Finding a remote job as a developer can be tricky. You want to work for a company that recognizes the value of remote workers, and you want to be sure that the company will support and encourage your remote working style.

If you’re a developer looking for an opportunity to work from home, only a handful of jobs can really provide you with great flexibility, a supportive environment, and manageable workloads.

If you're reading this, you probably want a nice list of companies that offer remote work. Unfortunately, most of the lists out there tend to be outdated or are filled with jobs that are not 100% remote.

With that in mind, in this article you will find a list of actual companies that hire remote developers in one way or another. You will also learn what these companies do and how they stack up against each other.

What Are the Benefits of Working Remotely?

Working remotely is an increasingly popular trend. It offers a level of flexibility, autonomy, and freedom not found in other work situations. In addition to that, remote work can also open the door to increased productivity and creativity.

Nicholas Bloom conducted an experiment and found that remote workers worked 9.5 % longer and were 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts. Below, I'll share some of the benefits of working remotely.

1. Working remotely saves time

Employees who work remotely don’t have to spend time commuting to work, and can thus manage their own schedule.

Also, some people perform better at different times of the day. For example, one person may be a morning person, while another is more productive in the evenings.

As long as you meet deadlines, it doesn’t matter what time of day you do your work.

2. You have peace and quiet when working remotely

Offices can be noisy, distracting, and generally disruptive. Sure, they can be productive spaces, but they're often anything but quiet.

Remote work allows you to escape the daily grind and go to a quiet location where you can concentrate on work.

Whether you choose to work from home or not, having peace and quiet during the working day can be the key to greater productivity, more motivation, and less stress.

3. Remote work can bring health and happiness

If you commute every day and work in an office, you might not be living as healthily as you could be. Remote developers are often happier, healthier and much more productive.

A recent report entitled the "State of Remote Engineering" captured sentiments from software developers across a range of topics, including remote work, compensation, burnout, payout, and productivity.

A whopping 75% of the developers surveyed mentioned they want to work remotely at least three days a week.

Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels

The study found that 68% of respondents are able to get more meaningful work done when working remotely or from home. In contrast, only 32% reported they are more productive in an office environment.

Important reasons for this were that working remotely gives people the freedom to make their own decisions and to be responsible for those decisions.

4. Remote work can help give you work-life balance

The key to a good work-life balance is to structure your day effectively and make sure you are spending enough time on both your work and home tasks.

Developers who feel like they have a sense of achievement are more productive. Other benefits include:

1. Taking a break when you need one.
2. Spending more time with family.
3. Not rushing to catch a train or spending time sitting in traffic.

5. Working remotely lets you personalise your office

The freedom to work remotely allows you not only to work when you want, how you want, and wherever you want. It provides you with the ability to establish your own office space and personalise it however you like.

You can create a truly inspirational workspace with the help of your favourite photos, paintings, plants, or anything else you might find that brings you joy.

This is all about making your work area totally yours – a completely inspiring environment. No one can judge what you like or dislike.

What Are the Best Remote Companies for Developers?

The remote work revolution is in full swing, and there’s a lot of online chatter about the best companies for remote work.

In this article, you will find a compiled list of the top 10 companies for developers to work remotely. This list is by no means exhaustive but should give you a good starting point of where to look for your next employer.

1. Intergiro

Screenshot from integiro website

Intergiro is an all-in-one platform that provides multi-currency bank accounts, card issuance, and card acquisition across Europe. Their services enable anyone to embed banking functionality into their website and app, creating opportunities for new and innovative product experiences.

Intergiro provides both hybrid and fully remote options to its employees. They are committed to building a remote-friendly company and make work simpler, more pleasant, and more fulfilling for their people.

Although a remote-first company, the company boasts hubs in luxurious coworking spaces in Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and Poland. The availability of these coworking spaces has allowed Intergiro to attract individuals who prefer to work side-by-side with like-minded colleagues

2. Automattic

Screenshot from Automattic Website

Automattic, Inc. is a software company, with its most famous product inarguably being WordPress. They are based in San Francisco, CA.

Automattic is the parent company of WordPress, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and several other web applications.

Automattic has long had a remote-first working environment that has even been the subject of various articles.

With workers in 96 countries, Automattic emphasises flexibility, autonomy, and an optimal work-life balance with open vacation days, paid sabbaticals every five years, and generous parental leave.

3. Zapier

Screenshot from Zapier website

Zapier is a web application that creates and automates connections between apps. Using Zapier, a user can easily create workflows and implement custom automatizations to smoothen their work

Zapier has been a 100% remote company since its establishment in 2011, and now boasts over 200 teammates in 24+ countries.

The company places a high degree of value on autonomy and employee ownership of their own work, and rewards employees with a flexible vacation policy and a profit-sharing system.

To build team spirit across the distance, the company also holds twice-annual all-company retreats.

4. InVision

Screenshot from Invision website

A software company focused on collaborative design tools, InVision has worked to become a go-to name in remote work since its establishment.

InVision motivates its globe-spanning workforce with a monthly allowance for work and self-care activities, an annual fund for self-development, and generous budgets for new hires to fully outfit their home offices, as well as office refreshment budgets every two years for existing employees.

5. Abstract

screenshot from Abstract website

Abstract is a web application designed for designers and developers that assist with collaboration on web and mobile projects. They currently have over 7,000 design teams signed up for the platform.

With 80% of their workforce being remote, Abstract is a remote-first company, although they are currently based entirely within the United States.

The company shows its investment in employees’ work-life balance by establishing four-day workweeks, along with unlimited paid time off and a range of other benefits, including pet insurance and adjustable work hours for caregivers.

6. Trakstar

Screenshot from Trackstar website

Trakstar is a software suite that empowers companies’ human resources to best manage and track their employees, all the way from the hiring stage through employee retention.

A remote-first company, Trakstar hires globally and provides a number of generous perks to their worldwide employee base.

These benefits include flexible time off for their workers, ample employee development resources for their staff, and bonuses and financial compensation (dependent on the specific country of hire).

7. Doist

Screenshot from Doist website

Doist is a software company specialising in productivity apps and tools, with a goal of providing software solutions that help people accomplish their goals.

Doist works on a remote basis with no limitations on employee locations. To ensure easier onboarding, Doist also assigns a mentor to newly-onboarded employees, and offers the possibility of flying out to the mentor’s location for a week in order to work side by side with a colleague at the beginning of employment.

The company also covers the fee for a coworking space of the employee’s choice, and has a budget for work-related services, personal development, and work-related hardware.

8. Frontastic

Frontastic is a company that provides a platform for e-commerce, brands, and mobile-focused startups to create mobile-first experiences, with a focus on delivering complete platforms for mobile-first e-commerce.

The Frontastic team is remote-first and spread around the world. For team-building, the company offers perks like three company meetups a year and a yearly five-day retreat.

Outside of these meetups, Frontastic offers flexible working hours and a generous working allowance.

9. Stripe

Screenshot from Stripe website

Stripe is a platform that companies use to collect and process payments. It allows business owners to create an app or website with a checkout flow that connects to their Stripe account and processes transactions with customers. This can be used for recurring billing, for example with subscriptions, or for one-time payments.

Stripe was ahead of the curve in implementing both remote and hybrid working models, hiring their first batch of remote-only engineers back in 2013.

The company offers flexible working hours, caregiver leave, and a monthly allowance for employee wellness.

10. Twitch

Screenshot from Twitch website

Twitch is a global leader in live streaming and video game streaming, with more than 5 million active users a month. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company has offices in nine countries.

Twitch is remote-friendly, although employees must still be based around one of its offices. It provides commuter benefits, flexible paid time off, and monthly contributions to employee wellness.

Wrapping up

I hope this article has helped you out if you're looking to work remotely as a developer but don't know where to start.

Remote work is a growing trend in the tech industry, and there are a lot of great resources out there to help you get started. In addition, I hope this enables you to find a job that suits your personality and lifestyle.

If you learned something new or enjoyed reading this article, please share it so that others can see it. Until then, see you in the next post!

You can also find me on Twitter @Davis_McDavid.

And you can read more articles like this here.

Indeed, a bit more than two years ago, I started my first full-time job as a Software Engineer. And at the same time, I began my first remote experience.

Nowadays, I'm 23 years old, living in Europe, working for a company based in Singapore, and planning to start a digital nomad life in Asia.

Based on my experience, I've put together 15 working from home tips to help you stay productive. I categorized these tips into 5 categories that you'll discover just below.

Just keep in mind that these tips are based on my personal experience, readings, and documentation. Everyone is different, and some of them may not work with your needs and goals.

Tip #1 – Build a strong work-life balance

One of the most impactful categories you need to take care of is your work-life balance.

Yes, you read about this in all remote-work articles, but what does it mean?

When you work remotely, it's easy to cut yourself out from your life. Your work can start overwhelming you because you feel like you're only doing that.

Even if you're passionate about what you are doing, it's essential to know how to step away from it to relax and stay productive in the long run.

Here are some tips to achieve a work-life balance.

1. Take breaks and go outside

It seems simple, right? Remote work doesn't mean staying at home all day. I highly recommend taking breaks and going outside to refresh your mind and leave your workplace.

What about eating outside during your lunchtime or even going for a walk in the afternoon?

2. Take up a sport or activity that takes your mind off things

To avoid feeling burnout from your job, take a step back and practice a relaxing and mind-changing activity.

Many people like to play a sport, while others prefer simply making time for other activities or hobbies that are different from what they do at work.

3. Split your computer

One of the most challenging parts of working from home is differentiating your work time from your non-work time.

If you're using the same computer for your work and your side-projects/chill time, this tip is for you.

Split your browser configuration

Nowadays, most browsers allow you to create profiles. I recommend that you make two profiles, one for your work and one for non-work time.

This allows you to disconnect easier when you're outside of work. At the same time, it helps organize your bookmarks and sessions (for example: if you're using the same tools between your work and your side-projects).

Create another session on your computer

This isn't something that I do personally. But, I read a lot about people using two different sessions.

It sounds like the "ultimate" solution if you want to keep these two spaces independent.

4. Don't setup work notifications on your phone

This tip can be controversial depending on what you're doing as a remote worker. But, still, I think it's something essential if you want to keep a work-life balance.

I don't like to have work applications or notifications on my phone for many reasons. Remote work means asynchronous life. Your co-workers can work at different hours than you. If you want to avoid waking up with work notifications or receiving messages while you're outside with friends, this is something you should avoid.

Note: If your work requires setting up some applications, there are many ways to remove the notifications after a defined hour. That can be an alternative.

5. Work from a co-working space

Another piece of advice that I've heard a lot is to work remotely from outside your home. Well, it's a bit controversial with this article title, but it's a genius way to keep a work-life balance if you can afford it and feel comfortable working in a public space.

If you're not feeling productive at home, even after reading and trying many things, working from a co-working space can help you.

Nowadays, co-working spaces are everywhere. If you can, try one of them out to see if it works for you.

Tip #2 – Create your own working environment

Now that we've talked about the importance of keeping a work-life balance, let's dig a bit more into your workspace and how you can improve it.

1. Choose or create a workspace that stimulates you

While working remotely, you have the freedom to create a workspace where you feel good. Be imaginative and bring what stimulates you around your desk. It can be plants, books, or anything that you like.

If you're a digital nomad or a frequent traveler, you can select a coffee shop, a co-working space, or a flat that inspires you.

A nice place to work is always a good source of motivation.

2. Separate your workspace from your sleeping one

I know that's not possible for everyone, but try as much as possible to separate your workspace from your bedroom.

If you wake up and work in the same place as you sleep, you will certainly have the feeling that you're always doing the same thing. It's not motivating to stay in the same room all day. When you reach your bed, you will still be in your "working" room.

3. Declutter your desk

Many articles and guides about productivity share this tip, but decluttering your desk and keeping it clean and minimal can help free your mind and help you focus more.

Again, it's a matter of personal opinion, but I like to keep my remote working space clean and simple to focus only on what matters.

Tip #3 – Socialize at work

Social aspects are essential as a remote worker. They help you stay motivated and avoid this inner feeling of working alone (even if you're not).

1. Schedule virtual time with your colleagues

Remote work doesn't mean staying away from your colleagues. Even if it can seem socially distancing at times, one essential point is to keep socializing.

Don't be shy – ask your colleagues for a 15-30 minutes coffee meeting to get to know them better.

If you're not working as a freelancer on alone on your project, there are many online events and communities that allow you to talk with like-minded people and share a coffee with them.

2. Try to schedule a social meeting each week in your company

If you're leading a remote company or working at one, this point is for you. Don't hesitate to schedule or ask for a social meeting each week. For example, it can be an hour where everyone meets up online and plays an online game together. The possibilities are endless.

