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

[Thomas Buckley-Houston]

Goodness, a lot to digest here. There's a lot of discussion about
remote which is actually not my main concern, as I'm only approaching
remote-orientated business. But. As is clear there are actually some
interesting overlaps between remote and part-time. As Jon Wood points
out,

> Situations in which you can't just ask somebody about their code aren't unique to companies with remote employees.

This stands out as a key point. In essence it feels like we're talking
about a continuous spectrum -- rather than the binary of remote/local
full/part time. Because yes, absolutely, good documentation has
broader benefits than merely supporting the remotes. Yet at the same
time at the other end of the spectrum as Sleepyfox points out, there
is undocumentable, "implicit knowledge". Then we have the local
employees who live inside headphones and IRC who may as well be
remote. But we also have the approachable and eloquent remotes who are
more engaging than the locals.

There's a great honest answer from Patrick Gleeson, "people are
tribal, and if you're not fully in the tribe you're an outsider". This
is really the point I want to unpack. It's all very well justifying
conventional working practices for their logistical merit, but what if
such reasoning is a convenient coping strategy for the eternally
non-logistical challenges of human interactions. Working with other
people is going to hurt, that's a given I believe. Therefore the most
pragmatic and realistic approach is to expect and accommodate
outsiders --geographical outsiders being just a literal example-- but
more importantly: *situations* that are outside our comfort zones.

Which brings me on to Ronny Ager Wick's and Sam Livingston-Gray's
points. Ronny made a point about the definition of part time

> work hard when there is a need, then take a few weeks/months off to compensate

This is exactly the kind of thing I mean. I simply have no need for
the kind of money that full time requires, beyond that I'm extremely
flexible. Helping out with that "implicit knowledge" at 2am in the
morning on my smartphone waiting for the bus home has no reason to be
by default annoying -- in fact I've done similar things before and
loved the geeky romance of it.

Sam Livingston-Gray has a good point to end on;

> being open to part time employees, [...] strikes me as a huge cultural blind spot

Just one last word, thank you sooooooo much for all your replies, I
genuinely appreciate the perspective and sobriety it brings.