Comments on: Calling all remoties

By: fantasai

fantasai — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:39:29 +0000

The best thing I did was join a coworking space. Before that I worked from home and would go to a cafe occasionally just to get out of the house and not go stir-crazy, but my schedule was haphazard and I didn’t spend much time with other people. Joining a coworking space gave me a community to spend the day with, and a place to go that was not home but was a comfortable, external place to work. I didn’t have a dedicated desk there, just picked a seat at one of the the open tables. Some days I’d work from there, and other days I’d work from home, and occasionally I’d travel to an office somewhere to work with someone in person for a few days. And that worked for me.

By: Russ S.

Russ S. — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 22:22:42 +0000

I used to work remotely as a software developer and liked it a lot. I worked for a small company, so I was constantly communicating with my boss and coworkers via IM and email throughout my work day. I had very few problems separating “work time” from “home time”, even though I was usually working from home. It helped to designate specific work hours and keep track of them.

I think the hardest part was training my family and roommates to respect my work time. For example, sometimes my sister would ask me to babysit while I was working, but that never really worked and I’d always wind up taking part of the day off. Maybe some people can multi-task like that, but for me, writing code requires all of my focus.

Sometimes I would go to nearby coffee shops to work, but that starts to feel awkward after a few hours of sitting there by yourself. The library was an enticing idea, but it wasn’t an option for me because I needed to take calls sometimes. Occasionally I’d wish for access to a communal office-type space, but the pricing for those spaces was a bit out of my range.

Overall though, I think that working from home can be a good fit for the right person and the right job.

By: groovecoder

groovecoder — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:42:36 +0000

Probably the single most important thing for remote workers is that they have to believe strongly in the mission of the company. When I tell people I work from home they always say, “Oh I could never do that – I wouldn’t get any work done.” I usually think to myself, “Wow, then you must not like your job very much.” I frequently put in 50+ hours of work a week simply because I strongly believe in Mozilla’s mission.

As a coder, one practice I’ve taken up is to leave my editor open all the time. (vim doesn’t take many system resources) “We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.” http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html It helps me start focusing on work in the morning instead of being distracted all day. In an office there are other people around that will notice if you spend all day on distractions.

By: njn

njn — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 01:15:53 +0000

My main observation comes from being a remotie in an awkward timezone. My feeling is that being in an awkward timezone is a bigger disadvantage than being a remotie.

For example, during the southern hemisphere summer I’m only 5 hours behind MV which makes things much better than the southern hemisphere winter when I’m 7 hours behind. E.g. in the southern summer when I start work at 9am it’s 2pm in MV instead of 4pm, which gives me two hours of extra overlap with North Americans. This makes lots of things easier, in particular attending meetings (though there are still plenty that I can’t) and getting answers to questions on IRC.

Similarly, IRC is pretty dead on my Mondays (North American Sundays).

By: @schalkneethling

@schalkneethling — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 19:52:10 +0000

John O’Duinn: Calling all remoties http://t.co/253Y5qp9