Gozit

Going to be done school soon (Dec), and looking into the possibility of working remotely - hopefully for a Canadian company since they tend to pay more, and then being able to travel / work abroad for at least part of the year. I'm in IT as alot of you know, I'll be coming out of my diploma with 3.5 years of work experience in a helpdesk/senior desktop support type role, so i'm not coming out with nothing. Would be hoping to get into a junior admin / windows admin type of role, or something to do with cloud technologies (office 365, azure, intune, etc), but I would take another senior desktop support position to be remote.

I know quite a few of you on here are/were in IT - is this something that could potentially be feasible?

Cheers

DigitalGhost

What are you asking here? You're looking to do IT Support remotely for a Canadian company from the UK/overseas and be highly paid for it?

If so then I wouldn't fancy your chances much there if I'm honest.

sharkus

I'll be brutally blunt. Have a re-think, because I don't think it is going to happen.

I don't think you'd be able to just walk into a job that would allow you to work remotely outside of the country. I suspect you would need to be located in the office for at least a probationary period, if not longer. It's also probable you would not be able to work from home, eg; location within say a 2 hour one-way trip of the office, without having worked for the company for a short while.
It does also depend on what sector you'd be in too. Some sectors may not allow remote access for security reasons.

One supposes that wherever you're going to travel too has the internet connectivity you require to do you job. What if the WiFi or Cell Data coverage isn't great, or is very costly? What happens if the place has issues with VPN's, and you need to use one to get into the corporate network, would you take a risk to do that? Do you think the employer would be overly happy about you taking that risk?

I might be wrong on this next point, but there could be visa / work permit requirements for wherever you'd be working, unless you're a PR or citizen of the country you'd be working from. Just turning up to travel to somewhere, having a bit of a holiday, and then working too might not go down too well.
I have a feeling if I popped down to Buffalo and said I was coming in for six months, and I'd be working remotely for some of that period, that they'd not be overly impressed, but as said, I might be wrong about that. Obviously you would not be so foolish as to not mention to immigration that you won't be working, right?

Moses2013

Good points and this is a good read in relation to topic: https://www.lexology.com/library/det...f-c7e875f91015An entitlement to work remotely does not give employees freedom to work wherever they want. Absent a workplace policy or agreement to the contrary, the employer still has the authority over where work is to be performed.

This may be an issue if an employee wants to use multiple locations (e.g. home and cottage), or moves to a location not suitable to the employer (e.g. different time zone, limited access to technology).

If a policy or agreement is silent on location, it can open the door for an employee to work from different locations than originally contemplated — within reason.

In Ernst v. Destiny Software Productions Inc. (2012 BCSC 542), the employer, based in B.C., entered into an agreement with an employee, who lived in Calgary, allowing him to work remotely. The agreement did not specify location for working remotely. The employee interpreted this to mean ‘anywhere’ and relocated to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He was terminated when he refused to return to Canada and sued the employer. Appropriately, the court held that this was far beyond the employer’s expectation and dismissed his claim for wrongful dismissal.

dbd33

I expect to want a summer student. If we don't get stuck with someone from the Nepotism Program then we'll stick a sign up at the nearby university and I know, based on past years, that will be inundated with talent. People with good basic computer skills and fluent English are a dime a dozen. Most of them will have worked out, before the interview, how they'll be able to get to work and will come right out and say that they're available on weekends and won't take holidays. The choice always comes down to the answer to "tell me about something you've done that you're proud of".

In such a climate a junior person would need to have some amazing and unique skill for the employer to consider any arrangement that's even slightly awkward.

dbd33

There’s something wrong with this story. Note that I deal with large, conservative, organizations, but:

I've worked remotely to Canada from the US, Switzerland, the UK, Germany, other places - I could ask the VPN administrator for a list. Also remotely from Canada to numerous countries and to some jobs of unknown location. I worked with a team for a year thinking they were all in the same room before finding they weren't all in the same country. Today I shall try and recruit someone to our team by offering 100% remote working; we don't care if he's in Barrie or Hawaii (where he has properties) or somewhere else. Certainly relocation to Cabo San Lucas wouldn't be an issue at all.

A couple of things drive all this:

- it's all contracts, no actual employment.
- it's best if it's measurable work; "share your screen, show me what you done so far". If your role is essentially bullshit, "Agile Advocate", "Scrum Master", "LEAN tutor", "Agile coach" then no one will pay for you to do it on a beach.
- Sales positions work fine, 100% commission paid on sale, no need for firm to pay for chair, everyone wins,
- Reputation, some people are trusted, others not.
- Skills. The more the skill is needed by the client, the more flexible the client will be.

Really, no one cares about tax situations, work permits and that manner of administrivia. The client is usually well insulated, if the contractor goes to jail, the client's concern is just finding another one.

