Google, almost the definition of Internet connectivity these days, crowds its developers into a giant campus and gives them free food, on-site laundry & dry cleaning, etc., to make sure they'll stay there.

Alex Martelli, one of their uber software managers, stated very clearly in a speech a while back that he considered remote development an impractical fantasy and required his developers to show up in person or find someone else to work for.

I'm not saying that remote development can't work. I'm just saying that with this attitude from employers like Google (big campus), Apple (launching a new spaceship campus), Oracle (campus), Microsoft (campus), etc., if you want to work from a beach somewhere, you'll probably do better if you design your own little company so that you can make the beach your campus.

Not quite the same money. Employers willingly pay a big cost-of-living premium for face time. I doubled my salary by moving from Seattle to the bay area, which is to say they could save more than 50% (including office space) by hiring someone in the same time zone and a short plane ride away from meetings, yet they aren't even doing that. Founders don't have this opportunity cost (or rather, they've already accepted the opportunity cost of 100% of the market rate for their labor), so work while travelling makes a lot more sense for them.

> It amazes me that so few software developers take advantage of this fact.

Actually software developers would take advantage of this fact, if there were more jobs for remote workers. Look into HN "who is hiring" monthly threads: most companies want on-site workers, most workers want remote jobs.

Indeed. Workers think they can be just as effective working remotely, but employers feel otherwise, and I have come to agree with them. The only time I could see working remotely go well is if you were doing something simple and lone, such as developing a website as a contractor.

It took us about 6 months to really find our groove and work efficiently on the road. Now after more than a year, we settle into new places pretty quickly. It takes a day or two to get fully productive, which is pretty negligible out of 3-6 months. Plus we lose another couple of days to arranging flights, visas, etc.

There's also a productivity uptick from working in foreign cities. With no friends or family around, you'd be surprised how much extra time you have. Some of that time is spent meeting locals and joining expeditions, but otherwise, weekends are free from external disruptions (unlike at home).

It's certainly not for everyone because some people find it difficult to self-motivate and others just don't like to travel. And if there's one real downside, it's that we spend less time with other tech founders. We try to meet-up with them where possible, and in Montreal we met many more than at home, but in lesser developed places, it's not so easy.

All of that said, living in countries like India, Bolivia, Peru and Thailand (which we've previously done) is highly thought-provoking. I don't mean in the clichéd charitable sense, but day-to-day seeing how we all live. It tends to get the creative juices flowing.

Watching how people do business in India, for example, provides a lot of lessons for business in developed countries. The fundamentals are the same, but often the drivers are different (lower margins, higher volume, lower income, cheaper labour, government regulation, corruption, etc.) Both positive and negative drivers provide useful lessons.

I remember suggesting to one guy that his idea wasn't very scalable because it relied on lots of manual labour. He said, "what do you mean, of course labour is scalable." Of course in India, labour is pretty scalable. I was very surprised to see the value you'd get for $1.

This actually brings another positive of working on the road. In places like India, we saved a lot of time because we never have to cook, clean, wash clothes, drive, etc. It makes sense to outsource these services because the price drops way below the value we ascribe to our time.

We have recently promised to slow down a little; maybe 6+ months in each city where visas allow.

I wasn't even thinking about the impacts of constantly moving around on individual productivity; rather, I have usually worked in a team, and things work better when you can speak face-to-face.