This article's title should specify that by "work remotely," it means "live together with your coworkers in an exotic location remote from company headquarters."
Wait a minute, they went to Brazil and chose... São Paulo?<p>They chose a crowded traffic-clogged endless concrete jungle, over the airy, green, lush beachside tropical paradise of Rio?<p>At least it says they went to Rio on long weekends.
I have only worked remotely in my career (as in by myself inside a home office), and I have worked in full remote as well as in mixed local/remote teams.<p>If you are in a position to choose/offer to work remotely, make sure that everyone you have to interact with is communicating in the same way, at least for work stuff. If half of your team is in an office and they aren't making an effort to communicate equally with the both local and remote team members, it will not work well. Having a remote team means an overhead in the communication for the local team.<p>Anyways, here is a great collection of resources on working remotely: <a href="http://www.wideteams.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wideteams.com/</a>
Sounds like a cool idea. But frankly, for me, I hate programming on a laptop (which I have to do when I travel.) I much prefer the 3 * 22" monitor setup I have in the office. Not to mention the comfy chair, office-with-a-door and so on.<p>I can see how it kinda makes sense, a bit of fun, and a bit of holiday, good team building and so on, but its not something that appeals to me. Maybe, probably, I'm just too old....<p>Edit - it also probably helps that I live in a town with good weather all year round.
Wow. I mean wow. Somehow they convinced a bunch of smart people that working remotely is like a vacation. And to brag to their friends about it! That's amazing.<p>For me, visiting foreign lands does not mean staying with my coworkers in an apartment all day long working and then maybe having a drink after work in a different climate. Call me crazy, but <i>living</i> with my coworkers for upwards of six weeks in paradise that I can't really spend real time in sounds kind of awful.
Expensify sends the whole company somewhere remote for one month each year. Last year they did Vietname - initial discussion at <a href="http://blog.expensify.com/2011/10/25/expensify-offshore-2011-vietnam/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.expensify.com/2011/10/25/expensify-offshore-2011...</a> and full details at <a href="http://blog.expensify.com/tag/vietnam/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.expensify.com/tag/vietnam/</a><p>Thailand this year: <a href="http://blog.expensify.com/2012/09/28/expensify-offshore-2012-thailand/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.expensify.com/2012/09/28/expensify-offshore-2012...</a><p>I have no connection to Expensify other than reading their blog which I originally saw posted on HN. This adds a second datapoint showing the principle working for more than one company.<p>Another interesting approach is on Rand Fishkin's blog where Seomoz will reimburse employees up to $3,000 each in vacaction expenses.<p>The message is consistent - a change of scenery either as a group or individuals is benefical to the company.
What kind of hours do these guys work? If it's 60 hour weeks it sounds like a hellish lifestyle to have to deal with culture shock and long work weeks at the same time.
Our startup is thinking of doing this in a few months to get away from the Canadian winter for a few weeks. It also helps that our designer lives in Mexico, so that would be our first location choice. Any affordable location recommendations for a travelling startup?
We did something similar in Barcelona earlier this year: <a href="http://trigger.io/cross-platform-application-development-blog/2012/06/06/working-away-consider-it-for-your-startup/" rel="nofollow">http://trigger.io/cross-platform-application-development-blo...</a><p>Money well spent!