Another remote story
Habré has a myriad of articles about remote work. Life stories, demonstrating success / failure in this difficult task. But despite this, I constantly keep stumbling over the fact that people confuse remote work with freelancing. Reading another article on this topic, I realized that it was no longer possible to wait, someone on the Internet was wrong, and it was urgent to simply express my experience on this issue as quickly as possible so that the phrase “distant work” would not give people the “freelance” association. ".
For the first time, I thought about freelancing, when in 2014 the ruble began its rapid decline. Before that, of course, there were also thoughts to look in the direction of various sites, to try oneself in this line, but I didn’t have much enthusiasm, I arranged the work for hire, I could see growth, interesting projects, a great team - what else is needed. But when, in distant 2014, I began to hear from friends who worked on freelance exchanges how their income in ruble terms grows without any gestures on their part, I became thoughtful. And when I decided to go on vacation and transferred the expenses from euros to rubles, I finally realized that something had to be done.
I registered for the then oDesk (now Upwork), found the first client who needed a similar experience and set to work. At first, everything was great - the clock was magically transformed into dollars at an excellent rate, the project was done, everyone was happy. But after a couple of months, the client suddenly ran out of funds, the project was stopped in the middle, I was told something like the following: “if there is funding, we will definitely continue, thanks for the work.”
')
It was decided to continue the experience, but, unfortunately, the following two clients had similar stories (more complicated, but this is not for the current article). Also, I realized that if you take a lot of work, then there is no time for growth. Yes, the income has grown, but it is very easy to be in a financial trap, and to spend all my time only on the implementation of new features / fix bugs (forgive me for my tracing of English words). Before that, I worked in a good company, where a lot of time was spent on the professional growth of developers (high-quality review, regular meetings, retrospectives, conferences, etc.). And here you were completely left to yourself, and you need not a weak discipline in order not to limp and continue to develop professionally.
Hence the first important point about freelancing - discipline. If you do not have due discipline, or you do not want to devote a significant part of your time to this, then I would refrain from freelancing. Without discipline, you risk, at best, losing qualifications in a few years, and at worst, losing motivation for continuous development.
The second important point is the lack of any stability. You cannot be sure that the project will not end tomorrow and you will not need to look for a new client again. If you know how to manage your finances and hold a safety cushion, then there is nothing terrible about this, but there is also not much that is pleasant.
And the third important point is the ability to independently build your work schedule, where you want to work (in my case, just from home). In various circumstances, I was much nicer to work from home than in the office (starting with the fact that I stopped spending every day an hour on transport, and ending with the fact that I could eat homemade food and forget about business lunches).
After some freelancing experience, I realized that I much more like a regular job when I don’t have to look for new customers. When there is a strong team, colleagues with whom it is possible to debate on various working and non-working questions. When you are more or less sure that you will have a project tomorrow and in a month, you have an understandable development plan for the company, you can share its values and feel that you are doing something really important. On the other hand, I really enjoyed working from home.
Accordingly, we smoothly come to the fact that you can get all the bonuses from freelancing, but to get rid of its negative aspects, simply by choosing a distant job. Yes, to find remote work with income in a more solid currency, you will have to try a little more than when looking for freelancing, but, on the other hand, you don’t have to do this often.
Distant work in a large company usually implies that occasionally you still need to visit the office to make contacts and discuss global plans, but usually this is a relatively small amount of time. Otherwise, you are on your own. Here it is worth making a reservation that everything, of course, very much depends on specific companies. Hereinafter I speak of more or less stable companies, with an average developer staff (10-100 people) and good working conditions (from my own experience and the experience of my friends).
Thus, let's say you have found a good company, with a steady income, a worthy staff of developers, established processes, and the ability to work remotely. Life seems like a fairy tale. But still there are a few points that you should think about before opening Google / LinkedIn and look for similar options.
Workplace
Also, as in freelancing, it is very important to build the most comfortable workplace. Unlike the office, you need to think for yourself how to isolate yourself from external irritating factors (especially if you have a family / children). If it is possible, then it is ideal to make a separate office room for yourself, and sometimes it may be more profitable to even rent a separate office / apartment in order to reduce contacts with home rooms (yes, there are still co-workers, but I don’t think it’s convenient ). Try to immediately explain to your wife / husband / children that this is also work, it requires 100% concentration and cannot be distracted. It is especially hard to explain that at work you sometimes get distracted (read Habr / news / ...) and this is also part of the job (that is, you can’t do homework, for example).
schedule
In office work, even with a flexible schedule, there is an unspoken schedule when you come / leave from work. Usually, people do not strongly deviate from it. Most often, people get used, for example, to come at 12 and follow this schedule. When working remotely, this is a little more difficult. Most often, you have no external reason to start working at a specific time. And the worst thing is that there is no reason to finish working on time. Therefore, in my experience, recycling from udalenchikov happen much more often. You know that you will not have to go from the office and just work until this damn function stops falling. And when she stopped falling, you look at your watch, you understand that it is already one in the morning, and you should sleep. So close to burnout. Therefore, my advice here is to make a more or less clear schedule. Decide for yourself that you are working, for example, from 11 to 20. Yes, you can shift this schedule, if necessary, but I would strongly advise not to completely abandon it.
