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?"

Comments

Control/Trust

[strikethree]

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

My suggestion:

[TeleoMan]

Seriously, stop for a moment (before you go to the interview) and think about what kinds of things would make you not want to work somewhere: Are there "death marches"? Frequently? If you have issues with your immediate supervisor, is there someone higher up in the chain who is specifically set aside to mediate? Ask to meet your prospective teammates (cow-orkers?). Do you get a fluffy bunny when you do something outstanding (rewards)? Just think about what is important to you. Some things will stress you out, but won't stress me out so you will need to decide for yourself what are the most appropriate questions to ask. I recall being younger and just being thankful that they were even considering me. Now, I will reject any company that does not fit my criteria (which is as it should have been even when I was first starting out!).

Hard to Collaborate Over Distances

[humblecoder]

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!

I highly recommend it

[MarkusQ]

I highly recommend it. A few thoughts:

• If you presently work in IT, especially in a small shop, talk to your employer. You may be surprised at how receptive they are to the idea.
  • Don't mention (or at least, don't get specific) about the pay cut right up front
  • Point out that you'd be glad to have visitors
  • Look for (and point out) other advantages, such as you providing swing-shift support or...?
• Broadband is available in surprising places. It's also unavailable in surprising places. Do your homework.
• VOIP
• Research the climate for a whole year. Quantify things like "the rainy season" and make sure you know what you are getting into. Some places are really nice for six months out of the year, and...interesting...for the rest
• Make sure you like the local food.
• If there is a local language other than English, try to learn as much of it as you can.
• It takes more discipline to work this way. Lots more.
• Explore the tax consequences, work permits, etc. Many places can be sold on the notion that you are a "tourist" who happens to be being paid by your company back home--the idea being that you really are commuting, and aren't "working" in the country--just spending your money there.

--MarkusQ

P.S. My present job (which I'm taking a break from for a few minutes to cruse /.) is in the US. My house is on the side of a (dormant) volcano near the equator.

Yeah, I'd say you're on to a good idea.

One other thing I forgot

[MarkusQ]

I forgot in my list:

You'll need to get serious about UPS/battery backup (or just do everything on laptops) and making backups, etc. You probably think electricity 24/7/52 is normal. My power is up a good 99% of the time--meaning I average about 24*60/100 = 15 minutes of no-electricity a day, with outages lasting from 5 seconds to 5 hours. Not unsupportable, once you accept and plan to deal with it, but a pain in the butt if you don't.

--MarkusQ

Rentacoder.com

[bergeron76]

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!

Re:80% pay cut?

[NanoGator]

"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?

Third-world business, first world income?

[daviddennis]

I'm putting together a web service type business, and I figure I can outsource myself to the Philippines and save a lot of money thanks to the low cost of living. It might make totally new business models possible, such actually, seriously, being able to make a living of blogging, even if you're not in the top 1% of it, through a combination of the generosity of Google ads and the incredibly low cost of living. Most bloggers who try this are in the high-cost SF Bay Area and bleed money like crazy, but you're just one person and don't have to do that.

It also brings new social opportunities. Third-world chicks dig American guys. You're a millionaire in their eyes, even if you make $1,000 a month. You are also exotic and curious and odd, and that uniqueness is attractive in ways money doesn't completely explain. True, they love you for your money, as well as being you, but that's really no different from how American girls work. The only difference is that you're at the top of the food chain instead of the middle.

The biggest problem, of course, is that your options in getting customers don't include the schmoozing that is so necessary in cases like this. In my case, I have a business partner who's staying in the US and dealing with those things. At the very least, you would need a US bank account to accept money and someone in the US to deposit checks. Most affiliate programs and Google Adwords require US addresses and banks.

In the Philippines, you come in on a tourist visa and can renew it for up to 12 months. At that point you have to leave the country for 24 hours. Most people doing this take one day vacations in nearby Hong Kong, Singapore or Taiwan.

Make sure you have very carefully researched the cost of living in your chosen area. You can usually bring in your laptop computer, but parts and service for it may be scarce. Computers and other electronics can cost double or triple what they do in the US thanks to stiff tariffs and corruption. On the other hand if you're stopped by a cop, you pay PHP500 ($10) and you can go on your merry way without the slightest stain on your driving record.

