
Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely? - thingamarobert
I hold a PhD in applied machine learning, and have been working as an engineer at a startup for about 10 months now. A few weeks ago I moved away from where my company is located for a few months for personal reasons and have been working remotely. I really like this setup, as I&#x27;m in the comfort of my home throughout the day and have the discipline to carry out my work despite the change of place. And it is something I expect to do often in the future as my wife is in a profession that requires her to be physically present when dealing with her clients, and I realised that there may not always be the most interesting opportunities for me in some places where we live together (for example now).<p>This got me thinking about what I should pay attention to if I wanted to have a successful career working remotely. What kind of companies are more open to allow this form of work? How about freelancing? Are there any forums or groups online where I can find more information about working remotely? I have little idea about this as I have always been physically present at my place of work during the past 9 years of my professional life.<p>I thought this would be a very good place to get various points of view. Thanks in advance for any useful information you have that you share!
======
pimterry
One thing to look out for is remote-first companies, not just remote-ok
companies. Zach Holman has a good post on this:
[https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-
first/](https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/)

If you're one of few people in the company working remotely (or worse: one of
few in your team), you get cut off really easily. Remote practices won't be up
to scratch (because most people aren't using them), meetings will happen in
person and dialing you in will be a chore, and things won't work as well.
You'll hear about major events by email that everybody knew about last week
from office chatter. This isn't to say it'll be a disaster, but it'll be less
effective, and less fun.

Companies where everybody works remote by default meanwhile are a different
ballgame. Everybody understands how remote interactions should work, and
that's what gets used to get everything done. People are good at using the
tools and processes required to pull this off well, and the company will be
better at managing solutions to the downsides of remote work (by flying
everybody into a summit to see each other in person every 6 months, for
example, or covering coworking space costs). You're no longer the great
developer they want _despite_ you working remotely - you're now one of many
people, all working remotely, and all working together on the same playing
field.

~~~
pionar
Yes.

Management remotely when everyone else is co-located is even worse. For
instance, there was a nasty bug discovered late last week, and I didn't find
out about it until Monday morning, and that's MY team. I feel like I look like
an idiot to my superiors, and is one of the reasons I'm moving back to be co-
located.

I started at this company in the office as a developer, and went remote after
about 3 years because of personal reasons (actually remote - I moved 5 hours
away). That's normally not really an issue with my company - a good chunk
(maybe 40%?) of our developers are remote, so we're used to it.

However, shortly after I went remote (about a year), I moved into management,
and all hell broke loose. I feel I'm not as effective as I could be because of
my team, I'm the only one that's remote. I find myself finding things out
after the fact, having less effective 1:1's because of the remoteness, I find
it hard to build the relationships that are vital in management.

I'm moving back "home", so to speak, in June directly because of this. My wife
has been very understanding, as it was mostly because of her that we moved
away in the first place (pursuing her career).

~~~
saganus
You probably considered this already but, could you move to a technical
management position?

I understand that working remotely while having to manage people can't be easy
either way, but could being in the tech side make it easier or not really?

------
codingdave
I've been working for a 100% remote company for 4 years now, and I'd advise
that you market yourself as someone that has done it before. Remote work is a
skill set - the discipline to work a full day but not overwork, knowing the
tools for communicating without seeing your coworkers more than a few times a
year, and having built a space and culture in your home and family to be
productive without letting the home life disrupt the work... while at the same
time, sometimes you do run off for lunch with your spouse or go see a kid's
activity at school, and make up the time later.

There is a whole different work ethic and discipline involved, and being
someone who already knows all this is a value to a remote company. Because
even though everyone can learn and figure out these details... not everyone
ends up being good at being remote, so a successful history is a nice bonus
when hiring.

~~~
erikb
Yes, having experience in something you get paid for is great for the person
that pays you. But do you suggest lying for it? Looks a little like it. And I
don't think that will work.

~~~
codingdave
wat. He said he has been doing it for a bit now, and is just looking for
advice on how to keep doing it?

------
dwightgunning
The fundamentals of being a highly effective and valued team member and
employee are actually the same.

That said, perception is reality and being remote does add some friction to
certain aspects of the job and the way the team works. If you take a proactive
approach these can be managed or overcome, leaving you with just the benefits
of working remote.

Things that come to mind: \- Written communication: Crisp emails and IM that
get the message across quickly. Know when to optimise for speed and for run.

