🧑‍💻 Remote work: Death of Downtowns or Big City Renaissance

Hey, remote work fam! This is Remote Insider your favorite spot to get up to speed on what's going on in the world of remote work and digital nomadism. In this email, we talk about...

• why remote work will start a Big City Renassainace

• why so many Americans are moving to Puerto Escondido

• the problem with Indonesia’s digital nomad plan

• and quite possible the last charging cable you ever need to buy

In other news, we are very excited to let you know that Remote Insider is now a 3X weekly email! You can expect a new email from us on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 9am EST

Now, let’s talk about what to do if your boss flexes his inner Bill Lumbergh 👔 and decides to force you back to the office…

🗺️ What To Do If Your Company Is Forcing You Back To The Office

Despite recent news of more and more companies announcing a return to the office, 78% of people who currently work remotely even part-time want to continue working remotely.

So what if you’re one of the people unfortunate enough to be called back to the office? Well, we have some suggestions:

1. Check your contract: In most cases, companies can in fact force you to work from a particular location (for now) but in some scenarios, you may have some bargaining power. If you’re part of a union you may have more power to rewrite the existing rules of your contract and the same may be true if you have a disability that qualifies for reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

2. Negotiate compensation: Commuting to the office costs money, so use that to your advantage. Let your employer know that you want a raise to cover these costs or continue at your current salary but work remotely. You can do the same with childcare costs, work attire, etc

3. Walk away: If your employers aren’t willing to budge you can always take the ultimate step and say you will leave. Of course, you need to be OK with ending up without a job in case they call your bluff, but if your role is critical enough or hard to hire for, you may get what you want.

🌆 Remote Work Will Not Be The “Death of Downtowns” but Start The Big City Renaissance

While remote work news this year has been dominated by “return to office” rhetoric, this January 41% of Americans still worked some or all of the week from home.

Fewer people commuting to the office means less money spent on lunches and after-work happy hours and it also means less tax revenue that cities depend on.

As we’ve covered before, NYC is losing $12b annually due to remote work.

This shift in where we work has driven some (like the mayor of NYC) to believe that if something isn’t done quickly we may soon see the “death of downtowns” or the “office apocalypse”.

But this doesn’t have to be the future. Remote work could also launch a new Urban Renassaince

Big cities like NYC and SF have gotten lazy, assuming that their established brand alone will attract residents, but in a remote work world, they will need to step up and reinvent themselves.

To make sure that the next decade ushers in a new Big City Renassaince big cities need to turn away from commercial real estate (a market that has dropped 60% since 2019) and instead focus on making their cities a nicer place to live…

A shocking concept I know!

Big cities will need to get creative about how they transition unneeded office space into residential housing to lower the cost of rent, reduce crime, provide better education, and in general deliver a better lifestyle to their citizens.

Research shows that young people still want to live in vibrant city centers, but cities like NYC need to wake up and show that they’re listening and willing to compete for them.

If they can do that, the future for big cities is bright!

🇵🇹 How Much Does it ACTUALLY Cost to Live in Portugal as a Digital Nomad

🚨Word on The Web is…

🛋️ Furniture: As tech startups adopt remote work, their leftover office furniture has created a booming industry

🇲🇽 Puerto Escondido: Why more & more digital nomads are calling this Mexican beach town home

🏡 Housing: How to fix the housing issues digital nomads can create for cities

🔮 Future of work: How the gig economy is shifting into B2B 

🏝️ Bali: The problem with Indonesia’s plan to attract digital nomads

📱 Is the Volta Spark The Last Charging Cable You Will Ever Need?

The Volta Spark is a nifty little magnetic cable that comes with “charging tips” for all your devices - Lightning for iPhones, USB-C, and micro USB.

The charging tips stay inside your device (they’re tiny so after a while, you’ll likely stop noticing them) and now you can use the same cable which magnetically attaches to the tips.

One universal cable to rule them all!

📆 Upcoming Events:

April 25-26: Running Remote [📍 Lisbon, Portugal] - Largest remote work conference in the world for enterprises and SMEs

May 24-28: Vivel [📍 Multiple Locations, Turkey] - networking meets music at this one-of-a-kind conference for location-independent professionals

June 16-19: Camp Indie [📍 Kent, Connecticut] - adult summer camp & conference for digital nomads & those living an unconventional life

June 25-July 2: Bansko Nomad Fest [📍 Bansko, Bulgaria] - for digital nomads, freelancers, and founders in the mountains of Bulgaria

⭐️ This Week’s WFA Jobs:

I've teamed up with THE remote job coach Jordan Carroll to provide you with handpicked work-from-anywhere jobs right here in this newsletter:

⭐ Product Specialist @ OpenPhone

⭐ DevOps Engineer - Analytics @ Kinsta

⭐ Cloud Engineering Matching Specialist @ Andela

Want help finding the right remote job for you? Join the Remote Collective and get introductions to dozens of remote companies looking to hire people like you!

We produce this newsletter for you so we’d love to hear what we’re doing right… or wrong! Do you mind taking a few seconds and letting us know what you think 👇

Thanks for spending a few minutes with us If you are enjoying this newsletter consider sharing it with someone you think may like it by sending this link 👇

Send them this link!

That's it from us this week, hope you have an amazing day!