LIU011: Inside the Digital Nomad Life: The Good, The Hard, and the Wi-Fi

Kevin

This episode is sponsored by Meter. If you're tired of juggling five vendors and six dashboards just to keep the network up, Meter delivers the full networking stack, wired, wireless, and cellular, as one integrated system. Go to meter.com slash liu to book a demo. That's m-e-t-e-r dot com slash liu. Welcome to Life in Uptime, the show where we talk with the people behind the networks that keep our world connected. I'm Kevin, joined by Alexis, and every week we sit down with engineers, leaders, and builders in tech to uncover the stories behind their careers, how they started, what they've learned, and where they're headed next.

Our goal is simple, to help you see how far tech can take you, no matter where you start from.

Alexis

All right, y'all. This week we have a really exciting guest for you. His name is Andre, and he's a senior mobile developer who specializes in Android development.

Outside of engineering, Andre and I actually met a couple weeks ago at a co-living in Switzerland, and he's built a lifestyle around remote work that most people associate with influencers or digital creators, where he's been traveling and working remotely all around the world and designing his life around experiences rather than location. So we're going to talk today about a different model of success in tech and how you can use your flexibility that you get from having a career in this field to give yourself different experiences in life. So Andre, welcome to the show.

Andrei

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here and share my experiences with you guys.

Alexis

It feels crazy. I was just thinking about it. We were literally in Switzerland two weeks ago, because the last time I recorded this podcast with Kevin was at the co-living.

Insane.

Andrei

Oh yeah. Yeah, actually, I already missed the place. It's weird.

I get excited to get back home and after a week or two, I'm like, why did I land back? Why did I love the place?

Kevin

Yeah, no, I, where is home for you?

Andrei

Right now it's in Romania. It's the second biggest city in Romania. It's called Cluj-Napoca.

Believe it or not, it's a really big, it's getting to be a big IT hub and the IT community here is growing year by year. Interesting.

Alexis

So how, could you give us a very, very high level? How did you get into technology? Did you always picture yourself being a mobile app developer?

Andrei

Actually, no. Well, I was on a kind of like a crossroad when I finished university. It was like a technical university in this, in my city.

And I was specialized in control engineering, but I had the option to take something more lightweighted or spend more time learning more about control engineering. So from my perspective, back then software development was a lightweight choice that was very, let's say, attractive. Back then, which is kind of like 10 years ago, the market was different from now.

So it was really easy to apply to a lot of companies. A lot of companies were reaching out and yeah, it felt like the safer option.

Alexis

I feel like software engineering 10 years ago, you could get a job anywhere if you were a software engineer. They were like falling from the sky.

Andrei

Yeah, that's true. Actually, me and a couple of friends that were working in the industry, we made fun that for us being on LinkedIn, we got reached out by so many recruiters in the same way. It was an analogy with Tinder, let's say.

The same way guys were reaching out to girls, girls were reaching us to us to work for the companies.

Kevin

I mean, I remember watching a lot of those social media videos back then, where it'd be like, you know, interviewing with your salary and have like, oh, you know, I graduated two years ago, I work for so and so company, I make $300,000 as a software developer. And everyone's like, oh my god, so crazy. It was a big rush for everyone to get to software development.

And I see the same thing happening now with like AI and all that stuff. It's insane how cycles are in technology.

Andrei

Yeah, exactly. It was the beginning of the older cycle when I just finished university.

Kevin

Well, good timing.

Andrei

Yeah, thank God.

Alexis

And Andrei, have you always worked remote? You said you've been in the field for about 10 years. I feel like now it's much more common to graduate university and start a job remotely where maybe you'll never even meet people on your team, because post COVID, it's much more normalized.

But when did that start for you?

Andrei

So working remote actually started with COVID. And to answer the initial question, I went on the same path as the standard software engineer. First couple of years were just in the office working with all the team.

It was mandatory, it was expected to be in the same room with your team members. And let's say like the people that were on the same project with you, it was more productive to make sure everybody has an open line of communication all day long. It started to become a reality after COVID, actually in the middle of COVID, because that's when remote working became popular.

We had no choice, we had to work from home. And for me, honestly, this was the second crossroad. I started seeing that if I spend more time just in my house working from here, I'm not gonna end well.

So I started to look for different options.

Alexis

Working from home, I feel like being in your home office, and maybe, I don't know, Kevin, correct me if I'm wrong.

Kevin

Don't you bet I will.

Alexis

Yeah, he's gonna yell at me for calling him old again. But maybe it's a stage of life thing too, where working from home, you know, when you have a family and you have kids, and there's just more going on around the house. Your daily activities are much more involved with your responsibilities.

But I felt the same way, right? During COVID, I was 22, I was fresh out of college. And being from home, it felt more like a death sentence, right?

There was no social interaction outside of maybe if you were going to the gym or going to a club or something. But the office was such a social place, and I really felt like being confined to my home office was like, it was like grandma every single day. Yeah, I want people.

Andrei

Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. And for sure, I agree with this. It depends on like subjective circumstances.

If I would be with a spouse and have a couple of kids, I wouldn't be able to think about, even think properly about that. But yeah, like, putting it into practice and test it out. Yeah, it's, it's all about the circumstances that you already have.

Kevin

For sure.

Kevin

So I have a question. You are working remote. And when did you decide to like, start actually traveling?

Like, how do you make that jump of, you know, I'm working remote, I could do anything in the world, I could go anywhere. But to me, I go, okay, that's kind of scary to like, go away and try to work remotely. I'd want to start like, let's go, let's go to a pool first, or, you know, let's go to the work out of a out of a library for a couple of days, you know, start slow.

Was it like that for you? Or were you like, Nope, I'm gonna go to Switzerland and through this place I'm going.

