
Ask HN: Remote workers, tell us how you got started - Sukotto
If you&#x27;ve been working remote (in any capacity) please tell us your story: How did you get the position you&#x27;re in?, What advice would you give to others?, What&#x27;s your favorite story about your remote-working experience?<p>I&#x27;m currently out of work and considering getting a remote gig (be it as a freelancer, contractor, or plain old employee) so I&#x27;m especially interested in hearing what you have to say.
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rwhitman
I've been a remote freelancer on and off for about 12 years now.

In a lot of cases the clients I've had where I work remotely, were clients
that either A) aren't tech businesses and typically don't have developers
working on-site anyhow, B) I worked on-site with them for a while, and then
either moved or just stopped coming into their office or C) were referred to
me from another remote client.

Communication is the biggest part of success or failure when working remotely.
Slacking off on communication is a surefire way to bring about
misunderstandings and potential conflict. Always clarify everything you
discuss, never leave anything up to assumptions or guesswork. Bug the hell out
of the other people you're depending on (client, coworkers etc), send them
regular update emails even if they didn't ask for it. I've managed a lot of
remote workers. If it takes you more than 24hrs to respond to an important
email, or you leave me hanging past a milestone with no update, or you miss
scheduled conference calls, can't jump on chat in an emergency etc - it
doesn't matter how good you are, you'll get fired. If you want to work remote,
you need to be proactive about communicating, and very clear every time.

As a remote worker, personally my biggest problems have always been getting a
good routine and keeping up productivity. If you're the type of person who is
distracted easily (like me), remote work can be challenging from home. I have
all kinds of productivity tricks - site blockers, pomodoro timers, certain
music, etc. The biggest thing to me is getting out of the house once a day at
least, shuffling around my environment I find motivational. I'll go to a
coffee shop for a few hours each day and its often the most productive few
hours of that day. Getting a shared office / desk space, co-working with
friends, working from the road, library etc are also great ways to change
things up and put yourself in work-mode.

Hope thats useful advice. Good luck!

~~~
ben1040
This is great advice, especially about getting out of the house and having a
routine. I am on my second remote position and having a daily routine is
essential to not falling into productivity hell.

I am renting an office in a coworking space so I can have a place to "go to
work" rather than working from home. It adds a routine, it gives me separation
between work and home, and it's nice to have human contact over the course of
the day.

~~~
rwhitman
Yea I used to rent an office for a few years. I learned some important things
- particularly making sure that you have the right office environment for your
productivity. I unfortunately rented a space before the 'coworking' revolution
and got kind of trapped in an office with non-tech guys much older than me
constantly bugging about IT advice, a rent barter agreement when my finances
couldn't swing the overhead that was hard to break (I basically became an
indentured web-servant for a print design agency), and eventually a
realization that I wasn't even being productive in the office. Been a skeptic
about offices ever since, but definitely curious that a proper coworking space
might be different..

~~~
collyw
Productivity is one of the reasons I want to make the jump to freelancing.

I currently have a full time job, and enjoy the periods where I am left to get
on with my work, but all to often the non-technical users will not read error
messages, and ask me stupid questions to "fix their excel". It makes it
impossible to work on certain things, like learning a front end framework when
you are being bugged with trivial tasks like this every half hour. (The fact
we are still using excel as a data import solution bugs me as well, as I have
complained about the lack of reliability for a long time now).

So freelancing would hopefully allow me to do the sort of work I want to do. I
know there is a whole load of other stuff I will need to manage, but it must
be better than fixing formatting issues in excel.

~~~
casperb
If you are a freelancer, the lame basic PC questions are still coming your
way. Maybe not from collegues, but now from clients. There are always people
who think you are there to help with there PC questions. Also if the hired you
2 years ago for their website.

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michaelalexis
In my early 20s I did a bunch of random freelancing. $2000 for a website, $200
to modify some graphics, $450 for a research project, $250 for sales copy etc.

In 2011 I interviewed Ramit Sethi and wrote a huge article about his system
for $1 million+ product launches:

[http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/01/26/ramit-sethi-
ex...](http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/01/26/ramit-sethi-exposed-how-
he-earns-millions-blogging/)

After that, Ramit reached out to me to help w/ his business. I had shown 1:
that I do a lot of work to be the best (see the above blog post), 2: we had
matching communication styles, 3: he trusted me bc I wasn't some dude that was
trying to shake him down for cash, and almost less important, 4: I had the
technical skills for what he wanted me to do. Ramit became a 5 figure client.

