

How common is it to work remotely as a programmer? - thepredestrian

Is it fairly common for programmers to work for a company but remotely as well? Like work from home mmajority of the time and meet up only for meetings&#x2F;updates etc
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jarstorm
Hello.

I´ve been looking for a remote job since 2013 and I think it´s very hard to
find them.

In that way I found a new company called watho (watho.net).

We are a company focused on contacts between companies which have remote jobs
available with the applicants from any part of the world.

Currently we have 4 remote open positions.

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MichaelCrawford
I've been working remotely off and on since 1991, and for most of the time
since 1998. I advise you that it's not as great as it's made out to be - often
it is very lonely. When you're stuck on a problem, there may be no one to turn
to for help.

I've gotten very good at finding the work, and recently decided to share my
leads with others:

[http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/telecommute/](http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/telecommute/)

These are only a few of the remote or telecommute jobs I know about - the
others I just haven't posted yet, but will do so soon.

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zura
I wander how many of them accept overseas (Europe) candidates...

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MichaelCrawford
I have some links to European companies coming up soon.

It's a great deal of work to research these links. Not so much to post them
once I find them, but to find them in the first place. I have some ideas as to
how to make it easier, but have not yet tried to actually implement any.

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zura
Also, one thing to remember - jobs are not constant entities, you could have
find them in this month but half of them would disappear for next month...
i.e. timing matters.

In my experience, finding remote jobs for popular techs are quite easy (mobile
apps dev, web dev). But it is a challenge to find some good remote job for
non-web, e.g. C++/systems/desktop dev.

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MichaelCrawford
some kinds of sysadmin are easily done remotely. So is tech support. It
depends on whether the job requires access to the console, or opening the case
to install cards.

If you're looking for remote tech support work that's of a more advanced
nature - NOT! "Click the OK button until it turns black" \- apply with Luke
Crawford - no obvious relation - at [http://prgmr.com/](http://prgmr.com/)

Luke's a good guy. If he can't hire you I expect he could refer you to someone
who can.

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zura
Thanks, but under "systems" I meant systems programming, not sysadmin stuff.
At the moment I'm working on a great gig, I just shared my experience of
finding good remote gigs in general.

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bowlich
I have been working remote for two years now. The office is 800 miles away and
I stop in four times a year to say hello.

My experience has been that a good number of smaller companies in smaller
cities (U.S. Midwest, cities with populations under 100,000), that just can't
find local talent and so reluctantly pick up remote workers to fill their
ranks.

As another poster said. It is lonely. I pay for a co-working office out of
pocket so I can get out of the house. If most of the team is in-house and
management didn't really "want" to be managing a remote team, then you end up
being treating as a kind of necessary evil whose sidelined and left out of the
loop most of the time.

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JoeAltmaier
{ Shameless Plug } Its better if you can interest the main office in a
collaboration tool, such as Sococo offers. It may improve your feeling of
being included. It certainly increases the opportunity for communication.
Sococo tries hard to remove friction from remote collaboration, without
sacrificing privacy. For instance folks can see you are working in your
virtual office, but your door is closed so they have to knock to talk to you.

I work with engineers in three states. We're all in a virtual office space,
talking as needed (with webcam if desired) and sharing documents. Or just
chatting on a variety of channels. I honestly don't know who is in which
state, without asking.

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bowlich
Thanks! I realize there's a slew of technologies out there for alleviating
this problem and there's plenty of virtual teams that do a great job at it.

That said, I've come to the conclusion that for a virtual team to really work
the company culture really has to be on board with the idea. Particularly I
think it works best when the whole team or a majority is working remotely or
semi-remotely.

The two firms that I've been with so far had only one or two remote workers on
an otherwise in-house team that was managed very much in the 9-5 butt-in-seat
tradition. They reluctantly went with remote workers out of necessity and with
management that isn't too hot on communicating other than in person and firing
up a webcam is considering something worthy of planning out days in advance
and reserving a conference room.

Needless to say, I'm looking for a more remote-friendly team these days, but I
do think it's a good warning to anyone looking into remote work. Find out what
proportion of the team is working remote, really try to access the team
culture for supporting those remote workers, and do concern yourself with how
much buy-in management has to the idea.

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JoeAltmaier
Right on all counts. We've had to train our 'home office' folks to have only
virtual meetings. Every time they tried to gather and include us, it was a
tragedy of seeing the backs of people's heads and hearing only mumbling from
the audience.

If everybody is on board with the tools, then you hear all the comments, see
who said what, and can chat privately too. Definitely BETTER than in-person
meetings in many ways.

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hkarthik
It's become fairly common in the startup world to have a few remote
programmers, usually due to not being able to find local talent with a
specialized skill at a good price.

Some big companies are getting into it, largely through acquiring startups or
small companies that were already doing it. But these are much more rare. The
majority of remote work will be for smaller companies and startups.

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whywhywhy5
It's less common, but if you're willing to contract for the company then
working remotely isn't too difficult to find.

If you want a salary, then it's easier to start off working on-site then ask
to transition to remote down the line - or ask for more flexibility like 1 day
off the week, etc.

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gamechangr
Remote jobs are harder to find, but they do exist.

There are many, many jobs that have a two or three day work from home option.

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haidrali
Thanks to Skype, Github these have made remote working like never before. Its
very common buddy

