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

[Louis Goff-Beardsley]

What I’ve found with many of the ‘headphones-on heads-down’ developers is that if they grew up in the late 1990s on MSN messenger & IRC they often come out of their shells when working remotely. IM can be more familiar to them as their preferred mode of communication.

Some of the most close-knit teams I’ve seen have been fully remote but really tight socially in a similar vein to how some teenagers got engrossed and feel like they had a social circle on IRC channels & internet forums back in internet 1.0 days. With that level of remote IM based communication developed over decades, most of the points that Evgeny describes are a non-issues.

Where I’ve seen remote teams not perform so well, is where the wrong type of people have been hired or the leadership has not understood them. The important thing is for whomever is leading them to be similarly minded.

When you get it correct, the output can be much higher than an onsite team and the teams typically suffer from far less staff turnover than onsite London teams.

It’s my preferred type of team to build tbh.

Best, Louis

From: Chat [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] On Behalf Of stephen creedon
Sent: 27 February 2017 10:39
To: London Ruby Users Group <chat at lists.lrug.org>
Cc: London Ruby Users Group <chat at lists.lrug.org>
Subject: Re: [LRUG] [JOBS] Freelancer. And some reflections.

The benefits of remote vs local also depend on the company culture. I’ve worked at a couple of companies that were headphones-on heads-down and not a great deal of human interaction even when everyone is in the same room. At the moment a little over half of our developers are remote but they’re very communicative and rewarding to work with. Ideally people like that would be in the same room as me but I’m more than willing to accept the remote trade-off to be able to have them on the team. They’re senior, have children need family support and it works for them being at home rather crammed into a shoe-box in London with an increasingly unhappy partner.

I would say that it is important to be in a similar time zone though so there is plenty of time to chat about current things. Also it certainly helps that we’re all hungry, sleepy, thinking about the weekend and in need of beer and/or coffee at roughly the same time.

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On Feb 27, 2017, at 10:23 AM, Thomas Buckley-Houston <tom at tombh.co.uk<mailto: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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