Since then I've followed the same model. 1: provide a huge amount of value for
free, 2: propose recurring work to the client, 3: do a really really good job.
My average client provides about $20,000 work per year.

On pricing: for writing work I charge between $50 and $150 per hour, but I
prefer to just set a day rate. I became a lawyer a few months ago and I'm
leveraging other strategies to bill $550+ per hour. So depending on your
skill-set, you can do pretty well.

If anyone wants more info, you are welcome to email me: malexis@gmail.com

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MysticFear
I have been working remotely for 6 years now. I started off like you
unemployed after a layoff, but during the start of the financial crisis.

I looked at employers around my area, craigslist, job sites, everywhere.
Emails/called to see if they needed any extra help. Started with small
contracts lasting a few weeks. Eventually building up a client list to have
some stable employment.

It wasn't easy, but love it everyday. I always hated the office politics,
annoying drawn out meetings, strict timeframes (work at this time, lunch
during this time, etc). Just a lot more flexibility in life.

My advice is stay updated with technology and have quick response times to
clients.

~~~
ksinghsandhu
I like your advice. Thanks :-)

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chrissnell
I met a girl the same week I started at my job in 2007. We were in San
Antonio, TX and she was my upstairs neighbor and we started dating a month or
two later, then got engaged after about a year and a half. This girl (now my
wife) is a Captain in the US Army. When her time at this duty station was up,
the Army moved us to Colorado. I told my employer (a big cloud hosting
provider based in Texas) that I would be moving but that I wished to keep
working remote somehow, if it were possible. As it happened, my team was
short-handed and so my boss worked out a way for me to stay on as a
contractor. A few months later, the company decided that they wanted to keep
me so they converted me back to a full-time employee and I became the first
(or maybe the second?) remote employee at my company. I recently left to work
remotely for a SFO-based startup but I can tell you that my old employer has
hundreds of remote workers now.

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goshx
I did this a little over 10 years ago, from Brazil.

* How I got the job

I was working for a normal web shop as a developer, going to the office
everyday. This company had an US customer and I was the one who built his
entire system. After some misunderstanding between the customer and the
company's owner, the customer wanted me to work for him directly from home,
and this was discussed with the owner, my boss at the time. My boss agreed and
I started working for this customer from home, and continued to work at the
web shop for some time until he introduced me to another US company who wanted
to hire me for a full time remote position, which I accepted and I still work
for this company to this day. A couple years ago I was relocated to live close
to the HQ so I could be in the office :)

* What advice I'd give to others

\- Discipline/Productivity

You have to be very disciplined in order to be able to work remotely. You need
to pay attention to your time and make sure you work the hours you are getting
paid. You may work less hours, but in a worst case scenario, you end up
working much more than you are supposed to.

\- Communication

Your coworkers can't see you. You boss can't see you. Make sure you keep in
touch and reply to emails in a timely manner. This is key to show that you are
committed to the job.

\- Working from home

If you can, avoid working from home or try not to make the same mistakes I
did, below. The first two months I was working from home full time were great!
Freedom! But then it almost drove me crazy. I had nobody to talk to, I'd
barely leave the apartment. It was a small apartment, so I kept my workstation
in my bedroom... don't do it. Ever. At some point I caught myself working 12
to 16 hours a day. When that happened I wasn't sure if I was working from home
or living at work. (And I wasn't getting paid by the hour). I spoke with my
boss about this issue and the company agreed to rent a small place for me to
work from, since there was no public space or this concept of shared office
that I could use to work from.

* My favorite story

Well, I went from a one guy working alone from home to building a team,
becoming a manager, hiring more people, relocating to the US and becoming a
CTO. And it all started with that first remote job :)

Sorry about the long post. I hope something here is useful for you.

Good luck!

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itafroma
I've been remote-only for 5 years. The company I worked for decided that
remote work would be the way of the future and it'd save a ton of costs, so we
did a trial where a portion of the workforce would work from home each week
until everyone went remote at the end of the year.

I don't really have a favorite story: remote working is not that interesting.
It did have a profound affect on my life, though: since I didn't need to work
at a specific office, I decided that I wanted to move across the country.
Rather than a job opportunity deciding where I lived, I got to spend a few
