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Working remotely, 4 years in

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Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#191

Post by justonepost »

plekter wrote: post #105
justonepost wrote: post #42

Bingo: "My current theory about this is – as long as I work on a team with a lot of other remotes, everything will be fine. " reality is, if your team is 80-90% not remote, forget about career advancement. People who show up have two things, a) they want to advance their careers so will use proximity to their advantage and b) don't understand why they can't be working remotely. Plus of course processes and culture ar…

> reality is, if your team is 80-90% not remote, forget about career advancement. That's quite a sweeping statement - and doesn't resonate with me at all. I fit that statistic, but I work in a company that has a mature process for career advancement and that also has multiple sites scattered across the world. I cannot claim that remote work has held me back career-wise. That is, I'm still quite early in my career, ma…

In rare instances it'll work if you're incredibly in the top 5% of gifted. But, the thing with that, is only 5% of engineers are in that group.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#192

Post by rboyd »

mbrameld wrote: post #166
cpayne624 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the typical response to pair push-back. And I have no interest in convincing anyone why it is not for me. I will interview.

Yes, you will interview, because you'd be fired. I'm looking to build a team, not a collection of individuals. You don't have the necessary skills.

His point is that he doesn't want to work in your environment of programming to the least common denominator. It's perfectly reasonable that you want to build a team of interchangeable parts. It's also reasonable that most expert programmers don't want to be tethered to mediocrity.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#193

Post by draw_down »

The whole reason remote work is feasible, is that the problems we deal with, as well as the politics of the companies we work for, transcend place. In other words, it’s the same as working in an office as far as the actual work and the working relationships are concerned. Sure you video chat more, and eat lunch together less, and try to find ways of addressing that difference. But, in many ways it’s the same. I wish I felt as ecstatic as some of my fellow commenters here claim to.

But ultimately, it’s just another way of working, and the basic unpleasantness of working in corporate America/tech industry remains. Don’t get me wrong, I relish the ability to do my laundry when nothing is going on. But it’s not really that different, and the things that bum me out about working are mostly not to do with office space, though I do lament the move to open offices.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#195

Post by mailshanx »

blunte wrote: post #113

Most career stories are unique and driven by the circumstances and the person involved. So one's experiences may be very different from another's. My experience working remotely for 10 of the last 13 years is that it suits me very well and leaves me feeling _differently_ than when I worked in an office. I don't know if I can say I'm happier, but I'm generally more satisfied. I work MUCH harder and I work MANY more ho…

Care to share your career story?

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#196

Post by wolco »

mbrameld wrote: post #166
cpayne624 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the typical response to pair push-back. And I have no interest in convincing anyone why it is not for me. I will interview.

Yes, you will interview, because you'd be fired. I'm looking to build a team, not a collection of individuals. You don't have the necessary skills.

Why not hire senior developers who do not need to pairup in order to read and understand the changes happening in the codebase?

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#197

Post by plekter »

justonepost wrote: post #191
plekter wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reality is, if your team is 80-90% not remote, forget about career advancement. That's quite a sweeping statement - and doesn't resonate with me at all. I fit that statistic, but I work in a company that has a mature process for career advancement and that also has multiple sites scattered across the world. I cannot claim that remote work has held me back career-wise. That is, I'm still quite early in my career, ma…

In rare instances it'll work if you're incredibly in the top 5% of gifted. But, the thing with that, is only 5% of engineers are in that group.

So you see it as a general career progression impediment - even the gifted gets "slowed down" progression wise?

Are you talking from personal experience, or guessing? I strongly suspect a lot of this depends heavily on how the talent review process works in the company this takes place in. A gifted engineer will likely get recognized anyways, but an average engineer will need the review process to look beyond face value.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#198

Post by ibz »

anthony_barker wrote: post #188
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. Just curious, which country do you live in now?

Same - was thinking of doing the same think in France... but I have heard good things about northern romania

Of course this could be done all over Europe, as cheap farm houses abound. It's more a matter of having the patience to restore the thing. That is a very time and resource consuming task.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#199

Post by ganzolo »

driverdan wrote: post #127
ganzolo wrote: post #78

I had a totally different experience from the author of this article. Maybe, this was due to the fact that I was working remotely for 4 years with different startups maniacs. Biggest issues were : - Nobody sees how much you are invested into your day to day work. They just see bunch of commits / builds and the little gray or green presence indicator on your messenger app. But if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hou…

These largely sound like problems with your ability to manage working remotely and management at the companies you worked for. > if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hours per day to fix a bug, chances are high that nobody will realize this That's on you. You need to seek out help no matter what environment you work in. You should never struggle on something for more than an hour or two. Seek help early instead of w…

Who told you that I wasn't seeking help? Or that I was wasting time? You don't know anything about my situation but you are already judging it.

That's typically what can do bad remote managers. Don't ask any question, don't know details but already judged the situation. :-)

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#200

Post by izacus »

ahtu123 wrote: post #152
izacus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - You're constantly alone. Even if nowadays we have great communications tools, the reality is that you'll spend 95% of your time alone in front of a computer in an empty apartment. I am excluding working from coffee shops because of the noise and bad setup (chair/table), this can only work once in a while. I had this issue as well, but managed to solve it by renting an office with a few of my remote working friend…

It's a fine fix but many companies don't pay for that so you're out $200+ a month in a large city. It also gets complicated if you take the home office deduction

Yeah, I've decided then that the 140EUR of costs per month were worth it in terms of mental health and motivation. The difference in rents between the company HQ and my city made up for it anyway.
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