Andrei

Actually, in the beginning, it was just traveling. And I was just extending the time. Um, first time when I went traveling just by myself alone, it was 10 years ago, and I stayed for a couple of months there.

And just by traveling, I realized, okay, I can manage a routine while I'm traveling here. Technology is the like, you don't need to spend some too much energy to find things that work for you as much as you used to in the past. You can go anywhere in the world, and you can find a gym, like a proper place to eat, like a place to do your laundry, and all the things that you need to have like a decent lifestyle, right?

So that will be a foundation. Um, but to get to the point, I started just traveling. And then I heard about these types of communities that they integrate the working part, the career part as well.

And it wasn't something like I invented the wheel here. I just reached out to people that were already doing that. And I've seen some feedback, and I said, let's try it a bit.

Like, I can get a plane ticket, and if I don't like it, yeah, it's gonna be some money and some time loss, but it's worth of trying out, right? Yeah.

Alexis

100%.

Andrei

Um, yes.

Alexis

I, I want to touch on what you said about routines, because I think so, so many of us are creatures of habit. And before I got on the road, I mean, I was locked in my routine. I got up at the same time every day.

I went to the same gym. I walked the same walk around the block, around my apartment complex. I knew exactly what time I was eating dinner.

I ate the same foods every day. And I feel like travel, for me, when I first got on the road, um, travel was really disruptive to that. But you acclimate so quickly.

Like, you acclimate so quickly, because like you said, there's, what was it one of my friends said? There are humans in every city, and the humans in whatever country you're in have the same basic needs that you do. Gym, laundry, food, sleeping, a pharmacy, right?

You can find those five things basically anywhere. And it might look a little different. It might be a little wonky, but like, you could figure it out.

And there is slightly more mental load or, you know, maybe you could call it inconvenience associated with having to figure it out. You can figure it out. I'll give an example.

Um, when I was in Amsterdam, I went to buy time release melatonin. Okay. Now in the U.S., it comes in like five and eight milligram tablets. In Amsterdam, that came in one milligram tablets. And so I bought this bottle of melatonin. I go to my hotel room, I open it up, and I'm like, they're all in one milligram tablets.

So I sat there to count out.

Kevin

You take eight of them, like a package a night.

Alexis

Or like, you know, you're in the grocery store, um, Google translate on, on Chrome. I'll just show you guys here. I know we're on a podcast.

Kevin

We're on a podcast.

Alexis

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin

If you want to see this, go to YouTube and watch us there.

Alexis

Great. You open up Chrome, you hit the camera app. There's a translate feature.

Okay.

Andrei

Oh, wow.

Alexis

You can put anything you want in the frame, menus, ground beef or pork. That's a tricky one.

Kevin

Oh, you're translating it? You're not just putting it in the camera?

Alexis

Yeah. You just put like the photo of the label in the grocery store. That one's great.

Um, what were we talking about though? Routines, right? You can find the new, you can find the new routine.

Andrei

Actually, um, a realization that I had because I had the other side of the coin while I was traveling, I had so much time off and I didn't plan the whole thing. I had so many days where I was just drifting, drifting, thinking I should see this, I should see that, but the weather is unstable and it was a bit daunting to be honest, uh, drifting. And I got to a point where the actual work was a grounding mechanism and it felt like I can be productive and I have the references that I've been, um, used to in my default routine, let's say, and I'm spending some time on that.

But I also, when I close the laptop and I finish the meetings and everything, I go and try the new stuff. So it's kind of like you make a salad. It's not like it's just novelty.

You also ground yourself in a layer of, um, let's say, yeah, habits.

Alexis

Yeah. Well, cause there's, there's a layer, a layer of normalcy and even like working with the same people, even though you're working remotely. Um, I felt that when I was in Switzerland, right.

I got to see you guys every day. And then I got on my computer. I was working with all my coworkers from Megaport or on FaceTime with Kevin talking about podcasts.

Right. But it brings a sense of familiarity to like an unfamiliar place for sure.

Kevin

But how do you deal with like, like you're in that environment there, everyone else is kind of like having fun and like vacationing and stuff. Do you ever get that tempted to like, like, ah, I don't need to work all eight hours today. I'll work like three here.

You know, I I'm working at home and that happens to me where like, I gotta do laundry and like, I'm back on my head. I'm like, okay, I'm going to go take a nap. Well, I mean, ideally, but, uh, or do dishes or like, you know, stuff that I need to do in the weekend that I can do during the day working from home, take 10 minute break here, 10 minute break here.

So I would imagine that would just be like so much worse. If I was in a beautiful vacation spot or something like ski, I'd be like, screw work. That's just ski all day.

Yeah.

Andrei

That's a reality thing for sure. Um, it's hard to not get distracted by the foam or let's say the fear of missing out because not everybody in a co-living is working the same hours, same job and the same level of complexity type of work that you do. Um, that kind of used to be the same with your team, right?

In your company, in the organization. But back there, you see somebody is just like an influencer on your left. You have an influencer on, on your right.

Yeah, exactly. On my right. And, uh, you see there are different levels of freedom in their schedule.

And, uh, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna lie. There were a lot of times seeing people, groups making plans and they do this amazing activity. And I'm like, no, I need to stay in the office.

I have to do this deploy. I need to, I need to do this publishing. I have this important meeting and so on.

The solution is mindset. Um, but I'm kind of like, this is, um, my view over things that are no good choices or bad choices. They're just like actions and consequence consequences.

If you accept your consequence, none of staying in the office more or going with the gang skiing together, none of them are good or bad. It's just like, if you accept the consequences of both, yeah, go on.

