My last job was as a data scientist at Upworthy, which is a 100% remote company. Prior to starting the position I was worried about whether I could...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
I've benefited from the 'support for diversity' argument.
I have a chronic illness and I've been working from home for more than a decade. I can only work part-time and if I was forced to travel to get to my job or any job, I probably would be pushed out of the workforce.
Many people in my support group have suffered that exact fate. They couldn't convince their employers to let them work from home and they were too ill to travel to the office so they lost their jobs.
There are millions of Americans too ill to travel to an office to work but not so ill that they couldn't make a valuable contribution to their company from home if they were just given the chance.
I work remotely full time and your post really hit all the marks. At Minerva there has been a company-wide effort to think "remote first." Doing so really helps everyone be on the same page when it comes to communication, and delivering results.
I think the largest hurdle to having remote employees is management style and company culture. I can see it being very challenging to be the only remote employee for a company where most folks work at the office, and no thought is put in to async communication.
Remote work is to me an amazing thing. The fact that you don't need to be in a certain place to work is so liberating. I don't live near any big cities in France, and interesting programming jobs in the region are rare. I can't afford to move too far away from where I live either.
But as soon as you remove this geographical barrier, what a relief to be able to work for certain companies without being in the area. I don't really like to think that I could work for a company, only at the low cost of moving away from my family and my friends.
I've been working remotely for 9 months now, and it's been amazing. It's obviously a lifestyle that has its own challenges. But in the end, I feel happier and more productive this way.
I'm working remotely a lot. There's a problem though. When the team works mostly in the office, it is hard to organise communication process. People are just so used to go to someone's desk and interrupt them, so they don't really think that when someone writes to them, they expect the answer within some reasonable time. Sometimes it could take days to get an answer, even on messengers.
But it still, I'm able to do so much more remotely, so it worths every minute of it. :) Maybe because of less interruptions (even with two children playing around)
Life Pro Tip: If you use Slack, just keep pinging the #general channel with something like " Hey @channel, this will continue every 30 seconds until @AnnoyingNoResponsePerson replies to my DM!"
Real Life Pro Tip: Don't do this if you want the office to like you.
Oh, that is a really bad idea. :) In Oracle this means half of the world will not like you. :)
I can work remotely on occasion and love it. My goal is to get a fully remote dev position. Being able to get up, avoid the commute, make a great cup of coffee and just get to work makes me so much more productive. Any tips on actually getting a remote dev job? Are they really only realistic for mid and senior level devs? I apply to alot of them, without any luck.
Your dog's input was incredibly necessary <3 More dogs should have more input on their owners blog posts! Great read, makes it less intimidating to even consider working remotely 100% of the time.
She's the primary beneficiary of working remotely so I thought she should have her say :)
Great article. I have just one question, how do I get a remote job? Recommended sites to visit?
my last job was remote. it was great, w certain challenges (namely, running errands). but i found mgrs did NOT like it, for the very reasons you named (as a good), more things had to be documented and communication had to be intentional. but i loved it!
I've been working mostly remotely for several years and there are a few extra benefits that can be gained from it.
As you will likely have people in different timezones, you can usually additionally scrap the requirement to work at the same time and people can choose their own working hours as they best fit their day. This means you don't have to drag yourself out of bed after a poorly slept night and crawl to the office to be unproductive the whole day, but sleep in until you feel great and work when you feel productive. If later during the day you feel your energy levels are dropping, you can stop working and continue later when you're more energetic again. Similarly moving work around days you have other things to do on is easy, as there's no need to worry about access to the office. Not having to use an alarm clock almost ever is such a wonderful feeling.
At least in many tech areas you are required to improve your processes a lot from what they would be if you had an office. A new employee comes in, at an office you can hold their hand to get their stuff set up, remotely you need to have clear documentation and as much automation as possible set up for that.
It tends to be guaranteed that you can work on the go as well, I regularly work from the backseat of a bus, on a ferry, etc. as all the processes and tools are set up to support working from any remote location. I have Slack calls with team mates when walking to the bus stop or something as that tends to fit my schedule best.
Great point!
Couldn't agree with you more on absolutely everything! Appreciate the fact that we live in a world where more and more companies are coming to grips with the fact that having remote workers is an exclusively positive thing.
I'm sure articles like yours helps. Thanks!
I totally agree, it's about result orientation. When it comes to regular offices, you can easily spot guys doing nothing :)
Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing. Ommm ommm
Doing the wrong thing is more productive than doing nothing =P
As long as tests are passing, you're doing the good thing
Curious about how you mitigate the impact of not being able to do any paired programming?
Everyone has different ways of being so it just depends on what it works for you and your employer.
I have Aspergers and even people like me differ, we all unique beings. Ommm ommmm