Let me give you feedback on my experience. I'm working at Cococart. We create a product that allows you to create a simple, beautiful store in minutes. We're a remote worldwide company: all the team is spread worldwide, and some are frequent travelers.

Each week, we do one "Campfire" – an hour and a half meeting where we meet each other, talk about our highlights and lowlights of the week, give kudos to our co-workers, and play a game together. It can seem like a short time but trust me, it really helps build up significant team motivation and spirit.

One of the most awkward parts of working remotely is to feel alone. This point is only one example, but feel free to socialize using your preferred way.

Tip #4 – Become a time-management expert

To improve your productivity as a remote worker, time also matters. Make sure you're using yours wisely.

1. Try to have a set work schedule

I don't want to say that you shouldn't work hard or count your hours. I work a lot and don't always follow this rule.

I want to share that it's better to have at least a vague idea of when you start your day and finish it. It can be a good thing for your work-life balance, staying focused, and getting your work in the dedicated timeframe.

But as with all the tips I'm sharing in this article, it's a matter of personal opinion. I often shift my work schedule depending on a meeting or if I want to work more one day, and so on. Remote work gives you more flexibility and freedom. So it would be sad to not benefit from it! Just do what's best for you.

2. Schedule your tasks

This advice applies to many topics, but you will probably work more efficiently and achieve your goals easier if you schedule your day.

As a remote worker, it can be a good motivation factor. An organized day with focused work results in more time for yourself, lets you start working on something new at your job, or anything that you like.

Tip #5 – Learn to deep focus

Practicing some deep focus sessions is your ally if you want to skyrocket your productivity. Let me give you three tips that can help with it.

1. Listen to focus songs

Using focus/chill music can help you stay productive and enter into a deep focus. It's often an excellent way to hack your productivity.

Here are some examples of websites where you can listen to that kind of music for free:

• freeCodeCamp radio
• LofiGirl on YouTube
• Cafe Music BGM channel on YouTube

2. Use the "Do not disturb" option on your phone

Nowadays, we always receive notifications on our phones. Most modern devices have a "Do not disturb" feature that allows you to disable notifications when entering "Work" mode.

If you don't have this option, tons of applications like Forest in the store allow you to "restrict" your phone and enter focus mode.

3. Limit distractions

A bit related to the last tip, limiting distractions helps you stay focused. Review your environment and try to remove or push away all objects that annoy you while working.

Here are some examples: put away your phone, close YouTube videos while working, switch off the TV, and so on.

Wrapping up

Thank you for reading this article. I hope it provided you with insightful tips to improve your remote work life or even start working remotely.

I regularly deliver content about web development, personal growth as a developer, and my journey as an aspiring digital nomad and remote software engineer. If you don't want to miss them, I invite you to follow me on Twitter.

There is no better time than now to find a remote job and to work from home.

There are plenty of roles that can be done remotely, especially in the technology sector.

From product design and product management, to graphic design, marketing, sales and web development – web development jobs are one of the most popular and highly sought after roles.

In this article you'll see some of the ways you can find a remote developer role, when you're still early in your career.

We'll first go over how this shift towards remote work has occured in the last few years, as well as some of the pros and cons of working remotely.

Then, we'll see some strategies to help you land a remote developer role and some ways to stand out to future employers.

If you only want to just see some of the most popular remote job boards, skip to this part.

The Shift Towards Remote Work

The Covid-19 pandemic took the world by surprise in the beginning of 2020.

As everything started to shut down, a lot of workers were required and encouraged to work from home, making many companies remote overnight.

It's safe to say that the pandemic completely changed working life. What initially was a forced pivot is turning out to be a new world and a new way of working which is likely here to stay.

People's relationship with work has started to change. The view on fixed work spaces and workers needing to gather under the same office roof – something that has been considered the norm since the Industrial Revolution – has started to change.

With electronic means of communication such as e-mail and chat services widely available, along with communication platforms and shared documents, there doesn't seem to be an urgent need for many types of workers to be in the same building anymore.

Many people are now also reconsidering the idea of clocking in and out of work at set, fixed days and hours and becoming more aware of their time and what matters the most to them. After all, some may be more productive during the weekends and get more done on those days, instead of solely during a strict Monday to Friday and 9 - 5 schedule.

The Pros and Cons of Remote Work

The Pros and Cons of remote work are relative to every individual.

But in general, some pros of working remote that benefit both the companies and the people working at the companies, are the following:

• Flexible working schedules and locations typically increase productivity and performance.
• The above point leads to employees having more autonomy and independence which in turn leads to a happier workforce. Employees that feel trusted by their employers and have that level of freedom are more content with their jobs, efficient with their time, and more motivated to get their work done.
• Remote work allows you to travel and work from any part of the globe and become a digital nomad, making your own work schedule. When working in tech specifically, all you need is a good internet connection, a laptop, and good skills.
• With remote work you also place emphasis on producing quality work where you are highly focused on the task for a set amount of time that works for you. In a 9 - 5 job the bulk of the work for the day may be finished before 5 o'clock, but you'll still need to remain at the office and possibly not be as productive as you were during the remaining time.
• Office space is expensive, with companies paying thousands of dollars for office space every year per employee. Remote work would cut those costs, saving significant amounts of money.
• Remote work also means that long commutes to get into office everyday are no longer needed. Commuting often means spending a lot of time stuck in traffic, spending money on gas, or using crowded public transportation systems everyday. People can spend a lot of time can commuting - it's not uncommon for commuters to spend more than two hours each day getting to the office and going back home. This is often a cause of major stress. Not commuting to and from work can save a significant amount of time and money.
• With remote work, there is the opportunity to form distributed teams and hire people from all around the globe. This is more representative of the world as it is. Having people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds, with each having a wealth of different experiences to draw from, would in turn result in creating better products and services.
• With remote work you also get to spend more time with your family and loved ones.
• "With great freedom comes great responsibility" is a phrase that stands true when it comes to remote work. Often remote workers have a greater connection to the company's mission, which leads to greater motivation and sense of purpose. If you are not aligned with the company's values and don't find the work rewarding, it may be tempting to not put in the effort when there is no one watching you like there is in a 9 - 5 traditional office job.

There are also some potential cons of remote working:

• There are concerns around productivity. For example, a lack of a dedicated space and set up in your home where you can work comfortably and quietly could potentially lead to a decrease in productivity.
• A lack of a good Wifi connection, Internt speed, and decent voice quality could lead to troubles in communication. When a connection is not consistent and there are frequent disconnections, it makes communicating with team members difficult. Similarly, having poor voice quality, a microphone that doesn't work properly, or a lot of background noise can be distraction for others and make communicating over meetings harder.
• With remote work, some workers may be more prone than others to procrastination, getting easily distracted and managing their time efficiently. A good answer to that could be the Pomodoro Technique and time blocking tasks.
• Remote working may prove challenging for workers that have family members to frequently tend to and who need their attention.
• With remote work, work-life balance can be tricky at times. For this reason, some workers may enjoy the commute, the travelling to work and the removal from their home as they see it as a physical separation between work and social life. It can be a way to divide work from personal life and whatever issues are associated with that.
• Another potential issue is the difficulty in making connections and networking. This can be a challenge especially for juniors and folks that are early in their careers, and not so much for senior staff members who have developed their network over the years. Offices can be a good place for networking, but there are plenty of online communities available now, with new ones being created frequently, that can help you form connections in the industry.
• Differences in communication skills between team members can also be challenging. Communicating your thoughts in a clear and concice manner is sometimes tricky over email or a Zoom call. It can also be tough to break down problems, explain your thought process, and explain complex technical topics in simple words to technical and non-technical members of a team. And all this is necessary when working remotely. Remote work involves a lot of collaboration, so getting messages across clearly is vital, otherwise there will be frequent misunderstandings.

How to Appeal to Remote Companies as a Developer

Not all jobs can be done remotely.

It's no surprise that tech companies are paving the way and leading this shift towards remote work.

That being said, these tech roles are highly skilled - they are what are known as "knowledge jobs".

Most companies ask for a couple of years of experience, but how do you get that experience when you have none and no one will hire you because you lack that vital experience?

It's like a chicken and egg problem, and this can be even more of a problem when applying for a remote position.

How do you showcase your skills in an affective way when you are still early on in your career?

Companies want to know that you have the skills required and that you are capable of doing the job.

Not only that, but getting a remote role involves a lot more competition. The talent pool for selecting candidates is larger than ever, compared to what it typically is for traditional office jobs.

There are many people applying from all over the world just for one single position, since there are a lot of people wanting to work remotely and have that flexible schedule.

Listed below are some of the things you can do that may help you stand out in your remote job search as an early career developer.

There is the aspect of luck that plays role in every job search, but these points can help showcase your skills to prospective employers when you don't have that much experience.

Prep your GitHub Account for the Job

Include projects that you are proud of and are the most excited about.

Also, by showcasing projects that are related to the position you are applying to, you can discuss the different challenges you faced, the problems that arose, how you went about solving those problems and what you learned overall.

Make sure that your projects are well documented by creating README files for each one.

This way you can document your thought process and intentions while also showcasing your written communication skills which are important when working in tech.

Contribute to Open Source

Contributing to Open Source can be intimidating as a beginner, but it is worthwhile and does make a difference when applying to jobs. It's something that many employers appreciate.

You can start off by making small contributions. For example, you can correct grammar errors and typos and create sufficient documentation for projects that lack it.

This shows that you are able to communicate well and collaborate with other developers remotely and asynchronously to solve a problem. And all that is done in public.

A good place to start contributing is by checking out the freeCodeCamp repository for issues with the label "fist timers only".

Below are some resources to help you learn more about contributing to Open Source:

• The Ultimate Guide to Open Source
• The Definitive Guide to Contributing to Open Source
• How to Contribute to Open Source Projects – A Beginner's Guide

Create a Personal Website

A personal website is your own personal corner on the Internet and a way to show the world – including potential employers – who you are on a more personal level.

Include some information about yourself and the projects you are most proud of. Make sure all links are working and there are no typos.

The important information that employers are looking for needs to stand out clearly and easily at first sight.

Include an up to date CV/résumé and a way to contact you - preferably a professional e-mail address.

Below are some resources to help you with creating a portfolio website:

• Create a Portfolio Website Using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap 5
• Build Your Own Developer Portfolio Website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Create a Portfolio Website – A Beginner Developer's Guide

Learn in Public

Learning in public and getting involved with the developer community can accelarate your career and help you make valuable connections.

It's a way to showcase that you have those communication skills that employers are looking for.

Whether it be blogging, writing about your coding journey, documenting what you are currently learning, or giving a talk at a local meetup, all help create your own sort of personal brand. People get an insight into who you are on a more personal level.

Including links of all the ways in which you are learning in public and engaging with the community shows a level of dedication and that you're serious about getting into tech.

You can share your findings, explain how you solved a specific problem in a blog post, or craft lists of helpful resources to share. These activities not only help you understand everything better, but will help others that are also learning.

Below are some resources to help you get started with technical writing:

• Writing Tips for Software Developers – How to Become a Better Tech Writer
• Technical Writing for Beginners – An A-Z Guide to Tech Blogging Basics
• How to Become a Technical Writer

Gain Experience Working Remotely

Having prior experience working remotely will likely increase your chances of getting another remote job, compared to someone who doesn't have that experience and know-how.

It shows that you are productive in remote settings.

Even if you are working in a different field and are not a remote worker, but want to transition into a remote tech role, you can negotiate a hybrid role at your current company. You might be able to work remotely 1 - 2 days a week, and the rest of the week to work from the office.

Gain Experience Working as a Developer

If you want to get a remote developer job as your first tech job, it may be more difficult than getting an traditional office job. Getting your foot in the door as a junior is hard enough, without the remote aspect.

Although this is in no way impossible to achieve, it may be more realistic to have a couple of years of experience under your belt. This can make the possibility of working remotely more likely.

It's easier for intermediate and senior level developers to land a remote role, compared to those searching for their first job in tech.

Onboarding a junior member on the team remotely and training them can prove to be challenging. This is especially true when you don't have much direct supervision and mentorship and they end up spending a lot of time alone.

Focus on learning the skills needed and building them to the point where you can market yourself well and stand out from the crowd. The more well-developed your skills are, the higher the chances.

Show Genuine Interest in the Remote Company you're Applying to

Taking the extra time and putting in that extra effort to craft a high-quality application will help you stand out. Make sure your application is tailored towards the company you're applying to and lay out what you have to offer and why you're the right fit.

Hiring managers can tell when you've copied and pasted your application to several other positions and when it's not tailored to that individual company.

