Coronavirus, my van, and the opportunities

My employer has already shut down operations in our Italy, Korean, Beijing, and London office and rumors are circulating our USA offices will shut down soon and we will be working remotely for anywhere from 2-4 weeks.

I live in a van and can work anywhere, this would be a dream come true for several weeks. Give me some good options of places with WiFi i can go live an climb while all this blows over!!! I am in so cal and don't mind going anywhere on the west coast. Show me what you got

Gumby the White wrote: My employer has already shut down operations in our Italy, Korean, Beijing, and London office and rumors are circulating our USA offices will shut down soon and we will be working remotely for anywhere from 2-4 weeks.

I live in a van and can work anywhere, this would be a dream come true for several weeks. Give me some good options of places with WiFi i can go live an climb while all this blows over!!! I am in so cal and don't mind going anywhere on the west coast. Show me what you got

i can’t give you any recommendations unless you tell me where to put in a resume asap. can i be hired tomorrow?

petzl logic wrote:

i can’t give you any recommendations unless you tell me where to put in a resume asap. can i be hired tomorrow?

hahahahaha happy to help.

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Artem Vasilyev wrote:Redpoint coffee at Smith Rock has Wifi and a cool group of people to hang out around. Also Smith is in season currently, which is nice.

good to know Artem you might be hearing from me soon ;)

I strongly recommend you forget about WIFI and instead get a shortwave radio and find some repeaters on mountain tops. Stock up on freeze dried food, get an assault rifle for bagging game and defending your camp and hunker down. Oh, also, stock up on stainless steel bolts to develop some sport crags while the rest of the world goes down the toilet. Once the dust settles, the survivors will want to pull down to get over the memories of a dead and decaying world. And remember, bolting ethics are going to be a thing of the past, so do what thou wilt shall be the extent of the law.

FWIW, I've been working remote for a long, long time.  

Just cause I'd like to keep my job, I generally don't move around a lot.   Like, the entire reason that I pay rent anywhere is to have reliable wifi.

But maybe you have higher tolarance for risk than I do, and if so, good on you.  

I hate to burst your bubble, but here are some observations from my time trying to work remote while on the road.

It's one thing to try and poach some wifi from mcdonalds or something, but sitting in a coffeeshop for 6 hours is no fun.

Finding -some- wifi at some times isn't terrible.  Getting to a location and discovering that the "starbucks" is a kiosk in a parking lot with no access is no fun, when you have about 10 min to find a good enough spot so you can do your daily standup over LTE.  I find that stuff to be incredibly anxiety provoking.

The other issue is that there are no truly unlimited LTE packages.  I can get an LTE-based modem and put some external antennas on it, but every plan throttles you to no service after 20GB of transfer no matter how good your signal is.

Finally, I find that even though there are plenty of places I can go so that stuff is close when I am not working, if I am still -working- that 8 hours a day makes it tough to go do the fun stuff.  Like, it's super fun to be sitting at a music festival working- I spent 22 days at the Kerrville Folk Festival last year- but I can't really party down cause I have to, you know, keep my job and get up and go to work in the morning.

The only good thing is that public libraries are the best place to work, and they certainly don;'t mind you being there all day... that's what they are for.

Why not just get a hotspot? I used to game off one of those, buy 20-30gbs at a time and it would last me about a week of 2-3 games of LoL a night. I stayed around 100 ping on it iirc, occasional spikes but nothing too bad. 

Jon Hillis wrote: Why not just get a hotspot? I used to game off one of those, buy 20-30gbs at a time and it would last me about a week of 2-3 games of LoL a night. I stayed around 100 ping on it iirc, occasional spikes but nothing too bad. 

For me the issue is that monthly transfers cap out at about 20GB/mo.

I'd be stoked to find plans that didn't, cause'd I'd just go to ground if I had that.

John Reeve wrote: FWIW, I've been working remote for a long, long time.  

Just cause I'd like to keep my job, I generally don't move around a lot.   Like, the entire reason that I pay rent anywhere is to have reliable wifi.

But maybe you have higher tolarance for risk than I do, and if so, good on you.  

I hate to burst your bubble, but here are some observations from my time trying to work remote while on the road.

It's one thing to try and poach some wifi from mcdonalds or something, but sitting in a coffeeshop for 6 hours is no fun.

