Working Remote?

General Chit Chat
1

Anyone have any suggestions or opinions on working remotely? My wife and I are trying to do some “working aboard” before I suffer my nervous breakdown and buy a mini van.

2

John O’Duinn, who used to manage RelEng at Mozilla, has written good stuff on this. His presentation is called “We Are All Remoties Now”. I can’t immediately find a video, but here’s a link to a PDF:
http://oduinn.com/blog/2014/02/12/we-are-all-remoties-twilio/

Gerv

3

Because of what I do, I only work “remote”. In fact, often-times, I work while on the road. And I love it.

[I used to work “on site” back in my software executive days. Came damned close to suffering a full nervous breakdown myself. Leaving that sort of work behind has made my life infinitely happier.]

My primary suggestions (which may not be at all helpful):

  1. Plan ahead for data connectivity. In the densely populated areas of North America (including USA and Canada) getting fast, free Wi-Fi is easy-peasy. I found the process far more problematic while in mainland Europe and the UK (available connectivity tended to be slower, shakier and typically fairly pricey… and oddly complicated to pay for).

  2. Have two computers. Nothing worse than needing to re-load a system and not having a good way to download a new ISO. Personally I have one laptop and a tablet (with USB dongle and keyboard, turning it into a full computer when needed).

  3. Cell phones stink. They work great until you hit a region where they don’t work at all. Even with an unlocked phone, and buying month-to-month sim cards in each locale you arrive in, the experience is less than ideal. I don’t have a good solution for this (other than plan ahead for good WiFi and use a combination of Google Voice and Skype for telephony).

Dunno if that was at all helpful. :smile:

2 Likes
4

bryanlunduke that was helpful. I can say now I am coming back from a glorious vacation in the Caribbean and the wife fell in love with the isla del encanto, where my family is from. It prompted a conversation about what it would take to work from the island. So we are looking at all our options