Alexis

I think the other really interesting thing, at least for me and for reference to everyone listening, this was my first time ever doing a co-living. Um, over the, the fall, the course of the fall, it was all Airbnbs or hotels or like friends' couches and going to Switzerland and meeting Andre. That was my first time ever actually doing a co-working with like a group of strangers that I was like purely brand new to.

Um, and I think what was interesting to me was seeing how, number one, how many different types of jobs everyone had. And like you said, Andre, how they were managing them, because some people were like me where after six o'clock, you just wouldn't see them because they're up in their room. They're up in the office because they're working East coast hours.

I was working from anywhere from five to 2 AM was my normal bout for the day. And it was a sacrifice I was willing to make to be able to get up every day and go skiing from 10 AM to four. Right.

Um, but there was other people who were working UK hours or Andre, I don't even know what hours you were working, but they had to be online during the day. And so for them to get away for a couple hours, they actually had to manage their schedule in a much different way. And it was just really, really interesting to see.

Andrei

Yeah, for sure. Um, right now in the beginning, when this co-living, co-working digital nomad was just like for steps, you didn't have a lot of places like to be compatible to your time, timeframe, working timeframe. But these days I'm, I'm confident you can pick up a place that's very tuned to your hours, regardless if it's East coast or West coast.

Yeah. You can pick a place from whatever now.

Alexis

Yeah.

Kevin

And how was the white, like you mentioned being Airbnbs and like you mentioned Andre about like the wifi, if you're just roaming, the wifi is kind of crazy. That would be like my number one concern. I've been to Europe multiple times and even the hotels and even the nice Airbnbs and stuff, it's still spotty.

So I would be, I don't know, freaking out that I would miss a meeting because I can't get on the fricking wifi fast enough or something like that. It would bring me so much anxiety traveling. I'm blown away that you guys can do this and be, it is not for me at all.

I love my routine in my house and my, we just got back from New York a couple of days ago and I'm still recovering. Like, and that was just New York. That was the same time zone and everything.

And I'm still trying to like get back on track. So I don't know how you guys do it, but yeah, my number one concern would be accessibility to, you know, what I need to get done for work. So do you run into that problem a lot or do you have to like plan ahead pretty meticulously to get that?

Andrei

Well, usually the places like this that I'm talking about, if they want to make sure they have a consistent customers, this is one requirement and they need to satisfy from the get go. I usually, when I look for co-livings, I check for reviews, especially on messages and replies on this. If I see something mentioned like, Hey, that was the wifi here.

And I see a message like that two or three times, that's a pattern. And I'm like, okay, I'm, this is on the no side of the list.

Alexis

I had better luck. Actually, I had zero issues with wifi at the co-living. I have had issues at most Airbnbs I stayed in Italy, Austria, Belgium.

Kevin, if you remember the podcast episodes we tried to record.

Kevin

Oh, I know they were terrible. That's why I'm like, I can't imagine you guys doing this. So what is a co-living space?

How is that different than like, I'm picturing like a hostel in my head. And I have no idea what a co-living space is.

Andrei

It has that component for sure. It's one of the things that it's focused on. It's on accessibility.

You don't need to spend a lot of money to stay for a long period of time that it's meant to be sustainable. With all the owners that I've been talking and we became friends right now from different co-livings, I see the same view. This is meant to create a community of people that they are supposed to keep connections.

So yeah, it's kind of like a hostel, but it has a to bring people together and socialize and create activities together. There are some hostels for sure that do that, but this is, it's kind of like, you have the option to opt out from activities, but when you're in a co-living, it's kind of already the assumption that you're in the group and you want to share and have a wonderful experience with the other people in the living.

Alexis

I would say that to me hostels feel much more transactional. People are just there for a couple of days, like a much shorter period of time. Maybe you hang out with someone for one night and you have a lot of fun and then you kind of part ways.

But at a co-living, just the very nature of it being a co-working community to me draws a different crowd. Everyone is a little bit more adult. Everyone has more-ish.

Yeah, more-ish jobs, right? There's definitely people that weren't working while they were there, but the crowd is just a bit different.

Kevin

So it's designed to work, like to go there and work from it, but then the main clientele?

Andrei

It's also, yeah, that's one, they're like two parts. One is working, they make sure you have everything you need to do to keep your job, let's say. So internet connection.

Especially internet connection. But the other side is like the community part of it. These co-livings, co-workings became very popular in the COVID period.

Personally, I see it as a response to all the loneliness that people that were forced to work from their homes and they were not able to leave it and just spent so much time alone. Some of them were creative and they were like, hey, let's be alone together, the kind of thing.

Kevin

Almost like a commune, where you're just coming together and having a shared vision and just hanging out together.

Andrei

Yes. From all my experiences with co-livings, I've never met people that were on a different frequency from that. I mean, everybody is very welcoming, friendly, and they're open to new ideas and experiences.

It's wonderful to see how many like-minded people you find in every co-living. And Alexis, I think you can back me up here.

Alexis

Yeah. No, just the level of conversations are very interesting because, I mean, the mindset and the lifestyle is different just to go and do something like that. And again, the one in Switzerland was the first one I've done.

I will definitely be back, whether to Swiss Alps or to a different one. But when I showed up, I didn't know how to ski. I didn't have snow pants.

I literally had no idea what I was walking into. I had barely seen Google reviews. I found this place online and was in a WhatsApp chat with Stefan.

Okay. That was the only reference I had. I didn't fill out the paperwork properly.

So I didn't get all the Q&A answered. And 48 hours before I was supposed to get there, I got thrown in a group chat with Bruno and Camilla. And they were like, hey, we'll pick you up from the train station.

Perfect. Hopped in the back of someone's car.

Kevin

And we drove.

