kzisme

Currently, quite poorly.

I find that I don't get tired until 4-5am (pretty sure my sleep schedule is messed up). Since I work remote I can either work late, or I get up early with less sleep.

I previously tried to use melatonin at night, but I've been taking it less since I'm not sure if it's helping or not.

I suppose, but most of the time the answer I receive from this department is "We don't know" (ie: why a server is turned off)

Calling doesn't show or track attempts to get a hold of these individuals. CC'ing managers on emails being sent to other groups/IT is what I've been told to do now since I'm not the only one having issues with this.

Also I would be lucky for them to pick up the phone.

I've been working fully remote for a little over a year now. I enjoy the freedom it grants me to live where I want, but the main issue I have is feeling like I'm not meeting enough co-workers and having some sort of network while I'm still new in the industry (and fear of not learning enough).

It's also quite annoying to have a laptop that doesn't even have an SSD in it, and having to email IT or someone from a different group and never hear back without sending 3+ follow up emails. It would be easier to walk and go see them if I were just working there.

One thing I learned from my first remote job was to examine how your direct manager treats remote work, and that will quickly tell you how your experience might turn out. My boss communicated with me hardly ever (even to relay requirements for new projects), and frequently stayed up all night to finish stuff.

Are you still doing Crossfit? Since I've began working remote I've really done nothing after work and I think it's starting to effect me. A Crossfit place opened near me, and I've considered joining but wasn't sure if I would like it.

This has been my experience as well - if you want to progress salary wise you are almost required to change jobs every ~3 years to get a meaningful bump in pay.

2-5% raises are all I've seen pretty much (which is just cost of living).

Any suggestions on a weight loss diet other than keto? I've heard mostly praise about the diet, but personally I don't think I could go full vegetarian.

I have found that if I don't make it out of the house I am not nearly as motivated as I am when working from a coffee shop or similar.

For me, it's mostly been coffee shops and places to eat. I might start going to a university library that has many free meeting rooms, but that's the closest "large" library near me.

These sorts of articles always excite me that more places will be moving towards remote work, and hopefully using Gitlab as an example. In the past I've had some not so great experiences with remote work.

I've had two remote gigs thus far and the first was pretty horrible. On-boarding took a month (to receive a machine), and I frequently went days without hearing from anyone. There was zero communication even when I attempted to create meetings to talk (since pings were never replied to). It pretty much felt like being on an island - especially when most of your co-workers had worked together for anywhere from 2-10 years. Remote culture didn't really exist at this job.

At my current job it has been great - we use Slack to communicate and there is hardly any radio silence. Before starting, I was told we work to live not the other way around. I received my machine and ~actually~ had an onboarding process. It feels like I'm a part of a team (albeit small) and that makes a world of difference when working remote.

The one thing I haven't fixed yet is being on a routine/schedule. It isn't the best to work, sleep, and relax in the same room every day, but I've been working out of the house more lately which has seemed to help.

Yup! http://www.wall.org/~larry/cornea.html

It's actually a really cool read - I wish he had more stuff posted on his blog to read :(

Does most of it come down to memorization? I haven't ran into these styles of interviews so far.

On the flip side - I've been at two companies who don't use branches to develop software, and I've never been a part of a PR process unless I was doing it on my own time :/

Makes sense - I actually do work remote right now and I think that is part of the issue for a handful of reasons.

How important is it that you have a fulfilling day job? I see many replies about things outside of work being fulfilling, but doesn't work give you the freedom to have the time/money to do the things that give you substance?

Asking since I find some things I work on are very unfulfilling.

What sort of things does a typical mail client not allow you to do/tweak that Mutt does?

Have you ran into any large issues running your own mailserver?

Many times when people ask what to build or work on (much like the author) are told to focus on things they need - Scratch your own itch! Lately I haven't really found many things to focus on working on due to this. I highly doubt I can think of many things in my life that would be close to a "stand up comedy routine".

I mostly just want to figure out something I can work on in my spare time to learn outside of work. It doesn't have to be a business (although I wouldn't be upset if it eventually turned into that), but even having a userbase would be a fun experience.

So with these sort of tutorials/guides is it generally a good practice to build on extra functionality to learn more?

I always feel like it's too much hand holding, or I'm just copying/re-building the wheel and not learning enough, but I do very much enjoy them.

As most people are saying a balance between open and closed space would be nice.

For me personally I find that the temperature of the room/building is important. At my office people continually turn up the thermostat to 75-80F.

Aside from that giving employees enough room to turn around in their chair is decently important in my opinion . In my current setup (I call it the sweat shop setup) I'm not able to turn around or get out of my chair without bumping into my co-worker behind me.

Lastly - one thing that happened at my office was the installation of over-head speakers (think department store style) that constantly streamed Pandora. Please don't do that as it's annoying.

Thanks so much for the reply!

I guess my other question would be how did you end up at your latest job?

I always find that - for non .NET jobs they are mostly looking for Sr. level folks for jobs. Any advice on transitioning?

What sort of languages/stuff did you work out to move out of feeling that way with .NET? I've been working with .NET for 2ish years and have been feeling the same.

This might sound silly, but to get a position at Google is it mostly experience or just white boarding practice?

Is it possible to go from new grad -> first job -> Google? By that progression I mean what sort of background is required language/stack/etc aside from studying and practicing?

I'm not asking about starting a new one - but based on the wording it sounded like from inception of the project/idea to it being launched was 1 week. Seemed odd.

How do you manage to create a product in one week and begin making ~3k a week? What is that process like?

So in general what do most people use web scraping for? Is it building up their on database of things not available via an API or something? It always sounds interesting, but the need for it is what confuses me.

I'm in the Burgh fairly regularly! Keep in touch!

Having helped out very little with this project - it makes me sad to see it go. Chad is a great guy and means well in all that he does.

I wish him the best :)

How did you end up getting people interested/wanting to participate? I feel like that's the biggest hurdle.

Did you blog or write about your experience at all?

Are these projects you were working on before the trip - or were they a full time gig already?

I'm always curious how people are able to do these sorts of things!