control so I really do not expect you to either.
The other big show stopper is bandwidth. You would need a high quality, low latency, high bandwidth connection in order to do video conferencing. I have done projects through IRC before and it works relatively well as far as low impact programming goes. For serious projects, voice communication is an absolute necessity. Adding video on top of that is more of a requirement than a bonus; although whiteboard programs and such do somewhat alleviate the need for video.
Really, this is a great idea and I would love to participate, either as a business owner or a subcontractor. I think the first show stopper kills it though. Trust... *sigh*
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I am currently working on a project with a team that is spread across two locations, and I find that are team is much less efficient than if we were all working in the same building together. The main reason for this is that it is much harder to collaborate on things. Normally, if a group of people need to hash out some ideas together, they get in a room with a white board, put their heads together, and usually they leave with a common understanding of the problem and the solution. However, when you need to do this type of activity with people with whom you cannot meet with face to face, this type of activity takes a lot more time and is a lot more inefficient.
Certainly, technology does help to a certain extent. We use email, phone, instant messaging/ Net Meeting, virtual whiteboard, etc. However, it seems like it is harder to convey ideas using these techniques. What ends up happening is within a site, people generally end up on common ground, but between sites is where most of the disagreements in point of view occur.
The second roadblock is that team unity and cohesion suffers. If you see someone on a regular basis and can have informal conversations with them, you can build up a lot of goodwill and trust over time. You know where the person is "coming from" and you have a better understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and point of view. However, building this type of cohesion across long distances is really hard and it takes a lot more time and effort. As we all know, teams which are "tight" and have a good working relationship are very effective, while teams that lack this often work at cross purposes.
The third roadblock is that communications and information is not propogated efficiently across sites. Sometimes, news and information are passed through informal chats with people. Sometimes I will go over to a co-workers office just to "shoot the breeze" and I will end up learning a lot about what that person is doing and about the project in general that I do not get in the formal meetings.
Based on these personal observations, it seems to me that a virtual team really needs to really need to think about how they are going to overcome these issues in order to really work.
Personally, I think, first and foremost, you need a strong manager who has experience herding cats across time zones.
Second, you need to have a strong technical lead who can set the technical vision and direction for the group, since a virutal team cannot be lead by consensus.
Third, you need to have good collaboration tools to maximize the efficiency of the communications and to try and reproduce the "bull sessions" as best as possible.
Finally, you need to be able to divide up the work so that there are as few dependencies as possible, so that people can work independently on their piece with minimal active collaboration. Obviously, there will be a need to communicate at the integration points, but if you accept the fact that virual teams will not be bale to communicate as efficiently, the need for this communication should be kept as low as possible.
I am not saying that virual teams can't work. However, they need a different style of management, a different style of organization, and they are probably best for certain type of projects.
Now that I think about it, there are a lot of parallels (no pun intended) between parallel computing and the optimal organization of virtual teams. Perhaps there is a thesis topic lurking in there somewhere!
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www.moneybythenumbers.com
If you're a coder, you can use rentacoder.com. I've used it as both a buyer and coder.
One thing to keep in mind though, are Tsunami's and the cost of shipping to an island. You'll probably pay much more for internet goods (not services - ahem).
Have fun, and send some postcards!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
"Before you go taking that 80% pay cut, allow me to point out that "80% pay cut" and "80% of current pay" are two very different things. You might want to choose your wording very carefully."
I really don't know much about Bali, but I assumed he used that wording intentionally. I went to Brazil a couple of times and the cost of living is much much lower than it is here in L.A. I'm paying roughly $1,000 a month for a 1bd apartment. In Brazil, a much much larger apt was roughly $200USD a month. I've actually thought about relocating down there and doing freelance work for the US. Living is cheap and man it's nice down there. The people there are so nice. I mean... wow I still fantasize about it from time to time.
So what stopped me? Even when I found places where I could get 'broadband' internet access, I couldn't get US websites to load very fast. (It's worth mentioning that this was a few years ago.) Since I'm a 3D artist that often works with footage, the practicality of doing something like that was quite questionable. I gave up on that idea.
I have a couple of reasons for posting here. One is that I'm hoping somebody will chime in and say if Bali is like Brazil in the ways I've mentioned. The other is that I'm curious if the internet access in either place today is strong enough to support that type of work. Comments?
"Derp de derp."
I'm in a place with weather in the 70s when its winter, beaches everywhere you look, etc. And it sucks.
I'd trade this "tropical paradise" for London any day - give me a place with art, culture, hustle and bustle, architecture, history...
Sitting on the beach gets boring FAST.
This space available.
Wow, Bali, that sounds great - great to visit. Living there is an entirely different story.
I've lived on a tropical island for twelve years and returned to the US. From experience:
1. The natives won't make your life easy. If you want to live there, you want to live there with all the rights and privileges you had in Britain. Fat chance. Will you get to vote? Can you own land? Do you speak the language of your local representative. If some local thug takes an interest in you or your business, do you have any recourse?
2. Life changes. I went to paradise with my wife and returned with three children. The educational opportunities are limited. When my oldest child took a first grade standardized US test and failed after graduating highest in her class, it was time to leave.
3. All thing rot in paradise. Bali, Thailand or anywhere in the tropics is fecund, incredibly fecund. Things grow. Fungus grows - everywhere. Bugs grow everywhere. Everything is green. Computers are not green. Modern appliances are not green. All the conveniences we enjoy in the middle latitudes rust or fail in the tropics. Expect many difficulties maintaining your equipment and lifestyle.
If you want to go to Bali and telecommute, do it. Save up enough money. Start your own business doing contract coding over the internet and go.
Keep enough money to come back.
machinator omnis sine licentia
To give another story on working from home:
At my company, we have two groups working on different products (software). For one group development was split between two locations, to make commute easier. But in that group that lead to immense problems. People didn't communicate with the other location, rivalries (the bad kind) crept into the relationship and the product suffered as as result. Now they are in one location, and things are going much better.
The second group (where I am) on the other hand, had its members split into all directions from the beginning. Half of it was working from home, and the other half is now as well. Some are on the road almost always, doing support or installations, sometimes assisting sales people. We meet each other rarely in person. But we work together without trouble, and are as efficient as ever. That is for two reasons: First, we stay in contact closely via all means possible: IM, VoIP, phone, EMail, discussion boards, aso. Second, we were friends and working together at other companies before the current one and know each other well.
So, to sum it up: As others have written, only being in contact electronically can be problematic, as you have trouble building up trust and the kind of relationship that is necessary for well-oiled development.
But if you have all of that already, you can make it work just fine.
Be nice to each other and do not forget that in electronic communications (of all kinds) a lot gets lost. Words alone make it difficult to get what the other wants to say, so it is better to assume the thing he just said was just a joke, not an insult. That the phrasing was just harsh out of not having much time, not because the other side disklikes you.
If you intend to do contract work, that makes it difficult, but if you've worked together for years, go for it.
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
One thing to consider if the job will entail a significant pay cut is to what extent your expenses will be at the cheap local rates. In many third world countries local food and housing are very cheap, but imported items are very expensive. You'll almost certainly want to buy imported tech gear. Will you be able to afford it? Similarly, how expensive will it be to travel elsewhere if that is important to you? Do you like the local foods, or will you want to import a lot of expensive stuff? If you read a lot, to what extent will locally available materials satisfy you? Can you read the local language? And is a lot of what interests you published locally? If not, purchasing books from the US or other countries and importing them may be very expensive.