So make sure you customize your application for the position and show that you've researched the company's website and/or blog to understand what they are doing and what their mission is. This will make a better impression and make you stand out more.

Where to Find Companies that Hire Remotely?

There are plenty of remote job boards where you can browse through hundreds of job postings and apply to any you see fit.

This section showcases some of the most popular job boards that advertise remote-friendly positions.

To see a complete list of remote-friendly companies, check out this comprehensive GitHub repository

Remote Ok

On Remote Ok you will find different kind of jobs listed, such as product designer, product manager, copywriter and copy editor, to name a few.

The majority of jobs, though, are software development jobs.

The website consists of hundreds of job postings and it's updated daily.

It's easy to use, without needing to sign-up anywhere or upload a CV in order to submit an application.

You can just click on the search bar at the top of the page. When you do so, you'll see a dropdown menu with a filter for the different job categories you can choose from and the number of jobs available in each category.

When you click on a link of a job posting, you'll see the full job description and then a button that says "Apply now".

When you click that button to apply for the job, you'll be redirected to the company's website.

This job board is more of a place to take a look at the different remote jobs that are available in the world. It's not meant for creating a profile of your own or submitting an application directly from the job board.

It's also one of the most impersonal job boards out there, since there is no information or a way to find out more about Remote Ok as a company, or a way to contact customer service.

Remote.co

Remote.co is another remote job board with all kind of jobs listings available. There are editing jobs, customer service and marketing jobs, and many more.

There is also a wide selection of jobs in front-end development, back-end development, and full-stack development.

In the search bar at the top of the page, enter the type of position you're searching for or the name of a company you want to work at.

You can also sign up to their newsletter to receive daily job alerts, but other than that you don't need to sign up anywhere is order to view jobs or apply to jobs.

When you apply for a job, you'll be redirected to the company's website to apply directly from there.

This remote job is more personable compared to Remote Ok, since it has more information about it and different resources available.

There are articles on remote work, remote worker's rights, and even different online courses you can take.

We Work Remotely

On We Work Remotely you'll find lists of jobs in sales, marketing, software development and more.

There are jobs available in front-end development, back-end development, full-stack development, and in DevOps and Systems administration.

You can create an account by providing your email address and setting a password. This way you'll be notified about new job openings and specifically jobs that are tailored to your area of interest.

The site also provides advanced search filters, where you enter the job title, the region where you want to work, and the time zone you're in, as well as the job type you're looking for. From there you can choose either contract work or full-time work.

When you apply for a position you will be redirected to the company's website you're applying to.

Remotive

On Remotive there are a variety of different remote tech roles available.

There are listings for developer roles, customer support, customer service, sales, management, product design, product management, and more.

This job board is also focused on tech and there are filters available where you can view the different job categories available.

A new feature of theirs is the ability to hide the jobs that require applicants to be US-based and work remotely from a US timezone.

You can also use keywords, such as a specific skill or job title, to filter through all the different posts.

It also has a mailing list where you can receive daily job updates.

AngelList

AngelList lists mostly tech startup jobs.

There, you can create your own profile where you'll be able to inlcude your skills and information about yourself.

You can also set your desired salary and the kind of culture you want a company to have.

Then, once your profile is set up you'll be able to apply to jobs directly from AngelList, without being redirected to the company's website.

Companies will be able to connect you with by finding you through your profile and contacting you.

There are advanced search filters, to filter through the different jobs available.

When browsing though jobs on AngelList, you can also view the salary and stock options of jobs.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow Remote Developer Jobs lists only developer roles that are done remotely.

It includes an advanced filter that helps you really tailor your search to best fit your needs and what you are looking for.

Here are some examples of what is available with the advanced filter:

• You can include up to ten tags of technologies you like working with and ten technologies you dislike working with.
• You can include companies you like and companies you want to avoid and exclude from your job search.
• You can include a minimum salary range you're expecting to get.
• You can enter your level of seniority and experience.
• You can select wether you require a visa sponsorship and want to relocate to a different country.
• Also, you can select what job type you're looking for, whether it's contract work, a full time position, or an internship.

You don't need to create a profile. When you apply for a position, you'll be redirected to the company's website.

LinkedIn Jobs

On LinkedIn you get to create your own profile where you include your work history, highlight your skills, and write a headline that summarizes your achievements and past job experiences.

A good way to stand out is to share any articles you've written, and share other interesting and informative content.

LinkedIn is a way to connect directly with companies by reaching out to recruiters.

You can also let recruiters know you are available for hire. Specifially, you can inform them on what kind of postion you're looking for and whether you prefer to work remotely.

This is a feature you can add to your profile but it's private and is only visible to them.

Often if your profile is impressive, recruiters will reach out to you and direct message you.

Here are some resources for you to create a stand-out LinkedIn profile:

• How To Build An Amazing LinkedIn Profile 15+ Proven Tips
• How to Use LinkedIn to Get Your First Developer Job – A Step-by-Step Guide

Conclusion

The work landscape is starting to change and remote work is increasing in popularity and demand.

In this article, you saw some ways to stand out to remote companies as an early career developer.

You also saw some of the most popular job boards that feature remote-friendly companies.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your remote job search!

I have curated a list of 25 sites for remote work. Whether you are looking for part time, full time, or freelance work, these are the best sites to look into.

Here is the complete list. Once you find a website that interests you, click that link and it will jump you down to a more detailed description of that website.

1. Arc
2. We Work Remotely
3. Skip The Drive
4. Power to Fly
5. Remote OK
6. Remotive
7. FlexJobs
8. Dribble
9. AngelList
10. Remote.co
11. JustRemote
12. Virtual Vocations
13. Pangian
14. Working Nomads
15. Jobspresso
16. Outsourcely
17. Landing.Jobs
18. Authentic Jobs
19. Stack Overflow
20. Gun.io
21. Idealist
22. Fiverr
23. Upwork
24. Freelancer
25. freelancermap

Arc

Arc is a site dedicated to remote developer jobs. Arc provides many free resources including a job search by tech stack, a resume guide, salary explorer, virtual events, and interview questions.

You can also browse through Arc's list of Top Remote Companies that are hiring right now.

We Work Remotely

We Work Remotely offers free job postings in frontend, backend, full stack, mobile, design and more. You also have access to their events, forum, and slack group.

Skip The Drive

Skip The Drive offers free job listings in the areas of development, project management, sales and more. This site also offers a list of Micro Job Sites, a Remote Job Savings Calculator, and a Job Application Tracking spreadsheet.

Power to Fly

Power to Fly specializes in connecting candidates from underrepresented backgrounds to potential employers. When you create an account you'll have access to job listings, career events, coaching sessions, mentorship and more.

Remote OK

Remote Ok offers free job listings in development, online teaching, design and more. This site also has a separate page for just freelancers where you can create a profile and have access to thousands of jobs.

Remotive

Remotive offers free job postings in the areas of IT, development, design, QA and more. Remotive also provides career guides, webinars, and paid access to the Remotive community.

FlexJobs

FlexJobs is a subscription site for remote part-time, full time and freelance jobs. If you are skeptical about paying for job postings, then check out their Better Business Bureau rating and reviews.

This is the current pricing list for the FlexJobs subscriptions.

Members have access to their job listings, events, and articles. FlexJobs also offers career coaching, resume reviews, and mock interviews for an additional cost.

Dribble

While Dribble is mainly known as a place for freelance designers to post their work, there is also a section for remote graphic design jobs.

AngelList

AngelList offers software job listings at startup companies. You will need to create an account in order to read the full job descriptions and apply.

Remote.co

Remote.co offers free job postings in the areas of IT, development, design, QA and more. If you upgrade to the premium service, then you have access to more job postings, career coaching, and resume reviews.

JustRemote

JustRemote offers free job postings in the areas of DevOps, development, design and more. They also offer an online resume builder to help you get to the interview stage.

For an added cost, JustRemote has a feature called PowerSearch that provides you with additional job postings that are normally hidden from the general public.

Virtual Vocations

Virtual Vocations is a free service that provides you with remote job listings in development, technical writing, QA, project management and more.

Virtual Vocations also offers a paid subscription service which includes courses, webinars, and career coaching sessions.

Pangian

Pangian offers free remote job listings in the areas of development, IT, sales and more. You will need to create a free account in order to access the job details.

Pangian also offers free career tips and a community forum. For an additional $149.99 (US dollars), you can have access to the one on one resume and CV audit.

Working Nomads

Working Nomads offers free job listings in development, design, DevOps, project management and more.

Jobspresso

Jobspresso offers thousands of free listings in development, design, DevOps, customer service, and more.

Outsourcely

Outsourcely ensures that job candidates are paired with the right company. Create an account and browse through thousands of postings in web development, mobile, design, customer service and more.

Landing.Jobs

Landing.jobs connects independent contractors with remote jobs. Create an account, go through the Landing.jobs evaluation process, and then start applying for remote work.

Authentic Jobs

Authentic jobs offers free listings in web development, mobile, project management, design and more.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is mainly known as a place for tech questions and answers but they also have a jobs section. For remote work, just select the remote options in the search parameters.

Gun.io

Gun.io specializes in connecting developers with software companies. Create an account, apply for jobs, go through interviews and start working.

Idealist

Idealist is a site that posts hundreds of jobs for non-profits and organizations that want to create change in the world. For remote work, make sure to choose that option in the search parameters.

Freelance projects and micro-jobs

Fiverr

Fiverr is site where you can create a list of services and offer them to Fiverr's global audience.

Upwork

Upwork is a place for freelancers to bid on jobs, sell their projects, and connect with recruiters.

Freelancer

Freelancer specializes in connecting clients with freelancers. Freelancers can search through thousands of projects and make bids.

freelancermap

freelancermap specializes in connecting freelancers with clients all around the world. Freelancers can create an account and bid on projects that match their skills and experience.

##

When it comes to debugging, the tool you use is extremely important and can determine how easy is is to fix problems within your code.

In the early days, the debugging process was quite a challenge. With the distinct lack of reliable debuggers, developers turned to several hacks.

For instance, when debugging a mobile app or website, you would recreate issues on your desktop and then use Chrome developer tools and similar toolkits.

Unfortunately, these hacks were not as effective — you had to constantly shift back and forth from your desktop browser and mobile device.

Fast forward to today, and we have a powerful suite of tools that allow you to debug defective code running on a different device as if it were local code. Best of all, these remote debugging tools not only address the debugging challenges but also enhance collaboration across development teams.

In this post, I have put together the top ten remote debugging tools which can be reliably used to debug your code remotely.

Rookout

Rookout is a tool that brings agility to the debugging process. It can be used to debug JVM, Node.JS, and Python code in both serverless and containerized applications.

The beauty of Rookout lies in its ability to allow users to debug both staging and production applications quickly and securely. It eliminates the lengthy and complicated debugging processes by providing all the data needed in a matter of seconds.

The on-demand data provided by Rookout ensures developers can understand and debug issues lying within their code without coding, redeploying or restarting their applications.

With Rookout, you can remotely debug live Electron apps. Rookout’s shareable interface allows developers to set non-breaking breakpoints in troublesome Electron apps.

The tool gives you complete visibility into your app's performance, so you can trace issues and develop appropriate fixes. Rookout makes all this possible without the need to install another software on the end-user

Highlights

• Easy to get started
• Seamless Git integration
• Integrates with a range of tools including Slack, Datadog, Sentry, Sumologic, and more
• Interaction tracking and screen sharing capabilities
• Provides comprehensive debugging data in real-time

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is always a top pick for every developer working with .NET. It has a ton of features to facilitate both local and remote debugging. With this tool, you can set conditional breakpoints and log points.

It also allows you to inspect variables. For remote debugging, you will need to install the VS code remote development extension pack. This package has three extensions that provide everything you need to launch, monitor, and accelerate your remote debugging loop.

Highlights

• Free to use, cross-platform operations
• Highly active development community with Microsoft backing
• Integrated Git control
• Supports a wide array of extensions and customization options for workflow enhancement
• Automatic error checking and color coding is great

RubyMine

RubyMine is a powerful and intelligent cross-platform IDE that allows you to debug Ruby on Rails, CoffeeScript, JavaScript, CSS, ERB and HAML, and more. Its advanced built-in debugger allows you to set breakpoints and define hit conditions with ease.

JetBrains' RubyMine provides two ways to debug applications that run on remote devices. First, you can add the remote Ruby interpreter and configure mappings between local and remote project files, then launch your debugging session.

Alternatively, you can run applications on the remote device then add the Ruby interpreter.

Once done, configure mappings between files and bind to a running process. The latter is especially helpful when debugging an application that you cannot launch directly from your IDE.

Another great thing about this tool is that it allows you to launch multiple debug processes simultaneously.

