Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making Remote Work Work

source.opennews.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 92 posts

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#71

Post by sergiotapia » 

    The single best advice I got when I went remote 
    was from Matt Waite, >who said, “Put on pants,” 
    by which I’m pretty sure he meant, “Act like 
    you’re going to work.”
Remote worker here, for about 2 years running. Yes, this is great advice and probably the single biggest factor that will help you stick to work.

Some days I roll out of bed and work in my pajamas, and without a doubt those are the days I'm least productive in contrast with the days I go balls out with shower, shave, breakfast, fully clothed ZZ-Top-sharp-dressed-man style.

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#72

Post by felipeerias »

sneak wrote: post #37

Create another local user account on your computer for being at work. Change the desktop background to big work logos. Don't configure your personal instant messenger accounts and whatnot. Set up the email client to only check the "work" account so you don't fall down personal email item rabbit holes. Configure the WasteNoTime Safari extension appropriately (more strictly than your personal account's config, with sit…

I just got an iPad. Now work-related computing happens on my laptop, at my desk. Leisure computing happens on my lap, on the couch. It makes it much easier to establish a clear divide between “working” and “not working”. Being able to disconnect properly is very important for quality of life and productivity.

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#73

Post by __--__ »

AJ007 wrote: post #14
zrail wrote: post #3

This is all super valuable advice. The biggest thing that I've learned from working 100% remote for the last six months (which is also in the article) is to have a space that is just for work. Another thing that I've learned is to be crystal clear on when your normal working hours are, especially if the bulk of your team is in a different time zone. Don't be inflexible, of course, but establish normal working hours a…

I really like the article. Numerous tiny things I've never considered, like the switch between headphones and speakers. The weird thing is I started working in my bedroom a while back. Not only have I had the most productive year in my life (and I never had a computer in my bedroom, even as a child) I also have managed to completely eliminate my sleep disorders. The most important things I tell people, including my o…

I had no choice but to set up my computer in my dorm room at college for 4 years. By the end of the third year, my ability to sleep in that room was gone. I also work remotely and I do so from a remote area. Cities are too noisy and the few years in which I lived in SF, it drove me crazy.

This is all my way of saying what works for one person may not work for another. Which is one of the points of remote work, isn't it? To create the perfect environment for you?

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#74

Post by eweise »

technomancy wrote: post #69
mbillie1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish he had left that out, only because it was obviously going to lead to lots of reactions like this. Pair programming, at least on HN/reddit, is a fairly polarizing issue. I'm in favor of it, but plenty of folks aren't, and it's really an orthogonal issue with respect to working remotely. (For the record: tmux/vim/skype has worked perfectly fine for me while remote pairing)

It depends what you're doing. If you're getting up to speed on a completely new system, you're going to waste a lot of time if you don't have someone who's familiar with the codebase helping you out. If two people have fairly similar levels of expertise in a given area, the benefit is going to be a lot lower.

Totally and its great to mentor someone for a little while or occasionally work on a problem together. Pair programming though is practice where two people work together all day everyday until one of them becomes batshit crazy or quits the company.

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#75

Post by falcolas »

yawz wrote: post #32

Any remote-working developer who's pair-programming ? I'd love to hear about your experiences? I know there's been a few attempts at creating remote pair-programming tools but I'm not familiar with any particularly successful one.

Screen sharing in google hangouts work pretty well. Can't both type with that, but you both can see the editor with acceptable lag, IMO.

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#76

Post by banachtarski »

mbillie1 wrote: post #18
eweise wrote: post #16

Wow. "you should be pair programming". Terrible advice. Isn't effective in the office. Tons worse when remote.

I wish he had left that out, only because it was obviously going to lead to lots of reactions like this. Pair programming, at least on HN/reddit, is a fairly polarizing issue. I'm in favor of it, but plenty of folks aren't, and it's really an orthogonal issue with respect to working remotely. (For the record: tmux/vim/skype has worked perfectly fine for me while remote pairing)

For me personally, I hate it. Mainly for ideological reasons. I believe that when I'm "programming," most of it is spent in thought or jotting things down on paper. When it comes to actually typing things on a keyboard, I've already figured out exactly what should happen. Pair programming goes against this work methodology, so I don't subscribe to it. Naysayers tell me that I can work through the "thought process" in a pair too. No, I can't. That's not how I work. I'd be happy to discuss my thoughts after I've had alone time, but that time is critical for me to get things done at a reasonable rate.

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#77

Post by fixedd »

subway wrote: post #66
sneak wrote: post #37

Create another local user account on your computer for being at work. Change the desktop background to big work logos. Don't configure your personal instant messenger accounts and whatnot. Set up the email client to only check the "work" account so you don't fall down personal email item rabbit holes. Configure the WasteNoTime Safari extension appropriately (more strictly than your personal account's config, with sit…

I tend to keep completely separate physical machines. I have Thinkpad provided by work, and a personal Thinkpad. When the workday starts, the work machine goes in the dock, then at the end of the workday, I swap it out for the personal machine. I'm a strong believer in using company hardware only for work, and never using personal hardware for work related tasks, if only because it makes things slightly less complica…

Wait till you go to a "Bring Your Own Device" employer.... ugh.

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#78

Post by emillon »

sneak wrote: post #35
rjzzleep wrote: post #2

since i spend a lot of time in the console i have a few very simple aliases, for the following and some other time zones i use frequently. cst='TZ=CST6CDT date' est='TZ=EST date' berlin='TZ=''Europe/Berlin'' date' then i can just convert times and needed. berlin -d '4:00pm EST'

SO THAT'S HOW YOU SET ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES IN ALIASES! THANK YOU! (I'd been making the slight-environment-change aliases into bash functions as a workaround. You just helped me so much.)

I think that you can also use env(1) for this.

    berlin='env TZ=Europe/Berlin date'

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#79

Post by jimmcslim »

fixedd wrote: post #77
subway wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to keep completely separate physical machines. I have Thinkpad provided by work, and a personal Thinkpad. When the workday starts, the work machine goes in the dock, then at the end of the workday, I swap it out for the personal machine. I'm a strong believer in using company hardware only for work, and never using personal hardware for work related tasks, if only because it makes things slightly less complica…

Wait till you go to a "Bring Your Own Device" employer.... ugh.

Use a virtual machine on Your Own Device as the Work Computer?

Re: Making Remote Work Work

#80

Post by fixedd »

yawz wrote: post #30
malaporte wrote: post #26

Remote worker here, I agree with most things he said. I work with an on-site team, and I'm the only remote worker in that group. We use a permanent Hangout that I can keep opened in the background, in order to hear what's going on at the office. With the press of a button I can 'upgrade' it to a full two way video chat. I'm using an old battered laptop sitting on a stand, along with a good quality microphone and a we…

I've tried a few things. I find Sqwiggle's ( https://www.sqwiggle.com/ ) approach the best. You can see your team thanks to a-few-minute-apart snapshots and you're just a click away from talking to them.

I like Sqwiggle, in theory, but the CPU use and constant camera connection even while it's not in active-recording-mode was annoying... it murdered the battery life on my laptop. Some of my coworkers also found it a little privacy-invasioney.
Post reply on HN