Advantages and disadvantages of remote work

Hi, I am Alonso Godinez, I am 24 years old, and a Javascript Full Stack Engineer at Soshace. I’ve been working remotely for almost 3 years. And I want to tell you about my experience of successfully doing remote.

Most people think that working remotely is being free most of the day, working just a couple of hours at the beach and uploading selfies to Instagram. This is not true. At least not 100% true. The reality is that, of course, you can manage to achieve those things to some degree but that will require a lot of organization, discipline, and responsibility, and will heavily depend on how good/fast you are completing the tasks.

Having said that, we can point out some advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• Can choose how many hours you will work;
• Can choose what time you will work;
• Can choose where you will work;
• Can customize your workplace to be as much comfortable as possible;
• Avoid traffic, saving TIME, a non-renewable resource;
• Can work with amazing people no matter where they are;
• Can work on amazing projects;
• Might get better payment rates than your current place average;
• Can travel whenever you want (maybe start a digital nomad life);

Now we can talk about the Disadvantages, and how I mitigated them over these years. If you live with your family, you need to talk to them and inform them that you’re not just at home but you are actually working and need your space. Be sure you warn and have a serious talk with your family about your working schedule and how serious it is. I made my family pretend that I’m not at home the first month, after that, I added a bit of flexibility, but they still respect my work time as much as they can. You can feel a bit lonely or bored sometimes. It is a great idea to try working at different places to avoid the routine, you can alternate your workplaces between a coffee store, a friend’s house, a coworking office, or even a different room at your house. (Even better, travel!) I did everything on the list and so far I feel very motivated. Is really easy to procrastinate. Distractions are everywhere, even more than at the office. Make sure your “main office” have zero distractions, you have the freedom to customize it as much as you want, so use that superpower to boost your productivity.

My workstation has these items:

• A big desk, where you can easily accommodate more things besides a dual-screen set. Mine is placed very close to a window, so I can feel the sun and fresh air. It is not cool to work in the shadows;
• A very comfortable chair. Choose this wisely, take your time;
• A good pair of headsets, preferably with noise cancellation. It helped me a lot to get “in the zone” while working;
• Extra Screen 27’’;
• It is really up to you how you manage to get rid of every possible distraction but one absolute must-do is to turn your cellphone in “not disturbing mode”, I can confirm that it is a powerful productivity hack, even if you are not working remotely.

Being online is mandatory. Since the channels to communicate with your team rely on your internet connection, be sure to have fallbacks in case of emergency or unexpected situations.  Have that in mind every time you choose a place to work. When I travel, the first thing I check at the apartment I rent is WIFI. Same with coffee shops or coworking spaces. In case the internet is down at my home, I am paying for a large mobile data plan so I can use it as a fallback.

Summing things up, working remotely is such an incredible experience and it gives you the opportunity to work on amazing projects with people from different cultures and places. But also have a couple of tradeoffs that can be mitigated progressively with perseverance.

Alonso Godinez: https://blog.soshace.com/developers/alonso-g