Some things that come to mind:

\- Verbal communication: take the time to speak with your team mates.
Depending on the culture this may mean you never talk work by phone/Skype but
you should still speak to everybody occasionally.

\- Establish a rythym that works for you and the team. Be present and visible
in ways that demonstrate and reinforce your reliability and commmitment. Just
make sure you're adding value and not just making noise because you want to
compensate for being remote (or not actually delivering).

\- Respect other folks' time (and timezone, work arrangements).

\- Actively contribute to the team and workplace culture. Don't just follow
the lead of others but make suggestions and/or take the lead on initiatives
when appropriate.

[edit: Formatting]

~~~
lil1729
+1 to all the points made.

I have been working remotely for a while now. These are the things I learned.

\- time difference matters. It is better if there is some overlap with at
least some people in the team.

\- "showing up" (via various communication channels) have more value at one of
the places I worked than the actual work.

\- I was consistently rated less compared to others because my interactions
were only over video, once or twice a week and via chat channels and it could
never make up for face-to-face communication. This is highly subjective. At
another place, I never had such problems.

\- Expect to add a lot of stress in your life (again subjective).

\- Pair programming with colleagues over video/google-hangout can be extremely
valuable.

\- video calls mostly suck, especially if you have low upstream bandwidth
(which was the case with me).

\- make plans to travel and stay with your colleagues for a week or so, once
in a few months.

\- "everyone being remote" is better than one or two people alone being remote
and the rest in a central office. That way, the company is "set up" for remote
working and people take care to put everything online in a wiki etc.. Not so,
with a centralized office with only a few people working remotely.

\- It is also very easy to get burned out working more hours, especially if
the other side is in an overlapping your day. It happened to me many times.
This needs fixing at org level and should meet the expectations of everyone.

HTH.

~~~
psynapse
The addition of stress is under-represented when talking about working
remotely. The more you have going on at home, the worse it is. You have to
work out whether the "convenience" pays for the loss of clean separation from
family life.

The family will claim to understand that you have to work, sometimes (often?)
uninterrupted. But the perception, especially for children, is that you are
there; just not participating.

This segues into to the other point I found pertinent - everyone being remote
is definitely better. This is currently how I work, but I was previously a
"minority" remote worker. Depending on the organisation, there is a whole
political architecture that others navigate/recruit, but that you cannot
access to the same degree. It doesn't matter how good you are, you can be
undermined by people who resent advice/change/correction/omission/etc. This
contributes its own stress.

~~~
lil1729
Yes, totally agree with your observations. I am also hoping to eventually move
into the "everyone is remote" model. Minority remote model just does not work
for me. I consistently get rated less in performance appraisals despite doing
more contributions to the project. This is also because I have to deal with a
stupid manager...

------
Iv
About 10 years ago, I met for the first time someone who was working remotely.
I hate commuting (As an employee, I have always lived close to my office) and
at that point, I had decided this was what I wanted. It took me about 3 years
to get to that point. Here is how it worked for me:

\- Start freelancing. I started by negotiating with my employer to transform a
full-time job into a part-time one. This is a great way to start.

\- Accept what you find until you can get 100% freelance, but have a
preference for remote work. Be ready to cut your rates to work remotely.

\- Grow your network and reputation until you can have 100% of remote work at
a decent rate.

Now we moved to a countryside we like with my wife, we have a house for half
the price of an apartment in the city we used to live. I now say upfront to
clients that I can only work remotely. I occasionally go to meetings in Tokyo
(which is a bit less than 2h away from where I live) but Skype works most of
the time.

Be available. Be reactive. Be ready to make mistakes that will cost you time
and stress. Be ready to have some shitty clients that will bitch and won't
pay. It takes a few years before you get to a level where the stress is lower
than an employee job but it is worth it IMHO.

~~~
thingamarobert
A very practical piece of advice! Thanks. This is roughly the picture I had in
my mind about how to progress. My mother (who is a full-time consultant now)
did this. She'd work at the government office during the first half of the
day, then offer consultations during the rest of the day at a private
establishment. She carried this on for several years and finally, when she
retired from government service, she went into full-time practice and that
seems to be working very well for her. The time-line of this is much longer
than what you managed but I think her focus was never to quit government
service asap.

Congratulations on where you are! I'd love for something like this in my
career.

~~~
Iv
Thanks!

> Congratulations on where you are!

To give you an idea of the kind of freedom you get, I am actually French, used
to live in Lyon, and married a Japanese woman. When I reached 100% of remote
work, I told my wife "say, wanna go live in Japan?". When I told my clients I
was moving, so they should expect a 1-2 weeks of downtime on my side, I had an
important client in Australia. His reaction was "Cool! Our timezones will be
closer!"

