Tricks From A Freelance Digital Nomad

by Servaas Schrama / Aug 18

I have been a mobile worker for two years now. Typically, I will work from home, sometimes from strange locations such as cafe’s or restaurants (hotel bars are often quite nice in the Netherlands) and regularly from a customers office. Europe is way behind on all of this and a lot of companies tend to not trust mobile workers.

My equipment consists of 3 things:

• A blackberry with BIS service
• A macbook pro
• A flatfee UMTS card

It all fits in my backpack easily. Oh yeah, there’s a car too, obviously.

Practically speaking, it is not all perfect. Most bigger companies offer citrix based access, which is workable. Companies still believe that all workers, including freelance workers such as me, should come to the office every day and work on customer delivered equipment. I don’t believe in that concept as I run my own company.

Most companies also offer vpn options, but often it is restriced to certain hardware and impossible to bypass. This makes things hard for mobile workers like myself. I have learned that companies here are not willing to change much in this respect, but if you make sure your conditions are setup to your liking, a customer will try and get you connected in a satisfying way.

In short, it is a war, but we’re winning slowly.

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