Kevin

These were just random people at the co-living place? Well, yeah.

Kevin

We had never met. We went and got McDonald's.

Alexis

And they took me to the co-living and went to sleep, woke up the next morning. Everyone was like, oh, you don't know how to ski? Perfect.

There was this girl here two weeks ago. I think if you Venmo her, you can buy her old skis. Done.

Right? Within three days, I was completely set up. I had everything I needed to do to hit the mountain.

And I mean, I showed up there with zero thoughts. It was all I could do to just get on the train. But for me personally, I mean, I had been solo traveling since April.

So April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November. Almost eight or nine months on my own working remotely from Airbnbs. And just being able to come downstairs and see a group of people having dinner or playing a board game and have a little conversation with someone versus going and sightseeing or going to a museum or whatever you do during the day all by yourself.

Alexis

Yeah.

Alexis

And then logging onto your computer by yourself to work East Coast hours at night. The vibes were immaculate. Like so good.

I walked away. I was like, I don't think I ever want to travel any other way. Honestly.

Kevin

And these co-living spaces are like every country has them, like every big tourist area.

Andrei

I cannot vouch that.

Kevin

I mean, I don't, I don't need you to do some research right here. But like generally, you know, if you're traveling, is that, is that something that you look for when you're traveling? You pick a country, pick an area, someplace that you have to co-work.

Alexis

I would say they're normally a little bit off the beaten path.

Kevin

I've never heard this before, so I'm just trying to, I don't, I don't even know we're on a podcast anymore. I'm just having a conversation about you guys. You're traveling stuff.

I don't know in my book.

Alexis

Yeah. Like I wouldn't Andrean correct me if I'm wrong. Like I wouldn't say they're in like the most prime area of the, of the city you're trying to visit.

Like it's probably not the most ideal location. They're usually a little bit outside the city, a little bit off the beaten path. They're more unique.

It's different. I think there's a, there's a couple of different websites where you can find listings or what, if you get into it, they just kind of show up on your Instagram feed. That's what happened to me all the time on Instagram now.

Andrei

And I'm like, man, don't worry, the feed are gonna, after this talk, I'm pretty sure all three of us will see some co-livings when we check the phone.

Kevin

In the algorithm we trust.

Andrei

But, but, uh, even with co-livings, because it's becoming a business nowadays and the main reason why is this level of loneliness that everybody's experiencing. It's a business and there are different levels of co-livings. There are the ones that are very authentic and the backbone of these co-livings are the community and the people that they, they are the fire there.

And also other co-livings that are very marketed, they have an army on influencers that spend their time to promote it. And when you get there, you don't know if you're in a hostel or in a hostel with very kind people that are smiling a lot, but they don't want to do that much with you. You pay a lot of money for that.

It's, it's a lot of branding and rebranding. Um, I'd say go look for the reviews, look for the authenticity comes from people's reviews. Um, actually when I was in my data, there was a place in a very small town and there were like two co-livings.

That was the one that I spent. I think I spent like eight months totally in there. And there was another one very close by which it's very popular.

It's, I think it's called outside and they have this network of co-livings in all the world. And it's very expensive subscription. I'm not sure about the business model, but it's kind of like you subscribe for one year and you're allowed to go everywhere in the world and spend time at one of their co-livings.

The vibe was very different. I'm, I befriended with people from my co-living and people from that co-living. And it was such a big difference of mindset.

Some people, while most of the people in the co-living, I was there, they were looking more to very nature related activities, sports in nature, hiking, spending time in camping, like, yeah, things like that. And the people from the outside, they were like, let's drink, let's make noise. Let's go party.

Kevin

My people got it. All right.

Alexis

So I think, yeah, I was going to say, I think it goes back to, and I guess it depends on how you travel, right? I just try to get there. Sometimes getting on the plane and getting to the place is all I can do.

I'll ask the receptionist at the hotel what I should do. Lots of people at the airport talk to the Uber driver, right? If you just go to one and you find the people that you really vibe with and ask them like, Hey, have you stayed anywhere else?

It's really cool that you, you think I would like, they'll give you recommendations and then you can just kind of go from there. But Andrea, I did. I had another question for you.

How do you feel that this has affected your career? Like positively or negatively? Do you feel like it has helped you as an engineer, just meeting different people and being in a different environment?

Andrei

It helped me. It gave me perspective, maybe not that much as an engineer, but as a human being navigating this capitalistic world that I need to adapt as fast as possible and survive. I'm constantly amazed by the people that I find in those co-livings, you included here, Alexis.

I see so many creative people doing really good in areas that I didn't expect that was a full-time job. And I'm getting a lot of advice and like I said, perspective, I didn't know things were possible until somebody that I've never met in a couple of hours shows me and I'm like, oh wow, this is a whole business idea. It's expanding your perspective.

And sometimes even venting out. I had this experience in Switzerland with this wonderful friend from Poland. I was just venting because I had some meeting with a client of mine and I was complaining that I don't have time for the implementation because I spent too much time clarifying things.

And because I spent all my 10 years as a software engineer, my idea of work is I need to code, I need to push the code, I need to show the code works. That's work. And she was just listening to me venting out and she was like, oh, you're double working here.

You're also a manager and also like an engineer. Of course you need to ask them for more money. And I was like, hi, I think you're right.

So yeah, you get perspective. You get a lot of perspective.

Kevin

All right, quick pause because this episode is sponsored by Meter. If you've ever managed a network built from five vendors, six dashboards, and a bunch of contracts that no one fully understands, you know how fast that turns into chaos.

Alexis

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Kevin

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Alexis

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Kevin

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Alexis

Thanks to Meter for sponsoring this episode. You can go to meter.com slash liu to book a demo now.

