Would you love to work remotely (and asynchronously)?

We are Arkency and we have been working remotely since the very beginning of our company in 2007. Remoteness is a core value for us. If you opened the email, I hope you are at least curios as to why and how to work remotely. I think it all starts with dream and vision.

For me, the biggest reason for a switch, was commuting. I couldn’t help but feel that it was a huge time loss. Yes, you can read a book when commuting, but try it out in winter, when it is freezing and you are waiting for a bus. Yes, you can listen to the music or podcasts, but good luck enjoying it when the metro is so loud. The only solutions seemed to be getting a home closer to the city-center, which in my book mean more expensive. Or getting a car, good bye my environment-friendly lifestyle. At least riding a bicycle to the office can have some potential health benefits, if that’s an option for you (I envy you, Amsterdam) .

And when I was finally there, at the office, it was filled with people talking over phones or discussing their issues and I couldn’t event focus enough to do my job properly. Even though I have a medium hearing deficiency I still consider noise to be very problematic. I can’t even imagine how it is like for people who don’t have such kind of condition. For them the reality is even louder than for me. Distracted programmer is not an effective programmer, I am sure you can agree. I know there are offices other there which are quiet but after visiting some offices I find it to be an exception rather than a norm.

So I thought to myself what if I could work somewhere where I wouldn’t spend 90 minutes every day commuting to and from? What if I could work in a distraction-free environment? What if I could work… from home At first it looked impossible but first I negotiated with my boss working 2 or 3 days from home, just to give it a try. And I enjoyed it very much. Later I moved to Arkency where everyone was working remotely for full time and my dream became my everyday reality. Here is a winter picture from my current in-home office window.

Don’t know about you, but sometimes in the middle of the day I feel a little sleepy (thank you insulin resistance). In such case either I take a short power nap or I go for a 40 minute-long refreshing walk in a lovely forest in my neighborhood. Both options possible thanks to the fact that I can work from home. I always thought that offices should have a nap room, but somehow most office designers don’t agree. If you can take a nap in your office, share your story with me. I would love to hear more about it.

Of course you might be into remote work for your own reason like travelling. When home is no longer just quiet but rather boring, we often wish to be able change our location to something new and feel fresh again. Not necessarily take holidays just for that. But to change the environment, work, and enjoy the city or countryside after working. Is that an option for you?

And then there is the most important reason for some of us. Family. If you want to spend more time with your growing kids and lovely partner, home working might be a solution for you.

What’s next?

But no matter what reasons for going remote you have, you also need to know how. So in the next posts we are going to tell you how we did it. What tools we use, and how we handle communication. What’s our process like and what we value. How we work remotely and asynchronously and what interesting techniques you might wanna try yourself.

This was just a teaser. In next 2 weeks you will get 4 articles covering a lot of content. See you in two days.

Next part:

Async & remote - toolbox