What have you learned about working remotely?

[benoror]

Hey Kent, hope you're having great holidays!

Considering your experience in open source, and your recent role in PayPal (congrats again!) I just wanted to know how do you face the challenges regarding collaborating with a team remotely.

Someone recently arose the topic to me and I would love to hear your suggestions and what have you learned about working effectively this way.

Cheers!

[kentcdodds]

Well, it's hart to say right now because I only just started. I've had a bit of a hiccup with on boarding. So I'm going to archive this and I'll answer again in a few weeks/months :-)

[tylerdmace]

They say the best things for hiccups is drinking a glass of water while hanging upside down.

In all seriousness, hope it works out for you, Kent :)

[kentcdodds]

Alrighty, it's been a while so I think I'm ready to answer this question.

TL;DR - IT'S AMAZING AND I TOTALLY LOVE IT. I DON'T THINK THAT I'LL EVER WORK ANY OTHER WAY!

So, real talk, it's definitely got it's challenges. But the benefits far outweigh the challenges. The biggest challenge is that most of the people I started working with, I'd never really met in real life, or had only met during my interview. There's something you really miss by not knowing how a person actually sounds when they talk (and just reading what they're typing).

I overcome this by trying to prefer video chat over text chat as much as necessary. And tools like Hangouts makes this really easy. I also try to be really active in Slack and PRs on GitHub to make sure that people know that I'm still around. I should also say that I'm not the only remote worker on my team. This has made it much easier, because they were already used to working with someone who's remote.

Also, I've gone into the office four times already (combining conferences in San Francisco to trips to the San Jose office). That's been helpful.

Also, it definitely can get lonely down here in this basement all by myself. More time with my family and flexibility is sure nice, but having some developers to rub shoulders with is something I miss. I make up for this by attending meetups, doing video chats, and going to lunch with people every now and then.

On the good side of things, having no commute is awesome. Having lunch with my family is amazing. Reading my son a book and putting him down for bed is fantastic. Having my wife invite me to come upstairs for a minute to see my kids doing something cute or hilarious is wonderful.

So I put a little extra work in to make the experience with my co-workers better and in exchange I get an amazing home life. Not a bad trade IMO :-)

I hope this is helpful.