My guess is that Destiny Software Productions is just one jealous guy pissed that someone thought of moving from the damp to Cabo before he did.

DigitalGhost

I think it boils down to 2 things ultimately and those are skill and pay. There are a fairly large amount of full-time remote IT positions in the UK, US and elsewhere now, often for software and solutions companies who don't maintain much of a physical central presence and like the idea of having people in different locations. The problem is to get one of those you are going to need to fulfil some basic requirements. They're going to want to know that you're competent and trustworthy and more often than not you'll need some decent SQL and Windows/Linux server knowledge.

If what you're looking for is a job where you're just going to reset passwords and tell people how to restart Windows 10 all day then think about this logically. Why would any Canadian company pay you a decent salary to do that remotely when they could easily outsource that work to someone in Eastern Europe, India or the Philippines for a fraction of the cost? The majority of reasonably and well paid full-time WFH IT roles that I see are in areas like consultancy, development, cloud-based infrastructure management and specialist application support/DevOps. They're not in tier 1 or 2 desktop support.

Moses2013

That was just one point. There are also many other legal issues one has to consider, including GDPR.

DigitalGhost

Absolutely. A lot of European clients won't want their data anywhere near America and vice-versa.

I think this discussion might be moot anyway since the OP hasn't responded once. No disrespect but he seems a little naive to me.

Kooky.

Confession, I haven't read all of these posts (still on my first coffee) so may be repeating some of the advice. I'm not "in IT" (I was, a lifetime and 4 continents ago) but I'm a tech bro's wife. Most of his company works remotely.

I'm going to be blunt. "I'm in IT" is honestly a meaningless phrase, not all IT is equal. You're in desktop support, and, from the few posts of yours I've read, you're about graduate age. No offence but you're ten a penny, and even if you were in a position that followed the sun, you'd probably need to be in a fixed timezone. And local hires would be a lot cheaper.

We moved from Sydney to Seattle because my husband (global VP, team all over the world) had to be in this timezone and, despite my suggesting Tijuana, he wasn't up for it. (If he remains with this company we could move south in the same timezone but, for now, it is beneficial for him to work out of HQ.)

My advice would be to get yourself some more experience, move into a different area - consulting, enterprise software sales / implementation, etc. - and revisit this plan in a few years' time.

dbd33

A step up from dime a dozen, at least.

dbd33

Geographic location of data is a fabulously anachronistic notion. I recall partitioning an Oracle database years ago to have one partition for military data and one for civil data so the owner of the system could claim one was onshore and one off. Not true, of course, but good enough for government reporting, Now no one knows where the data is, it's just "in the cloud" so I have to think that type of regulation is tangential to reality.

Gozit

Not desktop support/helpdesk. Those are obviously onsite positions and i've nearly 4 years experience in those roles, so i'm looking to move up the food chain a bit so to speak. If I have to reset another password and walk someone through what a special character is for 20 minutes another time I might just lose my marbles LMAO.

What you suggested about getting windows/unix admin experience then using that to try and work remotely is probably the avenue i'll be going down. I respect that it might not be something i'm able to do straight away on graduation, but there are plenty of 20-something freelance programmers sitting on a beach in Thailand being "digital nomads"...surely someone in the Windows/Unix world should be able to do the same thing, especially in the age of cloud when you're really just sitting at a desk to connect remotely to servers across ther internet anyway.

Obviously internet/cell connectivity would be taken into account...would have it all arranged before I left. I don't think it would really work with US immigration, but the idea would be to go to a country I have access to via my EU citizenship, where working obviously wouldn't be an issue, or to a second/third world country with lax tourist/business visa rules. Realistically if you enter a country, say you're staying for 3 months, have $10,000 in your bank account and a return ticket, they are going to let you in most likely. If you are working remotely from your laptop while you are there, there is literally no way to track that. (yet.)
Yeah, I get that.

I don't get this culture of "i'm available on weekends and won't take holidays." Work/life balance people!

That's where i'm looking to take my career. As I said above I have 3.5 years of helpdesk/desktop support, some as a co-op some as a real full time job. Plus experience from school and personal projects, I feel like I should be able to apply for junior admin positions, whether traditional or remote, and if traditional use it to get into a senior role after a couple years, gain a couple more years experience and get a remote job afterwards. etc.

Gozit

Yeah, that's what it's looking like I will need to do. Whether I decide to stay here or go abroad and work is what I will need to decide I guess.

It's the age old emigration question of familiarity / spending power vs a new adventure and better quality of life (or in my case, a warmer climate.)

Advice on how to pivot my career from traditional administration to what you and DigitalGhost mentioned would be appreciated

Cheers!

dbd33

I believe I've stumbled upon the answer, Gozit. Get a job and then visit China. Your employer/client will then invite you to work from home continuously.