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Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

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Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#141
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like bliss to me. How did you get the citizenship of Thailand?

You can't but there are some options for a long term visa, easiest is an elite visa where you pay a few thousand dollars for 5 years of stay. Cheaper is a visa to take lessons in Thai language, that way you can get a visa for a few years.

You can also get married to a Thai citizen.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#142
Has it hurt my career? Maybe. I work for a small company As far as learning from others, I worked in office for the first 5ish years as a programmer. I learned a lot, but there is only so much you can learn in a tech department of 2 people. To offset this I secured a budget from my boss to purchase learning material, and go to conferences. In my personal time I occasionally go to tech meetups, and work on side projects. I am introverted so I wouldn't attend conferences and meetups if it wasn't for the fact I work remote.

Has it hurt my networking opportunities? NO! In fact it has helped them. The first 3 years after switching to remote, I made friends with programmers at several other companies, through the above mentioned educational stuff. These new friends at one time or another all promised to help me get a job at their company if I ever needed it. After that I started traveling. I went to 7-8 countries a year, living a location independent lifestyle. In just over 2 years I have made many new friends, and contacts. Some have taught me new things, and others have offered me contract work.

Has it hurt communication, and bonds with coworkers? Yes. With the other tech worker nothing much changed except he complains about my time shifted schedule when he can't reach me at noon, and praises that same schedule when I fix a down server at 3am. :-D With the non technical workers there seems to be a disconnect. I have done several things to offset this problem. First I show up at the office for 1 week every year to reconnect. I try to bring everyone a small trinket from some far off place. While at the office I initiate a performance review with my boss. While out of the office, I do many small things. Things like, initiate some small talk before the end of a 1 on 1, reach out to a coworker with a call instead of an IM, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#143

I would say it hasn't hurt me, but while I work remotely, I don't work from home. I have found a coworking space where there are a ton of independent workers like myself. This allows me to have the flexibility of a remote job, but the social benefits of an office ( and without the drama in my case). I have also found it invaluable for networking.

I've considered doing this, but I can't figure out if the networking upside would be outweighed by the "annoying people making lots of noise" downside. Not to mention I really like my setup at home, which I value more than I realized. Now that I'm working from home, I'm finding it hard to pry myself out.

My coworking space has "Quiet Zones" where I work and know I won't be disturbed. I also bought noise cancelling headphones.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#144
I've worked remotely since late 2004 with one six month exception. It's hard to answer questions like "did it hurt my career" because there's no control group to test against. What I can say is that it has worked out particularly well for me, and part of that is because I don't have any particular ambition to rise up in management (I'm a dev.) Although I think it is possible to advance a career into management working remotely, it is probably more difficult to build the personal relationships necessary to do so. If, on the other hand, you're like me: quite satisfied with coding in silence in a spare bedroom without other people around, it's perfect. I get to do what I want, I don't have to commute, and the office rumor mill isn't a big factor in my life. I will continue to work remotely for as long as I can pull it off.
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