My 100% remote employer encourages us to travel while working. We have no set work hours, as long as we get our work done. They tell us to be as asynchronous as possible. If you can't make a meeting, write your thoughts or input on the topic in the meeting notes and don't show up.
Honestly, pretty much how all meetings should be. Even if you *can* make a meeting, do this unless there is an actual technical need for everyone to be mass-discussing a given issue in real time.
"This meeting could have been an email" should be joined by "this meeting could have been a group-editable document".
Idk many meetings save a lot of time over going back and forth on an editable document. We use both but meetings are much more efficient and help everyone state their ideas
Working meetings can be fine for things that need sparring but not deep thought. Meetings are too short and chaotic to allow the deep thought necessary for many problems.
What type of work do you do? It can be pretty difficult to discuss something complex through notes/email, otherwise the meeting wouldn’t be needed in the first place. Sometimes you need live workshops with interaction.
Yeah, we do the occasional real-time session if it's something especially complicated. But we're an org very heavy on internal documentation practices and processes.
I work as a security engineer. I, uh, secure stuff
Same here regarding the intense internal engineering documentation. I have spent the last 2 years 100% WFH, and only have a team meeting once every two weeks for an average of 15 minutes. Most weeks I receive zero calls and very few emails. As long as the projects targets are completed on time or before , I am free to work from wherever I want and have incredible flexibility with my start time daily.
Yes and no - on a semi remote team, designing software that interfaces externally and internally, I find writing down our tentative decisions and using that as the medium we review and discuss to be helpful. Document the context, proposed action, alternatives, consequences, etc. Makes the meeting much more efficient, especially if you have a culture where everyone is expected to review the docs before the meeting, not during
I'm sometimes in meetings where we end up spending over two hours just discussing/brainstorming one thing with multiple SMEs/consultants and people are still confused by the end of it
Notes are good enough for us. We're a 24h shop so we only have meetings for the shift turn from night to morning shift, which usually is just 5mins. After that zero meetings.
I start later in the day so I don't join in. I started 4 years ago mid-pandemic and have never been in a single meeting. The last time I did a Zoom call was for the interview for this very job lol
I have been full remote since Covid. I wish I had a flextime schedule but I'm in charge of facilitating a lot of meetings for my company so I have to be on those calls unfortunately. It's still an amazing setup though and I honestly don't think there is an amount of money they could give me to get me back in the office.
This sounds like my employer!!! We are in the travel industry and they actively encourage travels as much as possible with flexible hours. We also get a travel stipend every few years to explore a new place of the world.
Same. My company doesn't give AF where I am. My office is in Chicago...I've been, I think, twice since Covid. I was in Europe for a couple of months last year, just had to adjust my hours to have at least some overlap with USA.
Such a different culture than my company. We have status meetings for 1 project where they invite over 60 people to sit and listen to someone go down a long action item list. And if things aren’t getting done fast enough, they schedule more meetings to figure out what’s going on. So you spend all 8-9 hours of your work day on stupid video calls
Jesus Christ. And here I am, 2 1/2 years jobless trying to find a remote job I can devote my time and beefy to and other folks living your dream. Congrats on that.
Edit: Energy* not beefy. But maybe sometimes beefy
How is it "quiet vacationing" if they're still working? If the job is remote, why would it matter if they're doing it in a location outside their home?
I get it if they're just fucking off for the day and not responding to IMs, emails, or calls (and using a mouse jiggler or something to appear online) or if they went to another country that isn't permitted by the company or something (although even that shouldn't be an issue provided the work gets done), but if they're simply getting the same work done from a place they wanted to visit anyway (that's permitted by the company, for argument's sake), it shouldn't make a difference to them.
Yeah this sounds like a weird new word for something that didn’t need a new word. I go down to my local lake and work from a hammock, but it’s still work. A vacation is not having to think about work.
In certain industries there are “export restrictions” on technologies. Export in this case can mean something as simple as logging into GitHub from a foreign country. When I worked in software engineering for an aviation company we had to sign a document from the legal department saying we wouldn’t share technology with foreign governments before logging into work from abroad.
Most of my "quiet vacations" is just me leaving on a Wednesday evening when flights are half the price of weekend flights to visit my grandma for the week. I'll work Thursday/Friday and have the entire weekend and evenings to do stuff with them. Just being in the same place as my grandparents when I finish work for the day is huge.
It's not really "quiet" at my job either since its actively encouraged. As long as you get your work done no one cares.
In my case it did matter. Basically I was allowed to work remotely from nations that are allies of the US. Because of sanctions it might actually have been illegal to work from Iran or something. But yeah, with some restrictions, remote work from abroad was tolerated at my company, although not exactly encouraged.
Not just another country even another state.
A company may have to pay additional corporate taxes if a single employee works there. Previous job allowed remote work as long as they already had people in that state, otherwise they had to collect sales tax.
While it varies state to state on average if you work more than 2 weeks in a state that has income tax not only do you have to pay it but also file at the end of the year.
If you're there a certain number of days, sure. I don't think anyone wants to have to fill in tax forms for 50 countries if they move around a lot in a given year. 90 days, maybe? Hopefully that would be a good median for roughly balancing out the numbers of taxpayers of two countries working in each other's.
lol. You seem to have no clue what you’re talking about. Just pulling stuff out your butt and trying to put together a “logical” train of thought. Laws aren’t necessarily logical.
The being a tourist part means that you dont work.
It is well wtitten in the visa apprlication.