Kevin

That's m-e-t-e-r dot com slash l-i-u to book a demo. Now back to the episode. On the flip side of that, okay, so, if it's, it's, it's given you perspective, but it hasn't hurt you, you think it's hindered your career in any aspects?

Andrei

Yes, it can. This is gonna be a bit hard to confess, but I recognize moments in me where I was, okay, let's finish this fast, push the code, and go snorkeling. Or everybody's waiting in their car, we have to do this, like, I told them I finish at four, it's four, I'm not finished, okay.

It's, it can be damaging if you don't have the level of discipline to be committed to your work. One way to prevent this damage is being honest with, with a lot of clients that worked. They, they see this honesty and, and they know if it's not like a hard deadline or a code red B0 that production is crashing, is crashing, and you can finish tomorrow.

If you're open and honest and say, hey, I'm gonna wrap things sooner today, I'm gonna make it up tomorrow, and everything is gonna be fine. But let them know, if they expect you to be online and you don't respond, or you have like an evasive respond, that can add up. And in spending a lot of time in an environment that, where you want to be outside with your friends, with your new friends, you don't realize how fast it's gonna add up.

So the client should know.

Kevin

Yeah, especially I could, I could see you like, you know, saying I had to sign off at the log off of the day, whatever. And they open Instagram and you're out there like, posting a selfie in front of something or like out there skiing. And you're like, what the, I thought he had something going on.

Andrei

Yeah, I thought he said the dentist.

Alexis

I was, I was going to say a lot of it is perspective too. And I, I dealt with this early in my career, but it's different when people know that you're working on the road because, oh, Alexis isn't answering, but I know she's in her home office. Versus Alexis isn't answering and she might be in Hawaii on a mountain.

You know what I mean? And even though, I mean, your day out of 24 hours, you're asleep for seven to eight, you work for another eight, right? As your assigned work hours.

And then the four to five of whatever you get to do with your free time. I mean, realistically, you could be doing anything. It could be the gym.

It could be laundry. It could be going grocery shopping. It could be skiing in Switzerland.

Those four or five hours of your personal time, but managing that perception of other people, if your clients or your coworkers are following you and all of a sudden you're not, you're taking a long time to answer, you could be at your desk knee deep in another email and it's just taking you a while to get back to their Slack message because you're focusing on a different item of work. But because they know that you're out there doing something else, the assumption is, oh, well, they're not working, right? They're not actually working.

And so you almost need to overcommunicate to manage that expectation and be extra visible and extra present and extra online, extra on camera when you're on your meetings, regardless of what time it is, because it's the price you pay for having that flexibility.

Andrei

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Be as transparent as possible.

Even go the extra mile. Show them that you're willing to be available. That's a great way to maintain your career, even increase it.

I got, there was a period where I got very good feedback from my work, but when we were in the meetings, the client was insisting for me to open the camera and they would see me just like tropical trees behind and me getting a 10 every day, like from Monday to Friday, I had a different face. But they told me like, Andrej, you're doing really well. This was even before all the AI started.

And they didn't have anything to complain. I was available. But yeah, I also was spending time and try to make most of the environment I was in.

To be honest, spending time in nature and being exposed to the sun and lovely people, it made me a healthier and that made me even better at doing my job. I was more aware, more at peace, more like calmer. These were things that were also impacting my professional career.

So I'd say we can switch the perspective here. Right now we're in a place where hard work doesn't mean smart work. It's these are two different things.

If you spend time on yourself to get like in a healthy environment with lovely people around you and you take care of your health and sleep, you can do better at work than staying lonely in your house and being on the same wheel. It was a good restart for me. So I'd say both are possible.

You can ruin your work and you can enhance it if you have some discipline and transparency.

Alexis

I'm curious because you mentioned AI and it's not about just working hard. It's about working smart. What's your take on AI as an engineer, especially as someone who's deep in the software engineering?

Because I feel like software engineers especially are being hit with that.

Andrei

For a lot of engineers, this for good reasons is perceived as a threat. Because a lot of companies would be, I'm not going to need 10 engineers anymore. I need a really good one that knows how to delegate things to these AIs.

So a lot of jobs are going to be taken. But on the flip side, if you're creative and you have a rested mind, this gives you a lot of leverage. If you position yourself in a good environment, you can see what's missing and you have all the tools to build it yourself.

I'm trying my best to see that this AI structure that we have right now gives the ability to make individual unicorns instead of big tech unicorns. Now there's the possibility to be just one individual that is very disciplined and organized and has a clear mind and sees what's missing from a lot of industries. For example, right now me, it's hard for me to say I'm a mobile or an Android engineer anymore.

I'm also doing design. I'm also doing DevOps. I'm learning new technologies.

The way I'm perceiving code is not more, okay, I'm a Java developer or a Kotlin developer. These are languages. But I know one language and I can use it as a reference.

And based on that, I can translate in way more. So right now I'm confident enough if I find a client that wants a backend or a web-based product, I'm going to go in and say, yeah, I can build that. I have all the tools and the tenacity to deliver that product.

So it's, like I said, I'm going to repeat myself here. You can lose jobs, but it also opens up for opportunities to take a lot of other work. And it doesn't need to be just in tech.

It can be more creative, more on the design side. Yeah, even building a game, it's easier than ever right now.

Alexis

I've seen, I know, man, I mean, I just got a, I posted a post the other day and someone commented and they were like, this is AI swap. And I was like, AI can be used for so many fun things if you're doing it creatively. I've seen so many creators incorporate AI into their style of content and it's video effects or motion graphics or things that memes, the meme videos are so good.

