Why I Remote

There’s an idea I believed for a long time, a thought that directed nearly every career decision I made throughout my twenties. This wasn’t something any single individual told me, rather it was a message driven into my mind over years of living somewhere, you know… “regional”. It goes something like this: if you want to make it in your career, you need to go to a city.

You see I grew up on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia. Around 300,000 people stretched across 60km (40M) of coastline half way up the East coast. It’s no country town, but it’s also no big city. There’s no major industry here, just glimpses of tourism, services, health and construction (though fortunately you can get great coffee here!). For someone looking to work in the Tech sector, there aren’t a lot of opportunities.

Now I love the big smoke as much as anyone, I’ve been to New York, Beijing, London, Berlin, Montreal, Bangalore, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Dubai, and more, and I love them, but there’s something really important I’ve come to understand with all my travel: The Sunshine Coast is my home. It’s where my family is, it’s where my friends are, where I have a house and want to bring up my children, and as much as I love to adventure, I know that a sense of home is equally as important.

But here’s the problem: with my sense of adventure, my desire to be a global citizen, my ambition to work on enterprise projects with significant impact, surely I would need to move to a city somewhere? Right?

Over the past 2 years, working remotely with XWP has given me an opportunity that very few people get, to work from my home and work with tech companies around the world. Right now I’m working with companies in Tel Aviv, Melbourne and Austin. These projects are challenging, high impact and large scale, the kind I’d always wanted to be part of but thought I would need to be in a city to access.

You see for me, it’s not about working from my house, it’s about working from my home. To be honest, I generally don’t even work from my house since I like to move around, instead choosing cafes and shared spaces for my day to day work. Working with XWP has meant that any number of exciting prospects are available right where I am, and that I don’t need to leave the place I love in order to find the work I love.

Working remotely for me isn’t about wearing sweatpants and avoiding the commute, it’s about being grounded in the place I want to live. Never before has it been so easy to live locally and work globally, and I’m unbelievably grateful to XWP for providing this opportunity.

This is why I remote.