
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Remote Work After 5 Years of Experience - maldinii
http://ionutn.com/the-good-bad-and-the-ugly-of-working-remote-after-5-years/
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djrogers
I'm coming up on 17 years of remote working (we used to call it virtual office
back in the day), and most of this rings true, however there are some
additional considerations when a family is involved. I've found a couple of
things to be most helpful as a family man:

Set a quitting time. Don't worry about starting your work day, that will
happen by itself, but you need to put a good cap on the end of the work day,
so you know when to walk away from work.

Have a place to work. I have a home office, but it could be a specific desk,
room, or beach chair. Wherever it is, try to do your work there when family is
around, that way they know you're working.

Leave your work laptop at your desk. Get a second laptop, tablet, etc that
doesn't have work stuff on it if you're going to use electronic stuff around
the family outside work hours.

And perhaps most importantly, take advantage of it! I have been able to watch
my kids grow up in a way 99% of fathers can't dream of. I take them to dentist
appointments, keep an eye on them once in a while when my wife needs to run an
errand, and get to see the amazing lego creations they build right away - they
don't have to wait till daddy gets home... My wife constantly drops comments
like 'it's such a blessing that your job lets you be here for this', and it's
true - I wouldn't trade it for the world.

~~~
pcglue
What type of work do you do? Webdev, sysadmin or ? It seems remote working is
only just becoming mainstream acceptable. How were you able to start doing so
17 years ago? Has it been with the same company or many companies? Are you
independent consultant? Sorry for so many questions, I just haven't been able
to figure out how to work remotely full-time. The best I've gotten was 1-2
days a week. Appreciate your reply.

~~~
brianwawok
I know someone who has worked over 20 remote years coding AS/400 for large
corporations (last one I knew of was Whirlpool). Think she started on dialup.
So it has been around for a while, but clearly has gotten more popular over
time.

Here is how to find a remote job.. find a remote FIRST company. Not a normal
company you ask if you can work remote. Find a company that only hires remote
people. Watching the companies that post on say weworkremotely.com and you
will find something interesting.

That said, remote jobs do tend to have more competition. Since anyone can
apply to any remote job, I suspect they get 20x the resumes of a local job
(would love to hear for someone who has worked both sides of HR to confirm).
So you can't just apply to 2 jobs and assume you will get 1 of them. It will
take more work.

~~~
FireBeyond
I've gotten multiple jobs via weworkremotely.com - and hired from there.

Our ad for a sysadmin got 100+ resumes, of which about 50 were trashable, and
we had a dozen plus excellent candidates.

~~~
brianwawok
How does 100 compare to your average local ad posting? Seems high but not as
high as I had expected.

~~~
kasey_junk
50% trashable from a web posting is _amazingly_ good.

~~~
FireBeyond
It may have been higher. But it seems that weworkremotely seems to have a good
bar for candidates. Also: I'm counting candidates, not agencies and such
spamming.

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abakker
A lot of this rings true for me. I've been working remotely in SF for 5 years,
though my company is based in CT. The 3 hour time difference makes things
interesting, since I now work 6am to 2pm to be on the clock the same hours as
my east coast colleagues. The disadvantage is the 6am start time. The
advantage is the 2pm end time, which sometimes slips to 3pm. However, I still
keep a very much Office/Personal dichotomy, where outside my working hours I
tend to not be working unless there is a specific deadline.

The real downsides for me are: 1\. The occasional loneliness 2\. difficulty in
casual collaboration with colleagues 3\. the "work hangover" where after
finishing work, I don't have adequate physical separation from it (like
leaving the office gives you), and sometimes I can waste time after work is
over before being able to spin up on something else.

The upsides are: 1\. Music when I want it, silence when I don't. 2\. Cheaper
food costs, healthier meals 3\. no commute costs 4\. more overall time to
indulge in hobbies/side projects 5\. tax benefit of maintaining a home office.
6\. save on dry cleaning, clothing costs 7\. can run errands during the day,
and always have the 2-5pm block of time while normal companies are still open,
and I am free.

~~~
honua
It's interesting to me that you have adjusted your working hours to match your
company. I work for a company in London and I would never be able to match
their working hours. Is that a requirement from your company, or just
something you hold yourself to?

~~~
abakker
it is a convenience thing - If they need me, I'm up. If I need them, I know
when they're available. My role involves some support for other employees, and
also some reliance on others. I work in the research/consulting/advisory
business, so I'm less independent than many developers.