Like they wouldn't be possible without Sora and some of these other technologies that are coming out. And if you can use your brain to apply it better, I don't know, I think it's like the best of both worlds.

Kevin

I think that's probably where the hate is coming from is the people who can't, who look at it as like, I don't want to have to evolve. I don't want to have to change and learn new things. And as AI thing is coming in, it's being scary.

It might take my job. So screw AI. I hate AI.

I don't, I don't want to deal with it. And it's just inflexible people who are, who are terrified of losing their jobs and don't want to, don't want to expand their horizons at all, which is crazy to me because in tech, that's, you have to do that constantly. So it's just the next thing.

Alexis

It would just be something else.

Kevin

Yeah. Like SD-WAN was the same thing. Automation and all this, like, it's all the same stuff.

Every couple of years, there's a new technology that comes out. That's supposed to change the world. AI is bigger granted than the other ones have been.

I think it's actually going to change the world, but I mean, we'll just adapt. We'll just change and adapt. And then 10 years from now, my kids will be dealing with a new, a new thing.

That's going to disrupt everything.

Andrei

It's giving, yeah, this has been the case, the whole humanity, like in the beginning, somebody was like cultivating and doing agriculture just manually. And then like automated tools came in and there were a lot of people upset. Because they didn't have a job anymore.

This is always going to be the case. You need to decide on what side of the fence you want to be. You want to adapt and evolve and relearn or stuck, be stuck in that mentality.

Kevin

Yeah, I just, and I don't get it. I honestly don't understand it because like, use it as an opportunity to do something different or like whatever, like use it as an opportunity to grow in a certain area. Like I, I've been doing cloud code.

I'm sorry, Andre. I've been, I've been, I've been vibe coding and I know a lot of programmers hate vibe coding is because it is not good code. I'm sure it is garbage security holes everywhere.

Hard-coded APIs, you know, terrible. It's fun.

Kevin

Especially, especially because Kevin's screen, he's texting me and Dale and he goes, I'm drunk vibe coding at the airport.

Andrei

It's great. Sounds like a good night activity. Exactly.

Having a couple of beers and cloud with you and just chatting together. Tomorrow you're a unicorn.

Kevin

But it's, it's allowing me to do things in a quicker pace that I would not have been able to do without it. And I think that is the, the key to AI. And if you can use that as an ability, as a skill to accelerate whatever you're doing, whatever project you're on or whatever you're trying to learn, I think it's a, it's a fabulous tool and you're, you're a fool to not try to use it.

Andrei

Yeah. Just repelling it, like resisting to the change. It's not going to help anybody.

I'd say embracing it. I'm for the last year or so I'm constantly using them, but I also slipped a bit. I, there were moments where I abused it and the vibe coding is real, but the vibe debugging, it's also real.

And that's a, so close to how I'm kind of concerned about this because I see an inflection point when it comes to the skill of an engineer from the newer generation. Back then, when we were in a university, we, we didn't have a choice. We had to understand the concepts, the abstract concepts from a software engineering.

Right now, that's not that much the case. There's so many ways you can trick and cheat and get your grades and get the diploma and then look for a job. But there are going to be a lot of people that don't understand the concepts and yeah, AI can do their job.

But when something like in real life, these heroes, like production incidents, when everything is crashing, they're going to happen. And you might like a client might have a couple of engineers that when things go south, no one knows the code base good enough or the architecture to understand where the problem is coming from. So, you know, when it's the same thing, when you go to the gym and you work your muscles, the same thing happens when you try to grasp and understand the complex abstract concept in your mind.

And all three of us had this experience in our studying years. I'm afraid if we, if the new generations, they're not going to have that anymore, we needed to replace it with something. Because this AI, it's offer something that not only humans are, let's say, prone to abuse it, every living being conserves energy if they're not forced to evolve.

So it, it takes a lot of mental effort to go on the longer, longer path when you know the shorter trail is available. It's, and yeah, I'm kind of concerned about that.

Alexis

It's gotta be a balance between going the longer path and then also using the shorter path to keep up with everyone else at the same time. Because if you don't, you are also going to get left behind.

Alexis

Unfortunately, yeah.

Alexis

I'm curious, Andre, for someone who's looking for a remote job, I get asked in my DMs all the time, right? How can I get a job like yours? I don't have a traditional engineering job that is letting you work remote, but you do.

So what would you recommend to someone who's looking? Is it something you bring up in the interview? Is it something you get the job and then try to talk your way into later?

What's your advice there?

Andrei

Well, recently the market shifted a bit. The hype words right now are like hybrid or back to office kind of narrative. So the aftermath of the COVID has been, has passed.

When you know how to do things really well, you can find clients from worldwide. And when you're from a different country, remote is the only option. And they don't mind that much from where remote you're working from.

But that's true. If I'm looking for jobs here in Romania, where I live, filtering out this hybrid and back to office, it's going to be a really big filter. Half of the positions or the offers, they're going to be filtered out.

So I guess people, companies are trying to bring people back in their office. But if you're very skilled in your department or domain, you can always find work remote.

Alexis

I think about it like a negotiation, like back when I was renting apartments and it would say no animals, no animals allowed. And I was like, well, I have a 750 credit score and I can pay rent. Does that count?

And then they'd meet me and be like, yes, actually you only have two cats. There's some wiggle room there. So maybe you get the interview, you prove you're a really good engineer.

They really, really want you. And then you're like, okay, so I come with some terms and conditions. Do you care what country I'm in?

Kevin

Well, that brings me to my question of, you know, is this something that's feasible for someone who's early career? Or is this really only something attainable, like mid senior level?

Andrei

There's a better chance to get a remote job when you're closer to a senior level, especially in junior level. They need to have somebody around them to show their strings and be observed and have like a proper learning path. So, yeah, a senior can be, can have more access to this.