~~~
thingamarobert
My situation is very similar, actually. My wife and I are of different
nationalities and would ideally like to have the flexibility to move to each
others home countries when needed and still be able to work without much
hassle. She's making an effort on her part, and this is a part of my effort
:).

------
junto
I've been remote working for 12 years. My opinion as to a successful remote
working relationship is as follows:

    
    
      - Trust. You need to build it on both sides. Your employer
        needs to trust you to deliver what they expect. You need
        to trust your employer to build their team to include you 
        even though you're sometimes not so visible.
    
      - Space. Get yourself out of the home office and into a 
        local coworking space. You'll thank me for it, otherwise 
        you'll go slowly crazy at home.
    
      - Daily contact. Make sure you have daily contact with 
        other members of your team. If you're Agile, then a daily 
        standup by video feed helps people to remember you exist!

~~~
cagmz
What's the difference between being onsite and working 'remotely' at a
coworking space?

~~~
robotresearcher
How many interesting tech employers are based in Whistler?

For Whistler, substitute the tropical island, rural idyll, or cheap city you
prefer.

~~~
tlavoie
I've been working for my company* for nine years, last two remote. My move was
absolutely for lifestyle reasons, and was supported thoroughly by my managers
of the day, and my current manager still.

What has been interesting to watch though is the culture clash that happened
when my employer was acquired by a similar company without a remote workforce,
where we'd always had some.

My original company has essentially gone away as the office was closed,
keeping _only_ remote employees. A few from that city were kept, and too are
now remote from the head office thousands of km away. I had the advantage of
already being remote, and kept because I provide value. I don't know how
likely it is though that new remote employees will get hired. As an ironic
twist, the HR director is one of the newly-remote employees without an office
base.

------
andy
There are a variety of good sites that allow remote job postings. I'm looking
now.

\- [https://stackoverflow.com/jobs](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs)

\- [https://angel.co](https://angel.co)

\- [https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

\- [https://weworkremotely.com](https://weworkremotely.com)

Good luck.

------
djsumdog
Years ago I got a holiday work visa for Australia. I was working for start-up
at the time. I worked remotely for them for a few months, which with my
savings, help me get situated in Melbourne. The start-up started struggling.
They let go of several critical researchers. Eventually I was let go as well,
but I had already found other contracts in Australia.

Years later I had a break in and decided to take off on a year sabbatical. It
was the most amazing year of my adult life:

[http://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/](http://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/)

I've lucked into working remotely a few days a week for my current company. I
actually find I'm more productive working away from open workspaces.

Still, I'm not satisfied with working as a developer. I've considered saving
up for a year and then attempting to find grants or use crowfunding sites so I
can take a break and work on my own projects for another year.

~~~
reledi
Thanks for sharing that blog post. I just started a sabbatical, and it was
encouraging to read about yours. I'm thinking of going to graduate school on
my return since I left for the industry right after my bachelor's.

Would enjoy reading an update of your journey to see how your next sabbatical
goes.

------
drusepth
Lots of good information here already, but I also wanted to throw in Zapier's
Guide to Remote Work[1]. It's very long but provides a ToC for you to jump to
what's relevant to you, but the gist is that it discusses the pros and cons of
remote work from both the employer and the employee's point of view.

You're probably learning many of the benefits of remote work already (but
there might still be some tips for you in there to get the most of it), but
it's also handy to know what the upsides (and potential downfalls) are for
your employer(s) so you can better see issues from their point of view, make a
more compelling case while interviewing for a remote position, and so on.

I definitely second the suggestion to look for remote-first companies. After
interviewing around and getting through a half dozen interview processes to
finally get an offer "as long as I was comfortable potentially relocating
later if remote doesn't work out", I ended up completely omitting all
companies that weren't 90+% remote from my job search. When you can actually
work remotely, the whole world is your job market -- you can afford to exclude
companies that are on the fence about remote work.

Good luck!

[1] [https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-
workin...](https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-working/)

~~~
thingamarobert
This is great! Seems like someone made a new post with just this link and
that's trending on HN :).

------
matchagaucho
First, it's important to _legally_ separate yourself from a company so that
you can dictate where and how work is completed.

In the U.S. this requires establishing a S-Corp, LLC, or C-Corp.

Second, don't consider it _freelancing_. Professionals are independent
consultants or contractors. They manage their own sales, marketing, invoices,
billings, healthcare, tools, and benefits.

Third, working remote is actually your _home office_. Deduct a portion of your
rent/mortgage to sub-lease space for your office.

There are easily 10 more items I could add to this list, but these 3 establish
a legal _point of no return_ for making a career working remotely.

