Remote Work & Digital Nomad Glossary: 30 Terms You Should Know

The moment you start looking for remote work or invoicing clients abroad, a wall of acronyms shows up that nobody really explains. Here are the ones that come up again and again, explained in plain language and grouped by topic.

Ways of working remotely

• Remote-first: a company built from day one to have its team work remotely by default, not as an exception to an office.
• Remote-friendly: a company with a physical office that allows remote work, but is still organized around that office.
• Hybrid: a mix of office days and remote days, split however each company decides.
• Asynchronous work (async): communication and tasks that do not require everyone online at the same time — work moves forward by leaving written context others can pick up whenever they can.
• Synchronous work: the opposite of async — real-time meetings and calls, coordinating overlapping hours.
• Digital nomad: someone who works remotely while moving between countries or cities, instead of settling in one fixed place.
• Workation: a short stay (usually one or two weeks) that mixes remote work with vacation time, typically in a touristy destination.

Hiring and money

• Contractor / freelancer: someone who provides services project by project or by invoice, with no payroll (employment) relationship with the company paying them.
• Self-employed / sole proprietor: the general legal and tax status many countries require to work for yourself and invoice clients directly, including international ones — the exact name and paperwork vary a lot from country to country.
• EOR (Employer of Record): a company like Deel or Remote that legally hires you "on behalf of" another company, complying with your country's labor law, so the company that actually wants you does not have to open a legal entity there.
• PEO (Professional Employer Organization): a structure similar to an EOR, common in the US, where an outside company manages payroll and compliance while sharing legal responsibility with the employer.
• International invoice: the document a freelancer or self-employed professional issues to a client abroad; it often has different VAT/sales-tax rules than invoicing within the same country.
• IBAN: an international bank account code needed to receive transfers from abroad without errors.
• LLC (Limited Liability Company): a company structure, very common in the US, that some international freelancers use to invoice clients; it comes with its own tax obligations worth reviewing with an accountant.
• Double taxation treaty: an agreement between two countries that prevents the same income from being taxed twice, relevant when your tax residency and where your clients are based do not match.

Nomad life and visas

• Digital nomad visa: a temporary residence permit specifically designed for people working remotely for clients or an employer outside the country where they live; more and more countries offer one, each with its own requirements.
• Tax residency: the country where, based on how much time you spend there and other legal criteria, you are considered liable to pay tax on your income — it does not always match your nationality or where you physically work.
• Coworking: a shared workspace you pay for by the day, week or month, with wifi, desks and often a community of other remote professionals.
• Coliving: shared housing designed for digital nomads and remote professionals, usually including shared work areas in addition to the living space.
• Border run / visa run: leaving and re-entering a country to reset the allowed tourist-stay period; common (though increasingly restricted) before digital nomad visas existed.
• Digital nomad insurance: a policy designed for long stays across multiple countries, different from standard travel insurance built for a few weeks.

Remote team culture and tools

• Overlap hours: the window of time your workday matches your team's or client's, key to scheduling meetings without early mornings or late nights.
• Async standup: a daily status update each person writes whenever they can (instead of a live meeting), common on remote teams spread across very different time zones.
• Documentation-first: a work culture where decisions and processes always end up written down somewhere accessible, so nobody has to have "been in the room" when something was decided.
• Remote onboarding: the process of bringing a new hire up to speed without ever setting foot in a physical office, relying on documentation, videos and guided online sessions.
• Remote burnout / right to disconnect: the exhaustion that can build up when the line between "working" and "being home" blurs; the right to disconnect exists specifically to protect against this.
• Deep work: protected blocks of time, free of notifications and interruptions, dedicated to work that demands sustained focus — harder to get without a clear routine when working remotely.

Frequently asked questions