Remote YearReviews of remoteyear.com

Avoid at all costs.

Remote Year will give you the above for $2,250/mo. (which you can do on your own for significantly less), and a whole lot more you didn’t bargain for! I left after 8 months, and don’t recommend it for reasons I’ll explain below. When I first got accepted into Remote Year, I was full of anticipation & excitement, not only about the immersive experience of actually living abroad (I had already traveled to 60+ countries), but also the opportunity to meet other adventurous and open-minded people, do some business networking, perhaps learn some new skills and potentially have a life-changing experience. It abruptly ended one day during my 8th month when I was told by a senior staff that I had been secretly “investigated” for some alleged “breach” of their code of conduct, and that I had to pack up and leave the program within 48 hours. Ok, I had sold my house, my car and fully planned on being away for at least a year. I had no place to go on such short notice, and demanded to know what exactly they’re accusing me of. But to this day, they won’t tell me what I was suddenly expelled for. I acknowledge that I didn’t like one of our Program Leaders, who constantly preaches the gospel of “One Love” and dreams of becoming a poet, but who fails at doing his job. One poignant example was when another member of our group threatened me with physical violence for talking to this girl he was trying to impress at a party. Making a physical threat was definitely a breach of the code of conduct. Following protocol, I asked the PL to keep this individual away from me and Remote Year premises, but not only was he was dismissive of my request, he repeatedly attempted to cajole me into “letting it go” because he’s now “cool” about the whole thing and really “popular,” which I thought was a ridiculous reason, but eventually, we agreed to move on. Half way through the program, this PL also shared a video on his Facebook timeline directly attacking and insulting our President. Given that most of us are friends with him on FB and most of us are Americans (he’s actually an Irish citizen), I felt this was improper for a Program Leader to post and questioned not his right to free speech, but his wisdom in posting something so controversial that we all can see. Obviously, some of us support the President and many of us don’t. That’s not the point. Imagine you work for a company and have been assigned a client. Would you post something that would likely be offensive to this client on your FB page while you’re still in this company’s employ? Probably not, if you want to keep working for this company, right? Remember, we’re clients, not employees! But this is Remote Year, not a real company, and over 3-years worth of red ink suggests its days are numbered. As others have eluded, it’s run like a fraternity/sorority, or some kind of a cult-ish summer camp. They preach diversity, tolerance and acceptance, but only if you’re talking about today’s liberal progressive political agenda, not the true meaning of those words. They encourage you to share and expose your vulnerability as a path to growth, after reassuring you that you’re in a “safe place,” but will use any information you thus share to stab you in the back in a despicable breach of trust. During my exit “interview,” they basically accused me of being homophobic, when one of my best friends in the program happens to be gay. They tried to make me sound like a violent person, when I was ironically on the receiving end of such behavior. Perhaps most surprising was when they questioned whether I may be a racist, when I’m a minority myself who had fought racism all of my life. At no time during my Remote Year experience did I ever physically touch or verbally threaten anyone with violence, nor make any racial slurs, or violate their code of conduct in any way, and I have no criminal history either. But I do admit that, as a man in my 50’s, I didn’t necessarily “fit in” with the mainstream millennial crowd. I wasn’t interested in their alcohol and drug-fueled party life, and my political views didn’t align with the majority. Well, so much for diversity, tolerance and acceptance. The concept of Remote Year is a good one: Travel around the world while keeping your 9 to 5. The reality is, less than half of our group had real jobs. Most only did just enough in order to get by, or lived off their savings, and of those, most were primarily interested in getting drunk/stoned by the beach/pool, not so much learning about the local culture/history/language. Within our group, there were some remarkable and reasonable people I’ve become good friends with, and it’s a pity I couldn’t finish out my year with them. If you still want to take your chances with Remote Year, honestly ask yourself if what I’ve described is what you want out of it and try to fit into their highly hypocritical social agenda, or at least pretend for a year. Just like the Stasi did in East Germany, if they think you’re a “subversive,” they will conduct a secret “investigation” on you, collect “testimonies” from collaborators and make you disappear. They don’t treat you like a client, even though you pay them a lot of money.

Remote Year treats their staff poorly as mentioned by another reviewer below. Don't believe the scripted and polished answer PR answer by Sam, it's all true what the reviewer said. Beyond mistreating employees, for us the paying customers they continuously try to sell you more and more stuff and add-ons along with your program, seemingly in desperation for money. They don't care about breaking the law in the local cities; they even encourage it through their communication. "How to dance around visa rules and restrictions, how to avoid paying taxes, how to stay in the EU longer". Very immoral for a company that pays less than minimum wages, but charge us 27000 American dollars. The networking opportunities they promise does not exist when everyone on the program is just some rich, spoiled American teen with a inheritance and nothing else to do! I thought this was a work and travel program, not a travel and selfie program. I wish I had gone on my own. Google and you fill find plenty of resources like nomadlist, wework or subreddits that can offer you the same for a fraction of the cost and without supporting exploitative wages or breaking the law.

I was excited to join Remote Year and travel the world. The city team in each country are amazing people and many of them became good friends. The more I talked to them the more I came to realize how poorly Remote Year treats its staff and I became disillusioned with my part in supporting such an exploitative company. What Remote Year doesn't tell you is that they don't pay their staff very well, even though they pay them in local wages, which are already cheap compared to Western wages. On top of that they make them work a lot of over time and on many weekends. The part that made most of them anxious and angry though is that Remote Year only pays them for the months when it has people in town. Otherwise its local workers need to find a way to work somewhere else in Remote Year (which is hard, because there are a lot of out of work people at any time) or they have to find another temporary job. You don't have to take my word for it though, read the employee reviews on glassdoor to see how bad the culture is at this company. I wish I had done my research before joining this program. I feel bad about supporting a company that treats the people who work so hard to make it successful like disposable commodities.

I applied to Remote Year, including making the payment "required for submitting your application", in December 2016. I received confirmation of my application by email. In applying I was assured that if unsuccessful, my payment would be refunded in full. I have never heard anything since, despite assurance that I would be contacted regarding final round interviews within a week. Also, the email address I was given with a note to "Feel free to reply directly to this email for a status update or with any questions you have", always bounces back messages. I can only assume that my application has not been successful. Moreover, my personal circumstances have changed and I would no longer be able to participate in a remote year scheme. I have contacted Remote Year repeatedly to tell them that I need to withdraw my application and have my payment refunded in full. Again, this is something I was assured I would be completely entitled to do. I have had no response from Remote Year whatsoever, nor any refund. I would just like to warn others thinking of applying!