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Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

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Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#81

Post by realbarack »

pimterry wrote: post #21

One thing to look out for is remote-first companies, not just remote-ok companies. Zach Holman has a good post on this: https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/ If you're one of few people in the company working remotely (or worse: one of few in your team), you get cut off really easily. Remote practices won't be up to scratch (because most people aren't using them), meetings will happen in person and dialing you i…

That said, I've heard it's much more challenging to get jobs at remote-first companies because they have a larger pool to draw on. Does anyone know if this tends to be the case?

Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#83

Post by xchaotic »

saurabhjha wrote: post #4

I have been working remotely for a few months now after spending many years in offices and I agree I am much more productive. You might want to check out https://www.toptal.com You might also like reading this book "Remote" written by BaseCamp founders. I read it last weekend and I think it's great.

I sent this to my ex-employer along with my resignation letter. Didn't help me, but they are now accepting remote workers.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#84

Post by junto »

altuzar wrote: post #77
junto wrote: post #53

I've been remote working for 12 years. My opinion as to a successful remote working relationship is as follows: - Trust. You need to build it on both sides. Your employer needs to trust you to deliver what they expect. You need to trust your employer to build their team to include you even though you're sometimes not so visible. - Space. Get yourself out of the home office and into a local coworking space. You'll tha…

Loved your advise. I've been working remotely for almost 2 years and will never go back to an office, but it's good to still have a relationship in a coworking space and weekly meetings with everyone.

Exactly. I still get the office social life, and regularly chat to fellow co-workers by the coffee machine or go to lunch together, but I only have to walk two minutes round the block to get to work. My primary client is in another country so commuting wouldn't be viable anyway.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#85

Post by junto »

cagmz wrote: post #65
junto wrote: post #53

I've been remote working for 12 years. My opinion as to a successful remote working relationship is as follows: - Trust. You need to build it on both sides. Your employer needs to trust you to deliver what they expect. You need to trust your employer to build their team to include you even though you're sometimes not so visible. - Space. Get yourself out of the home office and into a local coworking space. You'll tha…

What's the difference between being onsite and working 'remotely' at a coworking space?

For me it's about 1000 kilometres.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#86

Post by DominikR »

realbarack wrote: post #81
pimterry wrote: post #21

One thing to look out for is remote-first companies, not just remote-ok companies. Zach Holman has a good post on this: https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/ If you're one of few people in the company working remotely (or worse: one of few in your team), you get cut off really easily. Remote practices won't be up to scratch (because most people aren't using them), meetings will happen in person and dialing you i…

That said, I've heard it's much more challenging to get jobs at remote-first companies because they have a larger pool to draw on. Does anyone know if this tends to be the case?

Getting the job - not necessarily harder, but keeping it - definitely.

The thing is that these companies need their remote employees to be persons with exceptionally strong discipline who are also self driven.

So you can be a very good engineer that also performs given tasks within a reasonable timeframe, but if the person managing the team has to constantly hold your hand (which is harder remote) or you are too passive you'll be fired quickly.

Regarding the skill level (at least what I've seen until now): Yes, generally these people have more experience than the average engineer (of course I'm not talking about the average Google or Facebook engineer here), but it's nothing insurmountable, almost anyone could do it provided the will to improve.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#87

Post by ensiferum »

Depends where you work. If your workplace allows you to make a career on your skills (assuming you have those) then you might have a chance even if you work remotely. If you work in an organization (or don't have the technical skills) that needs non technical skills for career progression (i.e. bullying, ass licking, good luck, perseverance) then remote is unlikely to work for you. First step for you is to identify the organization you work at.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#88

Post by StavrosK »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #79
StavrosK wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with Toptal wasn't great, I tried to join and got a programming puzzle for the first interview (actually an online coding test), which was barely tangential to actual programming experience. They also want you to complete an unpaid project, which I heard takes around 30 hours.

From my experience, they weren't puzzles. They were pretty straightforward to do if you are familiar with arrays and hashes/dictionaries and when to use which.

Mine were different, the solution to one was literally "return len(x) - x.count(a)". If you didn't realize that, you spent an hour battling off-by-one errors.

Re: Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

#89

Post by thingamarobert »

drusepth wrote: post #30

Lots of good information here already, but I also wanted to throw in Zapier's Guide to Remote Work[1]. It's very long but provides a ToC for you to jump to what's relevant to you, but the gist is that it discusses the pros and cons of remote work from both the employer and the employee's point of view. You're probably learning many of the benefits of remote work already (but there might still be some tips for you in…

This is great! Seems like someone made a new post with just this link and that's trending on HN :).
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