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Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#51

Post by Vivtek »

I've worked remotely since 1995.

The main problem was, is, and shall ever be communication - but that's the same if you're face-to-face. I actually communicate better via email and forum than face-to-face, so remote work is good for me.

Especially in freelancing situations, it's a natural fit for how people like to do business; you have to organize yourself more carefully than if you were simply sitting next to your customer, but that's not actually all that onerous.

I wouldn't go back to commuting for anything. Life's too short.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#52

Post by Swizec »

stefano wrote: post #30
Swizec wrote: post #2

I 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…

How did you get started? Since you're not local, I'm curious about how you found your first clients in the US.

I started out by emailing people who post in the monthly "looking for freelancer" threads here on HN. Sometimes even job boards.

Although lately a much better model has turned out to be having a "Email me if you need a freelancer" link on my blog - produces, on average, one email per week. All from americans since that's where most of my traffic comes from.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#53

Post by thhaar »

Vivtek wrote: post #49
thhaar wrote: post #47

Freelance translator here. 4 years working at home in a few countries for companies around Europe. . Perhaps it is largely personality based, but I've always enjoyed it. Deadlines keep me on track and side-projects fill the spare working capacity. So work does get done and, as others have said, more besides. . Productivity is not a problem, especially when you learn to down-tools when you feel you need to, rather tha…

Now wait - I'm a freelance translator, too, so naturally I am curious to know how you're avoiding deadlines...

Definitely not avoiding them in my freelance work - they help to keep me on schedule.

The 'no deadlines' line at the end refers to the translation community/tools startup I launched recently - that's a new kind of remote work for me and will need adjustment from the world of deadlines.

Once I start working on a site, I can be absorbed for hours and deadlines become superfluous as I could do in a day what would take a secure-salaried staffer a week. But managing freelance projects and startup promo is a challenge.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#54

Post by toddmorey »

I like distributed teams because they force you really figure out communication and your team processes. It's hard work, but the reward for getting it right is that you have access to talent all over the world.

That said, I think the experience varies based on your situation. I'd be careful signing up to be the first or only remote worker. You'll find you miss out on a lot of the conversations where decisions happen; people can forget to dial you in or bring you up to speed. Don't underestimate how much work you'll have to do to keep the communication flowing. Working remote is a lot easier on a team that has other remote workers.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#55

Post by nehalmehta »

It has been awesome experience for me. I have been working as remote consultant since at least 2 years. And with all tools available right now, I think it is best time to execute anything from anywhere. I think besides different time zone world is really flat.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#56

Post by ssgrfk »

Its entirely up to the people. I've hired 3 contractors for remote work in my life. the first one, on 'mates rates' left the job half done which taught me the lesson: pay people what they're worth. The 2nd + 3rd have been great so far. Communication is key.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#57

Post by gexla »

nulluk wrote: post #41
gexla wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- 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." I understand the code part of this problem. I think it's good to have a set estimate on how long the item should take so that as soon as yo…

I have to disclose I am a remote worker for JonAtkinson. I believe set estimates are not the best way to approach this problem because how do you estimate it? If you are in new territory then what seems trivial to one person may require some research and extra understanding by another. Also when you set a deadline it becomes more of a target for the individual action and instills a time wasting mentality. It's especi…

The estimate wouldn't be a deadline or for billing purposes. It would be more of a tripwire for "this task needs attention" to make sure a developer doesn't get bogged down in a task that he / she is unwilling to admit defeat on. Sometimes all that is needed is a fresh perspective from someone else to look at the task and offer a different approach. Think about those situations where you bang your head on a wall for far too long on a problem and then take a break or sleep on the problem and then fix it immediately when you get back to the task. Another developer could also offer this fresh perspective. The task may simply be bigger than originally estimated and the discussion may be no more than "okay, adjust the estimate and keep doing your thing."

Also, in some cases there actually would need to be a deadline and there would need to be pressure. It depends on your situation. X startup working on their own application may have wiggle room for their timeline, but I do mostly client work where our deadlines are pretty much set. Often I need to give estimates which the rest of the team will use as part of tracking and projecting the overall timeline as well as setting the expectations for the client.

I agree with you though. It sounds like you guys have a great setup.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#58

Post by hippich »

hopeless wrote: post #23

I've worked as a (semi-)remote employee for the past 2.5 years for a HUGE multinational software company. Here's a braindump of experiences: - I work in Ireland and my colleagues are in the US. The time zone difference is generally handy because I can work in the mornings and they come online around 1:30pm. So my afternoons (or their mornings) are when meetings and scrum calls happen. I don't attend any meetings outs…

If you are already comfortable with remote working, why not to become independent consultant, rake up your compensation 2-3 times and spend 1/2 - 1/3 time on client's project and other time on traveling/hobby/family and learning/researching?

No matter where you live, once you get enough references and track of success - you will get this 2x - 3x rate easily.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#59

Post by lshevtsov »

I'm a remote Ruby developer. Most of our team is on-site.

My main problem is: online communication makes discussion much more complicated than face-to-face, so you don't contribute as much ideas when people brainstorm or otherwise solve creative problems. If you have a lot of ideas, that can be depressing.

I visit the office several times a year, mostly to share thoughts and socialize.

Re: Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers?

#60

Post by nigma »

I've worked remotely as a consultant doing full-stack web app development for over 3 years. Before that and after graduating I had a nice full-time office job for about 1 year.

The decision to replace a stable job with an uncertain entrepreneurial environment required a huge mental change from me (something that's due to local culture aspects), but the opportunity to simply work on what I like doing became irresistible at some point.

As far as the pros and cons of working remotely are concerned, I think the biggest advantage is that the projects I work on now are infinitely more interesting that any local job I could find. I like to learn and every new project brings new challenges.

I also like to travel and business trips have been a great opportunity to visit many places in Europe and US.

The downside is that if you are a consultant/freelancer targeting foreign market you have to be prepared for idle time in you business. The fact that you have several offers now doesn't mean you will have any 3 months later. It's good to have a contingency plan.

Also, if you are self-employed you have to deal with bureaucracy and accountants. For many companies it's just easier to work with people that issue invoices rather than going through a process of hiring foreigners. The overhead depends on the country you are living in and sometimes can be a real distraction. Outsource as much of that as you can.

Another thing that is a bit frustrating is that many companies back out when they hear I'm interested in working remotely, even though they are unable to find engineers on the local market and I can provide them with comparable if not better service. I've made the mental change, now it's time for you. My only tip is: hire managers of one [1].

[1] http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1430-hire-managers-of-one

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