months weighing the pros and cons of various places based on other factors.
After 6 months, I moved 3,000 miles away and it was one of the best decisions
of my life.

Of course, I probably couldn't have done that if I had any outside, major,
long-term commitments (spouse, children, family I had to stay within driving
distance of, a house, etc.).

If you're in a similar situation, the first bit of advice I can give is that
you're going to find that "nine-to-five" eventually becomes "whenever I feel
like working, as long as I get things done and stay in communication with the
rest of the team". This means working nights or weekends, but it also means
being able to knock off and do something fun in the middle of the day. It's
easy to slip into a situation where you're working 9pm-5am or working
Thursday-Tuesday one week and then a completely different schedule the next,
even if you have a personal schedule (it's easy to ignore it).

If you need a routine to be productive, you need to create one for yourself,
and I would suggest doing it immediately—don't wait until you're all over the
place in terms of time. If you already have outside commitments (like making
sure kids get to school on time or having to walk a dog) you'll have a leg up,
but otherwise I'd suggest joining user groups or community sports or something
that has set schedules you have to keep.

The second bit of advice I can give is to use a phone/video chat as much as
possible. It's very easy to slip into emailing/texting/IMing/ticketing all the
time, but so much is lost in the written word and you can find yourself
implying things you didn't mean to imply or inferring the wrong things from
people's messages. I've found you can diffuse most sticky situations with a
simple call: when in doubt, don't keep emailing, don't stew, call the person.
Even a run-of-the-mill problem that might take a half dozen emails back-and-
forth can usually be resolved with a simple 5 minute phone call.

------
pbnjay
I started out on the many contract working portals, got a few really crappy
jobs to get some ratings in my profile and keep increasing my rate. I kept
everything at arms length until I found people I didn't mind working with for
longer periods of time, at which point I de-listed from the portals. I
continued some of these contract arrangements, and got some great referrals
out of them.

I was a little lucky in that one of the initial contracts was for PHP
development, but they wanted an iOS dev so badly (and I had proved myself by
that point), that they paid for an iPod touch and Apple Developer license in
exchange for me working at the same PHP hourly rate. So basically I got paid
to learn the new skill while adding a portfolio item.

Don't waste a lot of time on the contract work portals. The pay is horrible,
the jobs are crappy, the people are crazy, and it sucks up a lot of time. If
you don't have an existing network though, it'll be a way to get started. The
people you find here which you can actually stand, you can use to build up
your network of referrals. Offer discounts if they give you a chance to get
paid to learn a new skill (but obviously be reasonable - don't get in over
your head).

Time management and Communication are key for success. Client management,
legal terminology, budgeting, etc are also great things to understand.

Good luck!

------
johndavid9991
I'm from the Philippines and we are changing the world remotely.

I started as a trainee for Junior Software Engineer level working with a
startup in Silicon Valley.

The best thing about it is that in just 3 months, I was able to learn HTML and
CSS, Bootstrap, jQuery/JqueryUI, PHP, MySQL, OOP in PHP, MVC using
CodeIgniter, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, Setting up Linux Server from Scractch, SVN,
Git, Agile Project Management and a lot more. My mentor is really good teacher
and at the same time "to struggle is to learn".

After two years, we have 9 more team members, an office. We have built our own
LMS to train more people remotely. We have bootcamps running in MV and
Seattle. We also have consulting projects. We are working with other
entreprenuers and helping them with their startups.

Gmail, ASANA, Skype and screen sharing tools make the world flat for us. Gives
us the feeling that we are working in one place.

The best advise that I could give to others will be 3 things:

1\. Have focus and Love your work. If you don't love what you are doing
remotely, chances are you will not focus. 2\. Company is about the people not
the revenue. This is very critical in a remote setup, you must value your
teammates as if they are your family. 3\. "What Gets Measured Gets Managed" \-
Peter Drucker. We have daily reports, we measure hours spent and assigned
story points to each task.

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ssafejava
I became a remote worker through a mix of bad luck, bad management, and a
startup that wasn't going well. Of course at the time, I thought it was
terrible; it turned out to be incredibly liberating and probably one the best
things that's happened to me, professionally.

I was a software consultant for about a year and it was all networking - after
all, that's how business gets done in the real world. I never had a time where
I had too little work to do. My 'hack' for the whole thing was working in a
