Working in IT – how programmers work in the world

As the latest report, Developer Survey Results, shows, about 12 percent of developers work remotely full-time, and a few percent more – half-time (17.6 percent). What does this mean? That the vast majority of them, almost 70%, rarely or never worked on the so-called home office.

Where is remote work the most popular? Among the top programmers who most often work in this system is Argentina, followed by Mexico and the USA. The results seem to be surprising – isn’t working from home, favorite café or paradise island a dream of many of us? It is certainly a question of how Polish employers approach it.

Work-life balance versus lack of organization – what are the pros and cons of remote work in the IT industry (and not only)

As it turns out – developers who have chosen this form of career in IT, definitely love their work more than those who have never had such an opportunity. Let’s see why.

Pros

Possibility of cooperation with companies from all over the world – remote working does not limit the employee to his or her place of residence. More and more international corporations, such as IBM, First Data, Xerox, Dell, Apple and Red Hat offer their employees the possibility of remote work.

Work-life balance – during the so-called home office it is easier to reconcile home duties, passions and interests with professional work. There is also more time for it – you don’t waste it on commuting to and from work, which in big cities can take up to several hours a day.

Cooperation with different companies – if you don’t work in one organization on a full-time basis, or if your work takes less than the statutory 8 hours a day – you have the opportunity to carry out several projects simultaneously. This will certainly affect your experience and the thickness of your portfolio.

Cons

Difficult communication – when working remotely in a multinational corporation, you have to take into account that you will have to work in other time zones. And if the project is overturned, your support will be needed for now. This means that you have to be in touch 24 hours a day. In addition, getting along by email or phone, in addition to the person who lives on the other side of the world can be troublesome and result in a lack of understanding.

Work organisation – when you have a home office and the boss is not standing over your desk – you may lose control of your time. To make remote working effective, you need to organize your duties and the place where you’ll be doing them – without the distractions of a TV or Playstation.

No sense of belonging to the company – rare visits to the office, limited contact with colleagues. All this weakens your sense of community with your employer.

Full-time job or freelance – what to choose in the IT industry?

We know the subject of remote work and freelancers from the inside out – there are several of us in the BrainJobs team! Although each of us has different experiences, we generally agree with one thing – if you don’t try to work as a freelancer, you won’t know what you feel best about. Our advice, check how it looks in real life! Here are a few tools to help you be productive.

Trello.com is an application for managing multi-stage projects with the use of intuitive cards. It allows you to update information, exchange files from various sources (such as Google Disc, onedrive or Dropbox) and cooperate with other people. The application has already gained Polish language version.

Slack.com – a tool that serves primarily to communicate with all team members in one place. You can create different thematic groups, individual conversations or share files. The application integrates with other frequently used tools, such as Twitter, Dropbox or Google Drive.

Toggl.com is an application useful primarily for team leaders, but also for feelancers who want to control the time of their work. It allows you to track the actual time spent on performing duties, as well as assigning different tasks or projects to a given period of time. It can also generate reports.

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