How common is it to work remotely as a programmer?
Is it fairly common for programmers to work for a company but remotely as well? Like work from home mmajority of the time and meet up only for meetings/updates etc
I´ve been looking for a remote job since 2013 and I think it´s very hard to find them.
In that way I found a new company called watho (watho.net).
We are a company focused on contacts between companies which have remote jobs available with the applicants from any part of the world.
Currently we have 4 remote open positions.
I've gotten very good at finding the work, and recently decided to share my leads with others:
http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/telecommute/
These are only a few of the remote or telecommute jobs I know about - the others I just haven't posted yet, but will do so soon.
It's a great deal of work to research these links. Not so much to post them once I find them, but to find them in the first place. I have some ideas as to how to make it easier, but have not yet tried to actually implement any.
In my experience, finding remote jobs for popular techs are quite easy (mobile apps dev, web dev). But it is a challenge to find some good remote job for non-web, e.g. C++/systems/desktop dev.
The jobs you find on craigslist, careers 2.0, monster and the like go away after a while - typically a month. One has to pay to post the ad in most cases; after their expiry, one has to pay again.
By linking to the "Careers" or "Jobs" pages at each employer's website, I'm enabling those who use my index to find all the currently-open jobs in a given location, even if no one has paid money to run a job ad.
Also, it is quite common that jobs are filled from the resumes that the hiring manager already has on-hand, without the job ever being advertised. So if you see a company you'd like to work for, definitely do apply even if they have no open positions - but also request that they keep your resume on file.
Not every company does that. But then, not every company succeeds. I expect that a significant factor in the success of some companies is their ability to fill an open job requisition in a timely way, with the best possible candidate.
If an employer waits until a position is actually open to start advertising - when they get a new project in, or the previous employee has actually left - then that unfilled position will not be generating revenue for the employer. There will also be delays that could have been avoided, had they hired from resumes that were on file.
You will reasonably object that the employer has to pay to fill a position, but in general, an employee earns his employer twice his pay. He keeps half, the other goes to the company. Some of that pays for overhead like office rental, telephone, internet and advertising but some is profit.
If you're looking for remote tech support work that's of a more advanced nature - NOT! "Click the OK button until it turns black" - apply with Luke Crawford - no obvious relation - at http://prgmr.com/
Luke's a good guy. If he can't hire you I expect he could refer you to someone who can.
My experience has been that a good number of smaller companies in smaller cities (U.S. Midwest, cities with populations under 100,000), that just can't find local talent and so reluctantly pick up remote workers to fill their ranks.
As another poster said. It is lonely. I pay for a co-working office out of pocket so I can get out of the house. If most of the team is in-house and management didn't really "want" to be managing a remote team, then you end up being treating as a kind of necessary evil whose sidelined and left out of the loop most of the time.
I work with engineers in three states. We're all in a virtual office space, talking as needed (with webcam if desired) and sharing documents. Or just chatting on a variety of channels. I honestly don't know who is in which state, without asking.
That said, I've come to the conclusion that for a virtual team to really work the company culture really has to be on board with the idea. Particularly I think it works best when the whole team or a majority is working remotely or semi-remotely.
The two firms that I've been with so far had only one or two remote workers on an otherwise in-house team that was managed very much in the 9-5 butt-in-seat tradition. They reluctantly went with remote workers out of necessity and with management that isn't too hot on communicating other than in person and firing up a webcam is considering something worthy of planning out days in advance and reserving a conference room.
Needless to say, I'm looking for a more remote-friendly team these days, but I do think it's a good warning to anyone looking into remote work. Find out what proportion of the team is working remote, really try to access the team culture for supporting those remote workers, and do concern yourself with how much buy-in management has to the idea.
If everybody is on board with the tools, then you hear all the comments, see who said what, and can chat privately too. Definitely BETTER than in-person meetings in many ways.
Some big companies are getting into it, largely through acquiring startups or small companies that were already doing it. But these are much more rare. The majority of remote work will be for smaller companies and startups.
If you want a salary, then it's easier to start off working on-site then ask to transition to remote down the line - or ask for more flexibility like 1 day off the week, etc.
There are many, many jobs that have a two or three day work from home option.