It's now been 10 years since I've been working remotely, full-time from my home office. And for a few years prior to that, I had worked remotely at...
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Working remotely the last 7 years, agree with everything. I don't want to come back to office anymore. It's easy to spend more time with family because of no need to go to the office and spend hours sometimes for transport, at home I have the best cafe because I can cook myself or order anything to home.
Flexible environments for traveling around the world despite on the vacations or planning like it used to be in office.
Thank you for sharing you experience.
Sounds interesting. I've been thinking actually to start working remotely but I think there is a problem: how do you manage this when a team working together is a must? I work in the gaming industry so nowadays is pretty common you have to ask for what is needed, talk to designers, artists, your producer and probably with other programmers to check how to do things, how are we going to make it, etc.
Without saying that most productive products I've ever seen belongs to a team working in the same room.
I've worked at companies that have done the "war room" thing to get a bunch of people in the same room to be productive. But really the purpose of this was more to isolate those people from the rest of the company.
What is the benefit of everyone being in the same room? That you can yell out a question to someone? That's distracting to everyone else and badly interrupts at least one person.
That you can easily get up and go ask questions of others? You can easily do that via video chat software.
Working together in the same room can have its benefits (I've done it), but it also has plenty of negatives.
No one environment is perfect for every situation, but working remotely is better for more situations than people think.
I work in a completely remote team. It's great for cases like this, when you want the entire team to isolate themselves from the rest of the company and focus, since it can happen with minimal disruption to the rest of the company.
And when you do have a knotty problem you need the space to tackle by yourself, you just flick off the video call, and do it.
Great article, thanks a lot.
How do you deal with the "social" stuff? Even if you are the type of guy, who sits all day with his headphones on and eats alone at his desk, you still have some social interactions. Even the goodmornings-goodnights. Do you happen to feel socially isolated or something similar, from time to time?
On our team we do a daily "huddle" via video chat (Zoom.us). This lets us see each other each day and go over what we are all working on for the day. I can also video chat anyone as needed.
If you require more social interaction you might consider investigating "co-working spaces". These are shared office space for people that work remotely. I've also used them sporadically in the past, but don't feel I need them (and they can be noisy/busy).
Co working spaces sound good indeed
I don't. But at Surevine, where I work, we make a point of video-calling each other for a chat as well as just for work. Plus there's the usual dailies etc which keep you in the loop.
Great article! I've been working remotely for the past 2 years and I feel the same way: Can't imagine myself working in an office anymore.
Apparently, it's hard for some managers to adjust to the idea of remote employees, but I believe companies are slowly beginning to see the advantages you mentioned in your post, so hopefully we'll see more remote working opportunities in the future.
I started working full-time remote 2 months ago. I agree with everything. My only issue now is sleep schedule. I find it very hard to wake up before noon anymore. I have had sleep problems my entire life but not having to attend a fixed schedule doesn't help me. Feels like my days are getting wasted like this.
staying up all night and sleeping from morning till afternoon is also my problem.
I have the benefit of kids that need to go to school each day to at least get me to start the day on time. But even in the summers and vacations when there is no school I make it a point to start the day around 8am.
Agreed with your points! I’m super grateful to be able to work remote. It’s been challenging as a Product Manager but I make it work. Lots and lots of video calls. It’s like you’re there just without the constant getting up and interrupting your coworker for a question. Now I better prepare for meetings with planned topics or questions to discuss and just bang it all it in a call. Also! Video calls can be short. Sometimes explaining something over a call is so much faster than typing it all out. My only gripe is that being remote and having the rest of my team in the office becomes sticky because there are a lot of things I miss from side convos that happen after meetings. But overall, I enjoy remote life. But this year planning and making the move back into an office job.
Hey @lefebvre , Thanks for sharing your story.
I run a platform where we share remote work stories and so far we have covered 12 remote work stories, checkout remote work stories.
Would you be interested to writeup your remote work journey?
I've been working remote since, erm, around 2002. Totally agree with this.