My job is performed entirely through my work provided laptop, does not always require a VPN and I have regular, daily communication with my colleagues who are mostly in other countries.
So... that's a great starting point for an answer. Also probing for their specific concerns might be a good way to take that conversations. As a manager (who happens to now lead remote teams across diverse countries), my questions fall into things like:
- Will there be any problems with fairness across team members working in different countries? For example, how overtime works, or the amount of notice someone is required to give when quitting can vary. A way to assuage that concern is being willing to work as closely to the rules of your home team as you can, which lessens the burden of figuring out the inconsistencies for your boss.
- Time zones - concerns around commuting turn into concerns around timezones. If you're in the same time zone in the new location, then this is great. It's a harder sell if you are in a wildly different time zone. It's easy enough, if the delta is a few hours to say "well, working in the same time zone as the team is easy for me, personally, even in the new location because... (insert lifestyle specific reason here)". It's harder for a manager to buy it if we're talking 1/2 a world away (Asia to the Americas, for example) - because no matter how much you love shifting your time zone, the whole location around you is turned against you in terms of when stores, services, etc. are operating, vs. when you are awake and working. I hear you that you don't do a whole lot of team meetup time, but availability when something is urgent tends to be a viable concern.
- Equipment - as you point out, you're no longer 10 minutes from IT. I would think the small stuff (wires, chargers, peripherals) should be something easy to handle as you should be able to get to some basic equipment almost anywhere. It's stuff like what if your actual laptop breaks, how do you keep working on a major project without risking any info sec concerns they have? Is this something you can handle with your own money or equipment? Or would you be dead in the water? Having a plan in mind for this might help.
- Are they any other risks to having you in your role be alone? For example, they may have a sales office in that country, but are you an engineer working on company confidential data/code? - would it help to have a chat with info sec on this to see what mitigations you can figure out?
I've had to be on the boss' end of this conversation (in the before-pandemic times) when I had someone who wanted to work West Coast US on an East Coast US team (3 hrs difference, but same country). I ended up with a very regretful "no" because I had to think of what was fair for the team. What's hardest for an individual contributor to see is often the team side of it - having one person being very, very remote sets a precedent, what happens if everyone on the team wants this? Can it work for everyone? if not, what makes your role a unique case? How does the team do the team-level stuff like build trust, work out urgent issues, onboard new people, maintain it's own communication channels in the midst of big changes - if some people are permanently remote and can't come to the office at a moment's notice?
That's stuff you can't necessarily answer - it's stuff your team leader or company will have to figure out. You can offer ideas, but realize that this is something you are now asking them to figure out.
Fingers crossed - pre-pandemic, I'd have said this was an uphill battle, but these days, I think enough folks have been productive enough for 2 isolated pandemic years, that we should be able to say, there's ways to make this work, and it's worth figuring out to keep key staff happy with their work/life balance.