Um, uh, I wanted to say one can always like reach out to this freelancing platforms. There are a ton of them and it's not, it doesn't take you that much time to apply to them. Some of them are very thorough with the recruitment process, but most of them, they just like you sign in, you put the details, your work experience, and then you're good to go.

And keep the funnel of opportunities as much open as, uh, as much as you can and allow, allow yourself to go to some bad interviews. Like you're, you're going to get the muscle working right. This, um, I'm not feeling ashamed anymore if I apply to a job and, uh, I'm not going to be a match, uh, let's say, um, cultural wise or technical wise, things like this happen.

Um, I had experience where people that prove technically they were, uh, lower than me, they didn't want me to join their team. And when I was interviewed by them and there was also moments where I recognized, okay, I don't know the technology and the area that good. So I'm, I'm okay with both scenarios right now.

It's a trial and error. One good advice would be try as much as possible, propagate your resume and your work history and reach out to all these platforms.

Kevin

And I feel like people get a trap of saying like, I want a job and they're not very picky about the job itself. And like the job they're interviewing the person, the job is very picky. They know exactly the kind of person they want, but the interviewee on the other side is just like, please just hire me.

I want money. And they, they need to get into the reverse that and be like, no, I'm also interviewing you. And these are the things that I want out of an employer.

And one of those might be flexibility in working location, something like that.

Alexis

Lauren, I think it, I think it depends on where you're at too. Andre, I like your point about, you know, early in career versus mid career versus senior. You, when you're early in career, I think something that's really, really important is getting yourself visibility and visibility, credibility, trust.

You need to, you need other people on the team to trust in you and know and have confidence that you are capable and doing the job. That comes with experience. That comes with projects.

That comes with showing up. That comes with FaceTime. That comes with sitting on calls.

And whether you are remote at home or remote somewhere else, yes, you could do those things. Once you have leverage, you are indispensable to the company in one facet. Leverage gives you negotiating power, whether that's for salary, whether that's for hours, whether that's for which projects you're working on or which teams you're working with or where you are physically located, you need that leverage to negotiate those things.

And you accumulate that as you get more skills and more things under your belt. However, that's also coming from a very privileged stance of you have a job and you have negotiating power. If you got laid off, you don't have a job, you got bills to pay and you got to put food on the table, you got to get a job first.

So I think that's where maybe the, just get any job. I just need a job. If you just need a job because you need to pay your bills, sure.

Andrei

Yeah, that's very well put.

Alexis

What's the saying? Start working for the job you want, not the job you got. If you got a job and you don't like your job, use some of your extra hours or your extra time to start working towards the job you actually do want.

Andrei

That's a really good way to put it. I want to add this when it comes to remote working. Right now there are some places, for example, I can say about London where somebody pays something like 2000 pounds for one month worth of rent.

But if you go to a co-living place, you pay a quarter of that to get into a place that can be even more spacious and more healthy and not as boring as UK when it comes to weather. I heard this tendency, actually it's a trend of people finding really amazing exotic places, but money-wise they spend way less than they're used to spend back at home. So they're also traveling, they can work and they save money through that.

And that allows you, it opens up for the opportunity to, let's say, not be that picky because you need to pay your rent, pay the utilities and everything. You can have something lightweight, get the same money by the end of the month when you cross all the budgeting you do and still have a healthier lifestyle. So this is also an option.

Alexis

It's about tailoring for experiences.

Andrei

Yeah, I remember a lot of people were doing that in Nepal. Four years ago, I was in this wonderful town in Nepal called Pokhara and I've seen so many digital nomads there. Every restaurant had a couple of people like from UK, from US, they're just sitting there with their MacBooks and coding every day.

It was interesting to see, because Nepal is very cheap, they had the comfort that they had back home, but it was just one tenth of the price and they were able to make a lifestyle there. And also it's Nepal, so you can see Everest, you can see so many exotic places from there and you can still do your work. Well, it depends on the time zone.

Yeah.

Alexis

You make it work.

Andrei

Yeah, for the most part. You can make it work.

Kevin

I'm time zone independent at this point, Andre, come on.

Kevin

All right, Andre, we're getting close towards our time limit. I have two very, very important questions for you. Number one, behind you, there's an access point hanging from your ceiling.

Can you please tell me what the access point is? Because I've been staring at it for the last hour and it's driving me nuts and I can't recognize it. Oh my God, it's moving.

What is that?

Andrei

It's my laptop moving.

Kevin

Oh, it's not even an access point. It looks exactly like a router. Oh my God.

It's been driving me nuts. You don't see that, Alexis? Top left of your screen.

Here on top? Yeah.

Kevin

Yeah, it looks like a fish or like a TV mount or some lights.

Kevin

Oh, to me, it's like they're just some lights. It looks like you're on my screen that's about this big. But it looks like a circle with antennas coming out.

Okay, I should have asked that way earlier.

Andrei

I'm not an alien, I promise.

Kevin

It's just one of those things where my eyes go to it and I can't stop staring at it unless I... Okay. Anyway, so that was question one.

Check. Question number two. It was very important.

Question number two, what is the craziest story you have of living in a co-living space while trying to work and you have this situation that has happened to you that you were like, that was absolutely insane?

Andrei

Well, I had this situation when I was in Madeira. We were a very close group and we were doing a lot of activities together. So we planned out to do a picnic Friday evening and everybody was cooking.

They were preparing everything. The cars were ready and then I get the call from my client like, hey, our production is done, something happened. And it was a feature that I built that why everybody reached out to me.

I knew everything there and everybody was waiting for me. I think like six or seven people were waiting for me and I got this call and I told them guys, 10 minutes, please. I need to check this out.

