Show HN: RemoteClub – Best cities to work remotely across the world | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: RemoteClub – Best cities to work remotely across the world

remoteclub.com

58 pointsboolean47 comments

I've been living abroad for 5 years, mainly in Medellin, but also in Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines. Living in Colombia is great for your mental health. People don't talk about Bitcoin, IPOs, or political turmoil.

Great neighborhood vibe. Folks are really friendly. Have a lot of friends that make the Colombian minimum wage ($300 a month) and they're generally happier than my rich friends back home. Took me a few years to understand the culture, but worth it cause it taught me a whole new way to look at life.

I've also spent 3-4 months in Medellin and my experience fully aligns with yours in regards to happiness of locals vs people back home.

Thanks for sharing. Do you speak the language? Or are you able to get by in English? That's one of my concern with working abroad when it comes to non-work-related interactions.

I came to Medellin with no Spanish and learned. Took longer and was harder than I expected. The locals don't speak English and most of the magical stuff happens in Spanish.

My Spanish speaking personality is quite different from English speaking me. I say things to my Colombian girlfriend in Spanish that I would never say in English. My Spanish speaking interactions don't have an English equivalent.

Come for a few months, speak English, and you can have a great time. If you come for a few years and learn the language / culture, you'll have a new worldview.

Sidenote: there's a misconception that you can learn a language by being in a country for a few years. I've known lots of expats that have been here for years and still don't know the language. Even fewer have truly understood the culture.

What's notable about the culture?

Any recommendations on neighborhoods for someone bringing a family with younger children (was thinking Poblado)?

I have friends with 4 kids under 10 and they live up in the Tesoro section of Poblado. Lots of gated house / apartment communities. Colombia is family oriented, so it's easy to find great housing and fit into the culture with a family.

Thank you!

These kind of sites are so generic that they are basically useless. I checked out a city I used to live in and which I know very well, it was first described by 3 adjectives, all 3 adjectives would be declared false not just by me but for every person who has spent more than 72 hours in such city.

Thanks for your feedback. We've spent extensive time on most of the cities listed on the website. If you could share (on here or via feedback link on the city page) what information you think is false, we can take a look and improve.

He's probably referring to the the page made by Pieter Levels

Some of the top hits have questionable human rights histories and in some case significant crime rates. This list seems to just be another “hey it’s cheap here and there’s decent population density ergo, services available”. Why not consider safety and political stability etc in the grading of remote location quality?

It also completely overlooks the difficulty of getting an appropriate visa (and a lot of countries have no suitable visa category at all for remote workers).

We just added a long-term visa section (link at the top). Remote worker focused visas are becoming more common and we expect to see more countries offering them in the next few years.

Safety is a criteria that we're planning to add. Political stability is a hard one (would you consider US politically stable these days?).

You didn't address the part about the questionable human rights records

Some of the cities we listed definitely have questionable human rights records. It's up to the individuals to decide if they want spend their time there. An example is Istanbul. Turkey has extremely questionable human rights records, and yet it's one of the most visited countries in the world.

The US, where many visiting the site will undoubtedly be living already, has a questionable human rights record.

Against tourists or folks with work visas? Since when?

> Against tourists or folks with work visas? Since when?

That was not the filter in the original comment, so why restrict to these? If there are serious human rights issues to their own citizens, it is bad enough.

That is the context of the original comment... since the entire thread is about working remotely in a foreign country.

> Against tourists or folks with work visas? Since when?

Against foreigners (or those mistaken for them), and people who don't meet the current, evolving, understanding of White race/ethnicity, and especially people in the overlap of those two groups, forever, though the degree, and which specific subgroups have it the worst at the moment, varies over time.

Safety is also overrated ;) The most fun adventures I've been on have been dangerous.

Lots of folks would be happier if they took bigger risks, went to more dangerous spots, and took some life tips from economically disadvantaged folks that are living full lives. You might get robbed every now and then, but not a big deal if you play your cards right.

This comment only sounds good until you actually have a gun pointed at you and/or you decide to have children.

Yea, I've been robbed semi-violently and quite violently. I stand by my statement. You're not getting hurt if you manage the situation properly. And the benefits for me are huge. So happy I left a safe life and have a more fun existence now, despite the risks.

Robbed? Try getting killed.

I don’t understand this trend of thinking that the US is “unstable” because of a few recent issues. As a non-American, the US seems to me an order of magnitude more stable to live in than most of the world.

Feedback: tell me why a city is a hotspot or up and coming on the homepage, because it looks like it's just what you felt like advertising/curating

Good feedback. We'll add a note to highlight why the city is popular. Thanks.

Not sure it makes sense - I would like to see

1. Size of software community around the location. In case I am interested in meetups.

2. Schools - if I have young kids

As a new permanently remote worker, I've been looking for something just like this! It's almost perfect.

If there was budgeting help, that would make it perfect. I'm trying to spend just as much as I would if I lived in one place.

Nice concept, but I'm not seeing any information about visa options? This is quite critical for anybody planning to live in a country.

Update: found it, but it's hidden on a separate page behind a tiny "Visa" link up top. The overall nav here is a bit awkward, I though the nav was just providing quick links to sections of the home page but turns out they're pointing to separate pages, some of which duplicate content (eg the news & updates stream).

Also, COVID restrictions are quite important now, although these are a nightmare to track because they change so rapidly.

We've started adding long-term visa options (there's a link at the top of the page). We have debated adding COVID restrictions and are still on the fence whether it's worth effort. At this point, we're optimistic that most countries will lift the restrictions later in the year.

Speaking from on the ground in SE Asia, it's highly unlikely travel will be back to normal before 2023. The big question for travel is whether countries will start accepting vaccination as a substitute for quarantine.

I'd take these living costs with a grain of salt. I can say from my own experience that in Bangkok you can live for about twice less quite comfortably. Well but better to overestimate than to underestimate and realize that you can't support your living.

On the other hand, staying in Thailand as a remote freelancer for a long time is pretty much impossible. Not to mention the difficulty of getting visa now along with all the extra expenses due to covid. Also, due to covid, most of the features such as nightlife, street food, and markets are non-existing now.

If you're working remotely and living in a _city_. You're doing remote work wrong.

This is a zero entropy comment.

I could make an equivalently meaningless comment:

If you're working remotely and living in a rural area, you're doing remote work wrong.

As someone that just bought a house in a rural area in order to escape city "life" and save money during covid lockdowns with no end in site...I don't think your comment is meaningless, simply incorrect :)

Nice site. Although it would be great if you rated every city, to know which cities aren't good for remote working.

Out of curiosity, how do you plan on monetizing the site (if that's one of your goals)? Like the idea

How long you think remote work will be the norm?

This is a solved space. Nomadlist.

NomadList is great but most of the site is currently being restricted to paid subscribers. Our approach is different in a way that our data is hand-curated instead of automation and api driven metrics.

Like it. I just started working on something similar. Shoot me an email if you'd like to collaborate.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a solved space. Obviously you need to bring something fresh to the table, but if this were true, then that intern I worked with back in 2000 would have been correct in his assertion that Yahoo was so powerful that nobody could compete.

Right? Surprised to see such a comment on HN. There is always room for improvement/innovation in any space. Even more so in a rapidly emerging new domain like remote work/living logistics.

As a remote worker for the last three years, I can't tell if this is real or sarcasm?

Not even close to being a "solved space". Especially not by just a single website.

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