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Comment by acchow | Hacker News Reader

People glorify traveling way, way too much.

It's even trickled down into actual work. New grads from college somehow think management consulting's traveling every week is a fancy perk. What?

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As a recent grad I spend two grand of my company’s money every week traveling to new and interesting places all around the country to solve interesting problems. I don’t pay rent and everything I need is free Monday to Friday. On the weekends I fly for free to all sorts of fun places around the country where my friends live.

Having only a suitcase of possessions is very freeing, and I’m saving tremendous amounts of money.

For me, it is a fancy perk.

Fancy perk for now, soon it will get old and tiresome to you. Enjoy it while you can :)

Yup. This was my life at 19 believe it or not. Grew old after 4-6 months, though it was a blast for a time. Hotels start to feel hollow and flying that much sucks, even in first class.

I've just about used up my huge cache of frequent-flyer miles. I still have a credit card that generates points I can transfer into a few airlines or hotels if I want, but I'm glad to be done with the amount of time I spent at airports, on planes and in hotels.

I loved traveling for work for about 2 years (traveling 4 times a year overseas for a week). After that it was just horrible. Once you start having pets and spouses and kids, it becomes a complete nightmare. Especially if you don't live near a lot of family who can help while you're gone. Eating food on the bed jetlagged in the hotel after another way-too-long day gets old.

It really was, before flying became awful. I'd roll in to the airport 15 minutes before takeoff and not have a problem. Thanks Osama!

Different people enjoy different things. For some people, traveling is fulfilling and exhilarating. For other people being in unfamiliar settings with unfamiliar culture and language is much less fun.

And even within that, some people can enjoy travel up to a certain point. Might be fun to travel for work once a month, but not for 3 out of 4 weeks. I traveling for my first job where I was gone 60-80% of the time and it was fun, but after a year it got old.

Yes, different people enjoy different things. I'm not claiming that nobody enjoys weekly work travel. I'm claiming that it's overly glorified - something like 80% of people will say "oh you're so lucky you get to do that!" when in reality only a fraction of them would enjoy it and most of them would hate it.

As someone who plays an instrument, and would like to spend a decent amount of time practicing.

This is possibly a thing that is not very possible, and very cumbersome with long term travel. Especially if you would like to practice multiple instruments.

I used to love travel but too much work travel killed my passion for it in all forms. Now I dread flying anywhere and staying even in suites(with points) in hotels is just meh. I'd rather be home with my dog and wife and familiar stuff.

I'm almost in my 40s and I was overjoyed when my company offered me the chance to travel for work.

Not everyone can afford traveling (I agree that's not as much true in the U.S.). And staying in fancy hotels is cool.

Once you have a family that changes quickly (I don't have children), but for 20 somethings it must be a real perk.

Edit: sibling comments says it wears out after 4-6 months.

Consulting companies here sell traveling as a perk. And the new grads lap it up.

Personally, flying and airports are just miserable. Traveling is nice but too much of a hassle to do more than once a year.

Traveling is like going to meetings. If you don't have a lot of work to do - great. If it gets in the way of accomplishing something good it becomes a pain point.

But there's also where you have to travel.

Middle of fucking nowhere? Oh joy.

Hot? Cold? Dangerous? Yeah, nah. Not so much.

I like to think you can find the good in almost any area. When I travel I make it a point to eat at local restaurants. No chains. I’ve had some really good food and met great people.

I haven’t been anywhere exceptionally dangerous since I was younger.

I work in a place where we have to travel occasionally (depending on the project - I rarely travel but some colleagues are always abroad) and new hires usually think that's exciting until they do it once or twice.

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