Motivation
If your team doesn’t have regular calls, discussing current problems, it’s very easy to lose motivation and understanding what is happening in the team and the company as a whole. When you go to the office, whether you like it or not, you hear the news of the team, plans and goals of the company. When you sit at home and close the ticket for the ticket, it is difficult to understand how important this all is. Here, of course, in many respects everything depends on the team leader (or your immediate manager, if the team leader is you). If regular calls with the team are not accepted in the company, then, firstly, you can try to implement them. Try to explain why this is important and worth 30-60 minutes a week. I think that any adequate leader, at least, will try to introduce this practice. Secondly, you can communicate with several employees and communicate with them regularly and directly. Thus, you will feel part of the team and the probability of loss of motivation will be lower.
Finance
Despite the fact that remote work is much safer than freelancing, the likelihood of reducing the remote manager is still higher than the employee in the office. Moreover, most often remote work implies work under a contract, without all the charms of the labor code (compensations to remote workers for dismissal are usually minimal, if there is any at all). Therefore, it is worthwhile to read at least the basic things about financial literacy and how to be prepared for an unexpected reduction. Also, if you work for a foreign company, you will have to get acquainted with currency control and all its charms in the Russian Federation. It is necessary to lay down a budget for servicing the IP account, various commissions for currency transactions, and electronic accounting. Nowadays, this is all done very simply, and some banks (I will not advertise concrete examples) help to prepare / translate all the necessary documents and give advice on how to avoid problems with tax.
Of course, I did not talk about all the intricacies of the distant work in this article, but I hope that I covered the most important points. The main goal was to show that remote work is not at all the same as freelancing, and that there are slightly different rules of the game. Accordingly, everyone decides for himself what game is most attractive to him. Some people like to find new customers, expand the list of contacts, work for themselves. Some people like to work in the office, have a classic work week, direct contacts with colleagues. And someone wants to have something in the middle.
Freelance
For the first time, I thought about freelancing, when in 2014 the ruble began its rapid decline. Before that, of course, there were also thoughts to look in the direction of various sites, to try oneself in this line, but I didn’t have much enthusiasm, I arranged the work for hire, I could see growth, interesting projects, a great team - what else is needed. But when, in distant 2014, I began to hear from friends who worked on freelance exchanges how their income in ruble terms grows without any gestures on their part, I became thoughtful. And when I decided to go on vacation and transferred the expenses from euros to rubles, I finally realized that something had to be done.
I registered for the then oDesk (now Upwork), found the first client who needed a similar experience and set to work. At first, everything was great - the clock was magically transformed into dollars at an excellent rate, the project was done, everyone was happy. But after a couple of months, the client suddenly ran out of funds, the project was stopped in the middle, I was told something like the following: “if there is funding, we will definitely continue, thanks for the work.”
')
It was decided to continue the experience, but, unfortunately, the following two clients had similar stories (more complicated, but this is not for the current article). Also, I realized that if you take a lot of work, then there is no time for growth. Yes, the income has grown, but it is very easy to be in a financial trap, and to spend all my time only on the implementation of new features / fix bugs (forgive me for my tracing of English words). Before that, I worked in a good company, where a lot of time was spent on the professional growth of developers (high-quality review, regular meetings, retrospectives, conferences, etc.). And here you were completely left to yourself, and you need not a weak discipline in order not to limp and continue to develop professionally.
Hence the first important point about freelancing - discipline. If you do not have due discipline, or you do not want to devote a significant part of your time to this, then I would refrain from freelancing. Without discipline, you risk, at best, losing qualifications in a few years, and at worst, losing motivation for continuous development.
The second important point is the lack of any stability. You cannot be sure that the project will not end tomorrow and you will not need to look for a new client again. If you know how to manage your finances and hold a safety cushion, then there is nothing terrible about this, but there is also not much that is pleasant.
And the third important point is the ability to independently build your work schedule, where you want to work (in my case, just from home). In various circumstances, I was much nicer to work from home than in the office (starting with the fact that I stopped spending every day an hour on transport, and ending with the fact that I could eat homemade food and forget about business lunches).
