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Ask HN: Remote workers of HN, what is your experience?

by bbayer on 2/6/18, 10:45 AM with 4 comments

• by byoung2 on 2/6/18, 12:24 PM

  I found my current position through the whoishiring post in November 2015. Payment is monthly, just invoice at the end of the month for hours worked in the month x hourly rate and payment is made via direct deposit 2 weeks later. During the month we track daily using Jira for our clients and weekly using an internal tool to track what hours we worked for each client so the clients get billed accordingly. Hours are reported based on the honor system, so as long as they are reasonable nobody questions them.

  Since our model is to assign engineers, designers, and project managers to various clients, some of the workflow depends on the clients' needs but so far 4 clients have followed the same pattern: daily scrum with one of our project managers, our engineers, and any of the client's team members, weekly project summary, and periodic updates to any budget estimates. As far as scheduling, our company only provides US and Canada based workers so in theory timezones aren't that big of a problem.

  If you have any questions or want to work with us, my info is in my profile.

• by viraptor on 2/6/18, 11:52 AM

  Answer to all of those is: "it depends". It all depends on the company and contact you negotiate and whether your remote position is a unique one or the standard way of working.

  A lot depends on what you accept as ok. I'd reject any offer that involves webcam/screen recording. Both because it's creepy and because the company defaults to no trust. If the manager can't figure out if you're doing a good work or not by looking only at your work output, that manager is useless.

  Time difference is annoying. Small shifts shouldn't matter. For big shifts like US/EU you have to learn to communicate in large batches that people can respond to overnight completely and without a need to clarify more details.

  If you never worked remotely before and the company doesn't have at least half of the team in remote positions, you'll likely struggle. There's going to be too much ad-hoc communication you're not involved in.

• by katelynsk on 2/6/18, 12:47 PM

  Agree with the previous answer - "it depends", so I can tell only about some of the companies I know. My company is very flexible in this regard - every employee works when he/she is comfortable. We agree on calls in advance. To organize the workflow, we use several tools:

  - Git for all software development (Github, Gitlab);

  - Skype, Telegram for chatting, calls;

  - Riter for project management/teamwork (plan and estimate sprints/tasks, add and track time spent on them, comments, file sharing, reports and so on);

  And that's enough. Another company that I know prefers that all team members work simultaneously, but their employees live in some of the neighboring time zones (the difference is up to 2-3 hours).

• by tommaitland on 2/6/18, 11:57 AM

  If you see reports of screen recording I’d avoid that company completely. I’ve never heard of it as common practice for remote jobs and more something that has come out of Upwork.

  The best remote jobs focus on output not time anyway, and everything else is to facilitate that so they’re best suited to independently motivated people.

  Pay seems comparable to local jobs, unless I guess you’re getting US/Bay Area salaries and you don’t live there.