Highlights

• RubyMine is based on the solid intelliJ IDEA platform
• Good support for ruby-related frameworks and technologies
• Autocomplete feature is pretty good
• Good Git integration.
• Supports multiple plugins
• Integrates seamlessly with rails

PyCharm

PyCharm is another robust IDE developed by JetBrains for Python. This intelligent code editor is equipped with remote development capabilities, including running, testing, debugging, deploying and applications on virtual machines and remote hosts.

The debugger offers several breakpoints, frames view, watches, stepping modes, remote interpreters, and a debug console.

Some amazing features of PyCharm include sophisticated auto-completion, excellent refactoring support and seamless integration with tools such as Django, IPython, Docker, Vagrant, and Pytest.

Additionally, PyCharm is a wonderful cross-platform development tool. Other than Python, it supports JavaScript, Cython, CoffeeScript, TypeScript SQL, HTML/CSS, Node.js, AngularJS, and more.

Highlights

• Awesome connectivity with multiple databases for querying within the IDE
• Searching and installing packages is easy
• Automatic code completion
• Git visualization
• Shows code errors on the fly and facilitates easy fixing

GDB

GDB can be effectively used to debug programs on another computer. To perform remote debugging, you will need to run the GDB utility in the host system. Additionally, you must run gdbserver on the target system so that the two utilities will communicate through a network or serial line using the GDB remote serial protocol.

There are two configuration options for remote debugging with GDB/gdbserver. The first involves using the remote GDB server to automatically build and upload application code to the remote machine.

The second option is using GDB remote debug where you should have the executable files.

Highlights

• Easy to use and trace faults within code
• Cross-platform and wide language support
• Effective for core dump analysis

Eclipse

Eclipse is a renowned IDE for Java development that also supports languages like Python, Ruby, C# and, PHP. The Eclipse IDE is equipped with advanced features for development and debugging, making it an all-rounded tool.

One of the most impressive features on Eclipse is the platform’s debug perspective that shows detailed debugging information such as breakpoints, variables, call stacks, and threads side by side.

Using Eclipse, you can step through program execution, suspend and resume threads, evaluate expressions and inspect values. Managing remote debugging configurations on Eclipse is quite easy and straightforward, which makes the tool more popular among developers.

Highlights

• Automatic code completion
• Good refactoring support
• Excellent navigation capability
• Helps with syntax checking for clean and efficient code
• Git Integration

Zend Studio Debugger

The Zend Studio is a professional IDE that supports PHP code editing, testing, debugging, and more.

It is tightly integrated with the Zend Server, thereby creating a complete PHP environment that facilitates easier analysis of problems detected in staging and production environments.

Zend also provides a PHP extension that users can install on web servers to debug PHP scripts. Using Zend for debugging is relatively easy – you only need to open the source code, set breakpoints in the project, and run a debug session.

Remote debugging on Zend can be done in three ways. The first option is using the Debug URL functionality on Zend Studio.

Secondly, you can use the Debug as Web Page functionality within Zend Studio. And finally, using the Zend browser toolbar on Firefox or Chrome.

Highlights

• Ability to sift through project files in just a few keystrokes
• Highly efficient and speedy platform
• Large community support
• Great for building and debugging PHP applications
• The framework is exceptionally flexible

WinPdb

WinPdb is an excellent Python debugger that works well on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux systems. It is compatible with both Python 2.x and Python 3.x.

This debugging tool supports smart breakpoints, namespace modification, multiple threads, embedded debugging, and encrypted communication. For remote debugging, you will need to copy rpdb2.py (Winpdb’s command-line debugger) onto the remote machine.

Once finished, start the Python script with the debugger on the remote machine. From your local device, launch the GUI and attach the script to debug. At this point, you can use the basename or full path of the script as it is on the remote device. You can learn more about debugging Python scripts with Win PDB here.

Highlights

• Supports multithread debugging
• Encrypted communication for remote debugging
• Quicker than PDB
• Easy to use GUI with breakpoints, stack/variable inspection, and more

Use the above tools to make your remote debugging experience much better. Happy coding!

This article will serve as a guide to improving your Data Science skills while working from home. You can use it to build real-life projects, beef up your portfolio, and prepare yourself for what's next.

The coronavirus outbreak is taking over headlines. Due to the spread of COVID-19, remote work is suddenly an overnight requirement for many. You might be working from home as you are reading this article.

With millions working from home for many weeks now, we should seize this opportunity to improve our skills in the domain we are focusing on.

Here is my strategy to learn Data Science while working from home with few personal real life projects.

"So what should we do?"

"Where should we start learning?"

Grab your coffee as I explain the process of how you can learn data science sitting at home. This blog is for everyone, from beginners to professionals.

_Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@nickmorrison?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="photo-creator noopener">Nick Morrison on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utmmedium=referral" rel="photo-source noopener)

Prerequisites

To start this journey, you will need to cover the prerequisites. No matter which specific field you are in, you will need to learn the following prerequisites for data science.

Logic/Algorithms:

It’s important to know why we need a particular prerequisite before learning it. Algorithms are basically a set of instructions given to a computer to make it do a specific task.

Machine learning is built from various complex algorithms. So you need to understand how algorithms and logic work on a basic level before jumping into complex algorithms needed for machine learning.

If you are able to write the logic for any given puzzle with the proper steps, it will be easy for you to understand how these algorithms work and you can write one for yourself.

Resources: Some awesome free resources to learn data structures and algorithms in depth.

Statistics:

Statistics is a collection of tools that you can use to get answers to important questions about data.

Machine learning and statistics are two tightly related fields of study. So much so that statisticians refer to machine learning as “applied statistics” or “statistical learning”.

Image source : http://me.me/

The following topics should be covered by aspiring data scientists before they start machine learning.

• Measures of Central Tendency — mean, median, mode, etc
• Measures of Variability — variance, standard deviation, z-score, etc
• Probability — probability density function, conditional probability, etc
• Accuracy — true positive, false positive, sensitivity, etc
• Hypothesis Testing and Statistical Significance — p-value, null hypothesis, etc

Resources: Learn college level statistics in this free 8 hour course.

Business:

This depends on which domain you want to focus on. It basically involves understanding the particular domain and getting domain expertise before you get into a data science project. This is important as it helps in defining our problem accurately.

Resources: Data science for business

Brush up your basics

This sounds pretty easy but we tend to forget some important basic concepts. It gets difficult to learn more complex concepts and the latest technologies in a specific domain without having a solid foundation in the basics.

Here are few concepts you can start revising:

Python programming language

Python is widely used in data science. Check out this collection of great Python tutorials and these helpful code samples to get started.

Image source : memecrunch.com

You can also check out this Python3 Cheatsheet that will help you learn new syntax that was released in python3. It'll also help you brush up on basic syntax.

And if you want a great free course, check out this Python for Everybody course from Dr. Chuck.

General data science skills

Want to take a great course on data science concepts? Here's a bunch of data science courses that you can take online, ranked according to thousands of data points.

Resources: Data science for beginners - free 6 hour course, What languages should you learn for data science?

Data Collection

Now it is time for us to explore all the ways you can collect your data. You never know where your data might be hiding. Following are a few ways you can collect your data.

Web scraping

Web scraping helps you gather structured data from the web, select some of that data, and keep what you selected for whatever use you require.

You can start learning BeautifulSoup4 which helps you scrape websites and make your own datasets.

Advance Tip: You can automate browsers and get data from interactive web pages such as Firebase using Selenium. It is useful for automating web applications and automating boring web based administration

Resources: Web Scraping 101 in Python

Cloud servers

If your data is stored on cloud servers such as S3, you might need to get familiar with how to get data from there. The following link will help you understand how to implement them using Amazon S3.

Resources : Getting started with Amazon S3, How to deploy your site or app to AWS S3 with CloudFront

APIs

There are millions of websites that provide data through APIs such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. So it is important to learn how they are used and have a good idea on how they are implemented.

Resources : What is an API? In English, please, How to build a JSON API with Python, and Getting started with Python API.

Data Preprocessing

This topic includes everything from data cleaning to feature engineering. It takes a lot of time and effort. So we need to dedicate a lot of time to actually learn it.

Image source : [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/293648838181843463/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/293648838181843463/" rel="noopener)

Data cleaning involves different techniques based on the problem and data type. The data needs to be cleaned from irrelevant data, syntax erros, data inconsistencies and missing data. The following guide will get you started with data cleaning.

Resources : Ultimate guide to data cleaning

Data Preprocessing is an important step in which the data gets transformed, or encoded, so that the machine can easily parse it. It requires time as well as effort to preprocess different types of data which include numerical, textual and image data.

Resources : Data Preprocessing: Concepts, All you need to know about text preprocessing for NLP and Machine Learning, Preprocessing for deep learning.

Machine Learning

Finally we reach our favourite part of data science: Machine Learning.

Image source : [https://in.pinterest.com/pin/536209899383255279/](https://in.pinterest.com/pin/536209899383255279/" rel="noopener)

My suggestion here would be  to  first brush up your basic algorithms.

Classification — Logistic Regression, RandomForest, SVM, Naive Bayes, Decision Trees

Resources : Types of classification algorithms in Machine Learning, Classification Algorithms in Machine Learning

Regression — Linear Regression, RandomForest, Polynomial Regression

Resources : Introduction to Linear Regression , Use Linear Regression models to predict quadratic, root, and polynomial functions, 7 Regression Techniques you should know, Selecting the best Machine Learning algorithm for your regression problem,

Clustering — K-Means Clustering, DBSCAN, Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering

Resources : Clustering algorithms

Gradient Boosting — XGBoost, Catboost, AdaBoost

Resources : Gradient boosting from scratch, Understanding Gradient Boosting Machines

I urge you all to understand the math behind these algorithms so you have a clear idea of how it actually works. You can refer to this blog where I have implemented XGBoost from scratch — Implementing XGBoost from scratch

Now you can move on to Neural Networks and start your Deep Learning journey.

Resources: Deep Learning for Developers, Introduction to Deep Learning with Tensorflow, How to develop neural networks with Tensorflow, Learn how deep neural networks work

You can then further dive deep into how LSTM, Siamese Networks, CapsNet and BERT works.

Hackathons:

Image Source : [https://me.me/](https://me.me/" rel="noopener)

Now we need to implement these algorithms on a competitive level. You can start looking for online Data Science Hackathons. Here is the list of websites where I try to compete with other data scientists.

Analytics Vidhya — https://datahack.analyticsvidhya.com/contest/all/

Kaggle — https://www.kaggle.com/competitions

Hackerearth — https://www.hackerearth.com/challenges/

MachineHack — https://www.machinehack.com/

TechGig — https://www.techgig.com/challenge

Dare2compete — https://dare2compete.com/e/competitions/latest

Crowdanalytix — https://www.crowdanalytix.com/community

To have a look at a winning solution, here is a link to my winning solution to one online Hackathon on Analytics Vidhya — https://github.com/Sid11/AnalyticsVidhya_DataSupremacy

Projects:

We see people working on dummy data and still don’t get the taste of how actual data looks like. In my opinion, working on real life data gives you a very clear idea how data in real life looks like. The amount of time and effort required in cleaning real life data takes about 70% of your project’s time.

• Here are the best free open data sources anyone can use
• Open Government Data — https://data.gov.in/
• Data about real contributed by thousands of users and organizations across the world — https://data.world/datasets/real
• 19 public datasets for Data Science Project — https://www.springboard.com/blog/free-public-data-sets-data-science-project/

Business Intelligence

After you get the results from your project, it is now time to make business decisions from those results. Business Intelligence is a suite of software and services that helps transform data into actionable intelligence and knowledge.

This can be done by creating a dashboard from the output of our model. Tableau is a powerful and the fastest growing data visualization tool used in the Business Intelligence Industry. It helps in simplifying raw data into the very easily understandable format. Data analysis is very fast with Tableau and the visualizations created are in the form of dashboards and worksheets.

Resources : Getting started with Tableau, Tableau for Data Science course

Image source : [https://imgflip.com/i/31dvdc](https://imgflip.com/i/31dvdc" rel="noopener)

It is now time for you start your work from home to improve your skillset. Also if you started this journey and need my advice or details about any subpart which I have mentioned above, feel free to comment or mail me at jsiddhesh96[at]gmail[dot]com.

I started learning JavaScript 10 months ago and the journey has been full of frustration, hope, and motivation. Before starting JavaScript, I thought I knew most of it — but I was wrong. There was a lot to learn, Vanilla JavaScript, Node.js, React — and then making some dummy side project to apply the knowledge. And time was short because I wanted to learn and implement everything in just 2–3 months to start a job as soon as possible.

