[LRUG] [JOBS] Freelancer. And some reflections.

[Jon Wood]

My feeling from what people have said so far is that reactions to remote
work, working from a different timezone, and working part time all boil
down to the same questions of how one works with somebody who isn't
currently sitting next to you so you can walk over and ask them questions.
The answer to that in my experience is to make sure everything is properly
documented - with a co-located fulltime team you can get away with building
something and assuming people will come and ask you if anything needs
clarifying, that's much less true if the person who built the feature is
now off work until Thursday.

The nice thing is that once you have developed a culture of properly
documenting everything and making sure all communication happens using
mediums that can be searched you also deal with the other circumstances in
which you find you can't just walk over to somebody. Holidays, maternity
leave, people leaving the company. Situations in which you can't just ask
somebody about their code aren't unique to companies with remote employees,
they're just surfaced earlier and more frequently.

On Mon, 27 Feb 2017 at 10:40 Patrick Gleeson <patrick at gojimo.co.uk> wrote:

> Re the bit of the question about part-timers, I have to say that the
> various times I've been looking for a coder I've never even considered
> part-time developers. The reason being, I'm always hiring someone to be
> part of a team (even when it's a teeny tiny team). When a team of coders
> works together it's a very involved, collaborative process. You can make it
> work if people are remote, as long as you have good communication hygiene,
> but having someone who's not available 2 days a week? That really messes
> with the dynamic, both on a practical level ("WhyTF did they do it like
> this?" / "Dunno, and we can only ask them when they're back in on Thursday,
> so you'd better not touch that class until then."), and more importantly on
> a psychological one: people are tribal, and if you're not fully in the
> tribe you're an outsider.
>
> Of course, if the whole team worked part-time, with the same days off,
> you'd sidestep that. But even if the feel-good factor offset some of the
> lost hours, your output will still drop, and I've never worked for a
> company that wasn't in a desperate hurry to get stuff done....
>
> On 27 February 2017 at 10:23, Thomas Buckley-Houston <tom at tombh.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> Wow Evgeny, I really appreciate the feedback. It gives me a much more
> digestible perspective than, "no, sorry, not at the moment" (which is
> of course a legitimate response itself).
>
> I should have mentioned though that all the places I'm applying
> clearly express remote focuses or remote friendliness. So I totally
> understand your preference for face to face, it's a basic human medium
> we've evolved over millions of years. And I love your;
>
> > I need a person who will look at the company and figure out how to
> prevent half the tickets from appearing.
>
> Also perhaps I could make clearer that I'm not just looking for short
> term contracts. I'd love a permanent part time role, I just have no
> need for the kind of money full time involves.
>
> Anyway, like I said, this is such a first-world problem. But still I
> very much appreciate the feedback.
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>
> --
>
> *Patrick Gleeson*
>
> Senior Ruby Developer
>
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