What kind of characters and skills are essential for a developer who is working remotely?

Question

For some personal reasons, have to leave the place where I live now, but still hope can keep working with the guys I am working with now.

I read some articles say that need to set-up the always on skype group, but is this all and just no problem any more?

Answer 1

Communication, communication, communication.

In particular, you'll need to:

• Be able to speak clearly even over a line which is sometimes poor
• Write clearly and concisely (whether for documentation, bug reporting, emails etc)
• Be patient when you find it hard to understand your colleagues due to the relatively poor communication channel (even the best remote communication is worse than face-to-face contact)

Do everything you can to make the communication easier: set up shared desktops so you can demo stuff easily, IM, good conference call facilities (make sure you've got a good headset for Skype etc).

Answer 2

If you want to work at home, you need a lot of discipline. Nobody is watching you, and your games, TV set etc. are just a few meters away. You should also be aware that working remotely mostly means being alone in a room for the whole day, not everybody likes that.

Answer 3

taking off your pyjamas after you wake up may be the first step.

Answer 4

Personal Experience

I have been working remotely now for almost 2 years. I have found that the following guidelines to be helpful in being successful.

Intangibles

• Love what you do. If you don't, at least try to have an infatuation. This emotional connection with your work will help carry your through the wanting to sleep in days.
• Feel a sense of morality or duty. Just because no one is watching, doesn't make it ok to steal, right? Just because you can get away with it, doesn't mean you can cheat your employer. I believe that the ethics of a person are often communicated unintentionally. Keep yourself ethical and you will be able to be more confident.
• Let your friends and family know that just because you are at home, doesn't mean you are free to help during the daytime.
• Conversely, it is very important to have a good work/life balance. It can be easy to stay home and never leave for sometimes weeks if you are an obsessive personality.
• If management (i.e. your boss) contact you, reply ASAP, even if it is just an acknowledgement that you received their message. This helps to reassure them that you are on the ball.

Technical Solutions

• Learn the lecture style of email. When discussing technical projects, I find that writing long-winded emails that can be used as reference documents goes a long ways towards replacing the information exchange chattering that goes on in offices. Plus you get a permanent record.
• Get the team a chat room and make it fun. Even if you are the only remote employee, if everyone is active in group chat, it can be nice dynamic that allows knowledge sharing to happen in ways that it doesn't happen in the office. Oftentimes, in my group devs have conversations that don't really concern the other devs in the dev-wide chat. This allows everyone to passively absorb what it is that they are working on and get some side knowledge.

Answer 5

Communication.

Answer 6

I agree with communication.

I often hear the argument that home working is not good for software developement because you cannot go and just talk to someone ah-hoc about apart of code, if they are not in the office.

I dont agree with this for three reasons:

1. Telephone, skype, msn etc. Everyone should have a telephone if you need to quickly ask someone a question about something.
2. Being on your own makes you think about a problem more before just hassling someone about it because they might know.
3. Interruptions. How often are you interrupted by colleagues asking questions about code, current news, what your first spectrum game was etc

I think the most important this for home working is having the right attitude and having an a room to work in which is a disconnected from the rest of the house as possible, which will reduce distractions and you will find yourself just getting on with the work.