~~~
mtberatwork
> In the U.S. this requires establishing a S-Corp, LLC, or C-Corp.

Also check your county regulations on whether or not you need to apply for a
business license.

------
mohsinr
I suggest in spare time contributing to open source. This will build a good
profile for prospective employers from future. As working remotely you may not
be visible much in scene, however if you have strong presence in open source
space, you will stay visible and prove how much you get done being self
motivated. And any future company , most remote employers love self motivated,
accomplished team members. And your online open source contributions helps
validate that.

~~~
thingamarobert
This is a very good point! I do collaborative work regularly on GitHub but on
private repositories of the company with their assigned GitHub account. I
should look into how this history can be joined with my public profile which
has very little activity as I do other programming on Gitlab and Bitbucket.

~~~
mohsinr
Exactly I am in same situation. I work remotely, most of my work is to private
repo on github.

I have set it up so that my private contributions are shown in my profile
progress chart, no access to private data but activity looks good sign.

Good luck :-)

------
ChemicalWarfare
There's some great info/thoughts in this thread already. I'd add that
different people would define "Successful career" differently.

If what you're after is essentially setting yourself up for being a "valuable
resource no matter if onsite or remote" then as long as you're on top of your
game tech chops - wise and there are companies out there willing to allow ppl
with your skillset to work remote - you'll be alright.

For some ppl "successful career" entails getting "more responsibility" in
their roles which is basically corp speak for getting into management/team
lead positions. If that's your goal then your best bet would be looking for a
"remote first" type company where everyone/most everyone is remote. Sure, you
don't have to do this right away but keep in mind that it's very rare for a
distributed tech team to be hiring external team leads/managers etc.

One other thing I'd add from my personal experience. Teams that aren't remote
first but are looking for remote folks out of necessity (as in lack of "local
talent") are not only more stressful to be on if you get the gig - they also
tend to place the bar higher for remote candidates so one- get ready for
hackerrank type challenges and two - have a github profile you won't be
ashamed to share with the potential employer :)

------
throw110911
I have spent last some years working on different projects, mostly remotely.
What I have seen is that if you want to have a career in a specific company,
try to find a company that has remote work in its DNA. That means, many or
even most of the people are working remotely.

I have in practise seen that things usually don't work out well for the remote
people, if the company has also a physical location where you have some
"higher ranking employees" (project managers, architects, etc) as well as a
certain amount of developers. If the company is not actively fighting against
it, very soon you will end up with situation where things are discussed
offline and those working remotely are left out. This can start very small. On
the bigger meetings you hear certain things have already been de facto decided
in the offline meeting. Instead on influencing, you are then just reacting.

This then leads to the most important thing for the remote worker trying to
build a career: You need to fight this tendency to be left out. It is in
remote workers interest that there are regular online meetings or gathering
where everybody participates (even on daily basis). You need to gently remind
people that you want to be involved in discussions as well. Be pro-active in
Slack and try to push discussions to take place there. If the organisation is
growing, push for quarterly or twice-a-year get togethers so that you have
also physical contact with the new people. It makes a big difference for the
remote communication when you've had a few beers with somebody.

------
late2part
1\. Choose a career/specialty that allows you to work remotely. Physicians
can't, SW Devs can.

2\. Embrace occasional travel, invest in relationships when you travel. Spend
time at their office(s), take people out for lunch and dinner

3\. Actively invest in relationships online with slack/hipchat

4\. Be at work before people and leave after them, make yourself visible. If
folks see your emails and messages, they'll know you exist; if you are quiet,
out of sight, out of mind

5\. Choose a company that supports remote workers; or as we call it
"employees." Whether it's remote first, or remote supported, make sure they
really embrace it

6\. Be top 5% of your profession or higher. Many will argue that being remote
encumbers communication causing a handicap; overcome any perception of this
handicap by being excellent at your job

7\. Be excellent at your chosen specialty. Make your indispensable by not
pissing people off while still being known as an independently minded
principled thinker. Do things that benefit the business - add tangible value
that is measurable. Don't be a sheep in a team - that makes you indispensable.
Be the innovator and efficiency improver.

