The Remote Game
Becoming a remote developer is a life changing choice. It is difficult. Challenges arise with communication, with staying productive and with feeling included in company’s culture. But, sure as hell, it’s worth it.
What’s important for remote companies looking for an employee? Thriving in remote setup requires skills that are often overlooked when working in the office. You rarely see being a good writer as a core requirement in job postings for a programmer. Employers don’t need you to be self-conscious about your work-life balance and they don’t focus on your ability to self-manage.
For fully remote companies it’s all different. Those qualities are almost as important as your ability to code. However, I would argue that this skill-set is equally important whether you are working remotely or not. Remoteness just makes the need for them more obvious.
Communicate Well
There is a one requirement appearing in almost every remote job posting: the ability to communicate efficiently. Software development requires cooperation and projects tend to be really complex. As a developer, you must deal with difficult requirements and it’s your job to translate them into code. So ask pointed questions and explain problems clearly. Aim for simplicity and explicitness when you express ideas and provide feedback. Try to never leave ambiguity.
In remote setup, face-to-face contact is a luxury. Sure, you can video-call your teammates but you shouldn’t overuse it. When it’s not time-sensitive, prefer chat messages, tickets and comments because it does not interrupt anyone. Less context switching makes a whole team more productive. Seems obvious, right? Well, imagine this in an open-space office.
Additionally, writing can reduce misunderstandings, simply because it forces you to stop and order your thoughts. It pays to be a good writer.
Be Manager Of One
In order to prosper as a remote employee, you need to be good at organizing your own time. There’s no one watching over your shoulder and you are trusted to give your best. It is both a responsibility and a burden — remote workers are especially vulnerable to procrastination. To remain productive, you can’t count on your boss anymore, you need to learn how to manage yourself.
A competent remote developer does a good job without supervision. To get to that point you need to understand business goals of the product and aim to comprehend it on all levels. Only then you’ll be able to identify bottlenecks and pain-points, prioritize features, create and assign tasks.
Keep Balance
It is also your responsibility to keep work-life balance. It’s much easier to overwork when you work from home. It starts innocently, but without clear boundaries you can easily spend most of your free time “just finishing the work”. It’s a dangerous route straight to burnout and unhappiness.
To avoid that, you need a life outside of work and keep 40 hours workweek.
I have experienced it myself — I used to be that guy who’s single, lives alone and meets people only on weekends. Sacrificing life didn’t give me super productivity — I was too tired and frustrated.
That’s It
Communication skills, self-management, and work-life balance are critical for successful software developers. In the office, you could overlook a lack of those skills, but you would still suffer from it. It simply becomes more obvious and unavoidable when you work remotely.