coworking space, which is IMO the best ~$300/mo you can ever spend in a city
that has one. I was lucky enough to have been working in one for more than a
year and half before I started working for contract work, but I think you
could easily do it in less time than that. When I started looking for work,
everyone knew somebody; I never went outside of my space to find any work. It
was incredibly convenient and really just worked out easily.

I always advise coders who are looking for freedom, a work environment change,
or are newly unemployed to try a coworking space while they figure things out.
You'll make a bunch of friends in a low-stress environment, meet
entrepreneurs, and make great connections in the community that will get you
work. It has worked well for those I know who have tried it - the secret is
finding the right space. A socially-oriented space with as few walls as
possible is best. You get used to the noise. Take long coffee breaks, go to
lunch with people, go to happy hours and meetups. If you let it be known that
you're looking for work and others know your skills, the jobs will come to
you.

------
zacinbusiness
I started when I was 18. I had a friend who telecommuted for most of his work,
but had to go into the office occasionally and I was interested in a similar
set up.

I started on VWorker (Rent-a-coder at the time) and found a cool gig that
lasted about a year doing mainly research projects for a web design and
marketing company. That job fell through, though, and I was in normal kid-jobs
for a while (retail, gas station worker, even a couple of stints doing factory
work).

Then, I landed a job building a website remotely for a friend-of-a-friend's
business. That worked but it was just a one-off gig, not long-term.

Then I sort of accidentally fell into remote work doing some development on a
desktop app, but again it was a short-term gig.

From there it was about 6 years before I found full-time remote work again
(I'm 28 now and have been with the same company for about 7 months and it
seems to be going strong).

My advice is to never give up, and never give in to the pressure that you will
get from family and friends. If you want to live the work-from-wherever
lifestyle then you have to commit, and the sad truth is that you will probably
have to go hungry sometimes unless you get lucky and land a job on the night
shift of a gas station (it's not too bad until a hooker bleeds on you, yeah
that happened to me).

Remote working, for me, takes a tremendous amount of discipline and it's
really a lot of work. But there are great benefits in that I get more time
with my family and to do the things that I like. But it also means that I have
to be an excellent communicator and that I sometimes have to work when I
normally wouldn't want to (a crisis in Europe doesn't care that it's only 3am
in the US).

------
jtheory
I have been working remotely (as a senior dev, software architect, now a CTO)
for more than a decade now.

I worked for a racing-to-IPO software dev company in upstate NY that collapsed
in 2002, and the connections from that spun out into subcontracting, initially
for various local clients (and thus already mostly remote, sometimes on-site).
Then I moved to Michigan, but kept doing the same work. Then I moved the
France; ditto (included one trip to launch a project on-site, living in a
hotel for 10 days... ugh).

It was tricky, working from so far away (esp. when working with a team of
developers who were on-site), so I worked solo for a few years (my wife
published a well-reviewed first novel, which helped a lot); we had a kid in
2009. In late 2010 I found a dev job with a Cambridge, UK-based startup, here
on HN. Now I'm the CTO. All of the developers here are remote.

My in-laws are in Malaysia, so I'm working (and parenting; we have two
daughters now) in Kuala Lumpur all this month.

I like this setup; it's sometimes really hard (mixing in parenting is the hard
part, really).

More details/advice available if there are questions, when I have time
tonight.

------
hkarthik
I've been a US-based remote worker for close to 3 years now.

I started doing contracting work in Rails while I worked full time in .NET
(while going onsite everyday). I also networked a lot within the local Ruby
community. When I was ready to jump to Rails full time, a friend through the
community was staffing up an early stage startup with remote devs spread
across the city. This was a good way to dip my toes into remote work while
still maintaining local connections.

After a year of that, I jumped to a larger company to join their remote team
of Rails developers (currently about 10 of us are remote). Now I'm pretty
adjusted to the remote lifestyle and it would be very hard to let go of it
since the impact to family life is so positive.

My advice would be to do as many others have done and start with remote
contracting to see how it works. Then you can either convert to full time or
find another full time role later if you need benefits. However, if you can
remain as a contractor I would generally advise people to do that if your
financial situation allows for it.

------
hbien
I've been doing remote work for a little over a year now. My story goes like
this:

1) Saved money and quit job for big vacation -- 2) came home but wasn't ready
for job so started contracting onsite -- 3) eventually introduced to a
