
Show HN: Learn how to work remotely from people doing it every day - Jasber
http://remotehabits.com/?ref=hackernews
======
Jasber
Hey HN! Here's a small side-project I've been working on to help remote
workers. I noticed when I switched to full-time indie dev, I experienced some
new problems, like building discipline, habits and healthy routines. I don't
like most productivity advice, as Paul Buchheit says most advice is limited
life experience + over-generalized to fit your situation.

I thought a good way around this would to just tell stories about remote
workers, how they got started, what they like, what they don't like, routines
they've found that are helpful, etc...

So that's what the site aims to do—interview remote workers so you can learn
from their experiences.

One cool thing about the site is you can deep dive specific questions, like

* What do you like about remote work? [http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-like...](http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-like...).

* What do you not like about remote work? [http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-not-...](http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-not-...).

Let me know what you think, thanks!

~~~
chasd00
the best thing is no commute, the energy overhead of a long commute is
terrible. The worst thing is missing out on conversations/decisions being made
at the office. My corporate office is in San Diego while I'm in Dallas, even
though I'm a director and the buck stops with me in engineering, lots of
sidebar conversations and decisions get made in Sand Diego face-to-face and
not on conference calls and slack channels.

~~~
zip1234
This is very difficult to address. I think people (in the office) need to buy
in and use chat or email as communication mode number one. Either that or
someone needs to come out with some better tele-presence for remote teams to
interact with people in the office.

~~~
dotancohen
Think about what you are saying. We should forgo direct communication with
people next to us, in favor of an online alternative? Even though your goal is
noble (enabling remote workers) your method is unnatural.

I agree that a way to better integrate remote workers is essential. However
disposing of direct communication is not the way to do it. I don't have an
answer, we need a novel approach.

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chasd00
I've been remote for about 5 years now. Once thing often overlooked is the
perception of working remote by significant others. It took a handful of
fights with my wife until we came to an understanding that from 8-5 i'm at
work, even though I'm home, I'm still at work. Granted, there's give and take
like with all things in a marriage but when I "leave" for work and shut the
office door I may as well be 30miles away in an office building until 5.

~~~
throwaway284726
As someone who’s not married it also isn’t good for relationships in general.
Staying home all day basically makes you the least interesting person in the
world. You never have any crazy stories, weird colleagues, office romances,
and whatever else normal people talk about. How do you answer “how was your
day” and make it interesting?

~~~
richardbrevig
I know I'm unusual about this, but I really try to keep my conversations away
from simply just normal happenings. I recognize this is probably a necessity
to share our days, but I value people that speak about ideas more.

~~~
jschwartzi
Yeah, I work remote and I don't talk to people about my job at all other than
to describe it if they ask. Frankly my job sounds boring and the industry I'm
in is totally unglamorous so the less I say the better. I'd rather talk about
all the stuff I do outside of work.

For the record I love my job and the company I'm with.

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mettamage
> I see a ton of new freelancer make the mistake of charging $15 or more from
> the jump without 0 reputation to back up that value. You can't expect to be
> paid what you want without having a way of proving that value in some way.
> [1]

To give a counter point. I have done the opposite with 0 reputation, I charged
between 60 to 70 euro's per hour. I now increased my rate to 75 euro's per
hour, since I know a couple of bootcamp graduates who charge the same. Why do
they charge the same? Well, one got into a dev shop and he quickly realized he
was the best web dev and got rented out for a 100 euro's per hour.

Though per haps one difference is that I knew people who needed a freelancer
_now_. They couldn't find anyone and I was still studying CS and therefore
available. Finding clients on your own with that rate may be harder.

I think understanding supply and demand really important, as well as building
trust with your client. Can you get the job done? If yes, then what's the
going rate for any other freelancer and charge that.

With all that said, it is just one interview that I am quoting. It is also
interesting to see such diversity in there!

