How Web Developer Yulia Tsyba Turns Every New City Into a Second Office

The Harold Washington Library in Chicago has nine floors. Most visitors stop well before the top. Yulia Tsyba heads straight for the winter garden on the ninth — finds a table, opens her laptop and gets to work.

It is one of dozens of places Tsyba has claimed as a temporary office during four years as a digital nomad and web developer with X-Team. Ozo Coffee in Boulder, Colorado. Julieta Brasserie cafe in Santo Domingo. Gyms she scouts in each new city, which she found a challenge at first. In this story, Tsyba explains how a background in competitive sport shaped her approach to software development, what it actually takes to stay productive while constantly on the move and why New Zealand sits quietly at the top of her still-unvisited list.

From the Track to the Terminal

Tsyba did not plan to become a developer. For years, her sharpest ambition pointed somewhere else entirely.

"From an early age, I was into sport and math," she says. She earned strong competitive results and at some point faced a decision most athletes recognize: go all in or treat it as a healthy hobby. She chose the hobby. Math stayed.

She enrolled in a Computer Science program at university and discovered programming through a detour — a grant competition that required her to use R for calculations and data visualization. She enjoyed it enough to keep going. The clearer turning point came when a friend, assuming that studying Computer Science meant knowing how to build websites, asked her to make a web store. Tsyba quickly realized university knowledge sat at a distance from real-world development. She started teaching herself what the curriculum had not covered, and never really stopped.

The discipline that competitive sport had built — daily training, tolerance for failure, the habit of showing up even when progress is invisible — transferred directly. "I think everything that you do, especially if it takes an extended amount of time, affects you," she says. "Sport has brought a lot of positive things other than a healthy lifestyle: discipline, improved teamwork, and daily competition. It teaches you to enjoy challenges, overcome failure and shows you how much a motivated person can achieve."

She draws the analogy all the way: "Web development could also be considered as sport — just not an Olympic one yet."

The Logistics of Working Everywhere

Ask Tsyba about the best part of the nomad life and she lands on growth before she lands on scenery. Traveling forces you to meet people, navigate unfamiliar systems, pick up words in foreign languages and solve problems — even small navigational ones — that push you just past your comfort zone. For her, that consistent low-level friction is a feature, not an overhead cost.

"I am sure that the best way to grow is to try new things, get out of your comfort zone, develop new skills, meet people, discover other countries, cultures, traditions," she says. "Traveling is just an easy and pleasant method for personal growth."

Getting the work itself done — on deadline, across time zones, from environments that change every few weeks — required more intentional architecture. In the beginning, she says, it was a challenge to stay on track. Over time she built a set of rules that now travel with her.

The first rule is routine. Tsyba starts early, running through tasks and planning her day before the rest of the world gets going. The second rule is a rotating list of vetted work spots — not one permanent desk, but a small set of locations in each city that have the right combination of atmosphere and focus. She has used apps like Work From to find reliable options in cities where she has no local knowledge. The third rule is consistent physical training, which she says helps her adapt faster to each new place. When hunting for gyms in every new city became its own logistical project, she added online training programs — including one called romwod — to her daily routine.

None of it requires perfect conditions. "I don't need much time or concentration to focus on work," she says, "so usually, it doesn't matter from where I work as long as my laptop and phone are charged and my headphones are on."

The harder challenge has nothing to do with productivity software. Not all of her friends and family have jobs that allow them to work from anywhere, which means long stretches of travel involve real distance from the people she is closest to. She has found some relief in friends joining her on individual trips, and in the friendships that new cities have a way of producing.

A List With One Stubborn Entry

For someone who has already logged time in Chicago, Boulder and Santo Domingo — among other places — Tsyba's dream destination is uncomplicated and specific.

She tends to enjoy wherever she lands. But one place has lived on her list long enough to develop its own gravity: New Zealand. "Being a big fan of The Lord of the Rings, it's totally a place you dream about," she says. She has not gone yet. There is no particular reason she has kept postponing it. Some destinations, it seems, are better held in reserve.

Beyond the bucket list, Tsyba holds her ambitions to a similarly grounded standard. When asked what mark she wants to leave on the world, she keeps the radius modest: "Just make a positive difference in people's lives, starting with my 'local' universe — the people around me — and let's see how large the scale could go." For a developer who turned sport discipline into engineering habits and turned restlessness into a system, small changes with compounding effects sound about right.

Ready to build work you're proud of? Apply for an open role at X-Team.