What would your boss say if you packed up your laptop and declared you were heading not just down the street to the coffee shop to work, but to a streetside cafe in Italy… for a year. It’s a new reality that some remote employees are seriously considering, and succeeding in, as our workplace culture continues to dive deeper into permanent, remote, asynchronous work circumstances as one of the norms.
Many workers are all for permanent remote work, and especially the option to work from anywhere. A 2023 survey of 3,000 people found that 98% would like to work remotely at least some of the time for the rest of their careers. Sixty-eight percent said their experience with remote work was very positive.
But not everyone has gone full digital nomad, though those numbers have been increasing since the pandemic. MBO Partners found that 17.3 million Americans describe themselves as digital nomads, up 2% from 2022. This followed a 131% increase from 2019 to 2022. The same survey found that millennials lead the numbers for digital nomads, with Gen X coming in second. An astounding 80% of those surveyed were highly satisfied with their job while working as digital nomads.
Digital nomading is a sought-after recruiting tactic for top talent
Would you be more likely to work for a company that is just fine with you working from Jamaica? Us, too. Job candidates are flocking toward truly remote options, though sometimes it’s hard to tell what positions are remote, which are mostly remote and which have bosses who would truly be fine with you working in another time zone semi-permanently.
FlexJobs reveals the top companies hiring digital nomads, or at least posting “work-from-anywhere” jobs in 2024. One such company is Kraken (ranked No. 3 on their list), a leading bitcoin trading platform.
Pranesh Anthapur, Kraken’s chief people officer, explains why: “Because Kraken had been designed to be remote-first, we had developed years of expertise operating across time zones in a globally asynchronous manner. Our general employee well-being philosophy is centered around providing autonomy and flexibility for our Krakenites to succeed in the workplace, and our work-from-anywhere policy is a testament to this approach.”
Anthapur says that “countless” numbers of “Krakenites” have leveraged that workplace flexibility option to explore the world while contributing to the company mission. He adds that it all starts with hiring. “By dedicating resources to creating internal alignment and being selective in the workforce you hire, providing autonomy can yield fantastic results.”
In addition, he says he’s concerned about some workplaces scaling back on their employee flexibility offerings over recent months, as providing digital nomads a chance to work at the company offers a “competitive advantage to acquire top talent from across the globe.”
A focus on quality work displaces the emphasis on location
Nathan Thomas, digital nomad, editor and author of Untethered: Living the Digital Nomad Life in an Uncertain World, says the concept of location has become “immaterial,” a fundamental shift in the modern workplace.
“My daily interactions span the globe… [but] my location remains irrelevant to them. What my clients demand is the delivery of quality work, clear and consistent communication and a reasonable degree of availability,” he says.
He predicts that this “great untethering” is just beginning for the future of digital nomads. “American knowledge workers are relocating to Colombia and Thailand, drawn by the allure of a superior lifestyle attainable on their existing salaries. Conversely, companies are increasingly embracing remote workers from Mexico, Spain and Poland, attracted by the relatively lower wage expectations.”
In addition, he predicts an impact on wages, which might align more closely with value delivered to a company, rather than by the provider’s location. He envisions a world where “copywriters in New Zealand vie with their counterparts in San Francisco, and designers in Nigeria compete with London agencies.”
But Thomas also acknowledges the “tight grip” that office culture has on interlacing our identities with the companies we work for and the value of our work.
That limited view is something that Emily Harrison, a self-employed design and research specialist and website designer has experience with. She is originally from Memphis, Tennessee, but has plans to spend the rest of the year driving up the East Coast. She recalls some pushback against her digital nomading:
“I took a coding class, which is supposed to end in the course organization helping us land an apprenticeship. My TA emailed me about an opportunity that would require me to move to St. Louis, which I obviously turned down. He decided to use that as an opportunity to tell me that everyone is bringing their teams back to the office, and there’s no way I’ll be able to find a job that won’t require me to be in the office at least part of the week.”
Harrison’s story, along with the effort of those who are fighting office-only work culture, is why Thomas says “this construct is overdue for a transformation.”
Employers remain concerned about the future of digital nomads
Some employers, even progressive ones who are open to their employees traveling, have specific concerns about both the logistics and implications of digital nomading on their businesses.
For example, Adam Brewer, a U.S. tax attorney in California and Hawaii, says employees themselves might be worried about avoiding double taxation. “[But], their employer theoretically has much larger concerns. Their concern is that having an employee with a physical presence in a country will pull them into income tax, sales tax, employment tax and/or regulatory exposure of their entire business.”
And then there’s the ever-present dilemma of meeting with employees in different time zones. Hannah Ryu, co-founder and head of business development and operations at Oak Theory, a design studio specializing in UX/UI, web and application design in New York City, allows employees to work anywhere. She says there are definite trade-offs to working remotely and allowing employees to travel globally.
“Most of our clients are based in the U.S., so if you are in a client-facing role, you have to be able to make U.S. time zone meetings. For internal meetings, we meet in the middle time zone. That means some of us are up earlier, while others are up later. This is one of the small trade-offs we make for being able to work from anywhere,” Ryu explains.
After all, it might be worth having a 3 a.m. Zoom call if you have a view of the Aegean Sea in the background. As Ryu has observed, there hasn’t been a “single issue,” likely because, as she notes, clients are also moving toward location-independence themselves.
Some employees, like Harrison, are sure they are more productive—not less—being remote.
“Nomadic or not, I have a chronic pain disorder and would miss so much work if I wasn’t able to work from home,” she says. “I was so sick and in constant pain at my last job, which had long-lasting effects on my mental and physical health. Working from home—wherever that home may be—helps me be more present and productive. And so, so, so much happier.”
Photo courtesy Peopleimages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock.com
