How to work remotely as a software developer

As some one who does this every day. This is all good advice.

I would add that it is really really important to occasionally do something different. If you you usually work from home, go to a coffee shop, sit in a restaurant for a few hours on a laptop.

You will be amazed how much of a difference that one day outside your office will make you excited about the same work that the day before seemed like a boring slog.

I've never tried working from a coffee shop but it seems people do.

How does that work out financially? I imagine they aren't too pleased if you just buy a coffee and then occupy space for 5 hours.

But I don't really want to spend a fortune on excessive caffeine consumption and $5 bagels.

I have never worked a whole day from a coffee shop, but I do like to spend an hour or two after lunch in one of the several coffee shops in my neighborhood. I'll order a coffee and maybe a sparkling water. I find the change of scenery helps get my focus back, especially if I'm having trouble concentrating that day.

No surprises there, but good solid advice that a lot of people need to hear. Well done.

The one thing I'd add is that working remotely means working away from machines as well as people - test machines, internal websites, etc. Even companies that are generally supportive of remote workers (like mine) often scatter essential information and resources across an annoying variety of machines that are not accessible from outside. Then they give you a VPN that's utter crap (usually because it's overloaded) or ssh to a bastion host so you have to tunnel/forward anywhere else. It's really worth the effort to make sure you use every trick in the book to get networking on your home machines and/or laptops set up in a way that actually allows you to get work done. I'm pretty darn good at that kind of stuff, but even so it took me several experiments over a period of weeks to get something I was happy with - and BTW it bears no resemblance at all to what the IT group thought would suffice. Similarly, it pays to make sure that using test machines is as friction-free as possible, and that common tasks are automated as much as possible so that you don't have to keep watching/tweaking things from afar. All good sense even if you're not remote, but even more important when you are.

I did it for a few months while moving to a new city before I had my own place. It wasn't too bad. I'd buy a basic coffee (and sometimes a cheap bagel) and find a corner to setup in. At lunch, I'd pack up and find something to eat, then head to a different place and buy a coffee. Sometimes I'd go to the library instead. It wasn't any more expensive than going out with coworkers for lunch every day...

Most businesses did't seem to mind people hanging out, makes the place look busier I guess. I figure as long as there are other empty seats I'm not in anyone's way. That said, if I did it again I'd probably tip a lot more than I had been tipping.