I'm current working at a IT services company in the Netherlands as a consultant for everything Microsoft for 3 years after graduating with honours from a local university. I'm mainly specialized in the Microsoft Web stack and Xamarin: got my MCSD's for Azure, Web Applications and I am a certified Xamarin developer. This means I know my way in full-stack architecture, DevOps, ASP.NET MVC, but also stuff like PHP, Angular, React and D3 aren't unfamiliar to me.
My consulting job takes 50h/week (with traffic), I moonlight another 24 hours a week as a freelancer, honing my skills as broadly as I can. As long as I learn something (and the pay is reasonable) I'm up. I've always been driven by passion and ambition, and by the need to do something new (preferably impossible at the time of saying 'yes'), and I'm thinking about applying for a remote worker position because my consulting job no longer triggers my passion and amibition....
I've been doing lots of jobs on the side, learning new technologies as they appeared, and that makes me think a 'remote' job as a worker for one of the "who's hiring" companies would be a good bet. Something new every day, being pushed to the limit by your teammates, working as a whole to crank out those awesome features for clients every day. I think I can be a a great asset with my knowledge (I'm full stack after all), allbeit knowledge of another stack (MS). Obviously I would only choose a startup if a) they would have me and b) I believe in the product (-:
I'd love for some of the readers to share their experiences with working for a startup (especially remotely). Some questions out the of the top of my mind are:
- Would you want to go back to your previous job? What if they paid you double?
- Working for a startup means putting in a lot more than the regular 40 hours / week we're used to in Europe. Is this hard on you? Does this affect your social life much?
- What are some of the downsides to working for a startup?
- Did you find your passion?