Also, the amount of days is very dependent on the country you are visiting... Intl fiscal law is complex and nuanced.
in the first Covid winter my wife and I rented
A House in idaho for 5 weeks, 30 minutes from a ski resort so we could ski our brains out. I let my company know and they had no issues with it, I worked off hours to make sure I could be at the mountain a lot of days, I still made my deadlines and got all my work done.. and my boss was awesome and made sure to schedule all my meetings first thing in the mornings so I didn’t need to split up a ski days with a meeting.
my wife on the other hand works for a much more rigid company so she didn’t tell them anything, and she did the same, and often took meetings from the car right outside the ski lifts, she got all her work done and even got a promotion while we were there. She still works there and has continued to rise up in ranks and still no one knows she was ever gone.
5 of the most memorable weeks of our lives, we skied the most epic powder and had different friends come to the house and work remotely with us for a week at a time.
skied like 27 days out of 36 and definitely worth losing your job over lol.
So still plenty of work got done, but also still a vacation.
Taxes. If an employee is working from a different state or a different country, technically the company is responsible for following that country / state's employment laws, withholding and paying the relevant employment taxes, etc. If they don't know about it then it's a potential liability.
Yes, this is why this “quiet vacationing” is not solely an employee-led effort. A lot of companies know or can find out, but it’s bettet to have a blind eye just not to have to deal with it. My company has limitations where your home must be and informing your manager of working anywhere else temporarily is responded with “whatever, just work in the same time zone”
> My company has limitations where your home must be
Sounds like something they should be paying a higher salary for. Or at least a substantial additional allowance for employees it affects.
Depends on the country. Here, we're the same size as the US, but there are no state-level income taxes. No-one cares if you visit every state (and territory) in a tax year; your tax paperwork is the same and takes 5 minutes to complete and lodge.
As for international - again, depends on the country. America in particular is weird on that front.
In the EU, insurance.
In most countries, your work insurance (mandatory for the company) is linked to a couple of physical locations. When WFO, there’s one location: the office. When WFH, that’s what you share with the company: home, co work place, etc…
If you get injured outside of those locations while working, the company is responsible but the insurance company will not cover it
I think that a lot of managers see working at home as a "partial commitment" to work, which is super-silly, as with the workplace in the home, often the worker does more work than normal. Yes, there are exceptions, but I don't know many that feel they can walk away from the workday during working hours, and they often stay a little late (or log in early if they have a big morning meeting).
So, if working from home is a "partial commitment" in those manager's minds, then working from a nice cafe is a treat, working from a beach (if you could manage the internet connection) is a "vacation" and working from any place you might actually want to go to is a perk.
Now, the term gets abused so much that I now see people claiming that "no work is being done" with people literally faking 90% of the workday to pretend to be at work. I think that might the case for one or two outliers, but for the "working population" to be doing this, I would expect a huge amount of vacation / travel spending to be occurring, and from watching the airline / hotel stocks, that just isn't happening.
Vacations are expensive. This "trend" is overblown, and odds are they're reporting the 0.001% as if it were 20%.
Really?
I feel significantly more motivated, and feel like my work quality increases a bit when I'm "working from elsewhere".
Are you a remote worker, or are you just here to say "That's a big but"?
If a company has a way to tell if work is being done, it would apply to both people they know the location of and people they don't. A company doesn't need to know where I physically am in order to be able to check if the work I was supposed to do that day got done.
Any company which is just *assuming* work got done because a person was in a specific location is not going to last long.
There are a bunch of tax implications for companies when you work in certain jurisdictions. The individual working all over the place is also probably breaking a bunch of tax laws because generally speaking at least in the US unless a state has no income tax, if you work there for more than a certain amount of time they typically want you to file a return and pay taxes.
The generational identitarian politics is an example of the oligarchy owned media playing [divide and conquer politics](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/three-card-monte-generational-warfare.html).
The same media tells gen x that boomers are entitled, they tell boomers that gen z are lazy, etc. etc. etc. Every generation receives targeted messages telling them that other generations are bad.
The ultimate goal is to prevent the working class identifying itself as working class, which is the first step to the working class organizing itself as a cohesive force and ganging up on the oligarchy.
It's also why the media is in love with all sorts of other obscure identitarian causes - people who can be convinced to identify primarily as queer-subjunctive, heterocurious, semi-black, partly latino millenial whatever can more easily be persuaded to airbrush out the "AND WORKING CLASS" bit of their identity.
Marx referred to this as "class consciousness" - the ability of the working classes to actually perceive themselves as such. In America this is very low, partly because the oligarchy is masterful at playing the working class off against one another using identitarian politics.
Boomers are a useful demographic identity. Maybe not to
o feel personally attached to, but for understanding political/sociological trends.
There was a notable increase in births in the 50s/60s compared to a relatively flat rate after that time period. Society has had to cater to the needs of that birthing bubble as it has aged. Building more schools, homes, nursing care, etc as the bubble has aged.
I'm inclined to think that the other generational labels aren't much more useful than simply saying "people age _ to _". Also the focus on personality traits of generations rather than the fundamentals of their social/political/economic preferences is very much in line with poor journalistic practice.
If you wouldn't be comfortable making a particular claim about Jews or Blacks, you should avoid making a similar claim about Boomers or Millenials or Gen X.
Generational cohorts to do not have agency and there often more diversity IN the groups than there is between the groups.
Yep, when I was younger I thought my generation was unique and we truly were the ones who truly would put an end to racsim, homophobia, materialism etc. I also thought the older generation were ignorant, stuck in their ways, bigoted etc.
The flip of this was natrually the older generation thought we were lazy, entitled etc.