remote/part time contract -- 4) started freelancing half time while working on
my own projects half time.

Working remotely is terrific! No commute means an extra 2 hours in my day. I
split my locations between home, coffee shops, and client offices (when they
have offices) for variety.

For anyone who wants to go this route, I recommend building a solid network.
The best contracts I've gotten were through former co-workers and former
clients. Another route I've used are recruiters/agencies (for subcontracting
work). It pays almost as well and there's less of a hassle with marketing and
invoicing. I've also tried using the Hacker News Freelancer threads but the
response rate usually knocks down my confidence a lot.

------
DEinspanjer
Been working from home full time for over six years now.

A couple of warnings:

1\. A danger of working from home is that work is always just a few steps
away. I've lost many hours of my social and family life because I had a
thought running through my brain about a problem I was working on and just sat
down for "a minute" to look at it. :)

2\. If you work for a US company as an employee, the IRS tax credits for home
office expenses are extremely unfavorable. Anything you want to count toward
work has to be kept completely separate from home. If you store household junk
in your office, an auditor can make the case the office isn't deductible. If
you have a business internet connection, but it is also used in the rest of
the house, you can't deduct the whole thing, only a fraction. When I tried to
deduct the expense of building out my home office, it didn't work out to any
sort of noticeable impact on my taxes. :/

Advice:

* Have a schedule and let people know when you are breaking away from it.

* Ensure friends and family know that when you are "at work", they should treat it just the same as if you were out of the house at an office. Make sure they don't feel it is acceptable to just come into your office and interrupt and that you might not be able to just take off on a whim.

* Have a pull mechanism for notifying co-workers of your schedule. People can get irked about lots of e-mails that you are going out for an extended lunch, etc. So set up a calendar or website where people can visit to see if you are available. Using the "Away/Busy" functionality of your IM client helps too.

* Have a pull mechanism for notifying co-workers of your work progress. Make sure you keep your issue management system up to date with what you are working on and lots of checkpoints along the way. A weekly status page similar to a blog might also help. Basically, provide your co-workers with an easy way to see where you are and what you are working on whenever they might need to without being barraged with e-mails.

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fayyazkl
Not exactly full time remote work, but i believe i can get into one if wanted
and approach is nevertheless the same.

I sort of got into part time work via odesk, in addition to a full time day
job. Initially the motivation was money, but very soon i realized multiple
other aspects of it i.e. i used to work for a large MNC back then as a day job
with very long dev cycles and organized work schedules. I learned the skill to
work under pressure of a day or two or night and quickly deliver things that
JUST WORK or being able to learn some thing needed very fast. Also i got a
chance to broaden my skill set a lot by working on any project that interested
me. So i still continue to do that on and off. This also provided me a chance
to work with several open source projects (vlc, dnrd, kannel, netsnmp) and
still make money. So i continue to do it still for all of the above reasons.

How i got into it in the first place? Took tests and scored well in areas i
claimed skills in, charged a lot less initially, under promised and over
deliverd to earn very good feedback, started with small jobs. Once i got a
client satisfied with small jobs, they came back with bigger ones latter.
Gradually increased rates and maintained an online profile i.e. public domain
code written by one's self among other things. During all this, i even had an
option to work full time dedicated to some body for a long time with good
money. Just couldn't find enough time i.e. didn't feel like leaving existing
job and go in.

With remote work, you get to manage your own schedule. But it is harder to be
organized and you need more effort to justify time spent achieving a goal vs
when sitting in an office.

The challenge in latter parts of life (when you have young kids) is to be able
to find enough time to work when you are physically active i.e. sitting late
night on a sofa after kids being asleep with laptop doesn't work very well.

Forgot to mention that this whole effort sort of reduced the fear of being
jobless since one becomes more confident about your possible prospects of work
whether local full time or remote. For this reason every one should work this
way at least for some time in life IMHO.

------
contingencies
I've done a few years on, a few years off, and a few years on. I prefer remote
by far.

Other than a few odd contracts, my real beginning in remote work was when I
worked at one place for a long time, became indispensable, and explained that
I had to move away. They had little option but to allow me to work remotely.
