Should you be a remote developer?
Last day of the remote boot camp and its all going well again. Had a nightmare yesterday that I almost gave up thinking that I couldn’t handle it anymore. Good thing I had the best team on my side who gave me the motivation I needed to get back on my feet.
The above situation looks so simple to the reader, but the hard truth is that all this did not happen in a flash, I had to be patient and hope there was a change taking place.
Lets get back to the main question Should you be a remote developer? Of course my answer is Yes. This answer is too personally and I have no idea what kind of a person you are so I will leave you with both the advantages and disadvantages as a remote developer. You do the SWOT analysis.
DISADVANTAGES
I will discuss a few challenges I have faced in this past week so don’t make conclusions if I don’t cover the ones you already know.
- Excuses don’t work!
Since you are working from your place something can inconvenience you. It can be an issue at your place you can’t ignore, your internet connection can be down, or you may blow up your machine or lose it. I didn’t have a laptop to work with so I was using limited time in a cyber cafe. This made it challenging to deliver well crafted solutions to tasks and worse make changes when requested to do so. How do you excuse yourself with this situation? this will just make you a liability to your boss. How do you even start to explain?
2. Procrastination syndrome
Oh wow so my boss is not around to supervise!
ME: What time will I wake up?
ME Again: 4 a.m *with a focused face*
The other ME: 4!!! am I a robot? I don’t have serious work tomorrow. Anytime of day won’t hurt.
The deal is sealed, and the next day you wake up a few hours to your deadline and the bugs won’t give you mercy! The deadline passes and your boss checks your work which you haven’t finished. Good thing the bugs were a blessing in disguise because the boss is not mad, he just can’t stop laughing at you git commits. Your last ten commits reads [Fixed] bug a , [Fixed] bug b , [Fixed] bug x …. [Fixed] bug a Again
3. Distraction
So you have work? what about today’s football match? I will leave it there for you to think.
4. Support
Sometimes you don’t no whether you don’t know something or your brain just stopped working. This is when your team mates play an important role. They know when you really don’t know what you are doing and so they chip in to help without your invitation which is good because you finally solve your problem and save time. You become disadvantaged when you are alone.
ADVANTAGES
The good sides need no details, they are self explanatory.
- You save commuting costs.
- No boring meetings when you are about to figure out what bugs are in your code.
- For night owls like me, you get to work the time you love most.
- Boss can’t see you just copy pasted code from stackoverflow and added comments only. Though your commit message reads [Solved] Serious problem x
- More time with your family and friends.
- Don’t forget you can minimize you code editor!
I guess that’s enough for now, this is just an article why are you frowning!
TIA