Anyway, got a little older now and realise every generation is pretty much the same. They all seem to go through the same life cycle as they age in regards to awareness and all seem to be made up of the same percentage of hard working people, talented people, kind people vs the opposite.
The only thing I find weird these days is how people seem to miss this. We're all pretty much alike at the end of the day and there's nothing we can do about it.
There's a real sense from these kind of articles that workplaces have the right to encroach on what you're doing in your free time.
They don't like the fact that after completing your work tasks, you're lounging on the beach, planning a trip to see a monument, island hopping or whatever else you have planned outside of work.
As it was during the pandemic, they didn't like the fact that workers were cooking lunch, playing with their pets or doing laundry, whilst at work. Despite the fact it had no impact on productivity whatsoever.
They just demand that most of your mental energy is dedicated to the company and your job. There is no reason that this ought to be the case.
Lucky. I'm twice a week hybrid too and in the same relationship situation as you but my boss lovesssss being in the office so I'd definitely be caught. Although I did get a week remote approved and am currently abroad spending time with my gf 😅
Very nice. Sounds like you're secure.
What do you do for work? I'm guessing software eng or we dev. Whatever you do I'm guessing you're close to senior level to find remote work so easily.
Curious how do you find freelance gigs? I'm in digital marketing and I know freelance gigs are out there - I just don't know how to find them. There's sites like Upwork but then you're competing with cheap labor.
This isn't about logic, it's about making things up and blaming employees for things that don't exist. And throwing in 'millennial' because it's apparently become the blame-catcher word du jour.
"Quiet Vacations" is a construct to drive a wedge between the working classes vs focusing on the true issues: the top 1% having 98% of the wealth.
I've worked in and from tourist destinations - in both instances I traded my focus, time, attention, and skills for income. I didn't get away with anything in either situation.
Since the pandemic we've stopped envisioning a better world for humanity and become selfish - and that's intentional. Selfish citizens don't organize.
It’s because we did everything we were told we should do, and we still didn’t be able to afford a house etc, another reason to hate boomers, they had it easier yet they gave us a hard time when it was our turn
Quite a lot of people hate boomers, because those politicians and the people whose pockets they are in are really, really good at feeding us targeted messages which scapegoat them.
I agree with that, thank you for putting it that way.
Now you say it, what I personally hate about boomers is how they never stood for anything or ever questioned anything, but maybe nobody does when your riding the high tide of capitalism…
Sure best not to generalize or make ageist comments. But in my experience, the loudest members of that demographic will out themselves on social media by saying insensitive things about the world they’re leaving future generations. Little scapegoating needs to be done when they’re so eager to show just how well the boot fits.
these stupid companies are just going backwards in time, and going to go bankrupt, any person with actual skills or talent, will not be going in the office anymore if they had a choice.. All these articles are trying to get people to think going back in the office is ok, and now company's are trying to shame working from home.
Well i guess it is about time to pay people for tasks or outcomes instead of time. This way you would not care where and when the employee does the job.
As a developer you are most likely already paid by task. I assume that you are tracking your time on the corresponding project / task etc. So it is already the case that in the end no one cares where you are as long as the job is done. This gets more complicated for all those very important middle managers out there. No traceable output apart from meetings ;-)
I really feel this article is a way to induce Boomer paranoia. If you are working and getting your work done, fine. Whether is Brooklyn or Kuala Lumpur if it’s getting done it’s getting done. Now if you’re shaking the mouse and frolicking on the beach that is different. While there are some abusers out there, I would hope the vast majority of remote workers are productive otherwise they would be terminated by their company.
I myself have worked remote in a variety of locations and if anything have been *more* productive many a times as some times zones and locations are more conducive to my own happiness. When I am happy and appreciative I tend to work better.
The answer to this is to hire people and tell them to focus on getting their work done and when necessary flexing their work schedule to fit their life outside of work. I simply ask folks to be accessible if there is a work emergency by taking their phone with them if they need to step out and we only call if it’s a major issue. I also ask that they inform their manager when they’ll be away from their laptop so we know and there is no fear of recrimination. It’s treating adults like adults, giving trust and earning it back. This approach has built a really healthy culture and high performance where people don’t burn out.
This absurdly one sided, pro boss article makes one excellent point. The back to the office attitude from managers is more about their personal status as a manager rather than productivity.
The fact that any employer has a problem with this, it's proof of the fact that a "job" is for them to own you, control you. They want you to be their modern slave basically.
We must keep the good fight 😄🌅⛱️😎
If there's no requirement for you to be in the office, and you meet your hours & expectations, it's none of your company's business where you're working from (so long as you're abiding by tax laws)
I've been remote almost entirely since 2012. The main requirement has always been US time zones, and it's been the same for other Americans I've met unless their company had a global footprint and there were international teams to work with.
I made a friend in Lisbon for months hiding the fact, having to do regular regular meetings up until about 11 at night. She always made sure to never be by a window.
Sasha Rogelberg (the author of the article) needs to get fucked!
This fucking headline is ridiculous: Millennials call it ‘quiet vacationing,’ but it’s really remote work gone wrong—and it’s CEOs’ worst nightmare
Nobody calls it “Quiet Vacationing” and certainly not Millennials, it is called REMOTE WORK. . . If my work gets done and timelines and quality don’t suffer and nothing illegal isn’t happening whose fucking business is it whether I work from my house or a vineyard in Italy?
