I actually never worked in the office……here is how I started. Once I was sitting in my room at my home office, I was working late night on my side project, and exactly 2AM, random Skype request came in. I accepted the request and call started immediately. I was like what’s going on? On the other end there was founder and CEO of Toptal and he mentioned that he wanna hire me as product designer, I was like well awesome! He was like, btw we are at the Thailand do you wanna come over? I was like when? He was like tomorrow, next day I was taking 12hour long flight to see new team and join 3 weeks long retreat.https://www.toptal.com/remote/the-ultimate-remote-culture
……
·You have freedom to choose location
There is no need for you to relocate, you can all the time, choose your own location. If you decide you wanna go to Mexico, you can go, if you will have solid internet connection and all required devices.
·Costs
Working at SF or NYC is awesome. Well it’s awesome on the paper. But when you look at in from other point of view, you are going to found out that costs are just crazy, if you would get $5K at SF you are done, but imagine having $5K at Thailand, or in the middle of the Europe. Remote working allows you to cut down extra costs, and live better life (not all the time).
·Time with family
For me it's really important to produce great, work but also be able to live my life and stay with people who matters to me. Remote working allows me to do that.
·Travelling
Exploring other countries and cultures, helped me alot to understand who I'm designing for, so I try to travel as much as I can.
·Lonelines?
Yes, you can be lonely sometimes, since you don't have a friend in the office and you can't jib jab next to the coffee machine.
·No Collaboration?
Not really, we do have lot of tools, what helps you to collaborate and built better products. It could be as simple as slack, invision or more complex like mural. You and your team needs to find a right way to do it. Ideally combined with well planed team retreat to get a team all together and work together.
……
Lastly, remote working is not for everyone, you really need to be strong individual to be able to work remotely and be awesome at it.
6+ years of remote designing and still love it!
I actually never worked in the office……here is how I started. Once I was sitting in my room at my home office, I was working late night on my side project, and exactly 2AM, random Skype request came in. I accepted the request and call started immediately. I was like what’s going on? On the other end there was founder and CEO of Toptal and he mentioned that he wanna hire me as product designer, I was like well awesome! He was like, btw we are at the Thailand do you wanna come over? I was like when? He was like tomorrow, next day I was taking 12hour long flight to see new team and join 3 weeks long retreat.https://www.toptal.com/remote/the-ultimate-remote-culture
……
·You have freedom to choose location
There is no need for you to relocate, you can all the time, choose your own location. If you decide you wanna go to Mexico, you can go, if you will have solid internet connection and all required devices.
·Costs
Working at SF or NYC is awesome. Well it’s awesome on the paper. But when you look at in from other point of view, you are going to found out that costs are just crazy, if you would get $5K at SF you are done, but imagine having $5K at Thailand, or in the middle of the Europe. Remote working allows you to cut down extra costs, and live better life (not all the time).
·Time with family
For me it's really important to produce great, work but also be able to live my life and stay with people who matters to me. Remote working allows me to do that.
·Travelling
Exploring other countries and cultures, helped me alot to understand who I'm designing for, so I try to travel as much as I can.
·Lonelines?
Yes, you can be lonely sometimes, since you don't have a friend in the office and you can't jib jab next to the coffee machine.
·No Collaboration?
Not really, we do have lot of tools, what helps you to collaborate and built better products. It could be as simple as slack, invision or more complex like mural. You and your team needs to find a right way to do it. Ideally combined with well planed team retreat to get a team all together and work together.
……
Lastly, remote working is not for everyone, you really need to be strong individual to be able to work remotely and be awesome at it.
……
My full article about remote working (audio version included). https://medium.com/swlh/remote-work-is-the-future-bc0712f47a90#.16nqz65za .....
If you have any questions, just hit me on my Instagram or twitter. https://www.instagram.com/lubosvolkov/