Open Thread: How Do You Score a Remote Gig?
ABC News writes that the future of the workplace has no office, only a headquarters in cyberspace, and cites IBM, Accenture, and Crayon as examples. If you’re lucky enough to work for one of those firms — and you want to work from home or café instead of cubicle — you’re pretty well set.
But what do you do if your company doesn’t encourage remote work arrangements? If working where you want is important to you, how can you make it happen?
One commenter on the ABC News story asks:
Where do you find these jobs? I’m in marketing/PR and new media (blogging, podcasting) and I’m having a hard time finding jobs that allow me to work from home. I’m tired of the commute and office politics. I like the work I’m doing at home, but it’s certainly not enough to be financially stable. I’ve taken an incredible pay cut just to try to improve my quality of life by working from home. Are there legit Web sites with these jobs? I haven’t found anything legit on the usual Web suspects.
Are you working from home or café instead of cubicle? If so, how did you arrange it? Do you have advice for those looking for remote work arrangements?
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I am so glad someone is asking the right questions for a change.
I am a programmer. When I work from home I get so much more accomplished. Not to mention an extra hour of my life back from not commuting. To top it off, my home office is better equipped for my work.
Now where is that employer at that wants to save money on office space while increasing productivity?
The trick is the same as what you need to get a good RL job: networking.
What changes is the venue.
Between my advocacy work, forum participation, and (regrettably small) clipbook, I find myself in a situation where the overwhelming majority of my clients are hundreds of miles away – and I’d lived here almost three years before I took on my first local gig. Both of those prospects found me as a result of my online networking, meanwhile.
However, this approach is not for the weak of heart – I invested almost two years in daily forum participation before I got my first remote gig, and the revenue didn’t start to get decent for another two years after that.
Elroy: I get a lot more done at home too — of course, it’s my main and best option right now because I work for myself.
But when I was an employee, I was able to work out a remote arrangement because that was the only terms on which the employer could keep me. One of the best ways to find a remote arrangement is to start as a traditional in-office employee, show your value, and then propose home-based work.
It’s unfortunate that more employers aren’t open to hiring on home-based or otherwise remote workers, though. Maybe this is because they find it hard to trust people they haven’t worked with in person.
As an ex-Accenture employee in the UK, you are indeed enabled to work from anywhere. Trouble is the client often prefers to see you so you end up in the backend of nowhere with your anywhere-enabled office tools stuck on a client site!!!
I left and now run my own business as a L.I.P (location independent professional) which takes this concept one stage further and means I actually work from wherever I fancy being in the world. So far this year, I’ve lived in Panama, Buenos Aires, Toronto & Grenada.
I attract clients worldwide to my businesses & run the business purely using online tools. My marketing is done largely via my blogs and I keep in touch using skype & other networking tools. My professional & personal network has expanded enormously since doing this – as have the business opportunities.
As Ben says, it’s not for everyone nor for the weak of heart…but it is one of the most rewarding ways of life I have ever experienced.
As a professional freelance writer based in Europe, I have often found that the best way to attract clients from other countries is mainly to emphasise how easy it is to hire me. Overseas clients often think they can’t hire me because there would be difficulties in paying me and keeping in touch. So I reassure them by emphasising my phone numbers, IM identities, Skype ID, online references, my website, the fact they can pay me via Paypal, etc. This calms them and makes them realise there are no actual barriers to hiring me.
Oh and networking is definately the key. Facebook has proved invaluable.
I worked for a large global consulting firm for 4 years where after 2 years they allowed me to work remote from home. I wasn’t planning on being allowed to work remote it just popped up. My family and I relocated back to our home state where I continued to work remote for two different departments for 2.5 years. I now work for myself (from home) as most projects I work are located out of state.
There are many job and ‘gig’ boards (gigs being shorter term/contract type opportunities).
I believe there are several important factors that influence this type of situation:
1) Are you trying to go remote as an existing employee?