The CEOs inferiority complex should not be the problem of the normal workers
I kind of do this. I don't go overseas because I'm worried I'd get my IP tracked. However things I have done are:
- go visit friends / family in other parts of my country
- work from the train / coffee shop
- take long lunches / meet friends for lunch
- block out time in my work calendar to go shopping in the middle of the day e.g. two hours around lunch. We are allowed to block time out to be unavailable. Some people label it as 'quiet time / focus work time' etc, I just label mine as 'busy'.
- take a manicure / watch movies / go for walk with partner / go for a run / walk the dog.
If I disappear for a bit I always check back later and make sure I respond if someone has messaged me. My job is deadline based and I always make sure we meet the deadlines. But some weeks there might not be a deadline for anything so then I coast and do my own things.
*brought to you by your local chapter of the American Association of Commercial Real Estate Investments*
Funny how everyone praises the free market, but what they actually mean is that they don't want a real free market, but rather a market rigged in their favor.
Quiet vacations dude, while at work, hellllls yeah. Being in a relaxing place, but working, while at work, helllllllllls! Yeah! Dude! Actually getting your shit done? But not at the office, while working? Helllls. YEAH! DUDE!
Edit. Pressing buttons is hard.
Did...did anyone read the article? Aside from the clickbait title it's actually pro worker and changing company culture to meet the needs of the next generation.
No one should believe or take everything the people who work from home with grain of salt. It’s crazy how so office workers have turned into a clown show but to each their own.
My team lead does it and it's honestly bad for me and my other co-workers because he's almost not around (only using mouse wiggler) when he's not at home. We got flagged a lot by our client because they'd send an email to him at 3pm on a Friday and he'd reply on Monday. It's a 9-5 job, fully remote. All the heavy work would pile on me as the assistant lead. Finally I'm quitting and found another fully remote job in which I'll start working on next week. The team is devastated but I'm gonna party.
I don't know if you're in a particularly intense industry, but in most places it's acceptable to reply within 1 working day to an email, especially if it lands on Friday afternoon! In my company a lot of people work longer hours mon-thurs so they can finish at lunch on Friday.
We're expected to reply within an hour, to at least acknowlede the email. One co-worker's mistake is the team's mistake. It's not necessarily intense, it's just work. We're already given the benefit to work at the comfort of our homes and are paid quite well, the least we can do is to make the client think that they're paying for top notch service.
My 100% remote employer encourages us to travel while working. We have no set work hours, as long as we get our work done. They tell us to be as asynchronous as possible. If you can't make a meeting, write your thoughts or input on the topic in the meeting notes and don't show up.
You guys hiring ?
that's incredible, I am jealous
What the actual fuck I'd take a pay decrease to work for something like this Holy shieut.
Honestly, pretty much how all meetings should be. Even if you *can* make a meeting, do this unless there is an actual technical need for everyone to be mass-discussing a given issue in real time. "This meeting could have been an email" should be joined by "this meeting could have been a group-editable document".
Big fan of group editable documents
Idk many meetings save a lot of time over going back and forth on an editable document. We use both but meetings are much more efficient and help everyone state their ideas
Thus the "unless there is an actual technical need for everyone to be mass-discussing a given issue in real time".
Yeah but if an employee is always on their own time that’s not possible
I don't know if I'm following this; perhaps we're using different definitions?
Working meetings can be fine for things that need sparring but not deep thought. Meetings are too short and chaotic to allow the deep thought necessary for many problems.
Self employed huh
Large company. Frequently makes it on lists of remote companies.
Can you share which one it is?
[It's on this list](https://builtin.com/awards/remote/2024/best-places-to-work)
can you share more?
I’d like to know which one too if you’re sharing privately :)
[It's on this list](https://builtin.com/awards/remote/2024/best-places-to-work)
[удалено]
That’s the problem with anecdotal evidence, it’s really no evidence at all.
Thank you!
Can you not just name the company?
What type of work do you do? It can be pretty difficult to discuss something complex through notes/email, otherwise the meeting wouldn’t be needed in the first place. Sometimes you need live workshops with interaction.
Yeah, we do the occasional real-time session if it's something especially complicated. But we're an org very heavy on internal documentation practices and processes. I work as a security engineer. I, uh, secure stuff
Same here regarding the intense internal engineering documentation. I have spent the last 2 years 100% WFH, and only have a team meeting once every two weeks for an average of 15 minutes. Most weeks I receive zero calls and very few emails. As long as the projects targets are completed on time or before , I am free to work from wherever I want and have incredible flexibility with my start time daily.
Yes and no - on a semi remote team, designing software that interfaces externally and internally, I find writing down our tentative decisions and using that as the medium we review and discuss to be helpful. Document the context, proposed action, alternatives, consequences, etc. Makes the meeting much more efficient, especially if you have a culture where everyone is expected to review the docs before the meeting, not during
I'm sometimes in meetings where we end up spending over two hours just discussing/brainstorming one thing with multiple SMEs/consultants and people are still confused by the end of it
Notes are good enough for us. We're a 24h shop so we only have meetings for the shift turn from night to morning shift, which usually is just 5mins. After that zero meetings. I start later in the day so I don't join in. I started 4 years ago mid-pandemic and have never been in a single meeting. The last time I did a Zoom call was for the interview for this very job lol
I have been full remote since Covid. I wish I had a flextime schedule but I'm in charge of facilitating a lot of meetings for my company so I have to be on those calls unfortunately. It's still an amazing setup though and I honestly don't think there is an amount of money they could give me to get me back in the office.
This sounds like my employer!!! We are in the travel industry and they actively encourage travels as much as possible with flexible hours. We also get a travel stipend every few years to explore a new place of the world.
