One common way to measure affordability is to look at the cost of things relative to local incomes. But the world is getting increasingly more complicated than this. Here, for example, is an interesting article talking about the "nomadification" of cities such as Medellín.

What this is referring to is digital nomads who might work for and draw a salary from a company in say the US, but who work fully remotely in places like Medellín, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City. It's like working from home all the time, except home is some exciting city in Latin America.

The appeal of this work arrangement is obvious. You get to both live in an exciting city and you get to arbitrage between a US or other similarly high salary and a place where the cost of living is significantly less.

But the point of the above article is that this can distort a local economy and make locals feel like they're getting priced out. When you take enough software developers making $150k a year and you drop them into a place where the minimum wage is $350 per month, that additional income starts to have an impact.

Though, many countries seem to think it's a positive one. Last year, both Portugal and Colombia introduced new digital nomad visas, which presumably means they want more of them. And I certainly think that we will see more and not less of this kind of working.

But in a way, isn't this really just an extreme form of tourism? I mean, unless these nomadic cities are collecting additional income taxes (or deriving some other benefits), aren't we just talking about foreigners renting Airbnbs and spending money that is earned and taxed elsewhere?

Chart: Rest of World

I'm not sure how much you can actually glean from this Australian Bureau of Statistics data (taken from this recent New Geography article):

The data was collected on August 20, 2021 and, at that time, there were still a number of pandemic lockdowns in place. But consider the fact that during the last census (2016), Sydney's "work @ home" share was only 4.9% and that its transit share was 26.2%.

Where Sydney is sitting today is obviously somewhere between where it was in 2016 and where it was in 2021. Who knows where exactly things stabilize -- that is largely unknowable -- but at least I got to use "Sydneysider" in a blog post title.

At the end of August, our office closed for two weeks so that we could shuffle a bunch of desks around. During that time, we all worked remotely. I spent one week working from home and one week working from Utah. Being in Utah in the summer was, of course, a great treat. Everybody appreciates having more rather than less flexibility in how they structure their workday.

But at the same time, being away from the office reminded me just how much I hate working from home. I hate the onslaught of calls and zooms that ensue when you're not proximate to the people you work with. I hate being distracted by the thought that I should probably do a load of laundry. And importantly, I also find that I have less energy.

One of the ways that extroverts and introverts are often defined is according to where they derive their energy from. The former is said to derive more of their energy from being around other people and the latter is said to derive their energy from being by themselves. Introverts need time to recharge. Of course, most people probably need both of these things. I certainly do.

But I think this is an important consideration as we all debate work-from-home policies. I enjoy being in the office. And I can tell you that our team overwhelmingly does as well. People were starting to get antsy during our two week hiatus. But not everybody feels the same way, which is why I wasn't expecting this (the above) Twitter poll result.

At the time of writing this post there were fewer than 200 responses. But even with limited data points, I was expecting more of a bell curve, with the majority of people doing some sort of hybrid thing. That is not the case here. The results were fairly equal with 5 days a week having a slight edge. My sense is that WFH is continuing to wane.

But I don't know, you tell me: What is your work routine right now and what would you consider optimal?