Why Cruise Ships Are My Favorite Remote Work Location (2013)

http://tynan.com/cruisework

by syncopatience • 10 years ago

50 31 10 years ago

tynan.com

okket• 10 years ago

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416 (~3 yrs ago, 311 comments)

samfisher83• 10 years ago

The internet on cruise ships are super slow and very expensive. So I don't know how to programming on the cruise ship would work if you are connecting to a server.

mixmastamyk• 10 years ago

He writes about downloading all necessary docs beforehand. Also, it isn't hard to run servers in virtualbox or containers if you need them. That leaves slow internet for occasional searches of stack overflow, which is doable.

mrob• 10 years ago

If you don't mind slightly outdated data, you can download and browse all the Stack Exchange sites offline:

http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline-bro...

https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

op00to• 10 years ago

Not really so much on the newest (mega-)cruise ships. http://fortune.com/2015/10/15/cruise-ships-tech-wifi/

Latency is tied to the laws of physics, but using stuff like Mosh and Git, you're pretty well set.

jkot3• 10 years ago

This was discussed in DN community a lot. Cruise ships are useless for slow internet.

toomuchtodo• 10 years ago

Cruise ships are slowly being outfitted with high speed spot beam internet access. A friend working on RCCL's Quantum Of The Seas can pull 50-60Mbps off hours.

jkot3• 10 years ago

Shared among hundreds of people... Not really reliable connection.

Darthy• 10 years ago

The service is called "VOOM" and it's now offered on every RCCL ship. The speed is impressive - easily fast enough to work at sea imho.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O3b_Networks

fla• 10 years ago

Sadly, that is probably a 56k per user in practice.

Kiro• 10 years ago

DN?

jkot3• 10 years ago

Digital Nomad subreddit

mst• 10 years ago

He fairly specifically said that the terrible net access was part of what made him productive.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Getting good Internet when you visit a town every few days and working offline while at sea is fine once you get used to it.

Maybe that's just because it's how I grew up with networks, doing everything in batch mode. ("Bluewave offline email", for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Wave )

zeristor• 10 years ago

I keep thinking about that article, working on a cruise ship. Here's a search of his blog about cruises, it looks like he stopped two years ago[༆]

[༆] - http://tynan.com/?search=cruise

alanfalcon• 10 years ago

He had a Syndey -> Seattle cruise in the works as of his post two months ago, so I'd wager he's still at it.

iamben• 10 years ago

Serious question - is the mobile signal terrible if you're cruising on the Med? My data plan is £2 a day for about 500mb (or something like that) when out of the UK. That would probably suffice, assuming there was enough signal to bother tethering...

jdenning• 10 years ago

(Disclaimer: this is just hearsay) I think that most cruise ships have their own cell towers, with their own roaming agreements. So if you try to connect while you're on-board, you'll be on their network and paying their rates.

narag2• 10 years ago

Related question: does someone know how expensive is a satellite phone plan? I've seen the terminals are about $1000 a piece and they're hellishly slow but considering this kind of use in a ship or maybe in a distant place, it could be an option if the plan is not terribly expensive.

Cerium• 10 years ago

Depends on location and provider, but I worked on a remote off grid monitoring station. We uploaded about 30 gigs a month over a satellite dish. The price was comparable to cell phone, but the ping was bad. 300 ms or so, occasionally much worse.

kinkdr2• 10 years ago

Why not an all inclusive hotel/resort? Same benefits + reasonable Internet.

andrewfromx• 10 years ago

Way cheaper on a crusie to get all meals included. Try and find a same price per day for a benefit by benefit equal land cruise. They don't exist. You are getting free meals because most people on ships make up for it with buying alcohol and other high margin vacation purchases.

kinkdr2• 10 years ago

I see. I have always associated cruises with expensive, but it looks like this is not the case anymore.

legohead• 10 years ago

Recently took a vacation on a cruise ship. I heard mixed reviews from everyone I talked to. Some loved it, some hated it.

I loved it and can't wait to do another one. We got a balcony, and I loved just sitting out on the balcony and watching the ocean. I kept thinking how I wish I had my laptop and could do work this way.

The free food, balcony, and exploring the ports were my favorite parts. I don't drink, or party, so that wasn't part of the fun for me -- but it seemed like most of the other people on the ship were there for that reason.

The only thing that I didn't like were the people on the ship, and I felt bad at how lowly paid the crew were.

danielvf2• 10 years ago

The crew, though, is paid more than they would be earning at home - that's why many sign up for multiple contracts in a row.

Also, if you can make friends with some crew, it's a blast.

Grishnakh• 10 years ago

I don't drink, or party, so that wasn't part of the fun for me -- but it seemed like most of the other people on the ship were there for that reason. The only thing that I didn't like were the people on the ship,

You were on the wrong ship. Let me guess, Carnival?

Different cruise lines cater to different crowds. To get the best cruise experience, it's important to realize this and select a cruise line that lines up well with your expectations and that you'll fit into well.

Carnival caters to the drunks and partiers. There's a reason that every time you hear about some drunk cruise-goer falling overboard, it's a Carnival ship. You never hear about this with, for instance, Disney Cruises, or Norwegian or Royal Caribbean.

I've only been on one cruise, Norwegian, about 9 years ago. It was pretty fun overall, though I'm not wild about doing it again for various reasons. But I did not see much drinking or partying, even in the casino. The crowd was pretty tame, so I can't say I disliked the people on the ship at all. A lot of them seemed to be Germans actually. The ports of call were fun (it was a Caribbean cruise) for the most part, and there was an interesting event on the ship one day where some artwork was being shown (maybe sold, I forget now), and they showed a video of a short film that was a collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dali which was really interesting to watch. At the time, it was supposedly only recently released IIRC.

The dining experience varies a lot between cruise lines too. Now remember a lot of my information is almost a decade old, but at the time, Norwegian had very open dining rules: basically you could go to the buffets whenever they were open (which were pretty generous hours) and grab free food, and sit anywhere you like. The dining rooms cost more and needed a reservation, but you could do the whole cruise at the buffets for nothing. By contrast, I was told that on Royal Caribbean, there was assigned seating and assigned eating times, so unless you were part of a group, you usually ended up stuck eating with strangers you didn't know. On Norwegian, alcohol was pretty expensive, so I didn't see people drinking much. I was told that on Carnival, alcohol was free or cheap, so that would explain drunkenness on those ships.

Anyway, do your research on cruise lines and their policies and pricing before you go, and look at what kind of crowds they cater to, and also what kind of on-board events they'll have. You're likely to have a much more pleasant experience if you pick carefully.

dTal• 10 years ago

Blimey, how rich are all of you? If I scraped together enough money for a cruise I sure wouldn't want to waste the experience working.

danielvf2• 10 years ago

You can cruise on good ships for less than $100 per day, if you shop carefully and wait for the right opportunity.

The advantage is the combination of extremely plesant, varied work environments, with no distrations from clients, coworkers, or the internet. The ability to sustain concentration lets do something hard in a week that might take you three months at home.

Why Cruise Ships Are My Favorite Remote Work Location (2013)

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