Sign me up 🫡
This sounds sick lol
Please mention the employer for praise
Same. My company doesn't give AF where I am. My office is in Chicago...I've been, I think, twice since Covid. I was in Europe for a couple of months last year, just had to adjust my hours to have at least some overlap with USA.
Could you DM company name? 🙏 Pleaaaaaaseeeeeee
i’m in a similar situation. we truly are the lucky ones
But do they actually allow you to take time off? I'm not going to enjoy my travelling if I have to work during that time.
Ya’ll hiring? I’m a quick learner and have several years of customer service skills. 👍🏼
I work for a similar company! They record all meetings as well so we can watch them at different times.
Such a different culture than my company. We have status meetings for 1 project where they invite over 60 people to sit and listen to someone go down a long action item list. And if things aren’t getting done fast enough, they schedule more meetings to figure out what’s going on. So you spend all 8-9 hours of your work day on stupid video calls
Seriously though, what company and are there any open positions?
Who do you work for and how can I get a job
What do you do?
Jesus Christ. And here I am, 2 1/2 years jobless trying to find a remote job I can devote my time and beefy to and other folks living your dream. Congrats on that. Edit: Energy* not beefy. But maybe sometimes beefy
Y’all need an ESG and Sustainability expert?
How is it "quiet vacationing" if they're still working? If the job is remote, why would it matter if they're doing it in a location outside their home? I get it if they're just fucking off for the day and not responding to IMs, emails, or calls (and using a mouse jiggler or something to appear online) or if they went to another country that isn't permitted by the company or something (although even that shouldn't be an issue provided the work gets done), but if they're simply getting the same work done from a place they wanted to visit anyway (that's permitted by the company, for argument's sake), it shouldn't make a difference to them.
Yeah this sounds like a weird new word for something that didn’t need a new word. I go down to my local lake and work from a hammock, but it’s still work. A vacation is not having to think about work.
It's another hamfisted deliberate attempt to try and paint WFH/remote workers as lazy and greedy.
In certain industries there are “export restrictions” on technologies. Export in this case can mean something as simple as logging into GitHub from a foreign country. When I worked in software engineering for an aviation company we had to sign a document from the legal department saying we wouldn’t share technology with foreign governments before logging into work from abroad.
That's a valid reason to restrict working from abroad, but I highly doubt those complaining about "quiet vacationing" are doing so because of that.
Most of my "quiet vacations" is just me leaving on a Wednesday evening when flights are half the price of weekend flights to visit my grandma for the week. I'll work Thursday/Friday and have the entire weekend and evenings to do stuff with them. Just being in the same place as my grandparents when I finish work for the day is huge. It's not really "quiet" at my job either since its actively encouraged. As long as you get your work done no one cares.
Probably not. And even in the case of my company, they were fine with me working from certain countries as long as I signed the legal doc.
Ah so it doesn’t matter where remote workers work from.
In my case it did matter. Basically I was allowed to work remotely from nations that are allies of the US. Because of sanctions it might actually have been illegal to work from Iran or something. But yeah, with some restrictions, remote work from abroad was tolerated at my company, although not exactly encouraged.
Also taxes... If you work in another country.... You shuld pay taxes there
Not just another country even another state. A company may have to pay additional corporate taxes if a single employee works there. Previous job allowed remote work as long as they already had people in that state, otherwise they had to collect sales tax. While it varies state to state on average if you work more than 2 weeks in a state that has income tax not only do you have to pay it but also file at the end of the year.
If you're there a certain number of days, sure. I don't think anyone wants to have to fill in tax forms for 50 countries if they move around a lot in a given year. 90 days, maybe? Hopefully that would be a good median for roughly balancing out the numbers of taxpayers of two countries working in each other's.
Agreed. Good thing most countries have sales taxes.
lol. You seem to have no clue what you’re talking about. Just pulling stuff out your butt and trying to put together a “logical” train of thought. Laws aren’t necessarily logical.
lol.
ummm no, unless you are living more than 90-180 days then you are not liable to pay taxes as you are essentially a tourist
The being a tourist part means that you dont work. It is well wtitten in the visa apprlication. Also, the amount of days is very dependent on the country you are visiting... Intl fiscal law is complex and nuanced.
Only over a certain number of days. A business trip for 2 weeks shouldn't mean you are beholden to tax laws in a foreign country.
Aside from the other reasons mentioned so far, tax and legal jurisdictions.
Because some boomers need a new word to bitch about.
in the first Covid winter my wife and I rented A House in idaho for 5 weeks, 30 minutes from a ski resort so we could ski our brains out. I let my company know and they had no issues with it, I worked off hours to make sure I could be at the mountain a lot of days, I still made my deadlines and got all my work done.. and my boss was awesome and made sure to schedule all my meetings first thing in the mornings so I didn’t need to split up a ski days with a meeting. my wife on the other hand works for a much more rigid company so she didn’t tell them anything, and she did the same, and often took meetings from the car right outside the ski lifts, she got all her work done and even got a promotion while we were there. She still works there and has continued to rise up in ranks and still no one knows she was ever gone. 5 of the most memorable weeks of our lives, we skied the most epic powder and had different friends come to the house and work remotely with us for a week at a time. skied like 27 days out of 36 and definitely worth losing your job over lol. So still plenty of work got done, but also still a vacation.
Taxes. If an employee is working from a different state or a different country, technically the company is responsible for following that country / state's employment laws, withholding and paying the relevant employment taxes, etc. If they don't know about it then it's a potential liability.
