Asklemmy

The idea of "work vacations" only exists because capitalism demands the entirety of our lives. I’m not working on my vacation, period.

IDK, seems stupid to me. The whole point of going to a vacation is to get away from work... well, at least for me. Some workaholics out there might disagree, but that's not me 🤷.

How very dystopian

If you're working, you aren't on vacation

As someone who is right now working from abroad by necessity - this idea is full of shit.

Yes, you won't get a chance to properly enjoy your time away, you will always have time constrains (remember - you still need to work, and it's still on top of your priority list), you will only get to enjoy the country like 2h a day (or whatever you had before as "me" time - that time didn't change much) .

Assuming you are not going out far from your usual timezone - you will basically only enjoy it in the evenings, and if you are adventurous enough to move very far away from your original timezone - gl, because now you will have all the timezone mess upon you and possibly are working in the unusual hours.

In short: your work will suffer, you will suffer, you won't get to enjoy your vacation and the country and on top of that - this will cost you more money than you usually pay! What a steal (literally).

I did it for about a month and and loved it. We got an Airbnb in Arizona. We woke up early, clocked out early, and went hiking nearly every day. The weekends we did a trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona, both great experiences. If you can make it work, then try it out. I know tons of people that maintain jobs while travelling almost full time.

Sounds like an expensive way to work with little reward. I'm all for making work as pleasant as possible, but paying to stay in a hotel just to work seems like a bad idea. It could be interesting in some ways in certain positions.

The question is not "is it better than a normal vacation?" where of course the answer is "no." Rather, the question is "is it better than your regular work routine?" The answer to that depends on a lot of factors: your specific job, personality, personal finances, family obligations, etc. I think there are lots of circumstances where it could make sense for some people.

Paying money to work isn't something I would consider worth it. Sure, I might get a bit of free time in the evenings, but it doesn't seem like enough to justify the travel and lodging costs

Sounds like self funded business trip.

This is propaganda... Plain and simple.

If you're working permanent remote, just do what I did and move to where you like to vacation.

Come to NZ, we also had a really shit summer!

Some people like the idea but to me that only makes sense if you are basically doing the nomad thing at a cheap location. You'd want to stay in the place for awhile as you're still spending most of the "vacation" working all day. On your days off you could do more. On an actual vacation you would actually be enjoying yourself the whole time. Traveling to just spend all your time working seems like a waste.

Also just try to work on just a laptop for a week. It sucks. I'm not doing that.

The only way I'd do that is if my employer paid for travel, food, and lodging. And even then, I'd do as much as I could before leaving and then just phone it in during the week as much as possible.

You say you can easily work remotely, but that is not the same thing as working from another country. Tax implications, cross border data transfer, work residency rules - absolutely speak to your HR before assuming that if you're remote it doesn't matter where you are

I'm not one to judge. If it works for you, cool. It might be something I'd be willing try. I just don't know though.

If I'm not being made to overwork, why not? Better than a dreading cubicle

Thank you for all of your perspectives

Some more perspectives/information. I can see that my post is lacking important details: 70% of my work is like mostly talking with people on how to reach solution (and possibly fixing it), 15% project work and 15% misc. It is a weird mix of sysadmin, technical support, and "internal process consultant". Deadlines are not a problem and I could even make it an easy work-week, e.g. 6-hour a day. We have a good infrastructure, thus remote connection is not a problem from that perspective - but internet connection at a hotel or café could be an issue as some pointed out.

I do not have a wife and children, but living together with a gf and one cat.

Regarding price I had in my thoughts just to use some of those cancellation trips which makes it quite cheap (Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Spain... lots of cheap flights when the vacation season is over).

With all of that said, I can see it work, but it mostly sound like a bad idea :)

This really depends on the type of work you do, the deadlines, how far you go (timezone differences), how much you feel like missing out if you don't go out to explore.

If all you want is get away from the rain, then it might suit you. Now if you also want to explore and relax, it might get a bit more complicated

We do it regularly - but from a much different angle than the US is sometimes promoting it.

We take 2-3 weeks off work as everyone does in my country. The problem is: Schools off much longer and neither the wife nor I can get more than 3 weeks off in a row (there are other school holidays to cover as well...). So we usually add another week or one and a half and work with reduced hours (accrued overtime, neither of us works for more than 5h per day) and usually mixed (half the time I take off work, half the time she is off work) time off periods. That works wonders as it is still much more relaxing than being back in the daily grind at home and the location away from home forces you to not do something about all the leftover chores waiting for you at home and often it's easier to get the kids entertained at a vacation location. That helps a lot.

Actually my friends company explicitly promotes this type of arrangements as they found their staff satisfaction to be much higher this way.

If you just go somewhere else to work from there without time out...well... that's a fucking business trip. Not a vacation.

If I were single or, heck, didn’t have kids, I think I could pull this off. I have done a few conferences at cool locations where my partner comes along and that was doable, if only just. But with a partner and kids in-tow, I know I don’t have the discipline to truly work while they’re all out doing fun touristy things. Maybe a an hour or two, or a half-day at best, but no way I’m going to want to (or be able to) stay chained to the desk, no matter how nice the view is. But that’s just me and what I know about myself.

Through reasons I didn't completely plan, I've had this happen to me twice, so I've had a little experience with it.

It sucks.

First time, the room didn't have a desk, so I had to deal with a mix of issues trying to get a place to work. I wasn't working full time, but I was working enough while still having to fight the urge to get up and go on vacation.

Second time, I had places to work while I was away, but I was still dealing with the issue of wanting to get up and enjoy myself where I was. I also bore costs to me alone to pay for my ability to work.

The only way I see it work is if you have enough mental discipline to work wherever or there is a firm understanding that the quantity of work is going to decrease.

It's better to switch to a 3 or 4 day work week and appreciate the things that you have, it doesn't have to be much. Beyond that there is plenty to see in and around Denmark.

I enjoy combining some holiday when I travel for work to new cities (e.g. taking the weekend after a conference). However the idea of being productive away from my home office where things are setup for maximum productivity is silly. I'm 100% WFH but wouldn't want to combine that with traveling even if I could (family etc).