The article talks about the flexibility of his lifestyle: "instead of following a fixed plan, I get inspired by random ideas: When the waves are great, I go surfing. When it’s chill and fresh, I work. When it’s hot, I go for a swim." ... which sounds lovely, but I can't see how that works with a full-time job, to be honest.
There are, of course, freelance jobs you can do where you have a task to do and a deadline and (hopefully) not too much real-time conversation required... but it may be hard to get enough of that work to support yourself.
In my team there are two others (there are a handful of teams in our company - all remote), sometimes we need to work together (e.g. to solve a bug) but most of the time we are all just working on our own tickets. If we were in an office we'd be the same - eyes down, headphones on.
You just need to trust people enough, to know that they are going to do, what they say they are going to do. Admittedly that's hard for some people (the trust and being trustworthy), which I'd say is why remote work often gets a bad rep.
You need the job & others around to stay in touch with the pace of what is happening and to keep up your friendships. And then having a quiet place to go, surrounded by nature is also vital.
The challenge is that I was trying to soften the remote aspect by working from home more often, but then caught significant flack from my managers that "it kills teamwork." The most frustrating thing about it all is that I, as a Data Scientist, work on a lot of "skunkworks" types of projects where I spend almost zero time collaborating with others.
The challenge is finding some of the freelance or fully remote jobs for data science work.
I also made a video recently about "3 Years of Living in a Camper Van and Running a 20 People Remote Business" [1]
Now I'm in it for 3.5 years already and thought I'd settle down eventually, but I still love it as on the first day if not even more.
[1] https://optimizingforhappiness.com/3-years-of-living-in-a-ca...
Yes, this Jeep build got a little out of hand, and some day I miss my bone-stock two door I took from AK to Argentina!
I don't plan on doing the whole journey on bike, the main 2 parts I want to do on a bike is Vietnam (tried doing this last year, but had to give up due to the weather), and Mongolia. The rest, we'll see what happens!
Previous HN discussion on the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14138438
Then again, if we could go off road, I think it would mean that we'd be hanging out with more Germans. Germans love massive 4x4, ex-military campers.
I'm in the DRC now, country number 16. Having the time of my life.
To really determine if you can do something, talk to people that have done similar things. I know at least 50 people that have done what I am doing, and loved every second. They all said without hesitation the only crazy thing would be not doing it!
I'm in the DRC right now, slogging through the mud!
I have no idea, though it looks like the trip will grow beyond the originally planned 2 years.
The price of the vehicle is hard to pin down, I bought a lot of parts by partnering with brands, so I got discounts.
The important part to remember is I drove AK-Argentina in a $6000 Jeep that I sold for $5000 at the end !
You might be able to find it for less, but it is doubtful.
I built a Jeep Wrangler into a house on wheels [1], and am driving around Africa for two years.
I am freelancing for Magazines, and earning money through my website and social presence. I have not done any coding on this trip, mostly becuase I find it hard to get remote work that meets my flexibility needs - i.e. weeks off-grid and only occasional checkins/calls.
Last time I drove Alaska to Argentina, doing more-or-less the same thing.
[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-jeep