Remote Work for Technology Workers

Presented at YYC IDIOT Meetup on May 24, 2018. For more information and a recording of the presentation, take a look here: https://blog.froese.org/2018/05/29/remote-work-for-technology-workers/

Transcript

1. R E M O T E W O R K F O R T E C H N O L O G Y W O R K E R S
2. D A R R O N F R O E S E @ D A R R O N O N T W I T T E R A N D G I T H U B
3. TA L K I N G A B O U T W H AT W I L L W E B E • The good things about remote work. • The not so good things about remote work. • How I got my first remote job. • Some tips that helped me jump into remote work. They might help you too. • As always YMMV.
4. T H E G O O D S T U F F F I R S T O F F
5. L O C AT I O N L O C AT I O N , L O C AT I O N
6. D I G I TA L N O M A D B E I N G A
7. O P P O R T U N I T I E S M A S S I V E
8. H O W Y O U L I K E I T Y O U R O F F I C E
9. C O M F O R TA B L E C L O T H E S A N D E N V I R O N M E N T
10. P U P P I E S P L U S
11. L E S S I N T E R R U P T I O N S C A N B E A M A S S I V E P R O D U C T I V I T Y H E L P
12. FA M I LY P R E S E N T F O R
13. N O M O R E C O M M U T E B I G D E A L I N !
14. P R O T E C T E D AT H O M E
15. F L E X I B I L I T Y A L L O W S
16. C O M PA N Y B E N E F I T S T H E R E A R E A L S O • Bigger and more diverse talent pools not limited by geography. • Have multiple timezone coverage for operations. • Office space is expensive, even offset by some travel costs this can save $$$. • Remote work helps to cut attrition. 50% in one study.
17. I T ’ S N O T A L L R A I N B O W S T H E R E ’ S A C O S T
18. B U S I N E S S I S P E O P L E I T ’ S A B O U T C O M M U N I C AT I O N
19. I T C A N B E I S O L AT I N G T H E B I G G E S T N E G AT I V E F O R M E
20. M I S S E D C O M M U N I C AT I O N L E S S O V E R H E A R D A N D H A L LWAY TA L K
21. AT A D I S A D VA N TA G E I F Y O U ’ R E T H E O N LY R E M O T E Y O U ’ R E
22. G E T T I N G S T U C K C A N B E H A R D T O G E T O U T O F
23. D I S T R A C T I O N S A R E A L L A R O U N D Y O U
24. C O O L D O W N T I M E L I M I T E D
25. O V E R W O R K H A R D T O S T O P
26. M O V E M E N T L I M I T E D
27. P U P P I E S A R E E X H A U S T I N G S O M E T I M E S
28. B U S I N E S S T R AV E L O V E R R AT E D
29. O H C A N A D A C A N B E A C O M P L I C AT I O N
30. C O M P L I C AT E D M U LT I L O C AT I O N L A W I S • In one country we're establishing an entity in, the process just takes a LONG time. We've been responding to any inquiries and sending paperwork immediately and we're 8 months in and still probably 2 months away from completing the process. Meanwhile, we still can't legally hire there. • A lot of legal paperwork is understandable in the local language of where you're creating the entity. This means that you also have to pay lawyers fluent in that language to vet the paperwork. We employ full time lawyers, but primarily in English, so this requires us to go to expensive outside counsel. • Finally, this is all expensive. There are fees to creating entities but also recall that we have multiple full time employees that spend their entire day establishing legal entities. So we have our own full time salary costs plus filing costs plus legal costs. • Each US state ALSO requires a legal entity in addition to adhering to state-local employment laws, taxes, and more. At this point HashiCorp has entities in ~30 US states. • Our corporate tax obligation would be hundreds of thousands of dollars [less] if we didn't employ people in New York state. We've had to weigh this in cases because the tax obligation from hiring _one_ individual could suddenly be that you can't afford to hire _multiple_ other individuals. • http://bit.ly/hashicorp-remote
31. T R A D E - O F F R E M O T E V S I N O F F I C E
32. M Y J O U R N E Y H O W C A N I T B E D O N E ?
33. Y O U N E E D T I M E S L O W E R T H A N Y O U ’ D L I K E
34. V I S I B L E P R O F I L E I N E E D E D A
35. O P E N S O U R C E B U I LT S O M E T H I N G
36. S O C I A L M E D I A I N VA L U A B L E
37. I N T E R V I E W I N G A D I F F E R E N T S K I L L S E T
38. T H E O P P O R T U N I T Y C A M E B Y S U R P R I S E
39. T H E O P P O R T U N I T Y C A M E B Y S U R P R I S E
40. H O W T O F I N D G O O D R E M O T E J O B S
41. B U S I N E S S I S P E O P L E I T ’ S A B O U T C O M M U N I C AT I O N
42. Y O U R FAV O R I T E T H I N G S M A K E A L I S T O F
43. F I N D Y O U R C O M M U N I T Y A N Y W H E R E
44. O P E N T H E C O D E S G I T H U B I S W H E R E O P E N S O U R C E H A P P E N S
45. G E T A C T I V E O N T W I T T E R Y O U D O N ’ T H AV E T O P O S T - J U S T R E A D
46. P R E S E N TAT I O N S + B L O G C A N H E L P
47. C O M PA N Y T R A I T S I M P O R TA N T • Remote First: Already has a well distributed team. • In Person Time: At least bi-annual/quarterly get togethers. • TZ: What time zones are we all in? If you’re alone… • Overall: No massive disadvantages to being distributed with that company.
48. I N T E R V I E W L O T S I T ’ S A S K I L L Y O U C A N L O S E
49. TA L K E D A B O U T W H AT W E • The good things about remote work. • The not so good things about remote work. • How I got my first remote job. • Some tips that helped me jump into remote work. They might help you too. • As always YMMV.
50. T H A N K Y O U A N Y Q U E S T I O N S ?