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It depends where you go tbh. Used to be at EY and travelled to ATL twice a month. Never once had a boring time. Matter of fact, I was pretty sad when I got rolled off the project.
This. I was in San Diego for 6 months.
I personally hated it. Did it weekly for 6 months pre-covid before going entirely remote, and I couldn't be happier. No time to do anything other than work 24/7 for 4 days straight. The traveling part wasn't bad, but the isolation in a foreign city/hotel room every night was very depressing. The travel points and rewards though were nice, but imo not worth the mental stress
I could have just been on a crappy project, but most of the time we didn't. Maybe we'd have a team dinner once a week or every other week. Usually, I was out the door 6:30ish, grabbed takeout, and finished work from my hotel room. Most of my team did the same, or had families locally
Rising Star
Are you not at PwC now?
It depends. I personally hate travel and I jumped to a boutique that allows me to travel at most once per quarter. Others look for excuses to travel, are away more often than home and love it.
Rising Star
Are you client facing now? If not, that's a pretty big shift, otherwise yeah, pretty much the same.
If you're single, bored, and don't value sleep, travel is great.
Chief
Do you have wife , kids? Do you have any kind of social life in your city ? If response to that is “yes” then the answer is pretty obvious how traveling most of the week will affect it. In my very personal opinion, I found people who “love” travel long term are defined by their job and they are addicted to that lifestyle . No judgements, I’m not.
But It’s good if you’re new in the job and you enjoy racking up miles/ status. Make sure you take care of your health though. People don’t realize it and it catches up with you fast
But I’d rather travel for fun.
Rising Star
I used to love it, but after Covid I realized that my company wanting me to travel the world in coach class and stay in 3 star hotels was simply abusive. None of these companies have good enough travel policies to justify regular travel and I wish employees would stand up to it.
It all depends. How old are you? What are your life commitments? What do you value?
When I was younger (early to mid 20s, just married, no kids) I loved traveling. Things were new and exciting. I loved hotels and meals on the road. Selfishly, I also enjoyed time away from a crying baby and, on occasion, a nagging wife.
I'm older now (late 40s, older kids, my wife and I get along better than we ever have). I love my bed and my routine. Consequently, I despise travel.
Still, there are jet-setters my age (and older) who hate being home (for various reasons). They love life on the road and live for the job/the chase... despite family, etc. I'm no longer that guy.
The best I can tell you is try it. If you like it, keep doing it. If you don't, find something different. No one can answer this question for you, except you.
Pro
It's fun in your 20s as you get to see new places, eat a lot of free food, stay in nice hotels, collect sky miles and hotel points so that you can do your own personal travel for close to free. Your friends will probably think you're some type of high flying jet setter, and to be honest at that age you kind of are and it's all free. But it gets old once you hit 30.
Pro
It all depends on project, team, client and location. You can have toxic team, dramatic client in Podunk Town living in a bad hotel and your life can be miserable for months. The alternate reality can also exist.
It’s overrated if you serve a sector/clients with offices in places like Columbus, GA or Bloomington, IL. If you’re traveling to actual cities it’s still a grind, but it’s pretty awesome.
I actually preferred it for personal life and family because it was very easy to segment my week, and the opportunity cost of more work while on the road is essentially zero. I’d go hard for three and a half days, enjoy the flight home, and have an easy Friday either working from home or going into the office to network or interview candidates. My whole weekend was just fun time with my wife and friends. I didn’t yet have a kid, but I was easily able to manage work and have a robust social life. And with all my points/miles/status we routinely took vacations that punched well above our financial weight.
With remote work, the opportunity cost of taking that 7PM call is dinner with my wife and kid, late evening work is bedtime reading with the kid, etc. There’s not enough separation and the expectations of output have only remained constant. And the lack of points/miles/status from regular travel is an effective hit of $10-30K in untaxed compensation.
And beyond that, anyone claiming to have built as durable or valuable relationships with clients or teammates while working remotely is simply delusional. And that matters a lot when you reach a revenue generating level, but it’s still important to juniors as part of the apprenticeship model as well.
Chief
It’s a necessary evil. But I think post Covid it’s much more reasonable and tactical now