Unemployed nomad
Job update... or lack thereof.
As some of you know (but many don’t), in 2023 I accepted a voluntary separation package from my employer, and December 2023 was my last month at work. My severance package runs into June… which is quickly approaching.
Unemployment and Nomadism
One of the surprising things about facing unemployment as a nomad is it is less stressful. And no, I’m not saying that we are carefree. It is tough, psychologically if nothing else.
However, there is one very significant difference between unemployment back when we owned a home in Alabama, owned two cars, and had a fairly established cost of living.
As nomads, we have low fixed costs.
That means we could look at the map, do some research, explore visa options, and determine that we could live for a year in Albania with a US passport without getting a visa. Just show up. And if we don’t want to become tax residents, we just leave before we hit 6 months, which is what we will be doing in a couple of months.
And the cost of living is low enough in Albania that we can live on a fraction of the severance payout. Combine that with our pre-existing emergency fund (where are my Dave Ramsey fans?) and we can live for quite a while without an income.
The State of Remote Jobs
If you listen to the news, you will think there are no remote jobs left and everyone is back in the office. It isn’t quite that black and white. As someone who has been actively looking for a few months, I can say there are many remote job listings out there, but unfortunately for me, a large percentage of them are for people residing in the United States.
There are some “remote first” businesses out there that are pretty great, but that limits the pool of possibilities in terms of the total available jobs that fit my qualifications. The freelance route through sites like Upwork and Freelancer is a slow, uphill climb, although I know lots of people are very successful and many even full-time workers on these platforms.
It is just an impression, but if I read between the lines on the economy and where businesses are today, having gone overboard in hiring during the pandemic and now having gone overboard in pulling back, I have a thought.
Maybe we are entering a new age of the contractor.
New Age of Contracting?
Not that contract work is anything new, or unique. It has been the “supplement labor” or “get the project done quickly” lever for businesses for ages. It is a specific type of widget that different companies of different sizes might use in slightly different ways, but I wonder if that is about to change.
Leaving aside any legal issues like the definition of full-time employee vs. contractor, I seriously think we might see a period where the volume of jobs (not those reported metrics that are highly manipulated) might continue to decline and the number of contractors increases.
Businesses get to move initiatives forward without the permanent overhead, especially as tax incentives erode for things like CapEx vs OpEx on the books. And if the revenue slips, costs rise, or any number of other financial or business issues arise, they can quickly and easily cut back the contract labor.
What have I been doing?
Panicking, pacing, pontificating… ok, none of those… well maybe pontificating. I am doing the things you would expect, and maybe some you would not expect. I’ll just list them for starters.
Resume / LinkedIn overhaul.
Full-court press on job search and applying for jobs.
Learning about platforms like Upwork, creating a profile, and applying for contract work.
Studying interviewing and other job-search topics that I have not dealt with for many years.
Training and Certification (like the Foundational C# with Microsoft certificate)
Then some that might be expected by those familiar with the development field.
Develop an SSRS dynamic report menu that pulls from the standard catalog database to demo my ability with SSRS in a sample project to help get contract work.
Start review of any C# projects I have completed for potential samples (found a pretty complete early version of a text-based “Zork-like” adventure game I had forgotten about from more than 10 years ago, that was fun).
Start getting my GitHub updated, begin on a public resume for part of my profile (still in progress), and work toward hosting any code projects that I plan to use as samples of work for job search and contract search.
Then some that might be less expected.
Develop a nomad travel application in Microsoft Access for rapid prototyping (for a future web application). For now, I’m using this to plan our travels including variables like distance to cities, temperatures in a given month, population, and estimated cost of living.
Consider brands for nomad blogging, get a Bluehost account, buy a domain, and start building my first WordPress website. It is a work in progress, but I’ll share details when it is live.
Imagine a future vision for the nomad blog website that has a sort of step-by-step curriculum for becoming a nomad at a high level, a future eBook companion and workbook, and a companion web application for researching and managing your nomad travel (iteration from the MS Access prototype), etc.
Research where we will travel next, including potential variables like starting a company in another country, taxes, residency, visas, etc.
And my wife has her list too, so we are keeping busy. I’m sure there will be more to come on the ideas of building a business, possible residency options, and various other ventures.
Until next time, have a good one!
DISCLAIMER: blah blah blah, I’m not a Lawyer or Accountant, blah blah blah, contact a professional for visa and tax advice :)