Working Remotely - After The Honeymoon Is Over

When starting a new job, people tend to be excited, happy, with a new deal freshly signed in the pocket. "How do you like your new job?" results with an optimistic, head-over-heels answer. Life is good. You have a new job. I'm so happy for you! And... I'll ask you again in three months.

I figured, 3 months is a good "rule of Thumb" (Thumb is my in-game nickname. See what I did there? Anyway...). 3 months in, you see what the job and position are really about, you become aware of broader aspects of your job, not just the perks of it, you get more insights into who are the people you are working with and a reality check when it comes to growth, opportunities and how the job and company culture fit into your life.

Working remotely is something I've wanted to give a go for a while. My wish came true three months ago, when I made a ballsy decision to leave my full time job at Social Point, Barcelona and switch to working remotely, for a Canadian startup called Mistplay.

Managing Expectations

Before jumping into the self-employment world, I shared my idea with friends and colleagues to hear their thoughts. I was lucky enough to come across people that had hands on experience working freelance from home, as a consultant or similar and eagerly listened to their words of wisdom. Most noteworthy ones were:

• "You will work 24/7."

Very good point. If you don't have a clear picture of when you are and should be available and when not, it's easy to fall into the trap of the 24/7 wheel. Another temptation is to onboard too many clients and it's hard to say no once the good offers start flying in. Solution? Make sure to define when you are available and when you are not, both for yourself and the company(s) or client(s) you work with. Stick to it for everybody's sake. In my case, no matter how motivated I was about my work, if I didn't have certain brain-off hours, my productivity would start falling and it's just a waste of time and don't get me started on how it effects your efficiency. Brain refuses to work with me even if I say pretty please. Ironically, it needs that time-off to think of the solutions. In the short-run, working "non-stop" can be productive and get lots of things done. In the long-run, it's a no go.

• "If you work from home you'll feel like you're in the office all the time."

Never was a problem for me. I do understand the point though. To be sure, I made a visual and mental divider between my working space and the rest of the room. On off-hours I put the divider aside and have the whole place to myself again. I also strictly stick to the no-working-from-bed rule and tend to keep my working space at my desk altogether.

On the other hand, the most common expectations and association on "working remotely" I hear are things like:

• "You can work from your sofa."

Technically you can if you want to, but it will hurt your back. Oh man... You do you, but my advice is to stick to the desk and invest in a good quality chair and/or work station. Good investments right there.

• "You can travel all the time!"

Think again. I mean, you do need to get the work done, you know. Travelling takes planning and time to find work worthy location and get to the destination, Be realistic and don’t count on working while travelling. Once you arrive, sure, you can work remotely, and you are definitely more mobile, but some planning is required. So, I say, yes, you are more mobile, but it's not as simple as it sounds. I am yet to try this one out. I'll get back to you on this one once I do.

• "There are no distractions.", and also, ironically
• "Remote work is distracting. How will you get any work done?"

It's all about self discipline, isn't it? I mean, it's one of those things you maybe don't know about yourself until you try. Luckily, this is not a problem for me. In fact, getting things done at my own pace made both my quality of life and work performance better in my opinion.

• "You can set your own working hours."

OK, this one is a little bit more true than the others. Depends on the deal. As mentioned before, you do have to define what those hours are and make sure you communicate it clearly sticking to your word. You have to make sure you get your job done as well as your private life. Find your balance and what works for you personally. For me, the potential issue in the beginning was with time zone difference which turned out to be a large pro rather than a con and fitted my lifestyle more than I could anticipate. Turns out, for certain types of tasks, late night hours suit me better than mornings and I enjoy it.

Actual Challenges Of Working Remotely

There are surely things to put more focus on. Things that I find worth mentioning are:

Socialising and Relationships With Co-workers - As you are not surrounded with the people you work with, extra attention has to be put into building and keeping the relationships with your coworkers and team mates from both ends. Now, I believe there's an important factor of a company’s structure and logistics. If the company is built as an office environment only and has grown as such, it will have difficulty incorporating remote workers into the mix compared to the company that has had them from the beginning. There is a growing trend of employees switching to remote work and I recognise this clearly in the IT industry. I’m curious to see how this will affect structures and cultures of established companies and how they will adjust. There will be resistance for sure, but I have a feeling that the current status quo attitude won’t be able to survive for a long time, as the digital progress keeps challenging it consistently.

Information Flow (Inside the Company) - There are two things to mention here. One is the general issue of information flow that comes with the fast company growth and the second one is the additional effort you need to invest when it comes to people working remotely. When the company is experiencing significant growth, it’s easy to lose control if there hasn’t been some planning and restructuring of the communication processes. On the plus side, you can make the changes to accommodate communication processes for remote work as a part of the same plan to be able to restructure and avoid future complications. This is, again, one of the reasons why I think bigger, established companies lose the advantage over newer, smaller companies or companies who had this in their original logistics plan from the beginning.

Networking and Information (Outside the Company) - When you are working full time in an office, information and people come and go. It's like you're sitting next to the stream of contacts and relevant industry information you can scoop into. Working in an office this flow exists. Sitting home alone, this same flow simply doesn't exist. Solution? Join LinkedIn, Slack, Facebook or other platform's groups that are relevant for your industry and specialisation, make sure you follow the relevant blogs and put some effort into subscribing and actually reading relevant newsletters. Dedicate and book some time in your calendar to seek out the information as it no longer just gets to you on its own.

Planning The Income - If you don't work, you won't get paid. There are no paid vacation or sick days. You can plan your vacation days, but not so much your sick days. Therefore, having that savings cushion or emergency funds a bit thicker helps calm down the nerves. The whole ecosystem of full-time employee vs. self-employed remote worker is different. For me personally, as it was my first self-employed experience where I had to be aware that I am negotiating for a gross salary where I pay my own taxes, as hard as I tried, I missed out on some key factors that inevitably brought some additional costs or holes in my plan. But that is OK. Remember, the hardest thing is starting. Form there, you learn and adjust as you go. That I accounted for.

My Perspective

I tried to focus on topics that were the most relevant to my experiences and the examples I came across the most often. I am certain there are many other expectations as well as pros and cons that vary from person to person, industry to industry or other.

Overall? The sum of the pros is still outnumbering the cons. I love to work, and I am the type of person who organically cannot stand micromanaging, I have pretty decent organisational skills, enjoy planning my and team’s schedule, and all in all - you don't need to "make me" work. Getting to work, closing whatever has to be done, and waiting for the proper time to go home was never my style. There are pros and cons to any working arrangement. If you are not happy with yours, I encourage you to test out the alternatives. You can always go back to 9-5. Worst case scenario, you satisfied your curiosity and now you know yourself a bit better. So far, being self-employed remote worker fits my working style very well. Zero regrets.

Have any questions? Have a remote work experience yourself you'd like to share? Or maybe you are an employer with remote workers in your workforce? Let me know! I would love to hear them and debate this topic with you.