Being jobless and not having the skills you want to work with is the worst feeling ever. And you need great willpower and motivation to keep learning and keep going, staying hopeful for the future.

I started the freeCodeCamp curriculum along with a couple of other tutorials (I’ll share more about them in another post) to learn and polish my JavaScript skills. After grasping a good amount of knowledge and making a fully functional web app in Express.js, Node.js, Handlebars and MongoDB, I got some confidence and decided to jump on the front-end and learn React.js. Then I got hold of some basic knowledge of React and made some throwable apps.

But I couldn’t focus on learning more, as I wanted to earn now. It had become hard for me to work without making money anymore. So, I actively started applying to remote JavaScript jobs. I used to apply for at least 2 jobs a day but for most of them, I was not the perfect candidate so the answers were NO.

After applying for numerous jobs I realized that most companies are not interested in hiring a junior developer remotely. They prefer to have juniors on site, while those who have some experience can work remotely.

Disheartened but motivated, I decided to fully focus on completely learning React, and went back to my freeCodeCamp curriculum. I decided to make a portfolio in addition to making myself worthy enough to get a fine remote job.

One morning when I opened my mailbox there was an e-mail from the Outreachy newsletter announcing the opening of their applications. I had signed up for this newsletter a few months back when the applications for the previous rounds were about to close and I was just starting my journey. I almost forgot about it and it popped up again after a few months right at the time I needed it. So I forgot all the jobs I applied to, stopped looking for more jobs, and fully focused, deciding to work hard to get the Outreachy Internship.

I read numerous articles by the previous alumni, noted down their suggestions, explored Outreachy, watched Youtube videos and what not. I gave myself a chance to prove myself. I couldn’t see anything else except Outreachy. I worked hard, learned about open source, stayed awake late nights, and worked on weekends to achieve my target. It was a chance to prove myself to myself.

Today, I’m sharing my journey with you to help you. To help someone who is struggling to code, who is struggling to survive in this tech world, who is dreaming of a great remote job and a dream home office desk. This article is for you, Outreachy is for you.

What is Outreachy?

Outreachy is a program that provides 3 months paid internships in Free and Open Source Software for people who are typically underrepresented in those projects. Interns are paid a $5,500 stipend and a $500 travel grant to attend any national or international event related to their project approved by their mentors. Outreachy internships are not limited to programming only. They also includes UI/UX, documentation, data science, graphic design, video documentation, and illustration.

The best thing about this internship is that it is remote and Interns can work anywhere from the world without the differences of color, nation, religion, gender or culture affecting their work.

Many dream tech companies share their projects and accept interns to mentor them and give them the opportunity to work with their best developers. Mozilla, Debian, Git, GNOME, Kubernetes, and OpenStack are a few.

Previously Outreachy was only accepting Women, Transgender, Trans-men, gender-queer and some other underrepresented people in Tech. But the good news is that from this round it is open for all now.

How I won the Outreachy internship at Mozilla

Here is the Outreachy application process and how I went through it.

1) Initial Application

After creating the account I found an initial application form. You provide some information and they decide whether an applicant is accepted or rejected for the next stage. In this form, you provide info such as your name, gender, country, city and most importantly your availability during the internship.

Outreachy requires interns to be available full time during the internship, which is 40 hours per week. I came to know that one applicant couldn’t make it to the next step because she was not available for full-time. So the first step is to filter those candidates who qualify through the criteria. I qualified for the next step which is selecting a project and starting contributions.

2) Project selection and contribution

Ahhh! This is the most important step and a bit of a tough part of the process. A wrong project choice can cause you to lose the internship or the right choice can open doors of learning and exposure for you. After clearing step one, interns now can see the list of all projects and their details.

The project I was selected for

Wrong way of selecting:
Going through every single project and company, reading details, and not remembering anything and thus ending up getting all confused.

You don’t need to read and see details of every project and switch from one to another. It will burn your time and energy.

The right way:
Just shortlist the projects based on the required skills which match your skillset. Now you have a few projects in your bucket. Next, you can further shortlist based on the supporting skillsets required with the major skill. Or you can choose based on your area of interest.

In my case, I am good at JavaScript. I had many JavaScript based projects but I was interested in ReactJS to enhance my skills. It was easy for me to choose a project and stop wasting time on other projects because I was clear in my mind that I wanted to work with React.

3) Setting up the project, understanding the codebase, and starting contributions

Ladies and gentlemen, tighten your seat belt as you are going to experience a lot of different emotions at this stage of the application. You are going to feel dumb, not confident at all, fear of contribution, fear of rejection of pull request, fear of not writing quality code, fear of asking questions of the repo owner to help you set up the project, and much more.

Throw that syndrome out the window :)

This is what my mentor asked me to do in response to my fears. And I recommend you do so, too. Once you throw it out you will do well. You will win it. Fear is going to take you nowhere!

Now you have to set up the project repo, make it run on the local machine with the help of available documents, and start finding good first issues. It is helpful to start with good first issues as they get solved pretty easily and you gain a lot of confidence and motivation to continue.

Remember, Outreachy requires at least one contribution to be eligible for the final application and internship — but they highly encourage interns to keep contributing to increase chances. Now, based on my experience I warn you not to get trapped and feel accomplished with one or two contributions.

Competition is tough, people contribute more than once from around the world and increase their chances of selection. So make sure you have more than one — and really good contributions increase your chances.

I had never contributed to any project ever before, I didn’t even know what a Pull Request was and how to do it. In fact, I learned everything during the application process.

I found one issue unassigned and opened a Pull Request with a solution. My mentors were in a different time zone, so before they would wake up I had two Pull Request opened and I couldn’t sleep just waiting to see the response. I stayed up till 3 AM until I got the response on my PR. And to my surprise it was…

and then

Yay :-D

You can’t imagine how happy I was. I felt like flying, like Superman going up above the sky. In short, I was in 7th sky!

But I had to come down to solve more issues. This gave me great confidence and then I didn’t stop contributing. By the time of the last date of application submission, I had 6 Pull Request merged. I submitted my final application and kept contributing afterward.

Before the Outreachy results were announced, I had a total of 10 Pull Requests in my bucket which made me a stronger applicant for this project.

Results announcement

It was hard to wait for the results. I was impatiently counting days to get the news. With confidence and hope, there was nervousness too. And the news of acceptance was nothing more than a cool breeze in the weather of frustration and journey of learning. I was excited and happy and what not. A long journey of learning and making test applications got me here at Mozilla working with the finest developers on earth.

I couldn’t stop imagining learning more and become another fine developer in the next few months. And then the news of a getting a MacBook Pro from Mozilla was like a cherry on the cake. I already started disliking my HP machine. :-D

Finally, I am now going to start another journey of learning by working on a real project with mentors in one of the world’s top tech companies. My internship is starting on 4th Dec 2018. I’m excited and can’t wait to start it. I am hoping to learn and get the most out of it.

Why I found Mozilla so special

Interns at Mozilla get three more benefits other than the stipend and travel grant, which make this internship even more exciting.

1. All Mozilla interns get the latest MacBook Pro with cool heavy specs.

My MacBook Pro is arriving in a few days with the following specs:

• 2.9GHz 6-core 8th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz
• 32GB 2400MHz DDR4 memory
• Radeon Pro 560X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory + Intel UHD Graphics
• 512GB or 1TB PCIe-based Flash Storage
• Touch Bar

Mouthwatering? It definitely is!

2. An Invitation to Mozilla All Hands, which is an event where all the company’s employees are invited to meet their colleagues in person and share experiences and interact with other people they may not normally meet in person. Interns get a chance to meet other employees, volunteers and more specifically their mentors of the project.

3. All Mozilla interns get LDA credentials which mean they will have an official Mozilla e-mail id — username@mozilla.org.

Nuggets of wisdom to win Outreachy

Based on my experience and observations, here are the things which led me to win this opportunity that I suggest you do:

• Leave every fear, insecurity or moment of low confidence behind and jump into it. Apply for Outreachy, contribute, learn, ask questions, try to solve the issue. It is okay if you don’t get it correct at first attempt — you will get feedback and you can make it in the 2nd or 3rd or 4th attempt. In the end, learning matters — not the number of times you made mistakes.
• Don’t feel too accomplished or overconfident after making one or two contributions. Try to solve as many issues as you can. Keep contributing even after the deadline until you get the results.
  This helped me a lot. It made my mentors realized that I’m a learner, enthusiast, and an active participant and they always appreciated it. So I recommend you to keep contributing.
• Don’t be afraid of asking questions even if they are stupid. For one issue I asked too many questions from my mentor, but he was kind enough to answer them all.
  Still, make sure you are asking after some personal research. Don’t throw any random questions out there. Ask if anything is not clear to you. Ask. Ask. Ask.
• Keep an eye on your competitors. I used to visit the project repo daily to check how many new applicants were trying to solve the issues. How many PRs were opened and who would be my biggest competitors.
  My heart used to beat really hard whenever a new applicant popped up which helped me not to stop.
• Start as early as possible. Sign up for the newsletter. If you start early you will have a lot of unassigned easy bugs which you can solve. You will have a good chance to understand the project and solve the most issues.
  The application process is long and time consuming, and you can’t make it in one or two weeks.
• Engage with the project mentor. Don’t let them forget you.
  Contribute, solve bugs, and ask (valid) questions.
• Most Important: I already knew that Mozilla offered a Laptop and All Hands meeting invitation, but I didn’t apply to the Mozilla project for these two things. I applied because among all listed projects, there were only a few projects that required JavaScript and React — and only 2 projects I could understand a little bit. And one of them was from Mozilla.
  Your primary purpose should be winning the internship with any organization, gaining knowledge, learning and making your way towards a better future. Don’t select one company because of a few perks. You will end up losing a good project and banging your head against some other project that’s not of your type. Select a project if you really feel that you can do well there.
• Focus on one project and give your best to it. In case your project doesn’t have more issues, ask your mentors to refer you to some other project. This happened in my case.
• Forget about the outcome. It’s okay if you don’t win the internship, you will learn a lot. You will get some mentors and a start to the opensource journey. At a point, I decided to keep contributing to the project even if I didn’t win the internship.
  Because the amount of knowledge I gained during the process was significant compared to what I gained working on demo projects over the past few months.

Hah! I have a lot to say. I should keep other things for the next article. I’m excited to start my internship at Mozilla. And I highly encourage struggling newbies to apply for Outreachy. You don’t need to be a great developer — you just need to be a great learner.

These internships are here to teach you to increase your knowledge. If I can get it you can definitely get it. Anyone who is motivated and willing to learn and work hard can get it. Next round of Outreachy is starting in Feb 2019. Don’t miss it!

A Big Thanks

In the end, a big shout out to Outreachy organizers Sage Sharp, Marina, Elizabeth Noonan at Mozilla and everyone who supports Outreachy helping newbies to learn and excel in open source. Lastly, a big big big thanks to my husband for telling me about Outreachy, sending me the link, and motivating me to apply and work hard. This wouldn’t be possible without his moral support.

It would be totally unjust if I don’t mention the support and motivation given by my mentors Armen Zambrano and Dustin Mitchell. I feel blessed to have supportive mentors who celebrated little achievements. Needless to say, their unwavering support was always there to sort out all kinds of issues I faced. Thanks a bunch for being so kind and helpful.

Ahh! I can’t wait to start!

Motivated?

If you are planning to apply for next round and not feeling confident or feeling lost in the application process, feel free to get in touch. I would be happy to help you. I want Outreachy to reach out to everyone struggling for a good career start.

Remember

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.” -Alchemist

My code is @aimenbatool and I tweet @aimenbatool. Contact me if you need help.

My name is James, and I’m a Software Engineer at a company called Yesware, based in Boston. Yesware is the fourth job I’ve had in which I’m paid to write code, but it’s the third time now that I’ve transitioned from being an in-office employee to a remote one.

Since I’ve handled this transition a few times now, in varying degrees of complexity/difficulty, I figured I probably have at least a few words for anyone else looking to begin working remotely.

But first, a warning: survivorship bias guarantees that your mileage may vary with regard to anything I say here. Switching to a remote position has worked for me in the past, but that in no way means it will work for anyone else in the same ways.

You don’t often see articles entitled “How I Completely Failed to Work Remotely and Botched my Dream Gig”, but I’m sure there are many cases of folks doing exactly that. That would actually probably be a more helpful article, so consider this an open invitation for someone to write it as a response.

Also, I talk about my place of work in this article a fair bit, but I’d like to state clearly that I wasn’t asked to, or otherwise encouraged to at all. Any reference I make to my employer is included only because I see it as relevant or helpful to others, so as to get an idea of how a company might support its employees.

Why Remote?

