People often ask me what it is like to work as a remote employee. In my work experience I have worked as a remote employee for three very different companies, all offering benefits and drawbacks. One was a very tiny company where I worked for the owner, with one or two other colleagues, and worked directly with remote clients. The second was a company located in a different country than myself, where I was the only remote employee hired to work with clients who were located in my city. My third foray into remote work (where I am currently working) is for a fully-distributed company, with no head office, and every person works from home (including the CEO!)

Pros:

• You can work from anywhere! This is obviously the biggest pro for me, as I have elected to leave Toronto and move abroad (we are currently located in Playa del Carmen, Mexico).
• No commute – living in a big city like Toronto, some of my friends have up to an hour commute. I sometimes joke that my commute to my office is a whole 17 seconds… but I don’t like to rub it in
• Your colleagues are top-notch. They have been selected from the largest candidate pool – the entire world! You’ll find that everyone is incredibly talented in their field – more-so even than a typical office.
• Taking mental breaks is easier: When you have a stressful job (like all jobs can be sometimes), I find it easier to close my laptop for 15 minutes and go for a short walk to clear my head, take my coffee onto the balcony, or my favourite mental break – go snuggle my dog for a few minutes.
• For two companies I’ve worked for (the one where I was the remote employee and now where everyone is a remote employee) I’ve had the benefit of business trips to meet my colleagues in person! When I was the remote employee they flew me down to the head office to work for a few weeks, and for my current company there is an annual summit where all employees head to a different destination for seminars and socialization.
• When you work with people who are on completely different timezones from you, sometimes you wake up and their work is complete! When I had a developer in Bali, for example, I’d chat with him before bed to discuss what he should work on for that day, then I would wake up and he’d already be done!

Cons:

• On that same vein as above, it can sometimes be a challenge to coordinate working hours with different folks around the world. One solution for different working hours is to have them indicate their working hours in their shared calendar – so there’s no questions about when they will be online or offline! I’ve even found that some employees who are on a completely different timezone will actually work Eastern time to make it easier on us within the western Hemisphere, so I usually just ask my teammates to indicate when they will be working each day so I know when to schedule meetings.
• Due to the distance, your team needs to be really strong communicators. Some people who are new to remote work may have yet to get used to being proactive about letting others know their status. I’ve found that if you just let someone know exactly what communication you need from them (i.e. tell me when you are this percent complete, if you hit any blockers, and please update me no matter what every Tuesday and Thursday morning). Usually people get the hang of this after a few months, but in the mean time, you may need to step up to communicate more!
• The most frequent question people always ask me is “Don’t you get distracted?” To be honest, most of the time I don’t – and the reason I don’t is because I have so much work to do, and I have a deadline – I can’t really allow myself to get distracted. If you do get easily distracted, and are not SUPER self-motivated, then remote work probably isn’t right for you.
• Some remote jobs can be isolating if you are working alone most of the day. I am very fortunate that my job is the opposite of isolating (I am essentially required to be talking to my team / my clients for more than 60% of my day) but some jobs do not have that luxury. If your job contains a lot of solo work then you might find working remotely a bit lonely! Some people in this situation like to work in co-working spaces so they are around people during the day. As you can see in the screenshot above, that is my typical day – talking to many people around the world!
• When working as a remote employee it is really important the company you are working for is set up for remote workers. I have worked for a company where I am the only remote employee and I was expected to be able to hear a room full of people through one telephone and see one person’s screen on a shaky connection. This was an incredibly tough gig. You feel disconnected from the rest of the team and you miss out on the “watercooler talk.” Also, people are very hard to reach via chat since they expect people to swing by their desks to have informal discussions. This type of company was definitely not set up for remote workers.
• Finally – you need to ensure you have a REALLY strong Internet connection. I call this a con because for me many of the places I’d like to move to do not have strong enough internet to support the video calls I am on all day! I find I need at least 20 mbps down at 5 mbps up to support my day-to-day video calls.If you are remote worker, I’d love to hear your reasons for selecting remote work! Please feel free to share in the comments below.