I worked on-site the first 10 years of my career, then at a remote office of a
company, then remotely. I think the first 10 years allowed me to build the
experience, skills, and relationships to allow me to work remotely.

------
tboyd47
I have been in software development for about 8 years and I have worked
remotely for 4 of those. My opinion is that there is no way to have a fully
remote-only working career in software. It is a perk that you may be able to
get in some situations, but it is never guaranteed. Executives have this image
in their mind of developers swiveling their chairs around and bouncing ideas
off of each other, or sharing key insights randomly at the water cooler, that
they just cannot give up (even though I believe it is a complete fiction).
They have many names for this, like "synergy," "collaborative environment,"
etc. It's a specter that will haunt you as long as you choose to tele-commute.

------
mtalantikite
I've been working remote for about 9 years now and I'd really recommend
getting your own space to work out of, somewhere that isn't your home. I
didn't get my own space until a year or so ago and I wish I had done it
sooner.

When your home is also your workspace it's very easy to never stop working.
Being a New Yorker with most of my co-workers in SF or the valley, your 5 pm
quickly becomes 9 pm. It's also very easy to isolate yourself at home,
particularly during the winter. Being able to tell your co-workers you need to
head home puts up boundaries.

If you live with someone the interruptions you'll get during the day are far
more personal than if a co-worker comes over to talk or ask questions. People
that don't code often don't realize the amount of concentration you need to
get good work done, to them it's just you working on a computer, so what's the
big deal if they interrupt you with life questions or tasks? It compounds and
can become an issue if you're not careful.

For me a co-working space like WeWork doesn't fit my needs, but I went in on
an old loft space in Brooklyn with some friends and it's great. I have a place
to walk to every morning, I have a workbench with tools for any hardware
things I want to hack on when I don't have client work, I have all my math and
cs books here, I can take lunch with people in the space if I feel like it,
etc.

And if the weather is bad or I'm feeling sick, I can always opt to work from
home for the day.

[p.s. we have a couple desks that just opened up if any HN people in NYC need
space!]

------
ensiferum
Depends where you work. If your workplace allows you to make a career on your
skills (assuming you have those) then you might have a chance even if you work
remotely. If you work in an organization (or don't have the technical skills)
that needs non technical skills for career progression (i.e. bullying, ass
licking, good luck, perseverance) then remote is unlikely to work for you.
First step for you is to identify the organization you work at.

------
up_and_up
Hunt for a job here:
[https://remotebase.io/companies](https://remotebase.io/companies)

------
andyjohnson0
I've been working 40% remote (two days from home, three days in office) for
just over twelve years. I'm employed as a developer, and I negotiated this
arrangement when I joined the company. I have no experience of freelancing or
self-employment.

As others have said, the key to making it work is trust and communication.
Employers/management need to know that you are being at least as productive as
you would be in a conventional office environment. And your team needs to know
that you are making a fair contribution to getting things done. Each person in
those groups will have a different default belief about what you are doing
(working or slacking) in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Understand
that, and use communication to address it.

So communicate _appropriately_. Some people suggest being super proactive on
communication as a way of visibly signalling the effort you are making. I'm
suspicious of this in a developer role, as you can end-up being thought of as
noisy and self-promoting. Recognise that the way you communicate will probably
need to change over time.

Find tools that work for you and your team, but don't get too preoccupied with
tool selection. Its not the main issue.

Assuming an employer is open to remote working, I'd say that you need to: a)
show a realistic understanding of how to make remote working work, and the
problems that can occur; b) demonstrate that you are trustworthy and can work
independently; and c) demonstrate that you can communicate effectively. This
is going to be easier for an existing employer than a prospective one. being
familiar with popular tools like hangouts/slack/skype will help.

Scott Hanselman [1] has some useful things to say about remote working. He's a
PM at Microsoft.

Finally, recognise that it might not work for you. You might get lonely, or
marginalised/overlooked, or just want a change. Don't lock yourself into one
way of working for ever.

[1]
[https://www.google.co.uk/#q=remote+site:hanselman.com](https://www.google.co.uk/#q=remote+site:hanselman.com)

------
elias12
Check [https://teleport.org](https://teleport.org) if you want to compare
cities based on life quality data. Also gives you recommendations which cities
fit best to your personal preference.

------
jt_90
Check out Cisco jobs. The company is built around WebEx and working remote.

Source: worked here 3 years, enjoy working with a fully virtual team.

~~~
wprapido
oracle hires remote employees, too. so does redhat

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Redhat does remote, but FWIW I had a very negative experience with their
hiring process.