This is a question I won’t dwell on too much because there are endless blogs, listicles, and books written on the subject _(Remote: Office Not Required is a decent intro to the benefits of remote work, but it won’t tell you how to do it. It’s also roughly half pictures)_.

Remote work is fantastic for some personality types as it affords much more freedom. Some folks just enjoy being able to move, to be able to go where their friends/family/bucket-lists take them. Being able to take your job where you want to go is, in my opinion, less stressful than having to factor in finding another one if you decide to leave. Simply put, it resolves any dichotomies between having a job you enjoy, and anything else you want to do.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

The phrase above should always be accompanied with a resounding “within reason”. I suspect your employer wouldn’t be too keen on the idea of using remote work as a means of somehow having another separate full-time job somewhere else.

Why Not?

Remote work can be much harder depending on a myriad of details related to one’s personality, the nature of their work, their company’s culture, etc.

Are you the type of person who can self-regulate and ensure you’re allowing for extended periods of focus, wherever you are? Is the work you’re doing something that can be done without any coworkers immediately available? Is the company you work for willing to put in the extra effort to ensure you feel connected and valued? Do you have some misconception that remote work means doing any less work? Do you have a spouse or other close family member who this will affect? Is the Wi-Fi going to be any good where you’ll be based?

I’ll leave you to ruminate on those questions, but there are many reasons that being remote wouldn’t be a good fit. They each warrant an honest discussion with yourself, those close to you, and your employer.

How To Tell Your Company

Eventually, you’ll need to broach the subject with your boss, and while there are various ways to do this, there is only one I recommend.

The worst way I ever went about it featured me telling my boss that I was moving in two weeks, no ifs-ands-or-buts about it. I was essentially abruptly quitting, without really offering to discuss the matter. I knew I had to go, and I was ready to leave my job to make that happen, but I feel as though I had cornered my boss.

After my spiel (“I grew up here, I’m ready to leave, I need to do this”, etc.), he told me to just work from Boston, and that there was no reason I couldn’t stay on the team while working elsewhere. This was incredibly surprising to me, and something I hadn’t considered. I ended up taking the offer. A few weeks later I was in Boston working the same job as before, and paying significantly more in rent.

This method felt wrong for a few reasons. Namely, I didn’t bring the idea up as a conversation, and I went in defensively, expecting the worst. Also, I didn’t value my role in the job enough! I didn’t expect that I was valued enough by my company to warrant letting me move and stay on the team, and that was unfair to myself.

By the next time I had to have the same conversation, I was already 9 months into my tenure at Yesware. I had an opportunity to move to Spain with a friend, but I valued my job an enormous amount.

I was simply learning and growing too much to justify leaving.

While this honestly wasn’t factored into the decision to stay at Yesware, I was also going to need an American job for my residence visa in Spain anyway. Without them, I almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to go.

Since I felt more comfortable at Yesware than any previous company I’ve worked at, I figured I’d just talk to my boss about the opportunity openly. I wrote him an email one morning stating plainly that I had an opportunity to move to Spain in the upcoming Fall, and I wanted to talk about if that would be possible while still working for Yesware. I dug up the original email, and the sentence that best captures its spirit was “I just want to open this dialogue to see what is and isn’t possible, without any expectations.”

My boss and I immediately had a short 1-on-1 meeting to talk about the idea further, and we agreed that, while it was unlikely to happen, we could at least see what it would take to work. If there were no legal reasons we couldn’t do it, and the company felt confident that my work wouldn’t suffer, we felt as though it should be fine.

Over the next few months, we discussed what it would take to demonstrate that I can handle remote work, and that our team can. We organized a month long experiment where our engineering team of ~6 people would be remote every day, and I used this as an opportunity to show that I can be perfectly productive (often times much more so) while at home. Eventually, once we had clarified everything with the Yesware legal team, I was made aware that I could work from Europe if I so chose.

_“brown concrete buildings” by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@alelmes?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title="">Alasdair Elmes on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener" target="blank" title=")

The most important thing I learned from this is that discussing big changes like this requires one to be honest, upfront, and realistic. By making sure Yesware knew I wouldn’t leave the company if they said no, I helped make the process easier for them to consider. We also put in the extra work to make sure it would go over smoothly by making sure the team would be comfortable with me being remote, and by proving that our productivity wasn’t jeopardized.

What Does It Actually Take To Work Remotely

I’d like to take a moment to reiterate my warning message at the beginning of this article, in which I claim that just because this works for me, it doesn’t mean it will work for anyone else. You’ve been warned.

The biggest struggles I expect one to encounter when starting to work remotely are, in no particular order, managing to keep a normal schedule, creating a space conducive to focusing, and feeling connected to your team. They are also 3 sides to the same geometrically-impossible coin. For me, managing to succeed in one of those areas makes succeeding in the others easier.

Here are some ways I do that, and some ways that my team supports me:

Stick to a routine: Pick a chunk (or chunks) of time every day to focus on work. While a remote schedule often means some degree of freedom when choosing when to work, we can get a lot out of maintaining some sort of normal hours. I tend to stick roughly to working hours EST (which is 3pm to 11pm for me in Spain), but I also know I’m most focused first thing in the morning, so I always do an hour or two in the morning, then trim a little off my evening hours when my team doesn’t tend to schedule meetings.

Schedule time for casual conversation: By being remote, you’re going to miss out on casual chats at lunch with your team, and you’re going to be deprived of spontaneous conversations with other departments at the proverbial water cooler. These can be vital interactions, however, and they warrant being protected. Find time to engage coworkers in non-work discussions so you can continue to develop natural friendships with those you spend so much of your day with.

For example, my team often uses our bi-weekly retro meetings to talk about whatever we want for an hour. We do end up being able to talk about things that have gone well or poorly since the previous iteration of the meeting, but we don’t worry about being completely distracted for an hour with a coworker’s photos from a trip abroad, or the grizzly details of an ongoing murder investigation (this is just run-of-the-mill morbid curiosity, nothing to be alarmed by, I promise).

Our daily standups can also get a little carried away sometimes, but as long as they stay within the allotted 15 minute window, everyone is happy to chat a little bit about whatever. It helps to bring the team a little closer in a small but ultimately meaningful way.

Set up your ideal workspace: This is a big one for me personally. There is a profound difference in my productivity when I am working with all the tools I need versus when I am not.

For example, I’ve realized that the correct keyboard for me is a dealbreaker, and I tend to work faster with another monitor hooked up to my machine. Also, my back gets achy after sitting for too long, so I usually use a standing desk, or an ergonomic chair.

Invest in your workspace, and the boost you’ll experience in being able to focus will ensure the money is made back. Yesware has a generous employee expensing policy, so I’m encouraged to buy what I feel I need to be healthy and productive on the company’s dollar. If your employer can’t make the same offer, it’s still important to spend what you can on having a proper battle station.

Get out of the house: Now that your consummate work station is complete with an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, powered standing desk, miniature koi pond, 4K monitor, and Newton’s cradle, leave it all and go somewhere else. Work a part of your day at home, and maybe finish the evening at a coffee shop, or library, or a friends house. Do everything you can to not get stuck inside, because when you work where you live it’s a serious risk.

When I was in the US and working remotely, I would always either skateboard or go for a walk immediately after finishing work (now I just do it before). I also purposefully avoid buying any sort of coffeemaker so I need to physically leave the house to get coffee, and my regrettable caffeine addiction mandates that I leave at least once to satisfy the craving. Some folks go so far as to pay for a membership at a coworking space just so they can actually go to work. While I haven’t made this jump quite yet, I can understand the appeal.

We need to carefully illustrate the differences between working and not working. It isn’t as easy when the place where I work is also the place where I unwind.

Hop on a video call: This is one of the more team-oriented pieces of advice for making a remote job work. When it comes to getting answers or clarification on something, or needing to discuss an issue that’s even partially technical, it can be much easier to just hop on a video call instead of having to type everything out in Slack, or whichever medium you use for such communication.

Our goal is to make our being in another location as simple and straightforward as possible for our team, and that often means acknowledging that talking can be better than typing. Since going remote, I’m now more likely to just hop on a call with a team member to discuss something, rather than spending 15 minutes discussing in Slack. Plus the face-to-face time is just nice anyway.

Iterate: If this is the first time you’ll be working remotely, or your company is making the transition to support remote workers for the first time, it’s going to take some trial and error to make everything work fluidly. Check in with your team or manager to see how things have been (this would be a perfect topic for retro), and experiment with different practices if there are issues.

For example, because Yesware recently started to open up our engineering teams to remote applicants we’ve had to experiment with different video conference solutions to see what works best for our space. It’s an ongoing endeavor, but we are closing in on what feels like the right product, which will ensure remote workers (hopefully) never have a problem calling into meetings and planning sessions. Besides, any large transition is going to demand time before feeling comfortable, so give it a couple weeks being remote before panicking that you can’t handle it.

Meet up every once in a while: Being a remote employee doesn’t mean never seeing the rest of your team or company. Schedule a trip every year to go to headquarters for a week, or go once a quarter just for some of that coveted face-to-face time. Or work remotely from the same city, and head into the office when you feel like it. Being remote doesn’t necessitate being hundreds of miles away, and we can still gain a lot by regularly working from home even if the company’s office is nearby.

_“person using laptop” by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@kaitlynbaker?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title="">Kaitlyn Baker on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener" target="blank" title=")

While those are practical tips for being comfortable while working remotely, the actual switch can be fairly daunting. To make that transition smoother, try easing into it one day at a time.

When I was ramping up to move abroad and work remotely, I started by working from home every Wednesday, since it was uncommon for my team to have anything special on that day. After a month of that, I worked from home 2 or 3 times a week, and purposefully chose days that had important planning meetings, so I could get a feel for how to navigate critical meetings without being in the room.

By the time my entire team began the remote experiment, I was already fairly comfortable, and after 3 weeks of being completely remote, I felt even more productive than I was in the office. If you can afford to, begin the switch to remote work slowly.

I’m sure you totally expected something like this at the end of the article, but Yesware is hiring engineers of all levels. Again, I haven’t been coerced into saying any of this, I just genuinely love where I work and I’m excited for our future. I’d be a fool not to encourage kind, driven, and smart folks to join us. Check out our company page for a list of positions, and to get a feel for us. And yes, we’re accepting remote applications.

Imagine there are parallel worlds. We have:

1. a world where I have created this video, and you’re watching it
2. a world where I have created this video, but you’re not watching it
3. a world where I did not create this video.

In this parallel world concept, a Git branch is a parallel world.

You can have a branch that stays the same in one world. Then you branch off into a different world. Once you finish your code, you can complete the initial world by merging the changes into it.

How to create a branch

Open up your Git client. Look for the branch you want to branch from. Right click on it and select create new branch.

You can name your branch anything you want.

Usually the first branch we developers use is the development branch.

Once you name your branch, click on “Create and Checkout”. Checkout, in this case, means to move to the development branch.

Once you create the development branch, you can see two branches in your branches section — master and development.

In the Git history, you can also see a new tag called development. This development tag is on the same commit as master and origin/master.

Why create a development branch?

Let’s say you have a website that’s ready for people to see. This website is on the master branch.

If you commit code to the master branch, it means you change the website directly. If you introduce any bugs, other people can see your bug immediately.

We’re humans. We make mistakes. We don’t want to show our mistakes to people.

So we create a new branch and work off it. When we’re done, and when we’re sure that there are no more bugs — at least we try to make sure! — we push the changes back to the master branch to update the website.

That’s why we use a development branch.

In this case, the master branch can also be called a production branch.

How to code on a new branch

When you create a new branch, you can code directly on the branch itself. Any code you change will be reflected only on that branch.

Let’s say we want to create a new file called development.md. In this file, we say “Hello! This is committed from the development branch!”.

# development.md Hello! This is committed from the development branch!

If you go back to your Git client, you can commit this change to the development branch.

Make sure you’re on the development branch when you create the commit. In Fork, you can tell the branch you’re on by looking at the bolded branch.

Commit your code to the development branch.

Now, if you look at the Git history, you can see that the development branch is one commit ahead of the origin/master branch and the local master branch.

This shows we can code as much as we like on the development branch without affecting other branches.

Pushing the development branch into the Git remote

You can push the development branch into the Git remote by clicking the push button. The steps will be similar to the steps when you pushed the master branch for the first time.

Once the push is completed, you can see the origin/development tag on the same commit as the development tag.

Switching between branches

To switch between branches, you can double-click the branch you want, on the sidebar. If you double-click on master, you will checkout master.

Checkout means to switch to the branch you chose.

If you look at your project now, you will realize that the development.md file is missing. This proves, again, that you can make as many commits as you need on your development branch without affecting other branches.

