If we live in a global world, why not establish a global job market based on remote working?
What are the main problems?
Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
1–10 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#2I work remotely as a freelancer and my experience has been nothing but awesome.
I'm from the CET timezone and the people I usually work with are either in PST or EST so there's a 6 to 8 hour time difference. Here are some of the benefits I've observed:
- I'm a night owl, so I can directly communicate with the people paying me
- even though I like long mornings, I still have at least 5 hours to work before employers wake up (makes for efficient-er communication because I already know what I need)
- the US is full of cool startups working with technologies I actively follow and take an interest in. (locally I've been smashed into teams still on svn ... on new projects)
- sad but true, in Slovenia nobody pays you the next day after sending an invoice, you are legally mandated to allow up to 14 days for payment and everyone takes that way too seriously (and often even overshooting) - US people have so far always paid me the day after invoicing
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#3I work remotely as a freelancer and my experience has been nothing but awesome. I'm from the CET timezone and the people I usually work with are either in PST or EST so there's a 6 to 8 hour time difference. Here are some of the benefits I've observed: - I'm a night owl, so I can directly communicate with the people paying me - even though I like long mornings, I still have at least 5 hours to work before employers w…
Do you work from home or do you go to some co-working space? One of the main concerns i find for a remote employee is that people somehow need to socialize with their coworkers, feel part of something., and that part may be missing if you work from home
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#4I work remotely as a freelancer and my experience has been nothing but awesome. I'm from the CET timezone and the people I usually work with are either in PST or EST so there's a 6 to 8 hour time difference. Here are some of the benefits I've observed: - I'm a night owl, so I can directly communicate with the people paying me - even though I like long mornings, I still have at least 5 hours to work before employers w…
Do you work from home or do you go to some co-working space? One of the main concerns i find for a remote employee is that people somehow need to socialize with their coworkers, feel part of something., and that part may be missing if you work from home
I work from home mostly, sometimes from coffee shops. Used to like a coworking space, but then it got too serious and office-like and drained all the fun out of itself. All the mojo was gone.
Socializing with people happens over twitter and at college, sometimes at a events, I make sure to go partying at least once every two weeks etc.
The only problem with working from home is the "But you're home anyways, you can take care of this and this and this" syndrome.
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#5I am a remote cakephp developer from the Philippines. I have been at the most productive stage of my career. I do invest to make my work the highest possible quality. A home office so I can concentrate, I buy new equipment (iMac 24") and I have two internet connections.
My main problem right now is getting burned out. I stay at home most of the time and it is quite depressing sometimes.
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#6I've been working almost exclusively remotely for 1.5 year (2 weeks on site in 2011) and I really like it as a freelancer. My clients are happy too :)
Just like setting a price, requiring remote work filters out the clients I would not enjoy working with. People with remote working habits I've worked with tend to be good at communicating, sharing issues (even psychological ones), giving visibility overall etc. Otherwise you're in trouble.
So yes: the future is now - if you wish :)
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#7Working as a data scientist with a remote boss: communication was much more difficult. No telephony or software solution came close to standing on front of a shared whiteboard. Which sucks, because I really wish it did. Maybe what we need is actual The biggest win I've seen is with ops teams. I hope I'm not betraying any confidences, but a previous employer had an international ops team so as the americans were going to bed the ukranians came on. It made ops a lot less shitty -- I do not like being tired, it makes me cranky and pissed. The issues may still be annoying but at least you aren't being screwed by bad software at 3am, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#8I am a remote cakephp developer from the Philippines. I have been at the most productive stage of my career. I do invest to make my work the highest possible quality. A home office so I can concentrate, I buy new equipment (iMac 24") and I have two internet connections. My main problem right now is getting burned out. I stay at home most of the time and it is quite depressing sometimes.
I work from home too. I make sure to detect when it goes bad, and focus more on well-being when it does.
Things like: going out one or two times a day (walking, biking), taking a regular yoga course (I do that), having periods where you stop working earlier, periods with no computers, reading books etc, seeing people, cooking...
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#9Any experience as remote employers?
Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?
#10I'm an employer.
Quick background: We're a small Django consultancy/web app development company based in the UK. 7 people, all remote, split as three developers, one frontend dev, one designer, one sales, one administrator. I'm a developer/managing director.
Our experience with remote working has been largely very positive.
- It keeps our overheads very low. I think that when we remove our staff wage bill, our operating expenses are about £200 a month, which is mainly service subscriptions. If we accommodated everyone in an office, we'd be looking at spending at LEAST £3000/month on rent alone. This cash being available has meant that we can expand the company quickly, pay developers well, and still afford to take the team out to conferences and the occasional get-together and night out.
- Remote working means that your processes and working practices need to extremely well defined from the outset. All our interactions are online, so clear, unambiguous communication and good project organisation and management are essential. Of course, there is an overhead in this level of communication that might not be necessary if we were colocated, but I think that overall it benefits us.
- We are also able to expand our hiring pool. We've recently taken on a freelancer in Poland part-time (we knew him from when he lived in the UK), and we're not making adjustments to suit him; we're already well adapted.
- The tools which exist make up for a great deal of the shortcomings of remote working (we use Skype, Trello and HipChat mainly, with the occasional VNC/Skype screenshare session). This is a huge contrast to even a couple of years ago,
The disadvantages are almost entirely human factors:
- I think it's easy to 'hide' from the team if a developer is having a problem (either with their code, or their motivation). It's easy to coast through an unproductive day and there is often a delay in the other team members realising that a project is falling behind schedule.
- Sometimes working remotely can feel isolating. A few of our developers who live near to each other sometimes meet up at one location and work for a day, and I get feedback that everyone feels refreshed after. We have quarterly 'get together days', where we talk mainly about strategy and review our processes and performance, but I think we need to start having 'work together days', just to keep the morale and motivation high.