~~~
zerr
Can you share more details?

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
After interviewing, they strung me along for weeks, repeatedly promising me
that they'd get back to me soon about whether or not they wanted to proceed.
In the end, they never called me back at all.

This was especially frustrating because it was my first-choice job prospect,
so I didn't actively pursue other decent opportunities.

------
amyfransz
I've been working remotely since the beginning of this year and was having the
same questions, so I approached some experienced remote workers about the
challenges that they face and how they overcome them. For me the “loneliness”
aspect of a remote lifestyle (lacking colleagues etc) was a bit of a concern
which led me to create a startup based around that very concept! I wrote down
the learning points that I picked up from these experienced remote workers
here:

[http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/11/02/challenges-every-
rem...](http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/11/02/challenges-every-remote-
worker-experiences/)

Other articles that might help you: 1\. 7 Tools that will boost a remote
workers' productivity on the road every day:
[http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/10/21/7-tools-will-
boost-r...](http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/10/21/7-tools-will-boost-remote-
workers-productivity-road-every-day/) 2\. How to negotiate a remote work
agreement with your employer: [http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/10/12/how-to-
negotiate-a-r...](http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/10/12/how-to-negotiate-a-
remote-work-agreement-with-your-employer/)

Hope it helps.

------
anovikov
If you know what you do, pay attention to tennis. There's quite some money in
tennis predictions. I know people who don't really know a lot about data
mining and don't have a formal education in the field (and some of their 'math
apparatus' sounds absolutely lame and laughable) who are making mid to high
six figures in tennis. One guy even switched there from such an obviously
attractive field as poker - a guy who already has an an excellent lifestyle
from passive investments alone, and he's 32. If you can apply real data
science there, and big data approach, mining a lot of data about tennis
player, tournaments, surfaces, etc. etc., you can probably make millions. This
isn't some temporary thing: bookies can't make better quality lines because
they aren't offering odds reflecting real probabilities, they offer odds
reflecting people's likelihood to bet on either side - and these are different
things. And lines at betting exchanges are influenced by bookies, who make the
bulk of the market, anyway.

~~~
bbcbasic
No. It's a zero sum game. Might be some hay while it's sunny but It'll dry up
once you have big well financed teams throwing enough IQ and compute power at
it.

------
mathattack
If you are skilled you can find it. A couple thoughts:

1 - Go where it's the norm.

2 - If you can't follow #1 then be attached to your desk and phone. People
won't give you the benefit of the doubt if you take 30 mins to return a call
or email.

3 - Do what you know. It is tougher to learn on the job remotely.

4 - Deliver tremendous value and make sure people know it. People need to know
why you're invaluable.

------
saurabhjha
I have been working remotely for a few months now after spending many years in
offices and I agree I am much more productive.

You might want to check out [https://www.toptal.com](https://www.toptal.com)

You might also like reading this book "Remote" written by BaseCamp founders. I
read it last weekend and I think it's great.

~~~
StavrosK
My experience with Toptal wasn't great, I tried to join and got a programming
puzzle for the first interview (actually an online coding test), which was
barely tangential to actual programming experience. They also want you to
complete an unpaid project, which I heard takes around 30 hours.

~~~
EduardoBautista
From my experience, they weren't puzzles. They were pretty straightforward to
do if you are familiar with arrays and hashes/dictionaries and when to use
which.

~~~
StavrosK
Mine were different, the solution to one was literally "return len(x) -
x.count(a)". If you didn't realize that, you spent an hour battling off-by-one
errors.

------
bubbleRefuge
Remote worker here for the last 3 months pulling a silicon valley salary. Here
is how it happened. 1) Domain/specialization. Thought I've got generalist
skills as well, have lots of years in a specialized category of enterprise
software. 2) Flexible Company. My employer has a small minority of remote
developers. 3) Negotiated it up front. I felt the initial offer was below what
I wanted and was worth and they were not the type of outfit that payed very
high by valley standards. They wouldn't budge on salary so I proposed remote
at the salary there were offering. They countered with remote after one year.
I said ok. Busted my butt for one year and here I am back in my home state
where I can afford a decent house.

------
wubalub
I have the following rules for working remotely. It's more for contractors, so
may not be directly applicable to people who work remotely for an employer.

1\. More than one customer. Even if you're earning less money, two badly
paying customers are better than one well paying customer.

