Learning code and living from a laptop

bingham67

bingham67

bingham67

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Ive always wanted that dream where you can work out of a laptop living in somewhere like Bali earning a wage remotely.

Now Ive kind of been told you can start learning with stuff like https://www.codecademy.com/ and then moving on to other sites like https://www.codewars.com/ or https://codesignal.com/.

I know this is not going to be easy but wondered if someone could give me some useful advice, is it worth pursuing and trying to teach myself coding for web development etc. I love to travel but being able to live out in another country whilst earning money as I go is what id love to pursue. With my current job I have a lot of free time on my hands to learn something so thought I would put it to good use.

Basically is it worth investing my time how do I go about getting the jobs at the end if so.
 
Web development isn't coding. Got that out the way :p

Becoming a decent enough programmer to get reliable freelance gigs is going to take a few years, and some time spent programming professionally.

Learning how to knock up pages and shopping carts, pull together sites for small businesses, probably more achievable in the shorter term using services like Squarespace etc.
 
Getting the work from abroad is going to be very difficult imo. Using the Internet might sound like a simple solution to global work and advertising but you also have to remember your competing with the other poor economies. India, Eastern Europe and others have always always drastically outbid anyone working from the UK on sites like Fiver and People per hour.

You might be able to get work locally in the destination, that's more likely but then you'd have to hope they speak English or your choice of location would have to have a pretty decent exchange rate to the place you choose to get the work from, say the pound or dollar.

Not as easy as it sounds imo.
 
It depends if you really like coding, and whether you have the potential to be good at it. There are lots of ways to make money by working remotely over the internet, so why are you choosing coding?
 
It's not a dream. I know people who live in Vietnam who are from the UK working as developers for mostly American companies.

Technically they could be anywhere in the world. As long as you have a laptop and an internet connection.

Before you start dreaming of moving abroad get good at the technical side and then your be in a better position to make choices.
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/

The general consensus is to get your skills while still here. Get a job which allows remote working or build up a client base if you want to go freelance. Then go remote. Also don't forget to plaster loads of stickers over your macbook pro. That last part is probably the most important.

Chiang Mai is apparently a great starter place (once it's opened back up).
 
This is very achievable, but far more work than anyone realizes.

I am more or less a digital nomad. I run a digital marketing company with two niche blog sites which are monetized in a few creative ways. My team is completely remote and I spend my time how i want. It took about 5 years to build up and has been the greatest learning experience of my life.

I made the mistake of setting off too early, i made my first few thousand in revenue (more than i was earning in my previous job) and got on a plane to Australia. After 4-5 weeks of having fun, getting drunk, seeing the entire east coast and thinking this is great the real world started to catch up with me. I had no company infrastructure to rely on so clients didn't settle invoices on time or at all, technical issues took weeks to solve, finding the time to do sale/admin/client work/accounting/website maintenance and every other "hat" you can think of took more time than i had hours available and things would slip. It took about 2 years to set up enough processes and raise enough money to really live the lifestyle i was set on. That time was extremely tough and really taught me the meaning of stress and anxiety :p. Once i had a stable income, staff i could rely on and a considerable amount of refinement in what we were doing then the real freedom kicked in.

Like a lot of people i know who have chased this lifestyle, i now have a base and just do extended trip to places i want to go to when i feel like it. The stress of being on the road 365 days a year is something only some people can tolerate and i would say the majority of people stop doing that after two to three years. While I'm not doing much other than monthly hiking trips across the UK atm, last year i did 13 countries and spent about 3 months of the year travelling. This feels like a good balance while still being productive enough to grow my business and maintain meaningful relationships.

bingham67 said:
Basically is it worth investing my time how do I go about getting the jobs at the end if so.
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I would say absolutely it is worth investing your time. The personal and professional growth is going to be immense. But as a priority get yourself set up as a successful freelancer here before you even think about setting off to SE Asia etc.

Also go and pick up your new bible - The four hour work week by Tim Ferris.
 
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bingham67 said:
Basically is it worth investing my time how do I go about getting the jobs at the end if so.
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Might be, might not be... completely depends on you and whether you're able to do it.

There is plenty of demand for good technical people - whether you're going to be good/competent isn't something we necessarily know. Not sure you need restrict yourself to web development at this point.

You could try bootcamps, I don't know how successful these are. Check out MOOCs perhaps too (udacity, coursera, edx) and/or just learn from tutorials/books...

Do you have a degree? That could be worth working towards if not - there are online/distance study options you could pursue from anywhere in the world - you don't need to have completed a part time degree in order to start working either. If you already have a (non-relevant) degree then an MSc or a graduate certificate could be the way forwards.

Be aware that lots of "digital nomads" are freelancers or indeed own/part own the business they work for. Probably will require you to work for some time in the UK first, get some experience etc.. some companies that allow home working might allow you to work from other countries... others might allow for relocation (rather than just jumping around)... others might have overly cautious, blanket policies against it - particularly financial firms or similar, this is mostly for tax reasons and perhaps more applicable to the business side than the tech side but if a blanket policy is in force then tough luck...

Getting a job at a company with offices around the world could be a good half way option too - you could spend an extended vacation somewhere else without using up too many vacation days or indeed just relocating overseas could be easier if you're existing staff and they have an office/business you could work for. I know people who've moved to Australia, the US etc.. doing this... granted it's not sitting on a beach on an island in the South Pacific but it's some additional flexibility.
 
Honestly, with the way covid is going and everyone working from home any IT related job that isn't hardware-based will do just fine.

One of my team is going to Japan as part of the JET program for a year and we've spoken about her coming back afterwards but I've said the other possibility, as we're a 24/hour business, would be to see if she could work for us from Japan covering our night shifts.

We'd actually save money as we pay extra for night workers for unsociable hours and she gets to live somewhere she loves and earn decent money, and that's as an application support analyst using TSQL.

Personally, I've spoken to my wife about buying and kitting out a bus so we can travel around with the family next summer while I continue to work while we're travelling.
 
AHarvey said:
We'd actually save money as we pay extra for night workers for unsociable hours and she gets to live somewhere she loves and earn decent money, and that's as an application support analyst using TSQL.
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Assuming she works from home and you're not having to shell out for an office over there you're presumably still going to need to set up some sort of legal entity/subsidiary she'll be employed by, organise bank accounts there for that legal entity, get advice on any tax liabilities, arrange a new employment contract compatible with the local legal system via a local law firm, sponsor a visa for her and contract someone to administer pay roll for her etc...

Had a 24/7 "follow the sun" team at a previous firm except we already had offices etc.. in Australia & the US so sending people over there and/or recruiting locally just involved addiing to the payroll at the existing entities, giving them a desk in those offices etc..
 
mid_gen said:
Web development isn't coding. Got that out the way :p
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HTML/JS/Angular/Node plus asset management etc, almost make front end work an art in itself..It is coding IMO.

More generally, a lot of programmers time these days is spent on configuration, setup, DB work, third party tool integration and work arounds when tools dont do what you need. Then there's the whole deployment process, repo handling etc, trouble shooting etc. Additionally, we have all the admin work, meetings, story grooming/planning/estimating.

The scope of a software developer these days is massive.

You need to be a problem solver in more than just code. Expect to also have to diagnose problems in other people's apps as well...
 
Yep, agree with the external work involved such as analysing what people do (tasks), translating people's version of events to what that actually means for IT people, think about how much resistance is going to get in the way and what is actually the best route for this to work.

Completing documentation for other people is another time soak, in my organisation I end up populating documents and creating flow charts as they dont exist or people cant do them. Really frustrating.
 
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