Four workers who traveled abroad without their employers' knowledge were talked to by Insider.
Tracking the local weather was one of the things they described.
The worker said he was able to pay off debt and improve his quality of life.
Work-from- home policies allow employees to log in from their living rooms in their pajamas, but some have taken the idea to an extreme, secretly logging in from across the world.
It can be difficult to keep up A marketing specialist based in Chicago who since 2020 has secretly lived in more than five countries while working 9-to-5 jobs recalled joining a Zoom meeting fromColombia as his coworkers lamented a recent storm that had covered the Midwestern city in snow
He recalled a coworker telling him to go to the beach. I'm sick of the weather.
I would love to go to the beach. The marketing specialist disagreed.
He was a 10-minute walk from the Caribbean Sea after returning from a yoga class.
He is one of four remote workers who have been secretly working abroad. Insider verified their identities and their employment status after they spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One way to avoid being caught is to read the local news. According to the marketing specialist, the two best practices helped him maintain the ruse, which resulted in him earning a paybump and a promotion. His social-media accounts are public for work so he posts pictures of his travels only in private.
He found a new job at a nonprofit when his company required staff to return to the office. He said that he keeps his international adventures out of the public eye.
I flew in the mountains. He told Insider that he went to a desert in South America to sandboard. I wasn't going to return to the office after doing all that.
He's traveled to many countries over the past two years. He pays rent for his apartment in Chicago and sub-lets it to friends. He spends less money in the months when he has to pay rent than he did in the months when he worked full time in the city.
Traveling full time is more affordable for some people.
After his rent went up to $2,700 a month, he and his husband quit their in-person jobs and moved to South America. They both took remote positions in marketing and consulting in order to covertly travel. He said that the cost of housing for two-bedrooms is about $500 a month.
The positions required them to be based in the US, but they didn't reveal that they were traveling around the world.
They paid over $1,000 for flights to get a work laptop from Florida. He said that they had been able to put 75% of their income towards paying off debt, a financial burden that had made them feel weighed down in Miami.
We would be living on ramen noodles if we tried to do the same thing in Miami. We can get lunch for only 25 cents a day. If you wanted the same plate of food in Miami, you would have to pay between $12 and$15.
The arrangement had made for some awkward encounters with coworkers, but the financial savings are worth it.
When coworkers inquire about how his weekend was, he said he contrives scenarios based on the couple's past life of hiking and bathing in hot springs.
It's impossible to prepare for scenarios like the one they experienced in July when an earthquake shook their home away from home.
Do you know what Florida lacks? He told the client that he was temporarily in South America and they didn't think much of it.
A Berlin-based remote worker at a multinational tech company who has secretly worked from the Canary Islands and Portugal told Insider the key to pulling the scheme off had been respecting his coworkers, working hard, and resisting any urges to show off.
He doesn't have any social media and didn't tell anyone who his friends are outside of work. It doesn't feel the best all the time, but that's the only way I can live.
He uses a virtual private network to make sure the company can't track his location and always has the computer's clock set to Berlin time if he has to share his screen. He's aware of any background noises that could give away his location.
In the middle of winter there is no birds in Berlin.
He works from the office about three times a week in the summer when he comes back to Berlin.
I enjoy my job. I enjoy working with my team. He doesn't want to quit. I enjoy my job because they don't ask a lot of questions. Those go together. If they fire me, it doesn't matter as long as they remove that.
Most companies don't allow employees to work internationally because of regulatory concerns, such as taxes, insurance, and immigration law. Companies that calculate pay with the local cost of living in mind are at risk of creating compensation concerns.
A software engineer from Minneapolis tried to work from Puerto Rico this winter, but his company's IT team reported that his internet address was coming from outside the US The director of his team told him to get back to the States immediately.
He left the company to start a tech startup.
He told Insider on a video call from Spain that he doesn't care where he's working. I don't care if I'm in Spain or South Africa or Minnesota.
Business Insider has an article on it.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
