Things to Know for Your First Remote Job | Hacker News Reader

Things to Know for Your First Remote Job

kixpanganiban.com

14 pointskixpanganiban10 comments

I’ve been working remotely more on than off over the last two years, full time since last summer. The two things I recommend are buying a Fitbit and making sure you’re active enough throughout the day, and going to a cafe for breakfast or lunch alongside meeting a friend/going to a meet-up two or three times a week.

It’s surprisingly easy to end up spending days indoors and destroying any sort of work/life balance. I know this has happened to myself and numerous team mates across the three companies I’ve worked remotely at. Keep an active eye on it!

As someone who is about 4 months into their first remote job I can speak to this. It is so easy to turn into a hermit with a remote job, especially if you're the type of person that is usually fine with being alone. Unfortunately, I took for granted daily office interactions and didn't make a lot of efforts to go out. I began to notice about 2 months in that social interactions (even work ones) became a lot more difficult. I would have more anticipation anxiety to things like demoing work I've done as an example. I still haven't taken care of the problem yet, but I know the solution is just to get out and interact with people more even if it is meetups or something.

The other problem is that it is really easy to have a weird and unhealthy schedule if your work doesn't require you keep core hours. I've had periods of time where I was just working from 7pm to 3-4am. I fixed that recently though. Point is, remote jobs require some degree of self discipline. I would not actually recommend it for people who struggle with anxiety or depression unless they're willing to make an active effort to get out, otherwise they will just exacerbate their symptoms.

So the original blog title is:

3 Things To Know For Your First Remote Job.

And it is really just three things. - Know your timezones - Map your day in blocks of time - Know your tools (chat, documentation etc.)

Well that might work for some type of jobs, I know for mine that I need a little more. "Map your day in blocks of time" would be all cool when there are no timezones to worry about. Cool when you can claim you do meetings just 3 hours a day, I know I can not with members all over the globe.

What I needed to find out the hard way, and find myself explaining to new team members is: - Setup your cam so that your background is clean (no roommates / family members entering the picture unintentional) - Get a SUPERB headphone with an EXCELLENT microphone - Turn your mic to MUTE when you are not talking - No, interruptions in a conversation do not work like when face to face, specifically not with more then 2 remote people in the meeting - Wear "professional" clothing (even if it just the shirt) - Do not eat or drink while in a meeting - Your cool click clack keyboard makes a lot of noise - We hear your mother scream in the background - Practice makes perfect: do take some time to setup your cam / mic / background / whatever in a one on one session with a more experienced colleague.

> Remember, the key is to assign your blocks and sticking to them. It’s also important that you let your teammates know what your blocks look like, so that they’d know not to expect you to take calls early your morning.

I'm not sure what world makes something like this possible, but every client I've had in the past (I contract to businesses) needs flexibility. If I were this rigid then there's no way it would be possible to meet their needs. Not necessarily specifically with early morning, but just throughout the day.

The author said teammates not clients.

Asking your team to respect the fact you block out some time every day to focus is good, and most teams will respect that especially if you also respect times they want to avoid distractions.

Clients can be managed too, but sometimes their needs are more important. I've always found my clients are happy for me to tell them I'm busy unless it's a critical issue.

Useful tips which I overall agree with. Having worked remotely more frequently lately, I've had to quickly figure out some of these things (like blocking out time/schedule for myself, separately from the rest of the team, for example).

Who the hell is buying a $50 calendar app?

Well, I wouldn't even though I'm also a remote developer working in SE Asia for a company on the other side of the world. However, if it helps you do what you need to do, then it's absolutely worth it. Time zone issues are killer. I can't tell you the number of meetings I've missed because Japan doesn't participate in the daylight savings time dance. Google calendar is a bit better than before, but the UX is still actually pretty uncomfortable when you are trying to think, "What time is that for me and what time is that for them". (Incidentally, there is a new feature in Slack where when someone messages you it tells you what time it is for them -- this has helped me a couple of times).

I hate calendar apps generally, so like I said, I'm not going to pay for one. But I can definitely see paying a measly $50 if it comes with UX that helps out.

Having said that, I found the article a bit heavy on app recommendations and light on actually useful tips for working remotely (especially remotely in a very remote timezone).

Google GSuite is about $15 per user per month for Enterprise, and most users only really use Gmail, Calendar, and maybe Drive. That's more than $50 a year for a calendar.

So... lots of people!

Spending $50 on a work tool that you will use many times a day actually sounds like a great deal to me.

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