Comment by briffle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by briffle | Hacker News Reader

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I often work from campsites. I no longer have to rely on if there is 4/5G signal, and can borrow a family members Mini (and pay for a month of service).

That means I can now head out on Wednesday after work, drive 3-5 hours to the middle of no-where, and work Thursday and Friday. But each of those days, I am able to be done working and then at a camping site with my family. Go on hikes, fish, swim, etc.

So now my whole family can enjoy being in the wild, and I don't have to burn up vacation days. And we don't have to try to jam it all into a weekend were you feel like your just travelling the whole time.

Side note.. Having no signal on the west coast can actually be extremely dangerous, with how fast some wild-fires have spread. You can have one 10 miles away and not know it with the wind blowing the other way, and if it shifts direction, you can have a very limited time and path to get away.

Being able to check tools like WatchDuty and weather reports from the middle of nowhere is a safety feature.

Long before Starlink I actually tried something similar: book a hotel or airbnb in a place with good natural beauty. Work remote for the day, log off promptly at 5pm and then go on a hike or bike ride. I felt that I did not enjoy it at all. Work is emotionally draining enough that the quality of an after-work hike is far below a hike on a weekend. I stopped doing that.

You can still go on hikes on the weekend

Thats a good observation - the capacity to appreciate something is probably as important as just being (in this case) in a beautiful space.

Sure, but in the parent's post, the family is able to enjoy the camp time, and they're able to somewhat enjoy the time, not have to drive 3-5h on Friday during rush hour when everyone else is doing the same, and not have to turn around and pack up camp <48h later.

I've had good and bad remote work vacations. My best was when I was able to link together 11 days out of town and only have to work 2 of them.

Same. I've done what parent post said with much success, but when I try to make it my own vacation, it's always short. It is nice to let the family enjoy it though

But you know what I’m gonna call this for what it is. Greed. Everyone wants everything all the time. But what cost are we paying for that? Astronomers can’t view the night sky anymore. And not to mention the power we give an oligarch.

Them viewing night sky is not as important as these. Astronomers can use telescopes in space.

I feel the same. But doing a half day each works great for me.

Ski 8-noon, then work in the warm.

Desert hike 6-10 then work in the cool.

That way if work is engaging - maybe you get into a nice flow state - you can keep going into the evening and your body already got the outdoors it likes.

I really like this mode a lot.

I have done a variation on this. Take a vacation, drive to a national park, and go camping. Then go to an airbnb with good natural beauty, work thursday and friday, go hiking on the weekend, then take a travel day to come home.

This allowed me to take a longer vacation while still separating work time from hiking time. The emotionally draining work days coincided with much-needed recharge time in between the strenuous camping/hiking days and the weekend of more hiking.

Different strokes for different folks. One of my favorite vacations involved working out of hotels during the day and driving around the Colorado Rockies in the afternoon/evening.

I had coworkers who worked east coast hours but lived on the west coast, so they were off at 2 every day. A lot of them initially had all kinds of plans for what they would do with their free afternoons, but in the end, seemingly all of them did about what those of us who work til 5 do after work, just with an earlier bedtime.

I worked with the reverse! Boss was on the west coast and I on the east. Honestly much preferred it. Having the open morning and starting work after a no-rush breakfast, some exercise, etc. was divine.

I am not a morning person, and I have dreamed of that setup. I think I would choose to sleep in until 10 or 10:30 most days and I would use my late evenings to enjoy that last bit of open time at the climbing gym where it's a bit quieter. I really like night time, but when I have a regular work schedule I have to go to bed a couple hours before I would really like to.

This is my ideal work schedule

Workation doesn't work...

It does, you just have to make it long enough to have time to explore and weekends. My fave time are month+ workations.

The family aspect is the crux here for me...it's great to get the family out enjoying things while us poor saps left back at the campsite just enjoy a slightly different view behind our laptop screen for most the day.

That's what I was thinking. Enjoyment is often benchmarked more by sharing the experience with other people. While I begrudgingly must admit this as an introvert, my introversion makes it no less true!

Better than not, I guess. But it would better still to have more vacation days (if you're American, then most of the world probably has twice as many as you do)

That explains European economic growth vs the US over the last decade.

Agree, they've got their priorities straight over in Europe.

Who is living better, typically?

It explains the growth in the Quality of Life surveys of Europe vs the US over the last decade.

I do agree when comparing developed wealthy nations the US ranks poorly on average vacation days per worker.

But on a global standard across all peoples, even those in the informal economies? US probably works out better.

Not that being a bit better off than subsistence farmers in extreme poverty is a high standard to cross, it's still a pretty low bar. I'd still recommend scoping your claims accurately.

Joke's on you, I have "unlimited" vacation days...

The next time a company tells me I have unlimited vacation, I will ask them the minimum number of days I need to take off a year. If they can't answer, then their "unlimited vacation" is just an accounting trick to take the financial liability of PTO off their books.

The demographic of Americans who use a Starlink to work from the wilderness probably has more vacation days than the mean European.

I always dislike the European vs American commentary. There are tradeoffs and we could easily go back and forth on those.

You're lucky that commentary isn't here then, as "most of the world" isn't just Europe.

But broadly speaking, life is better in most first world countries that aren't the US.

Trade-offs? Like better quality of life? I was amazed 30 years ago when I went to Italy and all these Germans were lounging around for a month on Sardinia imagine getting a month vacation every year and spending that quality time with your family instead of being stuck behind a computer why your family is often enjoying itself?

Starlink is only extending work time when it should be vacation time

Yes trade offs. Labor market is generally better for employees in markets like Europe. You pay for it with less innovation and risk bets by companies. Employees benefit by more safety nets, some of the trade off is less optionally in companies and jobs available.

It is just tradeoffs. It’s ok to have those.

There are approximately ~250 weekdays in a year (so excluding weekends). 250/30 = ~8.3% of the days. So if you had 30 days PTO a year, that's be an 8.3% difference vs. having 0 days PTO. I find it hard to believe that an 8.3% difference in working days would make a huge difference to overall productivity.

I know yall pride yourself on this point but it’s simply tradeoffs. I have no bone to pick like you do in this argument but you have to admit part of the innovation success in markets like the US is that companies can make riskier bets because they know they won’t be saddled with large redundancy loads of it fails.

Again it’s just tradeoffs mixed with cultural differences. It’s ok.

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