After that succeeded for many years, I had my experience and things became
easier for the next time ... and onward.

I agree with everyone's else's comments here on the challenges and benefits,
but would emphasize very clearly that _it 's not for everyone_.

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scoj
Networking, networking, networking. The secret is to know people. The best
jobs aren't found in the normal job boards but from connections. I started
programming (self taught) while moonlighting. I eventually asked my network
(or people i had met that were already freelancing) to keep me informed if any
extra opportunities arose. Eventually something did and i quit my job for a 6
month gig working mostly from home. I eventually found one project after the
next until my current work which is more long term stable and also work from
home (or anywherw)

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monkey26
I first started at a small web shop that was quite flexible. There were a few
of us who more and more starting working at home, but came to the office the
same 1 or 2 days each week, to work face to face and go to lunch...

Fast forward a few years, and knowing that I could work effectively as a
remote worker.

I co-founded a small company with a guy in a larger city. We ended up setting
up an office in that larger city, but I never moved. Travel as needed, but it
wasn't that much. Then got acquired. The acquiring company has kept me on
contract since then, as a remote worker.

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pushkargaikwad
My Story - I was doing freelancing stuff back in college years from my hostel
room, got hooked to it and kept on doing without doing/taking any job offer.
It is been 8-9 years now and it is been a good ride albeit with many ups and
downs. Working from home has its advantages as you have all the freedom of
thought but it do some serious damage to your social and communication skills
and can make you uni-dimensional.

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davidkrug
About 12 years ago I decided I didn't want to live in the system. I started
freelancing. Doing web design work for churches. Slowly I built other websites
of my own after my dad encouraged me to. Then this turned into actual 6 figure
businesses and I haven't looked back. It hasn't always been easy but by far
it's the best thing I ever did with my life.

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soboleiv
Ukraine. 5 years, Java. 9 month remote now. Been with a company for a year,
fell in love and decided to move to another location:) Offered to switch to
remote.

Advice: * Transparency(what you're doing, when it will be ready, when you're
online, etc) * Discipline(isolate yourself from interruptions and keep
commitments from the above)

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nl
Position: Solution Architect, full time, remote.

Story: Ex-employer wanted me back, but were closing local office. I said ok,
but I'm not moving.

Advice: If possible, don't be the only person doing remote work. That doesn't
work so well.

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Nekorosu
I work remotely for one company for a year and a half. I found my current
employer in a bar on a tropical island partly by luck, partly by my desire to
speak about my work with random people.

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kennethtilton
Here's a tip everyone will understand: email rocks but transmits emotional
tone like two cans and a string. As soon as you detect an edge, as painful as
it is, take out the phone.

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busterarm
Been a remote worker for the same company in two different positions for the
past 5 years.

Not a developer, just IT support here. I had been contract-to-hire working for
a hedge fund for most of 2007. I'd been let go (not hired) based on reasons
that I feel were more cultural than based on my performance. Had I been a
little wiser and realized that I needed to work harder than everyone else
(lack of degree) to prove myself I'd still have that job.

Anyway, I was extremely demoralized and spent the better part of 2008
unemployed. I was burnt out from working long weeks with overtime and didn't
even bother to look for a job the first four months. All of my time was spent
bettering myself (biking, reading) and relaxing -- I had a big pile of money I
was sitting on so it was okay.

I finally started to look for a job in the second half of the year, but I'm
extremely picky and didn't see any companies that I was interested in working
for. I spent some of this time as a bike messenger but hated being treated
like shit by everyone -- still, I think this was a necessary motivator to get
serious about my job search.

By November I was going broke. I finally found a couple of things worth
applying for. I got the interview call for the job I'm in now when I had $9
left to my name and no prospect of further money coming in -- no joke.

It was a bit serendipitous. Like ssafejava said in their comment "it turned
out to be incredibly liberating and probably one the best things that's
happened to me, professionally." At the hedge fund I had to constantly look
busy even if I didn't really have anything to do. Appearances were incredibly
important and being young in my career, it was something I bungled badly. I
