Digital Nomads Went from Niche to Normal
wired.com
wired.com
The problem with the DN lifestyle is that everyone marketing it hard has a vested interest (they run some product/service tied to the DN lifestyle).
For everyone else that wants to get their feet wet in this type of living, they soon realize that things get expensive really quickly (this applies to everywhere except South East Asia).
You just need to account for plane tickets, visas and short-term rent alone to see how it is expensive.
Also, the article conflates "work from home" with "digital nomad", which aren't exactly the same thing.
Working from a dedicated space at home is very different from working in a noisy coffee shop or heck even a co-working space, and I wouldn't be surprised if some "no remote worker" policies were built around the idea that the person will be sitting in a Starbucks charging you $100/hr to share their screen with whoever looks over their shoulder.
A remote (where most people work from a home office or some semi-permanent co-working space arrangement) team can definitely adapt to some short term "work from anywhere" changes, but I think the key part is adapt and short term.
I've provided short-notice ops assistance to colleagues from a beach (literally, feet in the sand, under an umbrella) in Thailand using an iPad.
I'm not going to claim I can work from the beach all day every day though.
Then there are people, like you said, who are renting apartments for weeks/months, prioritizing quiet work spaces, and often continuing to hold full time jobs.
I'm kind of in this category right now and am certainly never working from the beach. I went to Latin America so I could find apartments with good internet and continue to work in the same timezone that I started out in.
https://microship.com/winnebiko/
It was my first exposure to the "digital nomad" lifestyle. I thought it was super cool. I still do. The world would be a more interesting place if more people did stuff like this.
It sounded like a great lifestyle, if you could maintain it and/or had means. His data-input system using four keys on each handle to enter data a byte at a time while riding could be replaced with far more efficient techniques with off-the-shelf modern hardware (he had to innovate all of his stuff on the fly, with various hardware experts contributing prototypes).
End of 2014, I've been approached by my former co founder to work on a project with him. So I packed my stuff and my family, and we went to Caribbean. The project was a failure (at last for me) but I kept all my client so I stayed ´til now.
Next year we plan to go back to EU, most probably Ireland, for our kids to learn English better. And still work for my clients in France.
Then next, it will be Spain, then probably Sweden.
My point is, am I a DN ? With my wife we decided that, until our kids tell us to stop, we gonna travel from a country to another, staying 2 years probably. So we're not moving every month or so, but still. As I can do my work from anywhere, I think it's a great opportunity to be able to travel like that.
The only problem I see is jet lag, as I am sometimes wake up in the middle of the night if there's an emergency.
But it will no longer be one when back to EU.
I'm in the somewhat uncommon position where I can work in most of the western world without having to get a skilled work visa. The only country that's locked to me (in terms of effort required to immigrate) is the USA. Otherwise I can work visa-free in New Zealand, Australia, and the EU; and Canada isn't difficult to get a 2 year unrestricted work visa for.
Obviously everyone is different, but I don't really think it's a sustainable lifestyle to end up in a different city every month, staying in Airbnbs (and apparently shunning coworking spaces). You don't end up getting meaningful social connections, I think I would just feel like a permanent tourist who still has to work.