2\. Invoicing is always prompt, and payment must also be prompt. Walk away
from anyone that holds onto payments.

3\. Be scrupulous with the time you charge out, and be aware that if you do
this, you'll find it takes 4 hours of a day to do two hours work. Use
rescustime or timesnapper to monitor where your time is actually going.

4\. Never turn down work.

Don't know if these are especially good rules, but they work for me. I'm on
about my 5th year of being a remote worker.

------
philippeback
I have been working remotely for some time now (years).

I am not doing it all the time as I like to be around people every once in a
while (but having decent noise cancelling headphones for surviving those open
spaces).

The key thing is indeed discipline.

Current tools support this fully. The level of proficiency with these tools
directly affects the quality of the interactions. This includes their use by
the other parties.

In 2014, I spent my whole year working on a project remotely, from idea to
release and support. It was super nice and paid nicely.

It is important to be part of an open source community I'd say as it helps in
asking trusted people about various things. In that regard, Slack is working
well (as is Discord). Appear.in is also very useful.

------
tempestn
I own a small web-based company with six employees (plus myself), all of whom
work remotely. When I hired our first employee back in 2009, we both worked
remotely because there were only two of us. I always assumed that eventually
we'd have to get an office, but I had no desire to do so, so wanted to put it
off as long as possible. I don't recall exactly when, but at some point
between then and now I realized that it was actually possible to run a
business (at least one where the product is a website) entirely remotely.
Obviously that's old news now, but it was quite a revelation at the time.

Anyway, from this experience I have a few thoughts. What type of company works
well? My (obviously biased) perspective is that the best companies for remote
work are the ones that are all-remote. While there are certainly exceptions,
I've seen plenty of cases where companies allow remote work, but remote
employees end up being second class citizens, perpetually out of the loop. If
the company is all remote, that won't be an issue. That said, even a mixed
team could be effective (with a bit more effort) if they have an excellent set
of tools and processes.

Slack is huge, and has made our work _much_ easier than it was before. I know
there are other group chat clients that purport to do the same thing, but I
haven't found any that do it as seamlessly as Slack. Similarly you want to see
that they have good project tracking software (we use Pivotal Tracker, but
there are a number of quality options), and that they have clear guidelines in
place for _how_ to use it. Some project tracking software is more opinionated,
some less, but even with Pivotal being one of the more opinionated options, we
have done quite a bit of experimentation and optimization over the years to
make our process as effective as possible. Any team that does remote work well
will have experimented with their processes for keeping everyone in sync, and
they should be able to define the results of that work.

You can also learn a lot from the interview process. The most important
element of an effective remote team is effective communication. Since that's
what interviews are all about, it gives you a great insight into how they do
things. If communication is poor during the interview - if they have you doing
silly things like writing algorithms over the phone for instance - it's
probably a warning sign. On the other hand, I'm not saying this is the only
effective way to interview, but what we've found works well is to give
candidates a few 'assignment' problems to work on, on their own time. We set
up a repository for these and have them submit pull requests with their
solutions. Then we review their code and make comments for discussion, just as
we do when a feature is completed by a member of our team. The assignments are
as minimal as possible so as not to waste time, while still giving a decent
insight into how the person works. (A much better insight than a traditional
interview.) Again, this isn't novel, nor is it the only way to do things, but
I think it does demonstrate to prospective hires that we've thought this stuff
through, and are committed to building an excellent team. I would hope to see
something comparable from any hiring team, but I believe it is especially
important for remote teams because good communication and effective processes
are that much more important without the face to face crutch to fall back on.

Anyway, congrats on heading in this direction, and putting thought into the
kind of company you'd like to work for. Remote work can be fantastic; These
days I would never want to work any other way.

------
misiti3780
I started a consulting company about 6 years ago, worked on site with a few
clients, and eventually they just didnt mind me not being there as long as the
work got done. So now I have complete autonomy to come and go as I please.

I usually spend at least one week in the office because I like the routine and
my gym is right there, but 75% time is spent working from other places.

Moral of the story: If you consistently deliver, I dont see why this should be
a problem, as long as you dont want to work for a big corporation (FB, GOOG,
etc)

------
spajus
I had a profile lurking at Upwork.com, and while the platform itself is "race
to the bottom", there are quality clients and good freelancers there too. I
have been on both hiring and freelancing end of the table.

I ended up working for 2 years for same client full-time. Best job I ever had,
and 100% remote.

So my advice, create yourself a good profile at upwork.com and who knows what
may happen. In my case, client found me, I was not looking for anything
serious in there.