[1] [http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-
full...](http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-full-stack-
web-developer-who-works-remotely)

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omnimus
Well advice from one of the freelance webdevs
([http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-
full...](http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-full-stack-
web-developer-who-works-remotely)) is to start to charging 10usd. He calls it
reasonable pricing. I mean i live in quite poor country but 10usd is pretty
hard wow. The great twist is that he works for YCombinator backed company as
lead front-end dev. Way to go lol

~~~
slow_donkey
Oh boy. Please no one take that advice of charging 10/hr. Remote does not at
all justify making < minimum wage

~~~
illuminati1911
How much do freelancers usually get in different countries/regions? Or on
average in the US and Europe?

When I was still living in Finland (few months ago) the market rate was
usually around 80-120 EUR/h => 90-140 USD/h.

~~~
puranjay
I work remotely as a writer living in India. I charge the same rates as any
writer living in the US. I haven't yet seen any client dispute my pricing.

I don't see why I should charge less for my skills just because of my
geographical location.

~~~
dzhiurgis
Time zone can be somewhat of a filter if your client has a large team with
daily standups.

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andyfleming
It would be nice to have a way to separate full-time remote employees from
consultants/freelancers and part-time remote contractors.

I feel as though the constraints and consequences are very different between
the two.

~~~
Jasber
Good suggestion, I've tried to tag Freelancers/Consultants where appropriate
but this is something that can be improved—thanks!

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samat
Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner
reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

~~~
ddtaylor
I am curious, what kind of provider is this and what kind of bandwidth limits
could be burned through by a basic HTTPS website? I tried to do a reverse DNS
but it only came up with a generic "com.remotehabits.in-addr.arpa"

I only ask this because even my very poor $2.50/mo server gets 500GB to 1TB of
bandwidth allocated to it which is enough for millions of standard page loads.

~~~
duggan
Some whois sleuthing suggest a company called Conseev who operate a shared
hosting service[1] with a 250MB bandwidth limit.

[1]: [https://www.purespeedhosting.com/shared-
hosting/](https://www.purespeedhosting.com/shared-hosting/)

~~~
steve_adams_86
Is it not 250GB Data Transfer? That would be a lot more than 250MB. Still hard
to guess how they would get over that limit.

~~~
duggan
Hah, yes, whoops. Hard to imagine blowing through 250GB of bandwidth via HN
traffic in only a few hours.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Reason #2384 to keep your site lean...

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mlthoughts2018
My experience after having fully remote jobs and onsite jobs in companies with
satellite offices and other remote workers, as well as managing and hiring for
a team that includes on-site and remote engineers, is that you are generally
practicing all the same skills needed for working remotely even if you are
based on-site. You have to fight through the distractions of the surrounding
environment and practice self-discipline, you’ll have a video call option for
every single meeting (and often even other in-office participants access the
call by video rather than walking to the conference room), all “water cooler
talk” is deliberately moved into a medium like Slack, other on-site people
work from home often, even managers using video calls to talk about your
yearly performance review.

I’m sure many people making the transition could still use a service like this
for good advice.

But generally, on-site experience in many types of tech / ecommerce companies
these days imparts so much of the identical skills used for remote work that
you would find pretty much the sole difference is the utter bliss of not being
in an open-plan office.

Similarly when hiring for remote or on-site roles, I find years of experience
specifically working remotely plays no role. It does not make a candidate more
or less likely to fit in a new remote role. And lack of prior remote
experience rarely ever factors in even when hiring for a remote role.

In other words, most types of prior work experience already prepare you well
to be a remote worker. There’s no special “being good at remote” skill that
most on-site jobs fail to exercise, though some people might occasionally feel
that they _personally_ or idiosyncratically need more help with certain
aspects, unrelated to what general job experience offers them.

~~~
matt_the_bass
It sounds like in your opinion “no open plan office” is the sole value of
working remote? As I misunderstanding your comment?

My office does not have open plan offices. Some of us work remote about 20% of
the time. But I think we all generally enjoy working on site too.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
That has definitely been my experience from a worker’s point of view. People
assessing costs, etc., might have other opinions.

The second-biggest benefit is not spending time on a commute. And if you have
child care needs or other family arrangements to tend to, the flexibility
offered being at home is a benefit.

But by far the biggest benefit is that it lets you get away from working in
open-plan offices.

At one past employer that had a mix of on-site and remote workers, the company
had an amazing policy of letting on-site employees work from home as often as
they wanted, no questions asked.