Remote work
After some freelancing experience, I realized that I much more like a regular job when I don’t have to look for new customers. When there is a strong team, colleagues with whom it is possible to debate on various working and non-working questions. When you are more or less sure that you will have a project tomorrow and in a month, you have an understandable development plan for the company, you can share its values and feel that you are doing something really important. On the other hand, I really enjoyed working from home.
Accordingly, we smoothly come to the fact that you can get all the bonuses from freelancing, but to get rid of its negative aspects, simply by choosing a distant job. Yes, to find remote work with income in a more solid currency, you will have to try a little more than when looking for freelancing, but, on the other hand, you don’t have to do this often.
Distant work in a large company usually implies that occasionally you still need to visit the office to make contacts and discuss global plans, but usually this is a relatively small amount of time. Otherwise, you are on your own. Here it is worth making a reservation that everything, of course, very much depends on specific companies. Hereinafter I speak of more or less stable companies, with an average developer staff (10-100 people) and good working conditions (from my own experience and the experience of my friends).
Thus, let's say you have found a good company, with a steady income, a worthy staff of developers, established processes, and the ability to work remotely. Life seems like a fairy tale. But still there are a few points that you should think about before opening Google / LinkedIn and look for similar options.
Workplace
Also, as in freelancing, it is very important to build the most comfortable workplace. Unlike the office, you need to think for yourself how to isolate yourself from external irritating factors (especially if you have a family / children). If it is possible, then it is ideal to make a separate office room for yourself, and sometimes it may be more profitable to even rent a separate office / apartment in order to reduce contacts with home rooms (yes, there are still co-workers, but I don’t think it’s convenient ). Try to immediately explain to your wife / husband / children that this is also work, it requires 100% concentration and cannot be distracted. It is especially hard to explain that at work you sometimes get distracted (read Habr / news / ...) and this is also part of the job (that is, you can’t do homework, for example).
schedule
In office work, even with a flexible schedule, there is an unspoken schedule when you come / leave from work. Usually, people do not strongly deviate from it. Most often, people get used, for example, to come at 12 and follow this schedule. When working remotely, this is a little more difficult. Most often, you have no external reason to start working at a specific time. And the worst thing is that there is no reason to finish working on time. Therefore, in my experience, recycling from udalenchikov happen much more often. You know that you will not have to go from the office and just work until this damn function stops falling. And when she stopped falling, you look at your watch, you understand that it is already one in the morning, and you should sleep. So close to burnout. Therefore, my advice here is to make a more or less clear schedule. Decide for yourself that you are working, for example, from 11 to 20. Yes, you can shift this schedule, if necessary, but I would strongly advise not to completely abandon it.
Motivation
If your team doesn’t have regular calls, discussing current problems, it’s very easy to lose motivation and understanding what is happening in the team and the company as a whole. When you go to the office, whether you like it or not, you hear the news of the team, plans and goals of the company. When you sit at home and close the ticket for the ticket, it is difficult to understand how important this all is. Here, of course, in many respects everything depends on the team leader (or your immediate manager, if the team leader is you). If regular calls with the team are not accepted in the company, then, firstly, you can try to implement them. Try to explain why this is important and worth 30-60 minutes a week. I think that any adequate leader, at least, will try to introduce this practice. Secondly, you can communicate with several employees and communicate with them regularly and directly. Thus, you will feel part of the team and the probability of loss of motivation will be lower.
Finance
Despite the fact that remote work is much safer than freelancing, the likelihood of reducing the remote manager is still higher than the employee in the office. Moreover, most often remote work implies work under a contract, without all the charms of the labor code (compensations to remote workers for dismissal are usually minimal, if there is any at all). Therefore, it is worthwhile to read at least the basic things about financial literacy and how to be prepared for an unexpected reduction. Also, if you work for a foreign company, you will have to get acquainted with currency control and all its charms in the Russian Federation. It is necessary to lay down a budget for servicing the IP account, various commissions for currency transactions, and electronic accounting. Nowadays, this is all done very simply, and some banks (I will not advertise concrete examples) help to prepare / translate all the necessary documents and give advice on how to avoid problems with tax.
Instead of conclusion
Of course, I did not talk about all the intricacies of the distant work in this article, but I hope that I covered the most important points. The main goal was to show that remote work is not at all the same as freelancing, and that there are slightly different rules of the game. Accordingly, everyone decides for himself what game is most attractive to him. Some people like to find new customers, expand the list of contacts, work for themselves. Some people like to work in the office, have a classic work week, direct contacts with colleagues. And someone wants to have something in the middle.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/442556/
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