------
xchaotic
One easy thing I've found was to simply charge less. if you substract all your
expenses - commute, office, lunch and coffee money, you can get away with
charging a lot less. That way you can target a wider range of roles (roles
that would pay too little for onsite work) and clients can justify your remote
demands - they pay less than for onsite work.

------
mswen
You might find this interview with data scientist Tim Hopper interesting. He
works remotely and comments on tools his company uses to enable remote work.

[http://computationalimagination.com/interview_tim_hopper.php](http://computationalimagination.com/interview_tim_hopper.php)

------
rokhayakebe
I may suggest a different route which may be more difficult, but will allow
you infinite freedom. Create a small product that you can rent for 100 to 500
to 1000 to companies in your field.

------
clorichel
As a "forever globbetrotting" remote worker, I wanted to share some thoughts
about it with you.

First thing first: do NOT ask yourself what a company can do for you (remote
ok or not), showcase yourself and what YOU can do for a company. Here is what
I mean: I've been working two years in a company which is definitely not
remote friendly. I wasn't even thinking about working remotely, but life is
full of surprises. I'm now (remote) fullstack lead developer of that exact
same company, having 2 offices with developers spread over the world. I
participate meetings, answer my phone line as if I were with all of them. We
all admit I'm way more productive at work, some (including my boss) saying I
may be paying an Asian guy to be "answering every time they need me". It's not
about convincing each historical company to be remote friendly, it's about
these companies fit the market (as they always do to keep on making money) if
they want to keep on hiring most talented professionals!

If you know your stuff, you are the lucky guy. Find the job YOU love, and find
it where it is. Convince them you are the guy, be opened to spend one or two
weeks with your team few times per year, wherever it is, and be clear that
your teammates timezone is the one (yes, you may have to be online for a
meeting at the middle of the night, but the week-end after while your
colleagues will be somewhere fun not that far, you will be at Niagara Falls,
visiting Dubai, or sailing a lagoon in the Indian Ocean). Then just do it, you
will rock it, both of you being happy with it. And do not fear realizing you
work better in an office with teammates.

Having to keep a budget while travelling, I would definitely NOT recommend to
be freelancer without some recurring work from multiple well-known clients
(who really pays). This is NOT something to treat lightly. No money: nothing
good for you, and your family. Clients do NOT contact you just because you say
you are good and your website is awesome (I've been running two companies for
10 years before, I promise I know my stuff). Consider it thoroughly with your
wife, even if she makes enough money for the whole family. Many (but not all)
freelancer testimonies are fakes or pure dreams, it's not rare digging around
you will find them always staying in Asia because it's inexpensive and they do
not make enough money to get elsewhere!

Last words, regarding freelancer stuff or nomadism, keep in mind this is
getting huge nowadays, and becoming a business for a lot of people who just
think about making money from you with fancy website you may need (or not).
I'm pretty sure you will easily find links (if not some on this thread
already). Just be conscious about what it really helps you to. Having "a
community" to answer questions is free as you can see ;)

In a train from Aveiro to Porto, Portugal, I wish you fame and fortune for
your career! But fortune may be enough ;)

------
snowchyld
The information security industry has a large remote workforce

------
Rustydave
Check out nomadlist.com

------
dschiptsov
I think everything boils down to finding an actual demand for your skill set.
As long as some organization or an investor has a real problem to solve and
you could convince them that you really have the ability and necessary
training and experience, then it doesn't really matter how do you work and
from where. You could always frame a contract not for hourly basis but on
completion of the prototype, milestones, whatever you like.

Basically, you should imagine yourself as a specialized company doing sub-
contracting in ML.

Finding a real demand and securing a contract is much harder than doing actual
coding and modeling. There are literally thousands of guys who are smart
enough to apply ML, especially now, when it became mainstream.

PhD is, of course, a huge advantage in the world of pointy haired bosses, HR
and paper pushers. With it you, probably, are looking for a very high hourly
rate instead of subcontracts. In this you probably would fail, because people
who are willing to pay high hourly wages needed certain rituals to be
performed publicly in return.

------
ep02leda
I'm actually on the lookout to recruit Machine Learning PhDs, specifically to
work remotely, either on a temp fixed time or more permanent contractor basis.
:) How can I best reach you to pitch you what I had in mind?

~~~
ghufran_syed
Post a reply to this month's "Who's Hiring?" and be sure to mark it as REMOTE
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846216)

