Comment by mr_luc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mr_luc | Hacker News Reader

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Just wanted to say that I lived in a small ecuadorean fishing village for 7 years, and my experience was the opposite ... but I'm not starting a startup!

My internet was even more limited (EDGE), power went out sometimes (two power bricks were enough for my mac air, though, and the cell towers never went out, so I could make it through even a multi-day outage without losing internet!), and comfy fast wifi in a coffee shop was 40 minutes away (I'd schedule voice or video meetings on days I liked to go into town to buy things or eat at good restaurants).

And surfing fast, big, tropical beach and point breaks ... well. It was rainy during nearly half of the year, but I didn't even need a wetsuit, and during the good season, it put a smil

I bought a house down there; I'm back in the states right now, because I came back and got married to a girl from my hometown. But we're heading to Ecuador again as soon as we can. :)

But a startup? Hmm.

I think I'd have been a good startup employee, but contracting was a better fit anyway since I really appreciated multi-month blocks without work.

Do you contract for a few months at a time in $first_world_country?

I'm asking because I've been contracting in London for a couple years and I'm considering doing half the year here, then half the year something like what you describe. But I'd have to move the wife and (soon) kid twice a year. She says she's fine with that.

Congratulations, I noticed a lot more Commonwealth types than Americans doing that sort of thing as still-working professionals (but a heck of a lot of Americans doing things as investors).

Yes, you've probably done the math and know that it would work, and can lead to a great work-life balance, to take a few projects for a few months, and then be almost completely off the radar for your clients during the other months.

I did that at first. Now I'm 100% remote with my best clients -- not that I wouldn't be able to make a certain amount of face time if it was necessary any more. But it was slapping us in the face just how unnecessary my physical presence is; it feels almost unflattering, in fact. For a while I was making it a point of coming into their offices during a busy or critical week, but after the first couple of years of our relationship, it just seemed absurd to us; I'd walk into a physical meeting and say "hey," and they'd say "hey," and we'd laugh at how silly it was that I was physically in Minneapolis over just a few minutes or hours of face time a week. My 'home base' in the US is several hours away from their offices, all of our meetings could be done over the phone, and the most interesting conversations between engineers to me seem to happen better over chat anyway.

So I'm just always remote; sometimes I'm in South America, sometimes I'm on the west coast or the midwest visiting family. I change location a lot, and it never makes the slightest bit of difference for clients; I just always call in to meetings instead of physically walk into the room.

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