Merging branches

You’re done with the development process, and you’re ready to merge the branch back into master.

To merge, you first checkout the branch you want to merge to. This should be master.

Then, to merge the development branch into the master branch, you right-click the development branch in your Git client and select “Merge into ‘master’”.

Fork will ask you whether you want to create a merge commit. Some clients do this for you automatically.

Select “Merge” and the merge will be completed.

If you look at the Git history now, you’ll see the master branch is ahead of the development and origin/development branches.

This is because we have done a merge commit.

At the same time, master is two commits ahead of the origin/master branch. That’s why we see 2 up in the sidebar.

When you’re done merging, you can update the Git remote by clicking on the Push button.

Deleting a branch

To delete a branch, you right-click the branch you want to delete and select “Delete ‘[branch-name]’”.

In Fork, you can also choose to remove the branch from the remote.

Click on “Delete” and Fork will delete both branches.

Once the delete is done, you can take a look at the Git history. You’ll notice that both the origin/development and development tags have both disappeared from the history.

Wrapping up

A branch is like a parallel world where you can create commit without introducing bugs into production code. You can always fix the bugs before merging your branch into the production code.

Thanks for reading. Did this article help you in any way? If you did, I hope you consider sharing it. You might help someone out. Thank you!

This article was originally posted at my blog.
Sign up for my newsletter if you want more articles to help you become a better frontend developer.

Introduction

It was the winter of 2016 when I opened my phone and saw the job offer from Buffer. I remember I was in an Uber with my wife driving back home from the JFK airport.

So many things have changed since then. I’ve grown as a person and as an engineer. This article is a story where I openly share all the lessons and challenges I’ve experienced throughout my journey of working remotely as a software engineer.

Some background

My name is Tigran and I’m a software engineer at Buffer. I’m also the creator of Cronhub, a tool to help developers to monitor cron jobs. In the past, I’ve created other other side-projects as well and written articles about my journey of building a side-project while having a full-time job.

I get a lot of questions on Twitter about my experience at Buffer and how it feels to work remotely. Most of the questions are about time management, work and day structure, and the tools that I use daily to stay productive. Even though these are very good questions, I’ve decided to step back a little bit and share my story from the beginning — when and how I started my remote work.

I hope to share all the good and challenging parts of my experience. I know remote work culture is rapidly growing across the world, so I hope this will be a useful resource for beginners who’re considering going remote.

I’ll be honest and tell you that I also wanted to write this article for myself to look back and reflect. That’s why it may feel like I’m writing in my diary. I hope you don’t mind that style.

Starting a remote job

It’s interesting that I never thought about getting a remote job. It kind of didn’t matter at the time that I was applying for new jobs in February 2016. I was living in Jersey City, New Jersey, which is very close to Manhattan. I knew that if I had a job in New York City, the commute wouldn’t be an issue (especially with audiobooks).

However, at the time, the top company on my list that I wanted to work for was Buffer. It was, and still is, a fully remote company with employees spread across the world. I heard about and used Buffer before joining the team and read so much about their culture. I also really admired Joel Gascoigne (the founder of Buffer) and enjoyed reading his Buffer story and all the lessons he was sharing on his blog.

I applied for a back-end engineer position. Lucky for me, this position was open at the time and it really matched my previous background working with back-end technologies and services.

I knew that Buffer had many applicants for the same position (if I’m not mistaken, we had around 1500 applications for this position) so my hope was quite small. But only a couple weeks after applying I received an email from Leo (the co-founder of Buffer who’s not with the company anymore) offering to chat. He wrote that he really liked my background and wanted to get to know me better in a call. I was beyond happy and excited for the opportunity, and was really surprised — because, quite frankly, I wasn’t expecting to hear back from them.

After my chat with Leo, I started the interview process. Buffer makes sure that whoever joins the team is a great fit. So apart from technical aspects, the interviews were also focused on the culture. When I joined Buffer, I had to go through a 45-day boot camp.

Boot camp is like a date where both of you take your time to figure out whether you’re a good fit for each other. While in boot camp, you’re considered a contractor until you become a full-time employee. At this time, however, don’t have boot camp anymore.

As I said, I wasn’t necessarily looking for remote opportunities. It just so happened that I’ve become a remote worker because I really wanted to work at Buffer, and I was excited to explore what remote work would offer.

Initial challenges of working remotely

Working remotely is very different from working in the office. I don’t think you fully grasp the difference until you actually start being remote. For someone like me who never worked in a remote environment, the beginning wasn’t smooth and it came with challenges. Eventually, I got better at most of those things but it’s worth looking back now and reflecting on my early days.

I can clearly remember my very first day at Buffer. I woke up, had breakfast and coffee, then started my day with this question: “So what now, what should I do?” It was a valid question, really. There wasn’t any office that I had to go to, and I used to associate the start of my working day with arriving at the office. I felt confused and lonely for a moment.

Communication

In the office-based environment, we rely so much on in-person communication that it feels really odd not to have that commodity anymore.

The remote environment is the complete opposite, because it’s primarily based on asynchronous communication. Actually, current remote work-spaces are more of the combination of both synchronous and asynchronous communication and each one completes the other.

There are some tasks for which synchronous communication is more time effective. Later on, you start learning when and what type of communication is better for each situation.

Communication is still a big issue in remote teams, but I think at Buffer we have found the good balance over the last years.

Work Structure

Getting back to my initial challenges, the biggest one I was facing was confusion over how the work was done and structured. When I joined Buffer, I got assigned a role and cultural buddies who were there to support me throughout my boot camp. Having them by my side was a huge help. I used every opportunity to ask questions, and it helped me a lot to understand the work process.

In the beginning, I was mostly working from home in order to manage my time more efficiently. Plus I was nervous about having video calls in coffee shops, because of the noise and poor wifi signal. Wifi speed has become such a big part of my flow that I’ve bookmarked FAST (a network speed measuring tool developed by Netflix) on my browser and moved it to the beginning of all bookmarks for easy access.

Working from home really worked out for me in the beginning, because I got a lot of things done with zero distractions. But then eventually it made me feel more isolated.

Timing

Another challenge I was facing in the beginning was not being able to switch myself off from the work. I was constantly online. I’d end up starting my day at 8 am and signing off around 8 or 9 pm. It didn’t last long, but working long hours really did become problem.

You have to be very strict with your working hours, otherwise mental exhaustion can easily take over. You don’t want that. You want to set your working hours and stick to them.

Of course, you can be flexible when and how you work depending on your lifestyle — but time management is key. Think about what time of the day you’re most productive and construct your day accordingly.

For instance, I’m a morning person, so I do the most important tasks first thing in the morning. With no distraction and 2 to 3 hours of focused work, I can get a lot of things done. I try to schedule my calls in the afternoon when my mental energy is not too high but I can still concentrate and focus on the conversation.

I’ll continue talking about my work routine a bit later. In the meantime, let’s talk about how I’ve become better at remote work after my initial challenges.

Getting better at remote work

The first couple of months of working remotely were the most challenging for me. But working at Buffer was great, and I think they helped me find ways to overcome these challenges.

With the help and advice of my teammates and the lessons from my experience over time, I’ve become better at working remote. I have become more productive and have found my place.

Now when I look back, I think there were a couple things that really contributed to that success:

Co-working

Two months after joining Buffer, my colleague Dan Farrelly and I decided to find a co-working space in NYC where both of us could commute a few times a week. I was super pumped and lucky to have a co-worker based in the same area as I was. Dan, who is now the director of engineering at Buffer, has become my best pal whose advice and help really shaped me as a developer and remote worker.

I was fortunate to find a friend and co-worker who also worked remotely and had enough context in the remote environment to understand my challenges. We started to co-work a couple times a week, have lunch together, and discuss a variety of topics including our work at Buffer. As of now, we co-work 2–3 times a week in New York City and the rest of the week we work from home.

Going to meetups

Finding someone who you can work with is a great way to stay social. One of the other things that I’ve tried that’s been very useful is attending meetups in NYC on the topics that interested me. I met like-minded people with whom I had lots of common things to connect about.

Online communities can be helpful too, and there are many remote work-based communities you can be part of.

Working on time management

I started to better manage my time. Every day I dedicated time to prioritizing the next day’s tasks by setting specific goals. I usually set 3–4 tasks for a day, and typically don’t go beyond that number.

Prioritization really helped me with time management, and it also made me more focused on things that mattered. The tricky part of remote work is that you fully control your time and you have to be very cautious how and what you spend your time on.

Of course, distractions can happen. But finding ways to improve your focus is such a key element of productive remote work.

Upping the communication game

We use Slack at Buffer. I heard about Slack in the past, and knew it was very popular among tech companies. I think it is a great tool, and it has many benefits for the workplace including bringing the team together.

However, it’s focused on synchronous communication. For some remote teams like Buffer, asynchronous communication is very important and it has become part of our DNA and culture.

We are very mindful of our teammates’ time, so we want to structure our communication in a way that at least some portion of it can be handled asynchronously.

Working asynchronously

Another reason why we are inclined to communicate asynchronously is the time zone difference between our teammates. We are spread all around the world, and it’s not always possible to jump on a call or get an immediate answer to your direct messages. Buffer is also very supportive of each team member’s lifestyle, and we respect the working hours of everyone on the team.

Prioritizing my time better helped me to get better at asynchronous communication. I’ve started to rely more on tools that enable asynchronous communication like email or Dropbox Paper.

Staying healthy

I started to pay attention to mental health as a top priority. I work better when I’m less stressed. I’m lucky that Buffer is an amazing place that supports mental health in every way possible.

I started to work out in the mornings, play soccer, and track my working hours which drastically improved my mood and motivation. I stopped working late hours, and tried to get a good 8 hours sleep every night.

Living my best remote life

I finally started to take advantage of my remote work lifestyle. I started to travel more, going to Buffer retreats and visiting my family in Armenia for month long trips. It’s really incredible to have the flexibility to spend a month with my family and friends in Armenia.

I think that being able to work from anywhere is the most awesome advantage of remote work. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve traveled to Canada, Mexico, Bali, Singapore, and am flying to Armenia in a month. We are planning to visit more destinations in the future.

My typical workday

People ask me this question a lot on Twitter, so I’ve decided to dedicate a separate section to writing about what my typical workday looks like.

I wake up at 7:05 am every day. I have an alarm set, but rarely need it. My body has its own alarm that is quite precise. I wake up, and the first thing I do is make my morning coffee and have it with my pre-workout meal. In the summers, I’m usually having an espresso with an ice cube which makes the coffee more refreshing.

At 8:10 am I’m at the gym to work out. I’ve been doing weight exercises for a year now, strictly trying to follow Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body program to gain muscle and lose fat. It’s been working out great for me, and I see the difference in my body and general health. I highly recommend this book if you’re unsure what workout program you should follow. It’s a great book for beginners in particular. I’m tracking my workouts using Strong, and very recently hit my 100th workout.

I spend an hour in the gym and right after it, I try to have my protein-rich breakfast. Usually, it consists of eggs, cottage cheese and a piece of whole wheat bread.

After my breakfast, I get ready to start my working day. I usually ping Dan to decide where we want to work from that day. We use Croissant to find and book a co-working space. It’s a great app and has many spaces available in New York City. We usually stick to the ones in the Financial District because it’s relatively close to both of us. It takes 12–15 minutes door to door for me to get there. I’m in the co-working space around 10–10:30 am.

I’m done with work around 6:30 pm on a typical day. A couple of times a week I have evening soccer games, so if that’s the case I try to get home a bit early to have a light dinner before my game. Playing soccer is probably my most favorite activity in the universe.

I’m a huge soccer fan, although my wife doesn’t really like the idea of me paying $140 for authentic soccer jerseys. However, last year she surprised me by arranging a meeting with Henrik Mkhitaryan in London. He is my favorite player.

Unless I’m mentally very tired, I spend most of my evenings working on Cronhub and trying to grow it. I’ve written a couple of blog posts in the past about Cronhub, and how I’m trying to make it into an online business. I’m very lucky that my wife is very supportive of this and she is rooting for me. I’m a big believer of side-income, and that’s why I try to spend at least 2 hours every day working on my side-project.

If I’m very tired, I just crash on the couch and watch a Netflix show with my wife. On the weekends, I’m mostly trying to rest and do something with my wife and friends. There are weekends where I work on Cronhub, but not that often. I know how critical the rest is.

Remote tools

What tools we use and rely on plays a huge role in our productivity and work life. At Buffer, we are generally open-minded to experimenting with different tools that we think could benefit the team.

Here are some of the tools that we use daily at Buffer.

