My Experience as a Remote Worker

Any company that openly advertises remote work as a benefit is going to discount your salary.<p>Imagine delivering a million dollar feature, working nights and weekends, but somehow it&#x27;s discounted because of where you live?<p>Across the river from where I live the cost of living is 5% lower - if I happen to work from there, are the features I&#x27;m delivering magically worth 5% less?<p>According to companies like Buffer, Gitlab, Stichfix, the answer is yes.<p>Push back on these salary discounts and double down on the value you provide.<p>P.S. The are more remote opportunities out there than you realize. If there&#x27;s a job that&#x27;s a good fit for you, regardless of city, find the CTO or VP of Engineering on Linkedin, find their email on Hunter.io and directly ask if remote is a possibility. Sometimes they will say YES even though it wasn&#x27;t openly advertised.

I would never go back to commuting to the same place every day. It&#x27;s cool that he does the coworking thing, but I&#x27;ve been working remotely for 6+ years fulltime (and I have other periods of 2-3 years at a time working remotely interspersed through my 20+ year career in software), and I would not give it up for anything less than a C-level role at this point. Most of the benefit to me is the lack of routine. Routine stifles my creativity. I don&#x27;t want to go to the same place or do the same thing every day.

This post has some great points about remote work that make sense based on what I&#x27;ve learned from speaking with remote workers . I would love to find a remote engineering job but I have run into 2 obstacles:<p>First, I believe some remote companies like to see some remote experience to know that you can be successful on a distributed team. This is a tough catch-22! I have asked my manager at my normal office job for opportunities to work remotely 1&#x2F;5 days but I am not sure if this is adequate experience.<p>Second, it is much harder to find remote work for embedded&#x2F;hardware engineering (my background). Obviously it is different when actual hardware is involved as it is more convenient to be in the same physical location, but the advantages of a remote hardware team should be the same as a remote software team!<p>If anyone knows of remote friendly hardware companies I would love to know!

The important thing about working from home for me is that I get to spend more time with my 2 year old. Both from not having to commute and also by getting to see him every time I get up to take a break. If I worked 9-6 at an office with an hour commute each way I’d only see him for an hour every day.

I work from home one day a week, and honestly, I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;d want to do more than a day or two each week. It&#x27;s my most productive day by far, but the isolation feels unsustainable for me.

I&#x27;ve been remote for only 3 months but I&#x27;m totally sure it&#x27;s for me. In my case the alternative was two hours a day on BART. Now I get to see my kids way more.<p>I guess I kind of understand single people who like being at the office all day but at the same time many of them seem to act like work is most of their social life. That seems bad to me, So your whole social life is at the mercy of your employer? What happens when you get laid off?<p>In any case just like that guy I have options if I want to be more social. I got a house a short bike ride away from some co working spaces so it&#x27;s an option.<p>Totally agree about it being about choice which is a breath of fresh air. Companies in big cities like SF seem like they are run with single college grads in mind.

One thing I rarely see in these discussions is how I feel: I don&#x27;t WANT to be friends with my co-workers. I don&#x27;t want my social circle to consist of people with whom I&#x27;m interdependent for my livelihood and who share a very similar educational and professional background. I LIKE keeping the &quot;professional&quot; folks at arms reach, neatly contained by a screen in one room of my house.

Interestingly I feel a weird insistence towards location based software development in Europe, at least in the area I am active in (engineering design software for desktop). In the past 6 months while looking for a new place - partly because of the obsession of our COO on lengthy and tedious daily commuting regardless of actual needs, just for the sake of it, but for other reasons too - whenever I found a position in an other city&#x2F;country that was matching my capabilities, experience and interest very well after the first very enthusiastic round from the recruiter when the request of remote (or even remote dominant) work emerged they took a U turn saying on site presence is paramount so I will not fit. Reasons span legal through organizational to company tradition.<p>I do not get it.<p>Is the geographic location of making a software sooo much important? It is that very allocated desk and chair that will ensure a good product delivery so relocation of family, searching for accommodation and accepting a specific allocated city to live in and daily commuting in the overcrowded transportation systems must be mandated for a new workforce?<p>I am ok that managers have own style and some can only function face to face but to find zero number of those willing to accept remote workers because they are agile or what not is very strange to me.<p>Oh, btw, I worked remotely for many years earlier in total, successfully, was that just a one of experience then?

Imho the most important line in the article is:<p>&quot;If you&#x27;re providing Bay Area value, you deserve Bay Area dollars!&quot;<p>Every other kind of corporate propaganda (cost of living adjustment or whatever) is BS.

Niiice CSS styling for a personal blog! Really a pleasure to look at.<p>Mind if I ask: Is it completely homebrewed or based on some theme out there?

I have worked remotely everyday for the past three years. It has been a horrible experience for me. I am horribly depressed and feel stuck in my current position. I moved to a town with no tech work but I cannot leave because of my spouse&#x27;s job and I don&#x27;t want to move my kids yet again. I miss my 45 minute commute and my cubicle.

I work remotely as a contractor. Its both similar and very different from the OPs observations. For one, we&#x27;re all senior so mentors and contacts with other groups are far less important. Communication remains key however.

Interesting article. I will start working full remote starting next year and I had some of the misconceptions mentioned. Can&#x27;t wait for the next article!

Just started working remote in Tel Aviv and I must say it&#x27;s a life challenging. Without a boss so to say everything comes down to your decision.

People really talk about careers after three years in a field?

The first paragraph is my experience pretty much exactly. I haven&#x27;t rented an office yet, but it&#x27;s only a matter of time, I feel.

Any pointers on how to go about looking for a remote job?

Nice yoyos!