This is not something I would consider. It is interesting the government will pay your airfare if you agree to live there for a period of time. Interesting article anyway.

For many professionals, Hawaii seems a dream spot for remote work. But pulling off remote work in the Aloha state takes more than a plane ticket and a laptop.

The pandemic devastated the state’s economy. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, visitor arrivals fell 97.6% between August 2019 and August the following year. Employment in the state’s leisure and hospitality sector, which accounts for nearly one in five jobs, fell 53% between February and August 2020, according to the Pew Center.

Thanks in part to state initiatives—including pre-arrival coronavirus testing for visitors and marketing campaigns wooing remote workers—tourism is on the rebound. In April, visitors reached nearly 500,000, compared with roughly 4,500 in April 2020.

One program, called Movers and Shakas (named after the friendly Y-shaped hand gesture with extended thumb and pinkie that means “hang loose”), was launched in December with local business leaders. It offers free airfare to remote workers who commit to staying at least a month and participate in volunteer activities. The program’s 50 spots attracted 90,000 applications. Applications for the second round will open this month.



E

As it is elsewhere, reliable Wi-Fi is the litmus test for many. Some areas of the Hawaiian islands, especially rural regions, lack robust broadband or cellular infrastructure. Tomasz Janczuk, a 45-year-old based in the Seattle area who owns and operates a software-development firm, chose the three Big Island hotels that he and his family lived in for a month based on Wi-Fi strength.


Tomasz Janczuk at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park in Honaunau, Hawaii. Mr. Janczuk chose his Hawaii hotels based on Wi-Fi strength.
PHOTO: KAROLINA JANCZUK
During an off-road excursion, Mr. Janczuk got a call from an employee about a service outage at his company. He pulled over and had to climb on top of his Jeep for sufficient reception to help troubleshoot the problem. “If there’s no Wi-Fi, you have to fall back on cellphones, and that is quite spotty out there,” said Mr. Janczuk, who also carried a hot spot.

Some workers find that Hawaii’s spectacular surroundings—which drew them in the first place—can be a distraction. Jasmyn Franks, a social-media strategist for an advertising agency in Kansas City, Mo., began working in mid-May from the palm-tree-filled backyard of her aunt’s house in Mililani, a mountainous city on Oahu. Ms. Franks, 30, said initially, the first five to 10 minutes of every conference call were taken up with colleagues admiring her background. “So, there was a point where I was just like, ‘OK, let’s just take this to the corner or something where it kind of looks like I’m at the house.’ ”

Ms. Franks got in the habit of packing her laptop on trips to the beach to handle end-of-day requests from co-workers. “Somebody’s like, ‘Oh hey, can I give you a call?’ and you’re like ‘Sure,’ even though you’re on the beach with your towel or flying around the side of a mountain,” she said.

Ms. Franks plans to head back soon to Kansas City but will return to Hawaii for the end of the summer. Her company resumes in-office work in the fall.


A program to bring remote workers to Hawaii drew 90,000 applications for 50 spots. Above, beachside, with hammock and laptop on Kauai.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
For some, such as Minda Harts, Hawaii and remote work aren’t a match. After more than a year of isolation in her Harlem apartment, Ms. Harts, a 39-year-old workplace-equity consultant, told herself, “I really need a beach, I need some self-care.” She had always dreamed of seeing Hawaii and the pandemic made her yearn to exchange New York for the string of islands where surfing was born. After her second Covid vaccination in April, Ms. Harts figured it would be easy to relocate her work setup to Honolulu for a few weeks.

She was mistaken. Most client meetings originated on the East Coast, which meant she had to wake up at 3 a.m. to prepare. (Hawaii, which doesn’t observe Daylight Savings, is five or six hours behind Eastern Standard Time.) By late afternoon, she was too drained to do more than admire the view from her balcony, much less hit the beach. “I just kept saying to myself, ‘You’re almost there, you’re almost through the day,’ ” Ms. Harts said. “I was more tired in Hawaii than I was in New York.” After a week, she flew home, 14 days ahead of schedule.

Others, like Mike Panara Jr., a 34-year-old software salesman based in Haddonfield, N.J., discovered opportunities in Hawaii, the state with the longest life expectancy in the U.S.


Mike Panara Jr., on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu in March, learned to surf while in Hawaii.
PHOTO: MIKE PANARA JR.
After saving up during lockdown, Mr. Panara decided to live and work in Waikiki, a neighborhood in Honolulu, for February and March this year. His rent in Hawaii was $1,400 a month, the same amount he was paying in New Jersey. Rising in the wee hours to keep up with colleagues back home wasn’t a problem, Mr. Panara said, because it gave him time to explore the land and learn to surf. In June, he packed up his apartment and signed a ten-month lease for a place in Honolulu. He will be an official Hawaii resident by month’s end.

Before, “we were living to work,” he said. “Everyday is surrounded by work, and when you’re done, you’re putting on Netflix, you go for a little walk, and you’re waiting for the next day. In Hawaii, we were working to live.”

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/h...419?mod=hp_lead_pos9

Yeah, it’s gonna be a looooooong while before I even consider flying there. I used to live on Oahu and have friends on the north shore I could stay with but I don’t want my vacation to end up as a major headache.

One of my friends colleagues went on vacation there only a few weeks ago and got stuck on Oahu thanks to their brilliant covid policies. It only cost him vacation time and about $2400.00 for lodging. Good times.

