5 ms·

Ask HN: What questions should I ask when considering a remote position?

• glanotte 13y ago
  I have been working remotely for the last year after working in an office for ~14 years. The largest potential issue that I have run into is is communication and how it is handled. The most important thing I would ask would be how many of the people on the team you deal directly with are remote. That will give a pretty good gauge on what it will be like. I would also ask why they chose to open up remote positions. Is it a last resort to get people hired or is it because they just care about the quality of the hires. You may or may not get an honest answer here, but I would ask it any way. The other I would ask is what is the primary means of communication in the company. If they say "Campfire", "Flowdock" or something along those lines - ask how many rooms they have and how active they are. The key here is asynchronous communication, with remote positions come different schedules, removing the need for instantaneous response is nice. Along those lines I would ask about hours that people work, are there core hours or is it 8-5 Pacific time, etc. If there is a rigid schedule, that is a bit of a red flag for me. I would also ask how often the team gets together, this should be a priority and I think once a quarter minimum would be a good time frame. You mentioned a devops role, so this might not be as big of a thing for you, but I like to see them using pull requests (or similar methodology) for feature merging. In my experience thus far, those have really helped keeping team members up to speed. That isn't a deal breaker, but a good thing if I see it.
  • pandemicsyn 13y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! Any other tips for transitioning from an in office gig to remote? I'm considering getting a desk at my local coworking space to make sure I don't turn into a hermit and to stay in touch with the community in town.
    • glanotte 13y ago
      A coworking space is an option but find what works best for you and try different options. I personally work best at coffee shops, but I split my time between coffee shops and home. I would just add that you should be wary of burnout. For that I diligently log my time and try to manage my schedule. We have flexible hours which sounds nice but it is easy for me to work all the time. So, go to work (even if it is just a home-office) and then go home. I have a space at home that is exclusively for work. having those clean lines is what has kept me sane.
    • stevekemp 13y ago
      Personally I found it beneficial to have a "work computer", a "work phone", and keep things entirely separate from my home setup. That meant if I were working I'd use the dedicated hardware, and if not I would use my stuff. There were certainly times when I worked overnight, but in general the idea was to pretend I was in an office, and only bootup the work-machine when I was actually in working hours. I did deviate a few times, when the work broadband was down, but my personal one was up, but I kept that as minimal as I could.
• iSloth 13y ago
  Personally I'd ask for the contact details of the other remotely working team members so you can have a chat with them, you'll probably find that they had the same worries and thoughts as you did before they joined. Also these are the people that you might be working with soon, so also serves as a good idea to see how well you get on with them. As for specific questions: - How is work allocated to you, and who is allocating it - How are they going to keep track of your work, do you have to do daily/weekly reports? - What's the typical internal communications method, eMail, IM, Skype - Timezones, are your colleagues in comparable zones so you can actually have a chat with them at reasonable times - Is there any monthly/quarterly/yearly meet-up with the whole team?