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Touche
Every article about remote work makes it sound harder than it really is, and
probably scares a lot of people off. I've been doing it for 3 years now and
don't suffer from these problems. There was some initial shock for the first
month or so where home = work = home but once I got past that it became easy.
Now I wake up, grab my laptop and sit on the couch and work. When someone
wants to talk I go to my office, or if I need heads-down time.

Otherwise I just live my life. I usually sign off around 5 and take my dog for
a walk. I do normal hour-ish long lunches. If I need to mow the grass I go do
that, no big deal.

~~~
haidouk
Oh man, I got a puppy 3 months after starting to work from home and it's been
a struggle. I would get interrupted so often and she wants constant
attention.. I ended up working poorly for many hours. Some nights I end up in
bed at 5 or 6 AM because I don't get to do much during the day.. I hope she'll
need me less when she gets a bit older.

~~~
throwaway_java
She's a dog. Tie her up.

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georgehotelling
My job for the past 2.5 years has been remote and one thing that I have a
problem with is getting out of the house. I (kinda) followed "Invest in
yourself" to the point where I have a desk I like with monitors I like and my
cozy little spot.

It's hard to justify "Get out of the house" when you've built a nice work spot
for yourself. Maybe it's because the audience for this is in an urban
environment where it's a 5 minute walk to the coffee shop (as opposed to my
suburban 10 minute drive) or maybe it's because I'm cheap and know the coffee
at home is cheaper than paying "rent" buy buying coffee.

I'd really be curious to hear other remote workers' experiences with getting
out of the house.

~~~
monort
Slow travel - you will always have a reason to go out.

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joeax
I've been working at home for 4 years, and I sort of disagree with point #1.
Maybe this is good for some people, but part of the high degree of flexibility
comes from being able to work different, odds hours. Because of my freedom of
working at home I can run to Costco at 10:30, or take my daughter to her
soccer practice at 4pm. If I'm trying to wrap up some code, being at home
allows me to stay focused past 5, sometimes 7 or 8pm, without the need to get
in a car. It's give and take.

~~~
maldinii
You are not really disagreeing :), the point was that a while ago I used to
work 16 hours / day or work 2 am - 11am and sleep whole day which was really
crazy.

Working between 7am - 11pm is quite ok, I agree with all those advantages.

~~~
joeax
Oh yes agree there. When it get to a point that you are ignoring your family
then it's time to set a hard boundary.

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wambotron
This is one person's experience and viewpoint. I've worked remote for the
majority of the last 6 years and haven't run into anything like this.

Why would you treat working from home any differently than working from the
office? I wouldn't work until 8pm in the office, so why would I do it at home?

The special scheduling of personal appointments doesn't make sense to me. If
you were in the office, you'd tell people "I'll be away from 1-2 today" and
that's it. I do the same thing when I'm working from home.

Maybe I'm weird because I'm not big on socially hanging with my coworkers, but
the face time doesn't bother me at all. We do a lot of video calls, I see them
plenty.

My work is not my life. I've never had trouble separating work and home life.
Working from a room in my house has never changed that. Now if you'll excuse
me, I have some yard work to do on my lunch break.

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chandrew
Very valid points. I've been a remote worker for a year so I can understand
many points. I haven't tried some things yet (travel) so hearing about it is
insightful.

\- Although my work permits being flexible, I'd rather have a normal person's
schedule too! There's just too many real life things to take care of that
require normal hours.

\- After spending a lot of time alone, I have to find a friend to meet up
with. I made another remote working friend so we meet up 2 times a week. It's
odd but it does feel like there is some sort of pull towards human interaction
embedded somewhere. I also enjoy the busy and loud cafe background.

\- Taxes suck :( They have been very confusing since this is my first year.
Still working on them :'(

~~~
tylermac1
Anything particular about taxes that sucks for you?

Are you working for yourself or remote for a company?

I'm about 5 months into a remote job for a health company and I love it so
far.

~~~
maldinii
Hey,

I am a co-founder and employee of a company so while salary stuff is clear,
things like dividends + fiscal residence + tax treaty makes you crazy to be
short.

Just working remotely for a company and being in a specific location all the
time is certainly way easier to handle.

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mafro
Most of this is just healthy working practice for anyone, regardless of their
remote/office status (schedule time for yourself, don't work too much, see
people face-to-face etc).

Good post overall though!

~~~
maldinii
Yep indeed, my goal here was to tell non-remote workers that is not always
sunshine and rainbows :).