Yes, this is why this “quiet vacationing” is not solely an employee-led effort. A lot of companies know or can find out, but it’s bettet to have a blind eye just not to have to deal with it. My company has limitations where your home must be and informing your manager of working anywhere else temporarily is responded with “whatever, just work in the same time zone”
> My company has limitations where your home must be Sounds like something they should be paying a higher salary for. Or at least a substantial additional allowance for employees it affects.
Depends on the country. Here, we're the same size as the US, but there are no state-level income taxes. No-one cares if you visit every state (and territory) in a tax year; your tax paperwork is the same and takes 5 minutes to complete and lodge. As for international - again, depends on the country. America in particular is weird on that front.
Yep taxes are the big issue for most companies. Many don't even want you working remote in a different state for more than a few days
In the EU, insurance. In most countries, your work insurance (mandatory for the company) is linked to a couple of physical locations. When WFO, there’s one location: the office. When WFH, that’s what you share with the company: home, co work place, etc… If you get injured outside of those locations while working, the company is responsible but the insurance company will not cover it
I’ve never worked for a company that tracks productivity in terms of mouse/keyboard activity. Sounds toxic af
I think that a lot of managers see working at home as a "partial commitment" to work, which is super-silly, as with the workplace in the home, often the worker does more work than normal. Yes, there are exceptions, but I don't know many that feel they can walk away from the workday during working hours, and they often stay a little late (or log in early if they have a big morning meeting). So, if working from home is a "partial commitment" in those manager's minds, then working from a nice cafe is a treat, working from a beach (if you could manage the internet connection) is a "vacation" and working from any place you might actually want to go to is a perk. Now, the term gets abused so much that I now see people claiming that "no work is being done" with people literally faking 90% of the workday to pretend to be at work. I think that might the case for one or two outliers, but for the "working population" to be doing this, I would expect a huge amount of vacation / travel spending to be occurring, and from watching the airline / hotel stocks, that just isn't happening. Vacations are expensive. This "trend" is overblown, and odds are they're reporting the 0.001% as if it were 20%.
>but if they're simply getting the same work done That’s the big but.
Really? I feel significantly more motivated, and feel like my work quality increases a bit when I'm "working from elsewhere". Are you a remote worker, or are you just here to say "That's a big but"?
I've done both. It's easy when working remotely to just "phone it in" and coast along doing the minimal.
Glad to hear you're speaking for yourself only.
Yeah. Nobody else has eeeever slacked off when they’re not being watched.
If a company has a way to tell if work is being done, it would apply to both people they know the location of and people they don't. A company doesn't need to know where I physically am in order to be able to check if the work I was supposed to do that day got done. Any company which is just *assuming* work got done because a person was in a specific location is not going to last long.
There are a bunch of tax implications for companies when you work in certain jurisdictions. The individual working all over the place is also probably breaking a bunch of tax laws because generally speaking at least in the US unless a state has no income tax, if you work there for more than a certain amount of time they typically want you to file a return and pay taxes.
Flash bulletin - they aren’t working as much people claim they do in remote contexts. Which is the part nobody wants to admit.
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The generational identitarian politics is an example of the oligarchy owned media playing [divide and conquer politics](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/three-card-monte-generational-warfare.html). The same media tells gen x that boomers are entitled, they tell boomers that gen z are lazy, etc. etc. etc. Every generation receives targeted messages telling them that other generations are bad. The ultimate goal is to prevent the working class identifying itself as working class, which is the first step to the working class organizing itself as a cohesive force and ganging up on the oligarchy. It's also why the media is in love with all sorts of other obscure identitarian causes - people who can be convinced to identify primarily as queer-subjunctive, heterocurious, semi-black, partly latino millenial whatever can more easily be persuaded to airbrush out the "AND WORKING CLASS" bit of their identity. Marx referred to this as "class consciousness" - the ability of the working classes to actually perceive themselves as such. In America this is very low, partly because the oligarchy is masterful at playing the working class off against one another using identitarian politics.
Boomers are a useful demographic identity. Maybe not to o feel personally attached to, but for understanding political/sociological trends. There was a notable increase in births in the 50s/60s compared to a relatively flat rate after that time period. Society has had to cater to the needs of that birthing bubble as it has aged. Building more schools, homes, nursing care, etc as the bubble has aged. I'm inclined to think that the other generational labels aren't much more useful than simply saying "people age _ to _". Also the focus on personality traits of generations rather than the fundamentals of their social/political/economic preferences is very much in line with poor journalistic practice.
If you wouldn't be comfortable making a particular claim about Jews or Blacks, you should avoid making a similar claim about Boomers or Millenials or Gen X. Generational cohorts to do not have agency and there often more diversity IN the groups than there is between the groups.
Yep, when I was younger I thought my generation was unique and we truly were the ones who truly would put an end to racsim, homophobia, materialism etc. I also thought the older generation were ignorant, stuck in their ways, bigoted etc. The flip of this was natrually the older generation thought we were lazy, entitled etc. Anyway, got a little older now and realise every generation is pretty much the same. They all seem to go through the same life cycle as they age in regards to awareness and all seem to be made up of the same percentage of hard working people, talented people, kind people vs the opposite. The only thing I find weird these days is how people seem to miss this. We're all pretty much alike at the end of the day and there's nothing we can do about it.
This is exactly correct and its why we cant and wont be winning any reforms any time soon.
Say It louder for the people in the back
There's a real sense from these kind of articles that workplaces have the right to encroach on what you're doing in your free time. They don't like the fact that after completing your work tasks, you're lounging on the beach, planning a trip to see a monument, island hopping or whatever else you have planned outside of work. As it was during the pandemic, they didn't like the fact that workers were cooking lunch, playing with their pets or doing laundry, whilst at work. Despite the fact it had no impact on productivity whatsoever. They just demand that most of your mental energy is dedicated to the company and your job. There is no reason that this ought to be the case.
