🏡 How to work remotely

My experience in the tech industry from El Salvador and within the US

You might ask why I can advise on this topic, well I worked for a company based off Virginia, while I was in El Salvador. Also, I was a promoter of working remotely in all the companies I have been in ever since that first experience. So I have in total of 3 years of experience working remotely.

Now, I am in San Francisco, working for a company that within its policies are to work in-office at least three times a week which pretty much means they are open to work remotely. Probably you have heard already this but in SF a lot of companies are strongly looking for the best talent possible in the tech industry and that means they will work hard to offer good perks to attract that talent. What I have been able to experience is that it has become an increasingly attractive offer to be able to work remotely for many different reasons, I want to talk about 3 major ones that I have found especially good for.

• Ability to make your schedule
• Better integration between my personal and professional life
• Avoid traffic thus I have the potential to spend time on other things

Let's address these three points in a more detail way

Ability to make your schedule

It is not uncommon for me to post in the work chat that I will be unavailable for a few hours or an ETA of when I am coming back because I want to work on something in isolation or I need to go outside for a walk and breath some fresh air because I am getting a little stuck on something since I am being open to when I will be next available and also I am giving some sort of brief explanation why I want to be offline people in my team tend to be understanding, keep in my they also have the same needs and if I am in the other side of the road I am understanding too.

Making my schedule allows me to put effort and time in things my way, I could spend some time in the task I need to work on, next I can spend some time in my social networks or researching about something I like or even reading a book offline.

Better integration between my personal and professional life

When I was studying at university sometimes I needed to put some effort and time on school assignments or projects during work-time hours because not all my friends were working at the time, this was especially important and relevant when I was working on my thesis (which is something like a project with a ton of documentation for scholar purposes). As you can see, working remotely was key at this time.

Another example you might see yourself in is when I needed to pay stuff or go to the bank to do some transaction I would not be able to do online or an appointment of some sort like a doctor one, it is pretty easy to schedule those things even during business hours when you are working in a remote-friendly company.

Avoid traffic thus I have the potential to spend time on other things

One drawback for me is that I usually am an eager reader when I am on public transportation because there are not many things I like to do while traveling (if I am not driving). Other than that, I love skipping traffic. Especially in my hometown, that can get extremely bad (not LA level but still).

In my next post, I will talk about what things you can do to improve your remote game with tools I use and the things I do to stay productive.