The Beginning
I like to start my days at 7:00 PST. I’m on the west coast, so starting early helps me feel like I haven’t missed out on too much.
We use Skype to keep in touch, so firing up Skype and catching up on the various conversations that’ve been happening is my first order of business. After that’s done, I catch up on email and any feedback I’ve been given on the stuff I got done yesterday.
We follow an agile methodology at Fullstack, so we have daily standup meetings (via Skype). Usually within an hour of starting work, I have my first standup of the day. There could be more than one of these, depending on how many projects I’m assigned to at any given time. Standups are usually pretty brief, and once they’re done, I have a full list of things to accomplish for the day.
The Middle
After meetings are over, the actual work starts. This part is pretty typical of any engineering job. I have stories assigned to me in Pivotal Tracker, and I keep track of what I’m spending time on using Harvest. Once I get rolling, the day goes by pretty fast.
And The End
Afternoons are occasionally punctuated by random calls from co-workers, or other ad-hoc discussions. Around 4:00, I sign off Skype and pack up my things.
Roll Credits
Sound similar to an ‘office’ job? It is! Other than my physical location, not much has changed and that is kind of the point. Working remotely as a developer is fundamentally the same as if my location were in an office.
Still not convinced? Give a try some time, ask for a single day of working from home. The odds are that most of your coworkers won’t even realize you are ‘away’.