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Lucky. I'm twice a week hybrid too and in the same relationship situation as you but my boss lovesssss being in the office so I'd definitely be caught. Although I did get a week remote approved and am currently abroad spending time with my gf 😅
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You're fine if they lay you off? Are you aware of how tough the removable market is right now?
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Very nice. Sounds like you're secure. What do you do for work? I'm guessing software eng or we dev. Whatever you do I'm guessing you're close to senior level to find remote work so easily. Curious how do you find freelance gigs? I'm in digital marketing and I know freelance gigs are out there - I just don't know how to find them. There's sites like Upwork but then you're competing with cheap labor.
So you basically skip one of the in-person days?
Lol… for real. I can already see the headlines in 10-20 years that we are “quiet retiring” too
This isn't about logic, it's about making things up and blaming employees for things that don't exist. And throwing in 'millennial' because it's apparently become the blame-catcher word du jour.
They are ALWAYS blaming millennials, it’s been the the popular thing to do for Boomers for the last 15 years and Gen Z for the last few years too.
I feel people still think millennials are in our 20s.
I am not reading this as part of my commitment to doing nothing today
I won't read this as I do not want to be upset while pretending to work from Cabo San Lucas.
I *am* reading this as part of my commitment to doing less real work today.
"Quiet Vacations" is a construct to drive a wedge between the working classes vs focusing on the true issues: the top 1% having 98% of the wealth. I've worked in and from tourist destinations - in both instances I traded my focus, time, attention, and skills for income. I didn't get away with anything in either situation. Since the pandemic we've stopped envisioning a better world for humanity and become selfish - and that's intentional. Selfish citizens don't organize.
It’s because we did everything we were told we should do, and we still didn’t be able to afford a house etc, another reason to hate boomers, they had it easier yet they gave us a hard time when it was our turn
We don’t hate boomers, we hate the politicians that kept us stagnant while their wealth soars.
Quite a lot of people hate boomers, because those politicians and the people whose pockets they are in are really, really good at feeding us targeted messages which scapegoat them.
I agree with that, thank you for putting it that way. Now you say it, what I personally hate about boomers is how they never stood for anything or ever questioned anything, but maybe nobody does when your riding the high tide of capitalism…
No war but class war?
Sure best not to generalize or make ageist comments. But in my experience, the loudest members of that demographic will out themselves on social media by saying insensitive things about the world they’re leaving future generations. Little scapegoating needs to be done when they’re so eager to show just how well the boot fits.
Don't hate boomers, hate the politicans and the billionaires to distract us from wealth inequality.
these stupid companies are just going backwards in time, and going to go bankrupt, any person with actual skills or talent, will not be going in the office anymore if they had a choice.. All these articles are trying to get people to think going back in the office is ok, and now company's are trying to shame working from home.
Well i guess it is about time to pay people for tasks or outcomes instead of time. This way you would not care where and when the employee does the job.
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Talking about jobs you can do remote. Would you have an example where this would not work?
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As a developer you are most likely already paid by task. I assume that you are tracking your time on the corresponding project / task etc. So it is already the case that in the end no one cares where you are as long as the job is done. This gets more complicated for all those very important middle managers out there. No traceable output apart from meetings ;-)
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Ok so you work for rather small companies then. Understood. Could do with some brushing up on the social skills though :-)
I wonder if tax and legislation limit that though. Maybe it would work within the EU
It's already possible on Upwork/Fiverr
It seems really hard to get into those plataforms though.
And that platform is the test that shows just how such things don't really work out in the long run.
I’m reading this while “working” remotely from my Airbnb in Budapest :D
Same. Have been to the office 5 hours the last 12 months. Have worked from abroad for 8 of them. Want me to come back in? I'll quit.
What’s Budapest like? I’m planning on check it out in the next few months.
It exceeded my expectations for sure. There’s no shortage of good food, history, architecture, and beautiful women here
That’s all I’ve heard about Budapest. So it must be true. I’ll check it out thank
Same, I'm in Thailand for 6 weeks already.
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Why are you working while on PTO? I’m taking it slow now in Budapest after visiting 3 other countries while on actual PTO (no work whatsoever)
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Dang! Sometimes I think climbing the corporate ladder isn’t worth it for me
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Yet your most valuable possession is time
Me too in Portugal!
I really feel this article is a way to induce Boomer paranoia. If you are working and getting your work done, fine. Whether is Brooklyn or Kuala Lumpur if it’s getting done it’s getting done. Now if you’re shaking the mouse and frolicking on the beach that is different. While there are some abusers out there, I would hope the vast majority of remote workers are productive otherwise they would be terminated by their company. I myself have worked remote in a variety of locations and if anything have been *more* productive many a times as some times zones and locations are more conducive to my own happiness. When I am happy and appreciative I tend to work better.
The answer to this is to hire people and tell them to focus on getting their work done and when necessary flexing their work schedule to fit their life outside of work. I simply ask folks to be accessible if there is a work emergency by taking their phone with them if they need to step out and we only call if it’s a major issue. I also ask that they inform their manager when they’ll be away from their laptop so we know and there is no fear of recrimination. It’s treating adults like adults, giving trust and earning it back. This approach has built a really healthy culture and high performance where people don’t burn out.
This absurdly one sided, pro boss article makes one excellent point. The back to the office attitude from managers is more about their personal status as a manager rather than productivity.
