Ask HN: Achieving location independent working remotely?

14 points by notevenremotely 2 years ago | 7 comments

I've been working from home since the pandemic, first with a company that had offices, and later with a remote-only firm.

I'm at the point in my life now were splitting time between to locations would be really beneficial, even if that means compromising on salary.

Very interested in hearing how others have pulled this off and what pitfalls they encountered.

- Are you working as a salaried employee, running a company or contracting?

- How did you deal with employers and customers outside of your timezone?

- Do you work synchronously and keep anti-social hours? Do you work async? How does that affect your productivity?

wanderr 2 years ago |

Find a 4 hour block of time that works well for folks in the various locations you will be collaborating with and make yourself available during that time. I work with folks on the east coast and west coast. I was able to live in Hawaii and stick to the sleep schedule I had on the west coast, that is, waking up super early Hawaii time, having all my meetings in the morning and then having flexibility the rest of the day. That was great because I could take advantage of the copious daylight to explore and then finish work in the evening. On the east coast my collaboration time was on the late side so I could use the morning daylight and then jump into meetings and work later. In my experience it generally isn't that hard to fit collaboration time into those hours and then occasionally flex for exceptional circumstances and responding to async questions on slack to keep others unblocked.

moneywoes 2 years ago | |

how was Hawaii?

nicbou 2 years ago |

I'm self-employed and I run a website for a living. The website is about the area where I live, but I could run it from anywhere. I'm gone about a quarter of the year.

I don't offer services, so I am not bound to a place or time zone. I do have online meetings once in a while, but they can be moved around.

I still keep social hours, although I'm not a stickler about it. If it's sunny outside and it's about to rain all week, I can work later.

moneywoes 2 years ago | |

Brilliant.

This is my dream

How did you go about achieving this?

any suggestions for a novice e.g. programatic SEO & affiliate income

nicbou 2 years ago | | |

It was mostly luck. My niche is too small to get overcrowded, and naturally yields to high-commission purchases like insurance. I didn't know that when I started.

In any case, I live by the age-old advice "content is king". You wouldn't believe how much work I put into researching, writing and maintaining each guide. I didn't achieve local brand recognition by pumping out SEO-optimised garbage. You can't speedrun this.

Kon-Peki 2 years ago |

> I'm at the point in my life now were splitting time between to locations would be really beneficial

Do you mean something like snowbirding?

notevenremotely 2 years ago | |

Kind of, but across continents and time-zones.