Smart Moves Before Moving Far From the Office
BY CORDILIA JAMES
YOUR BOSS has given you the green light to work indefinitely from wherever you want.
Now what?
The lure of sudden freedom to try living someplace new, either temporarily or permanently, is real for a portion of the U.S. workforce. Facebook and Nationwide Mutual Insurance are among the companies allowing employees to maintain their remote work indefinitely or even permanently.
Lia Sueyoshi, a 24-year-old consultant, has lived in the same Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood her whole life. Living there comes with simple pleasures: She has family on her mother’s side nearby, and it’s nice knowing her favorite pizza joint is a short walk away. So when her father urged her to join him at his home in Lima, Peru, Ms. Sueyoshi didn’t know what to say. “For him, it was like, why not save so much money and work from home, because you don’t have any obligations to one location or one area? You can really do whatever you want,” Ms. Sueyoshi says. It’s a tempting offer that she’s still trying to figure out. A major life change requires extra consideration, even for those in their early professional years without mortgages or child care to worry about. But before you kiss your office goodbye for good, there are several factors to consider.
Consider your distance from the mothership
Thinking of getting as far away from the office as possible? You should make sure you understand how much face time is expected of you at the office now and down the road. Arthur Autz, a 33-year-old bio-medical engineer who works at Columbia University, was traveling solo in Antigua during spring break when the school announced that it was going online for the rest of the semester. With airports and hotels closing and beautiful views all around, he decided to stay. Mr. Autz rented a villa on the water for $900 a month rather than the usual $1,500 a week, he says. Anything he needed was a short walk away, whether it be fresh mahi-mahi or a nearby beach where he could scuba dive and paddle board when off the clock.
But a dream living situation that Mr. Autz expected to last for months was cut short when New York began to reopen earlier this month. His boss told him he had to get back to the lab. While some organizations might go entirely remote, it’d be wise not to go so far that you’d need hours to get back to the office in a pinch. Then there’s the question of time zones. You should ask yourself whether you’d be willing to work nontraditional hours if it meant staying in sync with your co-workers.
When PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant Tarika Gadh, 24, traded Manhattan for life at her parents’ home in Los Angeles in March, it meant spending the first two months starting every day at 6 a.m. It wasn’t until her company reassigned her to work on a West Coast project that she was able to go back to working at 8 a.m., as she had in New York. By then she didn’t want to. “At that point, my body was so used to waking up at 6 a.m. So I still start working at 6 or 7,” she says.
Remember your long-term professional goals
As with any major life decision, it’s important to ask yourself hard questions about what you value most in life, says Alison Bernstein, president of New York-based Suburban Jungle Group, which helps buyers leaving the city find new homes in the suburbs.
“Something that may have pushed you out short-term may have been better weather somewhere, or a house with a pool, since you’re looking into summer. But without really thinking overall about the community or where you’re really trying to raise your kids, that could be a mistake,” Ms. Bernstein says.
The service found that those who had more flexibility with their time often looked for places where they could eventually join other communities, like a church or a local sports league. Instead of booking a one-way ticket to do remote work in isolation while quarantined, it might make more sense to settle somewhere with a community that can satisfy your social needs once life approaches normal again, she says.
Your long-term professional needs are just as important, and it may be harder to network or climb the ladder when your colleagues are in Missouri and you’re in Montana. Even as some companies consider letting workers stay home, the benefits of establishing connections within an office remain, says Matthew Bidwell, associate professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
“Your career progression is about who you know, as well as what you know and what you can do,” Mr. Bidwell says. “I think the big concern working from home is it’s harder to build those connections.” You can compensate for this loss of connection if you’re proactive about how you plan to maintain office relationships beyond scheduled meetings.
Don’t forget taxes and personal finances
As soon as Darien Ford’s boss told him he could work from home indefinitely, the 30-year-old senior
consultant made plans to move out of his $1,800 studio apartment in Arlington, Va., and back into his mom’s house in Baltimore by summer’s end. “This is definitely a good opportunity for me to move back to Baltimore to save some money and also now think of where else do I want to live,” Mr. Ford says. He’s set his sights on Philadelphia, Charlotte and Atlanta.
But while moving in with your parents out of town might make it easier to save some cash, that doesn’t always mean you’ll be able to avoid some extra state taxes. Rules about taxing out-of-towners vary from state to state. Check what that means for you before you go. As always, you should make sure you understand your employer’s compensation policies before you decide to move away. You might think moving somewhere with a lower cost of living could save you some money, but if the employer decides to adjust compensation according to one’s location, as Facebook announced in late May, that might not always be the case.
BEFORE YOU LEAVE...
■ Make sure you fully understand your employer’s work-from-home policy so you can figure out how far is too far to move away.
■ Think about how time zone differences might help or harm your daily routines, and if your employer has a plan to help you navigate them.
■ Consider the costs of moving, services and furniture you’ll need to work in a new location, and whether they’re worth the price.
■ Do your research. Make sure you understand a country’s travel restrictions and visa requirements before committing to going there for a longer stretch.
■ Ask yourself: Would I have access to high-speed internet, and if not, how much would it cost? The internet can be iffy in some rural locations.
■ Consider how quickly you might move up in your job compared with the person who builds connections in the office, and how important that is to you.