Kevin

Never 10 minutes.

Andrei

So I looked at the code when I got the message from my supervisor, like, Hey, this is your code. This is your feature. Solve it.

And I look at the code, every line that was this, uh, last file with, I think it had like 500 lines, something, everything was written by me, except the line that was breaking. Somebody else changed that with a force push. And the, the error was something it was looking for a 31st of a month.

And it was 30, 30 September. And the next day was the 1st of October and it was crashing because the day didn't exist. And I lost the opportunity to go to the, with the, my gang to enjoy our start of the evening of the weekend.

Because I had to solve somebody's problem with, they didn't told me they forced push on my, uh, feature. And I just, I was a bit angry. I just showed the kid Blake, like, okay, this is the problem intentionally showing the name.

And I'm like, I'm out. Peace. Have a nice weekend.

Kevin

Oh man. That's rough. There's, I'd be so tempted to be like, ah, sorry.

It's a time. It's weekend. Bye.

Like it's, oh man, that's rough.

Andrei

Well, we reported, uh, we had, uh, we had a bill prepared. We reverted until we solved the problem. But, uh, I, I found the problem.

I was like, okay, you made the problem, make it disappear. I'm going to enjoy my weekend ticket, which was not the best thing to do. It was a mix of emotions in me because I let people down while I was blamed on something.

And, uh, um, my response was, uh, let's say on a low frequency that, uh, I learned from that experience. I should have been more professional.

Kevin

Now, would you have, if you had been home in like a home office in that same situation that happened, would you have then stayed and fixed it and like had a different reaction?

Andrei

Yes. I knowing myself. Yes.

Because I didn't have anything better to do. But the level of stress was here because I had plans with other people and I felt guilty because I was making other people waiting for me, which even if you were home, that's possibly happening to like, you could have plans.

Kevin

Um, it's, it was the weekend. You could be meeting friends at a bar locally, something like that too. So it's not, you know, I'm, I'm trying to, in my head, I'm going, okay, pros and cons of, of working remote.

And a lot of the cons that I'm hearing are the same things that could happen where you're living now, you know, same things happen.

Alexis

It goes back to managing, managing your time, communication, being visible, meeting expectations.

Andrei

Yeah, you're right, Kevin, that can happen everywhere. But, uh, from home, I feel like I'm more used to saying, Hey guys, I'm going to be seeing the pub after 30 minutes. I'm going to be 30 minutes late, but there was like, in the front door of the house, there were like six, seven people like staring at you and they're like, Andre, Andre, where are you?

Kevin

I'm like, okay, true. Yeah. I could see it being very different living with them.

Yeah.

Alexis

Would you say Andre, that working remote, I feel like when I'm home in my home office, I am much more inclined to overwork. Like I will wake up, I will open my computer and I will work and work and work. I'll go eat something and then work out and then get back on my computer and work and work and work.

Right. My default mode, unless I have dinner planned with my parents or like something is working. I enjoy working.

I like what I'm doing. And I feel like for me, traveling has forced me to step away more and it's not that I'm working less. I mean, I am technically working less.

It's just that I'm working a normal amount instead of the extra amount that is normal when I'm at home.

Andrei

Yeah. Well, I can ask you, was the same in Switzerland? You felt like, okay, I should work the whole day after the eight hours?

Alexis

No, I mean, I only gave myself eight hours, right? I would sign on at 5 PM and I worked until one in the morning. And at one in the morning I was spent, I would pass out, I'd wake up and then I'd go ski.

And so it was almost like I was forcing myself to only work eight hours. And don't get me wrong, when we were skiing, I still brought my laptop and popped it open at a couple of the cafes.

Andrei

Yeah, I've seen it.

Alexis

But I worked less because I only allocated that time to work versus at home. I feel like the scope creep is so much more real.

Andrei

I relate to that. When I'm at home, let's say I finish with the work, my leisure time back home in the crowded cities, when the weather is not as good, it's opening another screen, going to Netflix or another streaming service. And I'm still looking at the screen.

It doesn't sound attractive, but you don't have a lot of options. You cannot go out every night if you have to work the next day in the morning. You need to be, let's say, fresh.

And in the town, in the city, you don't have that many options as you do in an exotic, co-living place.

Alexis

So, Andrei, as we wrap up the show, I've got one last question for you. If you had a piece of advice for someone listening who maybe wants to follow in your footsteps, or if you were going to give yourself from five years ago a piece of advice, what would that be?

Andrei

I'd say try it out step by step, book a week or two, and allow, give yourself this space of, let's say, maybe that's meant for me. Maybe that's not meant for me. You're going to realize, and it's not so much of a burden or time wasted, knowing exactly that you're not meant for co-living or for this type of environment.

It's a good thing because you don't feel, oh, maybe if I should do it, if I'm not going to do it, like questioning. It's not that hard to have one attempt. That would be one.

And work-wise, look for freelancing opportunities and go out there. Expose yourself, try to fail more, even at interviews. Yeah, that's the main advice here.

But I've never met a person yet that they regret trying co-living. And I never met somebody saying, oh, okay, this is not for me. I'm not going to come again.

Usually, all the people that I meet in co-living, they're like, okay, see you next year. So I'm kind of like, I don't know, not hoping, but I'm not going to be mad if I'm going to meet somebody. I'm going to be, okay, lost from the bucket list, I guess.

Alexis

Perfect. Well, that is it for this episode of Life in Uptime. Huge thank you to Andre for sharing his journey.

And thank you to you for listening. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. And if Andre's story today gave you something to think about, make sure you share it with a friend or colleague who might need it.

And until next time, keep learning, keep building, and keep your uptime high.