The (not-always-so) glamorous life of the remotely working business traveller

San Francisco city a few minutes after take-off

After a frenzied run of 2.5 years, I said hasta la vista to my balancing act between San Francisco, Bangalore and Sri Lanka. I was traveling more than 100000 miles a year.

Family, friends and colleagues were often worried, curious, envious and full of questions regarding my work-style. Hence, I thought of penning a summary of my thoughts on the pluses, deltas, and often comic surprises of my many business travels and challenges working remotely.

The Business Traveler

When I moved back to south asia, the thought of regularly traveling half-way across the world was enticing. The excitement waned off, but not completely.

Yosemite in Spring 2018

The Pros

1. Seeing the World: Business travel lets you squeeze in some leisure travel too. May it be sponging on museums, shopping or hiking. Two of my favorites were Mysore and the Panorama hike in Yosemite.
2. Homes away from home: the San Francisco bay-area was my home for multiple years, and going back felt like home with family, friends and familiar surroundings. Bangalore was a new experience. However, I ended-up creating a dear little community of friends here too, who were great company, watched out for me like family and made revisiting have the feel of going home.
3. You get to stay in fancy hotels or corporate housing and generally get petted and pampered on company expense. The staff at the 5* hotel with long-stay business units, where I stayed in Bangalore, got to know me well (they even knew what Sarees I liked, as I always bought one each trip from the hotel outlet). To quote one of the hotel drivers, they considered me as an ‘unusual case’ as they had never seen a female business traveler, traveling alone to Bangalore. Apparently, I stood-out, and they felt it their duty to baby-sit me :P It is effectively a free-trip (food, visa and all).
4. You can rack-up lots and lots of airline- and hotel-rewards.
5. I learnt about cultural norms and day-to-day life of different communities. Such as employee turnover, what kind of clothes to wear, what time people have dinner, weather patterns, to name a few. I’m more tolerant now, in general.
6. I am super up-to-date and knowledgeable on movies, tv programs and news. I watched a LOT of movies. Well on 16+ hour flights you sometimes have no choice BUT to watch a lot of movies :P
7. Every-time you reach a new location, your friends and colleagues greet you with exuberance! And generally, this includes, lots of dinners/lunches and fun events. My favourite was a sailing trip in the bay.
8. You become a pro with visa-applications!
9. You will have lots of stories to tell! This is my favorite. We were taxing to take off, when an elderly couple, seated close to me, looking flushed and worried, explained to the Sri Lankan airline’s staff that they had left something very valuable at the gate — some paintings. A steward politely explained that the flight would be delayed by at least 30 minutes if we didnt take off. The elderly lady said she didn’t mind a 30 minute delay and that she definitely needed to get off the flight! The steward very calmly explained that the other passengers couldn’t wait, but notified the couple that the parcel was found and he would assure them personally that the parcel will be sent on the next flight (he even gave them his mobile number). The steward came back to assure the elderly couple a couple of times in-flight as they were clearly upset and annoyed. After the flight landed, and on my way out, I thought I should complement the steward on being tactful and for not loosing his cool. He smiled and said — the parcel consisted of paintings drawn by the couples’ grand-kids.

One of my many temporary home’s in Bangalore, with welcome chocolates and pastries.

The Deltas (Cons)

1. The concept of home becomes vague. I felt I was never really a part of any country. It was a constant effort to make it for personal events.
2. International travel is tiring. Apart from the flying time you need to factor in immigration, security and travel time to the airport. My flight to Bangalore from Colombo was just an hour. However, traffic in Bangalore was horrendous and the trip took me a good 6 hours end to end.
3. Everywhere is remote. In other-words there is always another location which is remote.
4. Jet-lag! There are a few remedies that help. Coordinating sleep time in-flight with the destination sleep hours. Starving in-flight. Keeping super busy so that you crash out in-flight. Alcohol (which some say has a placebo effect, but whatever works say I). Sunlight. Going for a run after landing. Having a bath during transit. Yet, I never really got used to dealing with the 12 hour time difference between south Asia and West Coast, USA. Most of the time I just forced myself.
5. My idea of a holiday now excludes flights! I subconsciously or otherwise associate it with work.
6. You need to work hard at keeping-up a work rhythm that is productive, as work-hours are obviously not static. Some people like this.
7. Long term Business visas and work permits are not easy to get (unlike tourist ones or short-term business visas).
8. I’ve learnt to be a minimalist and live off a suitcase.

Working Remotely

Beam — the first office robot back in 2015. I was so excited to check it out that I unwrapped Beam myself. We use to decorate Beam for Christmas with a Santa-hat.

Working remotely is gaining popularity across the world, especially for those with family commitments. Technological advances in remote communication clearly helps (Beam the robot for example). Yet, everything has two sides.

The Pros

1. Flexibility! Sans meetings, you can organize your work around whatever time works for you.
2. Less disturbances. After my daily set of calls, I could work in peace, with no interference at all.
3. Ability to spend time with family and loved ones. This model works especially well for those with young kids or elderly/sick family.
4. Getting a USD salary with the comforts and benefits of home or a more socially or economically comfortable location. Many like this arrangement. For example you can live in a state with low taxes, and command a slightly lower salary than the silicon valley, however, with larger net-savings.

PS: People sometimes forget to switch off their video/phone conferencing apps and get along with other businesses of the day (I will leave it at that). Suffice to say it was embarrassing. The rule of thumb is, if it happens — just don’t mention it.

The Deltas (Cons)

1. I had to be super disciplined with work hours! Everyday I struggled with keeping a productive schedule. Traveling was disruptive, so I had to always push myself to get back on track. I learnt first hand how work expands with available time.
2. I missed out on internal news. Whatever my location was, I was remote to another location. Hence, I missed out on the nitty-gritties of meetings I couldn’t attend, desk-side chats, and lunch time convos. Though seemingly unimportant at first, such bits of information, in aggregation resulted in me missing out on lots of information. Also, body language is important — with remote work it is not always easy to catch this.
3. My colleagues always tried to limit my night-time meetings. But sometimes there was no work-around, or, I felt I had to be on the call not to miss out on info. The end result is a messed-up social life, where you are constantly busy during evenings.
4. People from slightly older generations were baffled! Our beloved Cookie, complained to my family, that I was watching movies all day (she thought computers were used to watch movies), and worse that I was constantly talking to myself (those were video meetings)! She recommended I wear a saree and get a proper job like my mother.

Roam Analytics, Inc. was my first workplace in the USA following graduate school at Stanford. It was also, my first experience at a start-up. I learnt and matured a lot along with the company, since 2014, for which I am most grateful. A friend of mine once said “the only thing you’ve ever posted publicly about Roam is the bathroom with a book-case and paintings in your old office”. Yep we had a really weird (and cool) bathroom during our days in San Francisco. So I thought I’ll post one more favorite pic of mine from one of our many many night-outs with a few of my old colleagues.

I loved this view. I will miss it.