During one especially difficult design and implementation phase for a certain
project, I worked from home for three weeks straight, because otherwise it was
literally impossible to get the work done with noise distractions and lack of
private space to think and tinker while at the office.

Personally, I like working on-site (in private offices) most of all, but the
downsides of open-plan arrangements are so severe that I’d practically use any
other type of working arrangement, even being fully remote, if it allowed me
to avoid an open-plan office.

------
fcanela
I am getting a 509 Bandwith Exceeded error. The sites is still accesible via
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jNN8m0q...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jNN8m0qEa2EJ:remotehabits.com)

~~~
fcanela
It seems like the cache link I previously pasted does not allow to click on
deeper links on the site. Sorry. At least it helps to have a quick view to the
content.

------
johnc113
Hey guys, I saw a few people quoting my interview here and I appreciate the
criticism and wanted to clear a few misconceptions is the word? up!

For reference: [http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-
full...](http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-full-stack-
web-developer-who-works-remotely)

When I say charge $10 USD that is what I started charging personally as I felt
it gave me the most competitive edge as I was a recent graduate and JUST
starting out. The minimum wage in Puerto Rico where I live is $7.50 so it
definitely made sense to me and I'm the type of person who doesn't like
overselling themselves or feeling like I'm being cocky/arrogant, plus I was
starting out I barely knew anything haha. It's a personality thing you know. I
am however by no means saying hey charge $10 USD to start out, that made sense
to me and worked for me because I was a recent graduate, have no debts and no
family to support. Someone with all these things to consider $10 USD would be
DISMAL to even accept and I get that. What I was trying to convey above all is
be reasonable with your pricing, charge something that for you recognizes your
value and needs and ALSO Values your client and their needs if that makes
sense!

Also someone mentioned me being a lead front-end dev at OpenSea which YES is
backed by YCombinator but I wanted to clear up one thing which is I said main
dev not lead front end dev as I have been with them from early on, that title
belongs to the co-founders haha I'm sorry for that confusion and wanted to
clear it up, I hate taking credit where credit is not due! I am/was the lead
front-end dev for a startup called freshChefs in shanghai for their food
delivery app though which was an AWESOME experience!

Finally, I have upped my rates considerably from my early days starting out
and now usually charge $50/hr so I definitely climbed those up over time, I
just started at a reasonable price that worked for me but in no ways mean
works for or should be done by everyone.

Thanks guys! And I hope the article gave you some insights and it's crazy to
see it somewhere like HackerNews!

PS: I'm actually 24 and that picture was from my graduation day back in 2015
because I abhor pictures, I still have a baby face though XD

------
TallGuyShort
If you're looking for folks to interview, I've been full-time remote for
almost 5 years and have managed to do it quite successfully. I'd be happy to
share thoughts.

~~~
Jasber
Sure! Can you email brad@remotehabits.com and we can get something setup.

------
hoyin_remotes
This is great website! I think we need more things like these to make it
easier for people to learn how to work remotely. I have outlines some of
comments in this video message I recorded for you:
[https://www.useloom.com/share/3e8262418d7c4f1187d3b92b037624...](https://www.useloom.com/share/3e8262418d7c4f1187d3b92b037624ca)

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senatorobama
The key difficulty for me is finding a remote job (from scratch) in a name
brand company i.e listed on the NASDAQ.

~~~
bitlax
A lot of major companies offer remote work, but why is that important? Are you
using that as a proxy for salary?

~~~
senatorobama
How do you find them?

~~~
jambalaya
Are you based in the US? weworkremotely.com has worked well for me in the US

~~~
mmikeff
Shameless plug here, my side project
[https://www.mikesremotelist.com](https://www.mikesremotelist.com) finds about
10-20 newly listed remote positions a day, they are not all US based, but the
majority are.

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tomcooks
Death by hugs, 509 bandwidth exceeded~

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stockkid
It was working but now I'm getting "Server Not Found" when I click the link.

I find the content very helpful. How do you plan to keep producing such good
quality content in the long term? I've seen many Show HNs like this with
meteoric launch getting abandoned after some months.

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Oras
Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

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geoffrey123
I am looking for a remote developer role myself

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreycallaghan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreycallaghan)

