Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

I had a profile lurking at Upwork.com, and while the platform itself is "race to the bottom", there are quality clients and good freelancers there too. I have been on both hiring and freelancing end of the table.

I ended up working for 2 years for same client full-time. Best job I ever had, and 100% remote.

So my advice, create yourself a good profile at upwork.com and who knows what may happen. In my case, client found me, I was not looking for anything serious in there.

I've been working for my company* for nine years, last two remote. My move was absolutely for lifestyle reasons, and was supported thoroughly by my managers of the day, and my current manager still.

What has been interesting to watch though is the culture clash that happened when my employer was acquired by a similar company without a remote workforce, where we'd always had some.

My original company has essentially gone away as the office was closed, keeping only remote employees. A few from that city were kept, and too are now remote from the head office thousands of km away. I had the advantage of already being remote, and kept because I provide value. I don't know how likely it is though that new remote employees will get hired. As an ironic twist, the HR director is one of the newly-remote employees without an office base.

I've been working remotely since the beginning of this year and was having the same questions, so I approached some experienced remote workers about the challenges that they face and how they overcome them. For me the “loneliness” aspect of a remote lifestyle (lacking colleagues etc) was a bit of a concern which led me to create a startup based around that very concept! I wrote down the learning points that I picked up from these experienced remote workers here:

http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/11/02/challenges-every-rem...

Other articles that might help you: 1. 7 Tools that will boost a remote workers' productivity on the road every day: http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/10/21/7-tools-will-boost-r... 2. How to negotiate a remote work agreement with your employer: http://www.theremotetrip.com/2016/10/12/how-to-negotiate-a-r...

Hope it helps.