I like the idea of remote working a Hawaii but everything is expensive there. Living in paradise ain’t cheap.

I was stationed on Oahu twice, once at Schofield Barracks and once at Ft. Shafter. Spent around a year and a half there.

After I got out of the Army, I started going back every year for 2 weeks and coming home.

A lot of the locals call Hawaii "The Rock" as a reference to Alcatraz prison. It's because it costs a lot of money to go somewhere else for a couple of weeks and come back.

Some of the locals don't like white people (haoles) and feel free to let you know it, but most are pretty nice. The ones who don't like you are the ones who consider themselves "Native Hawaiians" even thought there are no Native Hawaiians. There are only immigrants and descendants of immigrants.

I always stay on the Big Island and find it costs less to spend 2 weeks there than it does to spend two weeks in Lost Wages, so it's not that expensive on the Big Island, but it is substantially more expensive on Oahu and Maui.

I missed going last year because the Airline cancelled my flights at the last minute and then they cancelled the March 2021 flights I had booked after my 2020 ones got cancelled.

I'm now booked to go at the end of this year and I get weekly updates on the opening of the Islands. If the Governor keeps opening it up, we'll undoubtedly go but if he decides to keep some of his idiotic rules in place, we'll postpone again.

A bunch of people have lost everything thanks to the Governor closing the Islands, lost their businesses, their house, their life savings and their dignity. It's a shame they don't have a Governor who knows how to Govern during hard times.

I really like spending a couple of weeks a year there, but I wouldn't even consider living there permanently for a lot of reasons, but primarily because of their laws/politics.

Hawaii did more lockdown for less disease than anyplace else in the US. Destroyed their tourist industry, always dependent on the fantasy of an island paradise, and almost all other employment is secondary to the hospitality industry.
I'm really glad we're no longer there. Worse than California as far as lockdowns were concerned.

As far as the article: Surprise! Working in Hawaii still means working!

Depending on your IT department, an SSD or RAM crash on that company laptop means a trip home.

Happened to a friend of mine who decided to stay about 200 miles from the company, Laptop went blue screen and it took a full day of driving here and back before it was GTG again.

They killed the single one thing that drove their economy. Required Visitors to stay in quarantine for ten days on their own dime. 4000 visitors? I’m surprised anybody would go to that shithole now.

Edited for better choice of words.

No sympathy for Hawaii, they are more money hungry and corrupt than California.

Nepotism alone is costing them billions. Let em do without

F*c* Hawaii and its idiots there. Any state that would ticket people for walking on a beach alone, should be nuked by NK.

Hawaii is prohibitively expensive. For everything. Even on the “cheap” Big Island. Look up real estate, or even rental properties. Unless you pull in a VERY comfortable salary for remote working, you could starve to death living it up in paradise.

quote:

Originally posted by Citadel:
They killed the single one thing that drove their economy. Required Visitors to stay in quarantine for ten days on their own dime. 4000 visitors? I’m surprised anybody would go to that shithole now.

So you're suggesting that we show sympathy for the residents of Hawaii who got screwed out of their businesses, their savings, their houses and some of their dignity by further withholding our tourist dollars?

I'm betting they'd fail to see the logic in that.

Rest assured, there’s no shortage of tourists on Maui right now. It’s infested with them. I’m on the east coast catching a break from them for a bit. It was great when they were gone, but then I’m retired and not dependent on them for an income.

Hawaii has a lot of problems, besides their economy being heavily reliant on tourism and the service sectors, they've allowed developers to over-develop and gov to over-regulate, thus crushing what little agriculture industry they have, forcing importation of the majority of their food stuffs. Lots of bad governance.

Combine those mis-guided directions with a rising sentiment amongst the Millennial age-bracket that Hawaiian sovereignty is a viable solution for all the ills in society. Never mind these are the same people go shopping at Costco or, Wal-Mart, purchase all the athletic brands with obnoxious logos, and adorn themselves with traditional tattoos, that from their own culture, have cultural and hierarchical significance, meaning, not everyone can get whatever they want. Study-up on Hawaiian monarchical society and, it was pretty brutal with very little wiggle-room if you stepped out-of-line or, bucked the common trend of the day.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
Study-up on Hawaiian monarchical society and, it was pretty brutal with very little wiggle-room if you stepped out-of-line or, bucked the common trend of the day.

As I said earlier, there are no "Native Hawaiians" just immigrants and descendants of immigrants, but you're right about how brutal it was.

The Elite ruling class had the beaches and the peasants had the higher ground. One step out of line and things got very bad for you. I guess that's the way the younger Hawaiians want it to be again...in their ignorance.

Here's an interesting place on the Big Island I go to on each visit. It's Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau or as it's most commonly known, the place of refuge.

https://www.nps.gov/puho/index.htm

Imagine you had just broken the sacred laws, the kapu, and the only punishment was death. Your only chance of survival is to elude your pursuers and reach the Puʻuhonua, a place of refuge. The Puʻuhonua protected the kapu breaker, defeated warriors, as well as civilians during the time of battle. No physical harm could come to those who reached the boundaries of the Puʻuhonua.

"Those Are My Ancestors" tells of the life or death journey of a Hawaiian warrior who desperately seeks refuge at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau. This spiritual sanctuary, commemorated today as Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, was protected by Lono, the God of life. Today, the puʻuhonua continues to serve as a refuge for all peoples in our modern world.