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selmat
I work (as network engineer) from home around 1 year and I am very satisfied.
I have project based position and am the only one (within department) who is
taking care of specific role. I have global customers so they don't care if I
sit here or 500 kilometers over-there. Provided service is still the same.

Here are my experiences from last year:

1\. I have own workplace with stand-up desk, big screen.

2\. I have silence for thinking and creating.

3\. In case of lower workload I can work on some side projects or get some
home-tasks or child-care.

4\. I am out of noisy open-office.

5\. Nobody is staring at my screen and asking silly questions what are you
reading? What is it? Can you send me a link?

6\. I didn't get any open-office illness.

7\. I don't have to fight for air-conditioning/heating temperature.

8\. I am home from work after 1 second.

9\. Since I don't travel to the office I save a huge amount of money

10\. I don't feel lack of social contact. I have neighbors at our street,
family near to us. I am introvert. Maybe sometime I don't have someone with
same technical expertise but never mind.

11\. I am living in area with lower cost for living so I am saving money, I
have higher quality of life.

12\. I don't need afraid that my car will be scratched (as happened a year ago
at private parking, of course no camera records, no witness).

13\. Sometime it's hard especially if kids are getting insane and make huge
shambles.

14\. Relationship with your spouse require higher attitude because you are
threatened by marine disease. You are together very often without break.

I would not change it back to the open-office insane workplace.

In regards to blogpost...I can confirm point #6 - third culture kid. After 5
years living abroad I moved back to my domestic country.

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solipsism
Suggested topic change: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Digital Nomadism
After 5 Years.

A lot of us who work from home but stay put are confused by this article.

~~~
maldinii
I struggled about finding the right title, I don't really consider myself a
fully digital nomad either, the article is about remote work, however under my
personal circumstances, I am now more an expat than a nomad.

Some learnings happened also in different periods of my life, so is really
hard to write a title/content that is clear and all the people reading it will
identify.

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solipsism
I just want to say, as someone who currently works remotely, the points about
travel don't apply to everyone. Some of us don't have to fly around for our
jobs, no matter where our base of operations is. The last flight I took was to
a conference my company sent me to, which I would have taken even if I worked
in-office.

~~~
eonw
i agree with this. i have yet to meet a very productive remote employee that
is changing locations frequently. all the travel i do is either for work, or
vacation, in which case it would be the same if i were in office.

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blisterpeanuts
There's a variety of work-from-home situations. The OP describes a situation
of WFH while living in foreign countries, and apparently he's also self-
employed.

Others (like myself, since 2012) are full time employed and work literally
from home.

Still others work from local coffee shops or other comfortable hotspots.

As a full time employee, and having tricked out my home office with a
comfortable chair and good equipment that I paid for myself, WFH is like being
at the office, minus the noise and inconvenience.

Financially speaking, WFH is a huge win for most of us who aren't lucky enough
to be able to walk 10 minutes to the office:

\- I no longer commute 15-20 hours a week, which to me is worth an extra $20K
a year.

\- I don't have to make lunch, or buy lunch.

\- I can go running at lunchtime, in fact, just stand up and go out the door,
back in 50 minutes, and at some point I'll hop in the shower, at my
convenience.

\- I can time-shift my work; dental, quick shopping trips, running down to the
Post Office, etc. become very easy to fit in.

\- I can time- _slice_ my day, getting my work done while fitting in 5 minutes
here and there of practicing the piano, walk out into the woods to clear my
head, or reading the news or checking social network sites without feeling
self-conscious.

\- Privacy

\- Quiet

\- Lighting as I like it.

\- Can easily do the laundry.

\- Easily make a personal call.

\- Take a "youtube" break now and then, no need for phones. Ditto for having
music going, though I'm more of a silence kind of guy.

True, you miss the 5-minutes-in-the-hallway kind of interaction that can
grease the wheels and answer questions quickly, but phones, chat/texting,
Facetime/Skype, screen sharing, and email pretty much cover it. A small price
to pay in my opinion.

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ErikAugust
The biggest thing for me was that programming by yourself is lonely.

And this was the case for me even in a coworking space with people I came to
know pretty well.

