Months after graduating from university and working freelance projects on and off, I applied and got accepted into a remote role as a web designer. I was ecstatic. Albeit the role pays less than what most people would consider a “good” salary for a university graduate, but I was saving a huge chunk of my income as I was living with my parents.
So, I have a job that is creative, with flexible clock-in time, allows me to work-from-anywhere, and build a decent savings… I must be living the dream, and in most situations, I love it…
But what I did not realise at the beginning was the trade-offs I was making.
This isn’t a post about whether remote work is “worth it.”
It’s about reflecting on what most of us not realise when making decisions… and for me that was: every choice that improves one part of your life is quietly withdrawing from another. The question isn’t whether you’re making trade-offs, the question is whether you know what you’re trading.
The trade I knew I was making: A Lower Salary 🔄 Freedom & Flexibility
When I was job-hunting, I mainly looked at entry-level, async-friendly roles. Most companies with that kind of culture turned out to be based in wealthier countries, hiring contractors from countries like mine to save on labor costs.
The catch is that you get paid in a stronger currency, but the amount is still benchmarked to local wages, not to what the company would pay someone in their own country for the same work. So you’re earning in dollars or euros, but you’re still being paid a “developing economy” rate for it. In other words: same job, same output, lower price tag, simply because of where you happen to live.
Going in, I already knew this. My main goal was stable, recurring income and I wasn’t too fussy about the number, because to me, this was the trade-off: a lower salary in exchange for flexibility.
The silver-lining of this is that living at home made the math even better than I expected.
I’m saving more than I would have if I’d taken a higher-paying full-time role in a city, once you factor in rent, transportation, and the invisible tax of “keeping up” that city life demands. For the first time, I have something that’s hard to put a price on: a sense of stability and freedom, and I was happy and contented.
The trade nobody warns you about: Status 🔄 Value
If I could summarise how I feel after explaining to people what I do for work, it would be:
“I have a lazy girl job, earning at the low end of the salary band”
And that sucks.
There’s a real stigma attached to a remote job like mine.
To people on the outside, it looks like I’m not really doing anything as I don’t clock in at 9am and out at 5pm (even though I get my tasks done in 4 hours of deep work, instead of trying to get through 8 hour days).
To people on the outside, it looks like I am not on a career growth path because most of the work I do are repetitive (my tasks go hand-in-hand with digital marketing, so think: recurring campaigns, launch updates, replicating tested and proven strategies for dozens of accounts).
To people on the outside, one’s success tied to how much you earn and how high you can climb in the corporate ladder, remote or not.
But that framing is all performative, not outcomes and growth.
Below the surface, there’s real room to grow in remote jobs especially in a company that actually encourages employees to build new skills. There is space for development and achievements, without society’s rules of how many hours one has to work to be considered productive, and without society’s benchmarks on how much you earn is equivalent to your success in life.
This was the trade-off I took a long time make peace with: Choosing this job is to be underestimated by people who only see the surface.
The trade I didn’t choose on purpose: Social Circle 🔄 Comfort & Depth in Relationships
Since having a remote job, I have more time with my family than I’ve had in years. The people I love most, I now can actually see and make time for. I can travel more, explore new places, and also start this blog. These are undoubtedly the best parts of it all.
But outside of my closest loved ones and circle of friends, I can’t tell you the last time I met someone knew and develop a friendship from that (no offence to my work colleagues!).
I’m less social than I used to be years ago. Fewer connections, fewer networking, fewer chances to practice the muscle of meeting new people. I’ve become more introverted, and I’ll admit, I’m more awkward in person now than I used to be. Making real friends feels harder than it did before. The most talking I’ve done with other people is at the 30-minute team meetings, twice a week.
This is the trade-off I didn’t sign up for. Nobody tells you that after working alone every day for a year, your brain slowly adapts to how comfortable you are around people. You lose interest in new connections and become more nonchalant since there’s an underlying feeling that “it’s just a day job, we don’t need to know each other”. This thought process quietly turns into a way of daily work, and it doesn’t happen in one dramatic moment. It happens one virtual meeting at a time, until one day you notice you’ve changed.
However it’s important to note that, I don’t think this trade-off is entirely “bad.” The relationships I do have, I value more deeply now. Knowing that I have a small number of people I genuinely love and trust has filled a space that used to be filled by knowing more people, period. I’ve traded numbers for depth, whether I meant to or not. So all-in-all, I am working towards building more connections as I miss the spark in the long-lost extroverted me, but it’s not too bad.
What does all this actually adds up to?
None of these trades are good or bad on their own. It all boils down to what trade-offs you’re capable of and willing to bear.
For me those were:
- A lower salary, traded for freedom & flexibility.
- A loss of society’s standard of “success”, traded for what I hold value in.
- A wider social circle, traded for deeper relationships & connections.
This is what most “is remote work worth it” conversations skip entirely. They talk about money and flexibility, as if those were the only two variables on the table. They rarely mention what other trade-offs there are, how vastly different our trade-offs can be, and how much they compound.
They never mention that the job can change who you are, not just how you live.