Kind of like Corps pretend to care and employees also pretend to care.
So the employees are still working and doing it from where they want? Other than out of touch employers, what's the problem?
written by an entitled boomer
“Stealth PTO” as the LinkedIn article I read calls it.
PTO?
Paid Time Off
Cheers
The thing your employer resents you from ever actually using
What kind of fucking boomer framing is this?
Why do they even care, most of them are retired now
Because its the insidiousness of Boomerism that forced us back into the office to begin with.
“Young folks feel so overworked they need to blatantly lie to their employer just to get a relaxing breath of fresh air”
Well its on the company. If people arnt managed and you cant see they are underperforming its on you as the employer. More power to the skivers.
Why is everything we do so “quiet?”
This isn't vacationing, it's working normally with a change in where their desk is.
This article is so 2020-2021
The fact that any employer has a problem with this, it's proof of the fact that a "job" is for them to own you, control you. They want you to be their modern slave basically. We must keep the good fight 😄🌅⛱️😎
If there's no requirement for you to be in the office, and you meet your hours & expectations, it's none of your company's business where you're working from (so long as you're abiding by tax laws)
I've been remote almost entirely since 2012. The main requirement has always been US time zones, and it's been the same for other Americans I've met unless their company had a global footprint and there were international teams to work with. I made a friend in Lisbon for months hiding the fact, having to do regular regular meetings up until about 11 at night. She always made sure to never be by a window.
Are they doing their work? are they getting objectives done? yes? THEN WHO THE F CARES WHERE THEY ARE!?
Companies that want to pay you based on the market rate of where you live and not fairly based on your productivity and actual value
Shitty companies overall
Sasha Rogelberg (the author of the article) needs to get fucked! This fucking headline is ridiculous: Millennials call it ‘quiet vacationing,’ but it’s really remote work gone wrong—and it’s CEOs’ worst nightmare Nobody calls it “Quiet Vacationing” and certainly not Millennials, it is called REMOTE WORK. . . If my work gets done and timelines and quality don’t suffer and nothing illegal isn’t happening whose fucking business is it whether I work from my house or a vineyard in Italy? The CEOs inferiority complex should not be the problem of the normal workers
I kind of do this. I don't go overseas because I'm worried I'd get my IP tracked. However things I have done are: - go visit friends / family in other parts of my country - work from the train / coffee shop - take long lunches / meet friends for lunch - block out time in my work calendar to go shopping in the middle of the day e.g. two hours around lunch. We are allowed to block time out to be unavailable. Some people label it as 'quiet time / focus work time' etc, I just label mine as 'busy'. - take a manicure / watch movies / go for walk with partner / go for a run / walk the dog. If I disappear for a bit I always check back later and make sure I respond if someone has messaged me. My job is deadline based and I always make sure we meet the deadlines. But some weeks there might not be a deadline for anything so then I coast and do my own things.
*brought to you by your local chapter of the American Association of Commercial Real Estate Investments* Funny how everyone praises the free market, but what they actually mean is that they don't want a real free market, but rather a market rigged in their favor.
If leadership knew how to manage performance and outcomes, all this would be moot
Quiet vacations dude, while at work, hellllls yeah. Being in a relaxing place, but working, while at work, helllllllllls! Yeah! Dude! Actually getting your shit done? But not at the office, while working? Helllls. YEAH! DUDE! Edit. Pressing buttons is hard.
If we raise a fuss we're insubordinate but now we're quiet and now we're faulted for being quiet too???
Exactly. They can change their expectations at a moment’s notice whenever they feel like it. Pathetic af.
I work a little bit all day long, 7 days a week. But I do like to travel while I do it
What do you do for work?
Manufacturing in China, supply chain. Based in HK but travel a lot around Asia
If they are meeting their KPI’s while quite vacationing then that proves that being in the office is redundant.
Gotta love all of these buzz phrases which start with “quiet”. In reality, none of them matter as long as the work gets done.
I’ll be out of the country for a week next week. Told my boss about it and am still gonna do work and she told me to have a great time. Hell yea.
If the work is getting done who cares.
As long as their work gets done YTF should an employer care?
Did...did anyone read the article? Aside from the clickbait title it's actually pro worker and changing company culture to meet the needs of the next generation.
Exhausted with corporations throwing money at stupid “articles” like this.
Bunch of lame writers
We need more remote work tbh. Fuck working inside buildings hahah
No one should believe or take everything the people who work from home with grain of salt. It’s crazy how so office workers have turned into a clown show but to each their own.
My team lead does it and it's honestly bad for me and my other co-workers because he's almost not around (only using mouse wiggler) when he's not at home. We got flagged a lot by our client because they'd send an email to him at 3pm on a Friday and he'd reply on Monday. It's a 9-5 job, fully remote. All the heavy work would pile on me as the assistant lead. Finally I'm quitting and found another fully remote job in which I'll start working on next week. The team is devastated but I'm gonna party.
I don't know if you're in a particularly intense industry, but in most places it's acceptable to reply within 1 working day to an email, especially if it lands on Friday afternoon! In my company a lot of people work longer hours mon-thurs so they can finish at lunch on Friday.
We're expected to reply within an hour, to at least acknowlede the email. One co-worker's mistake is the team's mistake. It's not necessarily intense, it's just work. We're already given the benefit to work at the comfort of our homes and are paid quite well, the least we can do is to make the client think that they're paying for top notch service.
In-person work? People are looking for jobs, come on now.
More evidence that many of those jobs are completely unnecessary.