was also extremely bad at keeping my coworkers from dumping their work on me
in the office. That's something much harder to do remotely.

Working remotely, all of my work is judged on its own merits. I can manage my
time appropriately with minimal interference from others. I've consistently
been one of the highest-performing employees here. My company was even
contacted by a major newswire to do a story about remote work and they sent
someone to my house to interview me. The story never ran though :(. I don't
work any overtime ever. Work-life balance is ideal.

It's been a great ride, but I'd like to go back to working in an office now
that I'm a bit wiser -- I would like regular interaction with people again;
IRC doesn't always cut it. A mix of office/remote would be best for me I
think.

There is a downside to remote work though. I know for a fact that a fair
number of my bosses/coworkers are doing drugs on the job. I'm not going to
make any judgments about marijuana but we do have some meth users. Management
doesn't want to know anything about it, but the performance of some of these
people is pretty bad. If I worked for a better company this wouldn't be an
issue.

------
Valid
I live in a smallish city (pop. 40k) in Southern Oregon where I've been
working remotely from for the last ~6 years.

I'm a front-end web developer by trade and a single father with two young
kids. My family has lived in this area for a decade and I want my children to
be able to grow up around them, so I am not open to relocation. In 2006, I was
working for one of the only major employers in the city that could really use
an in-house developer, but really didn't enjoy the work or the environment. I
wanted to find a new opportunity, but there just weren't many other options,
so I ended up working there for two years. In 2008, I found an ad on the San
Francisco craigslist job board that sounded perfect for me. Heavy HTML/CSS
work, some JavaScript, and a product that interested me much more than my
current employer. They didn't mention anything about remote work (it wasn't
advertised much then) but I figured it might be worth a shot, and sent them my
resume and a cover-letter. Two days later, the manager of the web department
called me for an interview, and after about 20 minutes of both general
information exchange and specific questions related to the work I would be
doing, I was offered the position. Phone interview for ~20 minutes and I had a
job. I loved it. I worked for that company for 4 years until, last year, they
had to downsize and laid off 90% of the web team, as well as many others. I
was incredibly disappointed, but happy to have had such an excellent employer
for so long. I found out in my subsequent job search that my previous
interview process was a very rare occurrence indeed. It was incredibly
difficult to find remote front-end work that didn't entail knowledge of
technologies that I was too unfamiliar with to be marketable. I did finally
find an another position, this time with a company based in New York. Though
it's not really what I had before, I'm happy that I get to code again.

That's my story, the short version anyway.

I will say that remote work really isn't for everyone. You have to be very
disciplined and self-regulatory. I personally am content most days with only
my own company and my kids when they get out of school. But if you are well-
suited to remote working, it can be amazing. I have a very comfortable home
office with everything I need to stay creative and focused. When I was working
in an office previously, I had a shared desk in a room with no exterior
windows. Now I have 3 exterior windows looking out at a beautiful Southern
Oregon horizon -- trees, mountains, etc. It makes a world of difference.

If you're considering working remotely, I'd suggest a few things right off the
top of my head.

1) Personal upkeep is still important. Working from home means potentially
fewer opportunities to get exercise. Make sure you take regular breaks and
take short walks throughout the day. Also, make sure you have healthy snacks
to tide you over during the day. I find that it's much more tempting to
overeat when you work in the same place you store all of your food. I
personally enjoy baby carrots and celery sticks.

2) Maintain contact with other humans. Grab a drink with your friends, join a
meetup group, or befriend interesting people at coffee shops. It's easy to
become out of touch when your only human contact are those living in your
house and the occasional text/video chats with your co-workers.

3) Set your hours and keep them For the most part, my employers have just
expected me to deliver my work on time. Even so, I still wake up at 8:00 every
morning, make my cup of coffee, then get right to work. I take a short break
at 10:00, 12:00 and 2:00. I try to stop working around 6-7:00.

4) Communicate well The adage, "Out of sight, out of mind" is very true --
when your employer/client/co-workers don't know what you're doing or when
you're doing it, it can reflect poorly on you, even if you're actually working
diligently. Ensure everyone is aware what is happening and when, and promptly
respond to any emails, even if it's just a confirmation that you got the
message.

That's all I've got for now. Feel free to let me know if you have any other
questions!