• G Suite — From the G Suite family, we use Gmail and Google Calendar. We use email a lot, and that’s why I have auto filtering and labeling setup so I can easily go over my inbox. Setting up filters and labels is not that fun, but it’s worth investing your time just once and forgetting about it later on.
• Slack — We use Slack for sync communication and direct messages. We have a general channel, engineering, etc. I like Slack, and I think there are situations when it’s hugely beneficial.
• Zoom — We use Zoom for video calls. We are so dependent on Zoom and it’s such a great tool to bring the entire team together. It handles the calls with many team members quite well, which happens in our all hands.
• Dropbox Paper — Probably one of my favorite tools. Even now I’m using it to write the draft of this blog post. We use Paper for collaboration and note-taking. It’s a big part of our asynchronous communication.
• Discourse — We use discourse for announcements, promotions, or sharing general learnings in the team. I enjoy using Discourse and I find it very intuitive to navigate.

Apart from these tools, I have my own tools that help me to be more productive. I’m a happy Todoist user where I log all my daily tasks and check them when they’re done.

I track my working hours with Rescue Time. It’s a great tool that helps me understand how I spend most of my time and where. It also monitors the use of social media that I’m actively trying to reduce.

In a remote team, you usually end up creating and sharing screenshots or screen-casts to show something to your teammates. We use CloudApp for this purpose and it’s so worth it. Highly recommend.

Finding a remote job

If you’re looking for your first remote job, then this short section will probably be useful for you. Remote work is quite trendy nowadays, and many companies introduce remote work as an option for their employees.

You can either work in a fully-remote company or a company that has an office but has also remote teammates. There are also the freelancers who can be considered as remote workers too, but it’s a bit different I think. My experience is only based on working in a fully-remote company that has no office.

If you’re non-remote right now, but are considering to switch to remote so you can travel or spend more time with your family, then there’s good news: it’s getting easier to find remote opportunities. The field is growing and companies are starting to realize the benefits of going remote. Remote companies have the big advantage of hiring talented people from the large pool of candidates because the location is not important anymore.

I know a few companies apart from Buffer that are fully remote. They are Automattic, GitLab, InVision, Doist and Zapier.

You can always go to their career pages to see if they have any open job opportunities. Another great resource to consider is Remotive . Remotive is a community that helps you to find a remote job. If you already have a remote job, then you can connect with other remote workers, get tips, or start a discussion on any topic. Another great website that is more focused on helping you to find a remote job is Remote OK.

Remote vs. Non-remote

Before joining Buffer and working in a fully remote company I worked for office-based companies. While I was doing my masters at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I interned at the Parametric Technology Corporation for 7 months, and 3 months at Twitter. After school, I joined YCharts and stayed there for a year. I’ve experienced both working remotely and working in the office. I think both work spaces have trade-offs.

In remote work, you’re not tied to a location so you can potentially live in a cheap place and earn enough to have a good life. In fact, I have a couple of Twitter friends who’re currently living in Bali and working for a remote company or trying to start their own thing. Their expenses are quite low compared to mine in the New York City area. A couple of months ago when I was in a co-working space in Bali, I saw many digital nomads living and working from there. Nomading feels like a movement now.

When you work remotely, you also have the option to choose your working hours. So if you have a family, you can spend more time with them by working from home. However, you have to be a self-motivated person and eager to stay focused most of the time.

Loneliness can be an issue too, so finding different ways to stay social can be helpful. Of course, it also depends on your personality.

In an office-based job, you’re tied to a specific location. You have to commute to your work which sometimes can take a lot of time. But I think developing personal relationships with your co-workers is a bit easier in-person when you all are in the same space.

At Buffer, we have annual retreats where the entire team gets together for a week. It’s probably one of my favorite times of the year, because I get to see my co-workers and spend time with them. It makes such a big difference, because it brings us together and helps us develop better relationships.

Conclusion

To summarize, working remotely as a developer for almost 3 years has been an incredible journey for me. Years full of professional learning, travel, connections, and new experiences. This reflection is solely based on my own experience, so it can differ from someone else working remotely.

I often get asked — but I don’t have the answer yet — whether I’ll ever go back to be non-remote. It’s hard for me to tell, because it really depends on the opportunity. I like the lifestyle and freedom I have, but it could change in the future.

Right now, I’m focused on my work at Buffer and growing Cronhub as a side-business. My eventual goal is to become financially independent so I can spend my mental energy on things that I deeply care about. It has become the north star that guides me forward and gives motivation. I see the path that I can take to achieve that goal and I’m doing my best.

If you’re new to remote work or looking for one, feel free to reach out to me with your questions. I’m always available to help and share more.

If you like my writings, then you may want to subscribe to my personal newsletter so I’ll email you when I write new articles. I plan to do it at least every month. Thanks for reading.

I’m also active on Twitter if you want to say hi.

As members of the Nigerian tech community, we’re fortunate to have met some of the world’s most talented individuals in development, digital marketing, and more. But one person in particular stands out among the crowd — Lynda Chiwetelu.

She’s a female developer who advocates working remotely. But what impresses us most is her willingness to share her story and encourage others, especially on Medium and Twitter.

We reached out to her to learn more about her perspective on staying productive as a remote developer, navigating the tech community as a woman, and communicating the value Nigeria adds to the tech community.

Hi Lynda! What do you enjoy most about working remotely?

This is a tough question, because I enjoy quite a lot of things about working remotely. The flexibility, how productive I become, etc. But yes, if I had to rank it in order of most enjoyable, it would be productivity. I love how productive I am working remotely compared to working on-site.

Anything you dislike about remote work?

Almost nothing. The isolation can be hard sometimes, but it’s not so bad for me as I do well with a little isolation. It is also relatively easy to solve.

With so many distractions at home, how do you stay focused?

I stay focused by ensuring that my computer is the only interactive device close to me at any point. Occasionally, I use site blockers and productivity trackers. But this has become rarer as I keep working remotely. I am usually able to focus well enough now whenever I have my computer in front of me. I have to mention that I mostly live alone, so I have even less human distraction than normal.

How important is networking as a remote developer?

Do you have any tips for someone who’s looking to make more connections?

While I didn’t exactly go the networking route, I will definitely state that I think networking is super important.

It doesn’t hurt at all to have connections that can help point you to opportunities, or to give a referral. Great places to network are at tech conferences and meetups. You can also network online with your local and the international dev community.

With social media, it’s a little bit easier to have direct access to literally anybody, so be proactive about visibility and reach out whenever you want to connect — it’s easy to do.

What skill sets have you picked up as a remote developer that you wouldn’t have in a traditional job setting?

My textual communication skills have definitely gotten a boost. Another thing I have picked up while working remotely is the ability to manage my time appropriately. I’ve gotten way better at time management — blocking out times for certain tasks and making sure they get done at that time, and even taking breaks.

What does your dream remote job look like?

How can employers create a better work environment for their off-site team members?

A great remote job is one that has flexibility, transparency, and communication as a huge part of the company culture. Of course, great pay helps, too.

I think one way for employers to create a better work environment for their off-site team members is to continuously communicate clearly, advocate communication, have informal meetings, and hold real life meetups occasionally where you get a chance to connect physically with your colleagues.

One more thing that’d make for a better work environment for off-site team members is proper organization and processes. Because you don’t have the human aspect to guide your daily work, it helps when things follow a certain process that is clear and as foolproof as possible.

In your experience, are there remote jobs for developers in Nigeria, or do you have to look internationally?

Internationally for now, I think. Before my current job, I considered some Nigerian roles but didn’t find any that were completely remote-friendly.

Surely remote Nigerian jobs exist, but there is still a healthy amount of skepticism with fully-remote work in Nigeria (and even many other countries).

But online, you get access to all the places where this isn’t totally the case. So try to find Nigerian remote jobs if you can, but chances of finding one internationally are probably higher.

Why should international employers look to Nigeria to find their development talent?

Nigerians are smart, hardworking, and equally as talented as development talent that can be found anywhere in the world. We adapt, learn quickly, and ship awesome code.

What’s it like being a woman in tech?

Do you feel like it’s an inclusive environment for females?
If not, what can we do to make it better?

I think a lot of work has been done on inclusivity, which pleases me. I personally have had an okay experience being a woman in tech. But, it could be better.

Lots of women still get sexist remarks at a professional work setting everyday that kills their drive a little bit. These remarks are sometimes normalized because the ratio of women to non-women in most workplaces are still largely in favor of non-women.

There’s also a lot of harmful stereotypes present that end up being destructive to women — for example, thinking that women aren’t naturally or typically great at coding (which I have heard, actually). This, for instance, can lead to unfair impatience directed at junior women coders, which will further cause them to believe that maybe, they just suck.

Some of the stereotypes make it so that women have a lot to prove when it comes to their tech skills, which just increases the odds of having fewer women in tech.

Also, there’s harassment. Sadly a lot of women still face sexual harassment at the workplace. This is disappointing.

To make tech a better place for women, we have to dismantle all the silly and harmful stereotypes. In their place, we need to respect women for their craft and approach them the way we’d approach any professional who is great at what they do. Harassment in every form also has to stop.

What are your professional goals for 2018?

In 2018, I plan to brush up my front-end development skills, and add one more back-end development language to my stack. I also plan to get at least one side project out of the planning phase and into the execution stage.

As far as professional goals that relate to work go, my goal is to contribute more value than I currently do to my workplace.

We hope you enjoyed this interview with Lynda Chiwetelu! Follow Charisol on Medium, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for more interviews and tech stories.

Many of you may have noticed that there’s a new “perk” or “category” that’s been popping up in job listings a lot more lately.

You may also notice that the jobs look really interesting, possibly more interesting than the jobs that might currently be available in your acceptable commute radius. I think everyone should have the chance to work somewhere they’re passionate about. If I start a company, my first criteria is to find people that are passionate about what we’re doing, all other criteria follow and do not lead that one.

So how do you interview for these dream remote positions? Let’s take a look at some guidelines and questions that you can ask a potential remote employer.

Fully Remote Positions

Most companies that I have worked for supported remote work in some fashion or another, some better than others, however there’s clearly a learning curve for employers as well as remote employees.

Typically jobs listed as remote are fully remote. That means that you might fly out to meet everyone for a week but after that you may only see them once a quarter or even less (aside from video chat obviously). Sometimes you don’t even have to physically meet everyone. Communication is done through things like Slack/Hipchat, video chat like Skype or Google Hangouts, project management tools and let’s not forget email and phone calls.

What To Look For

I’m sure there are many more great things to look for and I challenge you to comment and add more to this list.

1. “How many full time remote people do you currently have working for you?”
   GOOD: “We have about 25% of our workforce remote.”
   BAD: “You would be the first one and really, we just listed remote to get more applicants. Are you open to relocation?”
2. “How do you typically communicate with your remote team?”
   GOOD: “We’re mostly on chat but we usually have video chat for our stand ups in the morning, except for Fred, he doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth on his houseboat”
   BAD: “We use XYZ project management software and email and that’s about it.”
3. “How much does the onsite team use Slack/Hipchat on a daily basis?”
   GOOD: “All day, they do that thing where they’re sitting right next to each other but they talk in the chat room.”
   BAD: “The onsite team doesn’t really need to use chat since they’re together onsite”
4. “How do you work through ‘collaborative problems’ with remote team members?”
   GOOD: “If there’s drawing we have an app that we use where anyone can draw and anyone can see what’s being drawn. We also will get everyone in a video call and hash things out on a regular basis if needed.”
   BAD: “We don’t generally get everyone on a call. The people that are on site work at a whiteboard and then start implementing”
5. “What time do people usually sign off for that day?”
   GOOD: “Usually around 5–6 depending on when they started, things are usually pretty dead work wise by 6:30pm but there may be the occasional GIF or article that gets posted”
   BAD: “Chat works so well at communicating with the team that we’re all available 24/7/365”
6. “How many tools do you use with your remote workers?”
   GOOD: “We have specific tools for specific intents. We use github for our project management, Slack for async communication, and Skype for video calls”
   BAD: “We use email, a couple project management tools, bitbucket and github and some internal gitlab repos, some people are on AIM and some are in the IRC, others use slack, there’s a small group that uses email exclusively…”

Conclusion

The main idea is to see if management is really serious about taking advantage of the benefits that remote jobs provide them. If management doesn’t support remote workers 100% then you may have a dream job working on a dream product but things can go sour when you try to navigate the company internally.

You should try to get interviews with multiple companies that support remote workers and see how they answer your questions differently. You will be able to tell the difference between the ones that truly support remote in their culture and other companies that are transitioning or not really behind the concept.

This article is really here to help people in the process of interviewing for a remote position, PLEASE comment with your thoughts and hints that you think could save someone from getting into a rough remote position versus a remote position where an employee can grow and thrive!