Might have more leverage as an existing employee.
2) Are you looking for remote work from new clients/businesses?
This is where experience as a remote worker definitely helps. References are also good.
3) is the work you are seeking contract or ‘permanent’ in nature [i use permanent loosely].
Contract work seems to be very strong in the area of remote work.
4) How is your work-ethic?
I believe it requires a very strong work-ethic to do remote work. You must be disciplined to do what needs to be done. You often have to work harder in some areas to reach the same benefit as working in an office – for example communicating with team members. If you want to ‘stay on the radar’ then you have to make an effort to stay in touch with people, even your own teammates or colleagues.
5) How well are you able to control your working practices and habits?
I will admin i am horrible in this area. I enjoy my work and am constantly struggling with work/life balance. I had this problem being an office empoyee as well. However, when you office at home its very tempting to bust out another few features in that app you are coding or . I can’t say how many times i have started out with this idea in mind only to realize the sun was coming up the next day and I had worked a-n-o-t-h-e-r all-nighter. Not because I had to but because im addicted to the productivity high of getting more and more things done (off topic).
6) What is your personality makeup in regards to social needs?
I must say when i first started working remote I went from being in a leadership role to working by myself in my office. Yes the productivity is endless but you must take care to get out of the house. See people :) and no instant messaging doesn’t count!
I have had many friends come to me and tell me they would do anything to get a home gig. But I tell them the same thing i typed above. If you can deal with the whole package then great. If not, don’t ruin a great opportunity until you have weighed the factors (of which im sure i left some out ).
In the end I do not regret going from corporate in-office to remote. It does limit you in some areas as to where you are going in a corporate career path perhaps but I enjoyed it so much i went to work for myself as a freelancer. I love it.
Ryan
Like Anne, I found the best way to get the remote gig was to work in person for a time to establish trust and value – and then ask for the remote gig.
My company – a regional phone/cable/Inet/wireless provider – has differing levels of support for telecommuting/remote work throughout the organization. My department – IT – has 35% remote employees, and a good portion of the other 65% work from home at least part of the time. Other departments are less supportive and a couple prohibit it.
I’ve transitioned from FT office, to 3-4 days a week office, to only a day every couple of weeks office.
The one caveat I would add is that as a remote worker it’s *my* job to overcome any communication barriers with my employer’s main site. I have to work three times as hard to reach out, stay in the loop, and communicate proactively. As a project manager, that’s critical.
Like the original commenter, I’m another PR/new media guy with aspirations of working remotely. Though I struggled a little with figuring out how to make a work-from-home situation viable with my current employer, Ketchum, I’ve made it work without penalty in a couple of ways. A) I try to make myself equally available by keeping as many lines of communication open (whether it’s through using collaborative Google documents, allocating time to review e-mails, etc.) as possible. B) I try to make my physical presence negligible by participating in more meetings via phone and scheduling strategic, meeting-packed days when I do venture into the office to maximize my time with colleagues.
I’ve been lucky to have an understanding boss and HR department, I suppose, but it’s seemed to work quite well.
Related, if anyone’s interested in a work-from-home job, one of my clients (Nokia) is hiring for a hybrid community manager/marketer for its new mobile-to-mobile content sharing site, MOSH (http://mosh.nokia.com).
Job’s listed here: http://jobs.paidcontent.org/job/0fe9231a31c542013ed8f6077a200cff/?d=1
Online presence counts a lot if one is to look for work-from-home jobs. So blog about your skills and use social networks – they actually work.
My previous gig had a lot of remote-office time baked in. My current seems to have shifted oddly back into them WISHING I’d stay put, but I don’t. I can’t work in a cube, when 94% of what I do involves bit-pushing.
But you’ve given me something with a simple turn of phrase: a headquarters in Cyberspace. Being that I’m not so SL (waiting for the Sheep to make a better front-end), I might make me a blog-faced office. Hmmm. Nice, Anne.