Finding -some- wifi at some times isn't terrible.  Getting to a location and discovering that the "starbucks" is a kiosk in a parking lot with no access is no fun, when you have about 10 min to find a good enough spot so you can do your daily standup over LTE.  I find that stuff to be incredibly anxiety provoking.

The other issue is that there are no truly unlimited LTE packages.  I can get an LTE-based modem and put some external antennas on it, but every plan throttles you to no service after 20GB of transfer no matter how good your signal is.

Finally, I find that even though there are plenty of places I can go so that stuff is close when I am not working, if I am still -working- that 8 hours a day makes it tough to go do the fun stuff.  Like, it's super fun to be sitting at a music festival working- I spent 22 days at the Kerrville Folk Festival last year- but I can't really party down cause I have to, you know, keep my job and get up and go to work in the morning.

The only good thing is that public libraries are the best place to work, and they certainly don;'t mind you being there all day... that's what they are for.

I have a company hotspot so i can work anywhere that baby works. A lot of my job is on the phone and putting together decks and talking with prospective clients so theoretically this can be done at the crag. I can also work whenever so i could climb from 8-12 or 1 and then work in the evening. But yes i agree working in a coffee shop for 6 hours would be brutal.

I just want a free vacation without taking the time off :)

if you try to climb and work afterward, I can almost guarantee that you won’t get much work done. As somebody who works remotely, I’m saying this from experience. You might as well forget about working, especially if you’re not used to working remotely 

Gumby the White wrote: I just want a free vacation without taking the time off :)

Yeah, I mean, that's valid.  That's also why we are pretty picky about who we hire as remote :D

I guess for me, being long-term remote... well, like "all bleeding evenutally stops", I get a bit worried about how long I might end up on vacation cause some vacations get a bit too long.

But, on the plus side, I'd imagine that everyone else who is suddenly finding themselves workng remote all the time will be similarly unproductive, so it likely doesn't matter.

Man, a bunch of naysayers around here.  You're not gonna get fired for a few weeks of lower productivity while the entire world is in a panic.  Sounds like a golden opportunity to me.

Mammoth/Bishop area.

Stellar and Blacksheep both have WiFi and it’s fairly remote for major cities so I would assume less people are traveling to climb/ski 

Gumby the White wrote:

I have a company hotspot so i can work anywhere that baby works. A lot of my job is on the phone and putting together decks and talking with prospective clients so theoretically this can be done at the crag. I can also work whenever so i could climb from 8-12 or 1 and then work in the evening. But yes i agree working in a coffee shop for 6 hours would be brutal.

I just want a free vacation without taking the time off :)

Uh, I second the job opportunity ha.  I assume you work from an office most days considering your about to work remote.  Smith is a great suggestion.  Some good weather coming up (besides the random snow event at the end of this week).  I'd say come up to Seattle area because we have some sun in the forecast (finally) but we are basically the ground zero of the virus ha.  Stay south ha ...

Eric Roe wrote: Man, a bunch of naysayers around here.  You're not gonna get fired for a few weeks of lower productivity while the entire world is in a panic.  Sounds like a golden opportunity to me.

HAHAHA i was a little shocked too. Everyone will have lower productivity workin at home anyways.

Thanks to everyone with real suggestions. Maybe i'll see ya'll around the crag ;)

Pretty sure an assault rifle counts as aid.....

Expensive as heck but it works. Unlimitedville.com 
Unlimited att or Verizon no throttling but $200 / mo. 

FWIW, I'm going to cochise tomorrow for the week, but I'm actually taking time off LOL.  So if you need a midweek partner, there's a crew out there.

jealous. some of us ain't so lucky. I'm going to have to resort to 'showing symptoms' to get some well deserved free time off to go do what really matters

Jelly

John Reeve wrote: FWIW, I'm going to cochise tomorrow for the week, but I'm actually taking time off LOL.  So if you need a midweek partner, there's a crew out there.

Ya but what is the weather like next week!?! Rainy? A krew sounds fun

Gumby the White wrote:

Ya but what is the weather like next week!?! Rainy? A krew sounds fun

I'm not a weatherman, so your guess is as good as mine.  Possible mid week rain.  If you get out, say howdy.  I'm not sure about any details, just packing up to leave and gonna meet my peeps somewhere in southeast Az tomorrow. 

Feel free to PM me on here... I check my emails.  

And I will be working Friday, LOL.