Bear in mind that costs are lower, but not evenly so. Used cars in the Philippines cost maybe 40% more than they do in the US, because there are a lot of import duties. You can get cheap native made cars but you probably won't like them. Gas in the Philippines cost slightly less than the US, thanks to lower taxes, but it's still expensive. On the other hand, a high-rise apartment in Manila's most expensive elite area goes for about PHP60,000 ($1,000) a month. You can get housing in major cities for PHP7000 (about $125). True, it lacks a bath tub or hot water, but the water's lukewarm anyway.

DSL Internet, in areas that support it, is about $50 a month. Everyone uses cellphones and they're all on prepaid plans which are very cheap. Despite this, most people in the Philippines use text messaging because it's even cheaper.

So why did I choose the Philippines? Amazingly low cost of living, for one thing. Most people speak a bastardized version of English, so the language isn't a big problem. And of course it's a tropical island which means I can enjoy going swimming and boating.

So if you've always wanted to be your own boss, and have a good business plan you can execute, going to a third world country might just be the way to do it.

But beware: You won't be able to make money there yourself. Skilled workers go begging at P200 ($4) a day. And even technical workers don't fare much better, from what I've been told. The key in going to a third-world country is to keep some reasonable fraction of your first-world income.

I'm in the final phases of my research and will be visiting the Philippines in February. (All of this information is from my pre-trip research.) I plan to blog during my trip showing my reactions to real life there. Watch amazing.com (which will be changing radically soon) for details.

D

more info on Bali

[TheSHAD0W]

http://www.escapeartist.com/efam/69/Living_In_Bali .html

While Bali is fairly idyllic, apparently there are problems with foreigners being cheated in land sales and with becoming a resident.

General note: If you wish to work and/or live elsewhere, The EscapeArtist is a good resource to plan with.

Telecommuting is Evil

[fm6]

I just started a contract for a company that I previously contracted for eight years ago. They're seeing hard times, and they're leaning heavily on telecommuting to cut costs. This saves them money on facilities, plus there are a lot of people who will gladly take a cut in pay to live in Bali — or at least Bangor.

But for me it sucks.

I'm a tech writer, which means I spend a lot of time milking information from development engineers. Last time I worked for this company, I seldom could get engineers to answer my email -- they had too much shit in the fire, and responding to a tech writer didn't have any priority. No problem: I just wandered by their offices, asked them a few questions, and left. Much less time consuming for both of us than compusing a lot of emails.

Can't do that any more. Half the engineers I need to communicate with don't work on site. Some I can telephone. But not the ones that live on the other side of the planet! And the ones who do work on site seem to spend all day in teleconferences with the ones who don't, so I can't corner them either.

My own team is just as bad. My manager telecomutes from across the country, as do two of the writers I work most closely with. We have weekly staff meeting by teleconference, which have to occur early in the morning to accomodate a couple of folks in Europe. There are a couple of new hires that don't attend at all because they live even further east.

We have technical and planning screwups because it's so difficult to communicate. Plus communicating up and down the food chain is damned difficult, since my boss never has face time with me or her boss. I could go around my manager, but that's not smart unless your boss happens to be a total idiot. And for once, I have a boss who's actually pretty sharp.

I shouldn't complain. I get paid well, and people respect my work and my concerns. It's just that all these low-bandwidth channels degrade the quality of my work, and that hurts my professional pride.

Oh yeah, here's the ironic part. I'd like to move closer to my family, help my sisters look after our aging mother. And I might have a chance to go permanent with this company. Which would give me a chance to work from home...

Can I have your place?

[Jafafa Hots]

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.

Re:Can I have your place?

[Jafafa Hots]

In the ways that I said - no history, no architecture, no sense of community like you have in a city (it has a different kind)
It may be superficially pleasant, but there is no grit, no action, no reality... just sun and sand. Pleasant enough for a short vacation, but after that, boring as hell.

I'll never even get to visit London let alone live there (I'm poor) but I'd give my left nut to be able to live in London, Paris, New York, San Francisco. It may be because I'm a city boy, grew up in a city. Also, I am not a driver.

Telecommuting from Phuket, Thailand

[aaarrrgggh]

I am currently telecommuting from Thailand. MarcusQ brings up a good point, don't talk salary! I am currently at 100% of my US salary, although a different arrangement will eventually be required.