Jeff Atwood has written on this: [http://blog.codinghorror.com/in-programming-
one-is-the-lonel...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/in-programming-one-is-the-
loneliest-number/)

I came to the realization that others felt this from this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3AAGlG6NqM&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3AAGlG6NqM&feature=youtu.be&t=10m12s)

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kbenson
Regarding point 6, I wonder how much a decent expat community from your own
country, or at a minimum native speakers of your language, might help. For
example, I imagine living in Hong Kong might be alienating after a while (I
suspect this is because you may feel like you are a member of your own culture
less as time goes by, but never quite feel fully integrated into your host
culture), but if you have a core group of people with a shared original
culture around you, that might go a long way towards staving off feelings of
alienation.

~~~
sdm
English, an official language, and British culture are still pretty strong in
HK though declining. Still, I get your point. I live in China and I while I
don't work remotely, I just don't interact with the expat community. It's much
easier if you have local friends and co-workers. I can't imagine being here as
a remote worker -- China can feel pretty isolating. I just find your reference
to HK odd because I go there when I don't want to feel isolated/alienated. HK
is an extremely "western culture" place.

~~~
kbenson
I used HK specifically because I have a friend (one of my my Fiance's best
friends from highschool) that moved there a few years ago to marry a HK
native. She lives there and works in the family store now. She's noted more
than once (but not _often_ ) that she's somewhat lonely there, even though
there are some people that live in the same building that are Americans, as
she feels somewhat disconnected from them (although it sounded like this may
have had something to do with them being wives that didn't work). She
mentioned that in the store, her humor often falls flat with the other
employees, so there is some cultural disconnect there.

She is Chinese, speaks the language fluently, and I believe she was born in
HK, but she was raised in Northern California, and identifies completely as an
American. It's entirely possible this confluence of attributes may cause more
problems for her than if she was obviously Caucasian and living in HK.

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coderKen
Thanks for sharing this. I just started working remotely and need all the
advice I can get.

~~~
sumoboy
I've worked remote for the past 10 years and I'll say treat your workspace as
a real office, good chair, monitors, wireless headset, closed door to minimize
any noise. Scheduling tasks is absolutely critical because I find your way
more efficient and focused without office distractions. I'm easily 2x more
efficient vs an office so I have more time with non-work activities. Get a
small office or have access to one of those shared space offices to get away
at times, don't think that Starbucks and Panera are places to get actual work
done. It's easy to over work, so set aside time to learn something new to keep
things interesting.

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benzesandbetter
Most of this is pretty solid, though not particularly insightful.

I disagree with point #1 about working a "normal schedule". I think being able
to adapt to work when the mood strikes (or doesn't) is one of the best things
about being a digital nomad. Personally, I schedule my times in blocks which
are different on different days, and adapt to the needs of clients, team, my
current timezone offset, and personal schedule (classes, dinners, etc.). I
also move things around as I go, to adjust to things like nice weather to go
out, having a slow morning, or being inspired to do something. Note that while
I am flexible, I'm also very disciplined about scheduling work time, averaging
75hr weeks.

I also disagree with #6. I've certainly experienced being happier in some
countries (and cities) than others. I think one of the great things about
being a DN, is experiencing daily life (not vacation life) in different
countries, and learning where you are the happiest in different areas of your
life. Then, unlike a vacationer, who sadly has to return home, a DN has the
ability to extend their time in those places.

When I think of happiness, I also think of fulfillment which is more granular
than just being "happy". There are different areas where you can experience
fulfillment: family, friends, hobbies, work, lifestyle. Different locations
provide these in differing ratios. In one place, you may be happy that you can
be near family, while in that place, you miss surfing. One of the great things
about being a DN, is that you don't have to chose only one of these. You can
mix them in various intervals. Last year, I spent a lot of time with family
and friends in a bunch of different countries, made two trips to Peru, two
trips to Japan, and a bunch of time all over Europe and Mexico. I would say
I'm happier for it, than if I had been in any one place, even if I spent the
whole year in one of my favorite cities.

I thought I was going to agree with #3, but agreed less the more I read of his
description. To me, it's much more about being around specific selected people
that I care about: family, friends, clients, partners... Also beneficial are
places where I connect with people based on shared interest. Meeting random
people in cafes is nice sometimes, and the universe does throw interesting
people into the mix, but for me it's about more than just, "having people
around is always better".

Of everything here, #8 (Invest in yourself) is the strongest. The risk-
adjusted return of informed and ongoing self-investment is phenomenal.

(source: Digital Nomad since '06\. 10-20 countries/year while running multiple
successful service and product businesses)

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dba7dba
Not having to put on headphone to listen to music while working is glorious.

