Comment by devrandomguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devrandomguy | Hacker News Reader

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I was living the nomadic developer lifestyle for a couple years, and it has been the best experience of my life. Living in and working from a dozen or so different countries has given me an incredible perspective on where in the world I actually want to be.

If you and your SO are a developers, then I would highly recommend a work-cation in Prague. I spent a few weeks at a really cool co-working space, PaperHub, which was part of the Institute of Cryptanarchy (lol). They take BTC for everything, the transit system is a dream, and there are tiny little specialist grocery stores everywhere. If I was ever going to return to the same place twice, it would be Prague.

Beware of burnout, though - there is no rest in this lifestyle. The home office wants me online during their business day, and constantly learning new cultures is a huge cognitive load. After two years of this, I needed to settle down for a while; right now I am resting between jobs, thanks to a very supportive mother. Oh, make sure to take good care of your parents, they may end up being the only solid, reliable people in your life.

> I spent a few weeks at a really cool co-working space, PaperHub

I honestly don’t get the attraction of co-working spaces for most digital nomads. The costs often outweigh simply working from a cafe or the balcony of your AirBnB – 3G internet is cheap in most of the world now. In my hometown, co-working spaces attract locals who set up small teams with other local freelancers and could benefit from in-person collaboration. But for a solitary digital nomad all of whose contacts are remote, what's the point?

Networking is a big one. Traveling around the world gives you a chance to uniquely expand your professional network.

I see. I guess this must be a developer thing. I’m a digital nomad, but my profession is translation. In a co-working space in a third country, I’d be unlikely to ever meet anyone who needs my particular language pairs, and the only benefit would be working in an unusually quiet place that, in itself, doesn’t seem worth the cost.

Good coffee shops are certainly adequate, and many of them, in Europe anyway, have a section that is nicely furnished for a full day's work.

There are some extra perks to a good co-working space, though. It is library-quiet, and you are surrounded by people who are living and working a similar plan. I was actually able to informally recruit a guy who often worked near me, when we needed to bang out a bunch of UI components and their services, for a design that the client and I had already detailed fairly well.

For me, work/life separation has been important. It's nice to have a routine to just walk down the street to a WeWork. It's also great for meeting people and events.

Because there are two of us, we're being conscious of not spending every waking moment together. A coworking space helps with that.

So, your mother's supporting you because you can't/won't work to support yourself. I might be old-fashioned, but this reads like a cautionary tale, or an anecdote made pointless by the backdrop of privilege.

She's an elementary school teacher, and I am living very cheap. No new clothes, minimal meat products, no social events. Just resting for a bit. From a global perspective, I am quite privileged, but within my home country, my family has been near or below the poverty line for most of my life.

Thanks for the advice - we'll keep Prague in mind. We're amid investigating visa options in Europe right now.

We're planning on staying places for 3 months at a time. Here in CDMX, that's let us get a coworking space, gym membership, and a semblance of a routine.

We're planning on spending extended time in our hometowns, too (though maybe not 3 months).

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