Some pitfalls for you to understand:

• Internet access can be spotty in availability and reliability. You always need a backup plan. It can sometimes take months to get ADSL, and without a proper residence and sometimes a work permit it can be hard to get at all.
• Much of my job is on the phone. My US phone had a bill for the first month roughly approaching half my take-home pay. Fortunately, it was paid by the company. I had good intentions of using Skype, but 24-hour internet cafes aren't available anywhere near me.
• Can you do your job via dial-up? Often that is the best speed you will find! Make sure you have contingencies; I end up using GPRS for transferring large files. It hurts!
• You will be working odd hours. I start at 6am so I have a few PST hours, end at about 11am, take a break, and start working from about 8pm to midnight for time with EST hours. I feel sorry for my wife and neighbors when I am on a 3am conference call and having a heated discussion. The time difference can turn something you thought could be done overnight in the US into a 3-day activity if you end up needing help from someone else.
• There is no such thing working for a US company as part-time. If you are worth enough to them to let you telecommute, you will be putting in roughly the same hours, but likely working harder. The logical extension to this is that to succeed in the long-run, you need to start a business and have local people (and gullible travelling experts)working for you and billing them out at 10x their salaries. I hate to admit it, but that is the only way.
• The exception to the above rule is that if you happen to have irreplaceable experise, and a fantastic relation with your boss, and much of your work involves being remote from co-workers and clients, you might be able to pull something mutually beneficial for 6 months.
• Relationships with co-workers will degrade over time, especially if you used to be in the same office. Think in advance about how that might impact you.
• Finding just the right place to live could take a lot of time. Factor this in when you make your business plan.You also might need to move around seasonally. Under stand your need for access to an airport!

One last tip, find an expat website for the area you think you want to go and hang out there for a while to understand the pitfalls and work-arounds before you encounter them yourself! For Thailand, I suggest ThaiVisa.

Re:Quite the opposite here

[CarrotLord]

It's pretty easy for Australians to go to the UK (indeed, I'm Australian, and came here for the reason mentioned above), particularly if your parents or grandparents are UK citizens, as is relatively common in Australia (eg my mother is English). It's got little to do with the "tightness" of the relationship, and everything to do with historical links. The US fought a war of independance with the UK, whereas Australia still has the Queen as head of state.

Consider the fact that I am an Australian citizen, and will be a UK citizen shortly, but I can't get a work permit in the USA without sponsorship from a US company. However, as a UK citizen, I can work anywhere in the EU.

Re:And another other thing

[MarkusQ]

You may well be correct. I know they've formed well over 80% of the animal biomass (and total biomass for that matter) located inside my house at various times, so I may be more inclined to err on the side of Insects! than otherwise.

The key point really being that no fish, very very few plants, almost no birds, few reptiles, and only a small fraction of the mammals will routinely think it's a good idea to explore your dwelling on the off chance that something they might want is inside. For social insects in some parts of the world, on the other hand, it's kind of a hobby.

--MarkusQ

Re:80% pay cut?

[acidblood]

Since I'm Brazilian I'm going to chime in. I live in a medium-sized town (500k inhabitants, give or take) in the north of Paraná state. Right now I'm using 600/300 kbps ADSL which costs about US$ 50/month all told (including the phone line). Grab a free-for-all VoIP plan like BroadVoice's and you get free calling to Brazil, the US and other countries for US$ 28/month. This is absolutely imperative if you plan on using the phone a lot, as Brazilian rates are outrageously expensive. Cell phones are pretty expensive as well -- you'll hardly find people with 100+ minutes monthly plans (that's roughly 3 minutes a day). Also, be prepared to pay ridiculous markups on your hardware: the US$ 500 Mac mini costs upwards of US$ 1000 here, and a VoIP ATA/router I was looking at which sells for US$ 90 in the US costs US$ 200+ here.

In my town the best connection you can get from ADSL is 1 Mbit/512 kbps, paying I believe something from US$ 80 to 90, all told. No cable connection either. I don't think the situation in the big towns is much better -- I've never heard of anything faster than 1 Mbit/512 kbps. If you really need more than that, you're either going to have to get multiple phone lines with multiple ADSLs, or get a pipe directly from the local tier 1 providers like Embratel (which is going to cost a fortune even by US standards, probably not worth it).

Something you have to pay attention to is the capped plans. The main ADSL provider in São Paulo has monthly caps in place of (I believe) 10 to 40 GB/month, depending on which plan you get. You'll have to look around for uncapped plans or stay away from São Paulo (which is, as far as I know, the only place where caps are implemented -- plus it's not a good town to live in anyway).

Out of curiosity, where were you staying in Brazil?

Short Term Existence in a Tropical Environment

[Ropati]

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.

Telecommuting works well ... in some cases

[selfsealingstembolt]

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.

consider your buying habits carefully

[belmolis]

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.