The Ultimate Guide to Transitioning to Remote Web Development

At Soshace, we help remote web developers find long-term projects and trustworthy clients — and we’ve gathered a lot of experience about remote work in general. If you’ve been eyeing remote job listings or you’re just curious about how tech companies build their hiring strategies, this article will answer all of your questions (in case it doesn’t: we’re always up on Twitter too).

Remote work pros

Switching to remote work is an adventure in and of itself — and every adventure promises a reward. Well, remote work is no different — there are great benefits that web developers can gain from working remotely.

Higher productivity

As evidenced by a Stanford University study, remote workers are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts. This trend can be explained by the work environments that remote developers choose for themselves: home, cafes, or local libraries: in these places, keeping focused becomes ever so easy — there’s only you, your computer, and the task at hand, without any chit-chat with coworkers (which can sometimes be distracting). As web developers often prefer hourly wages, increased productivity nicely segues into the next benefit which is...

More money

A DoughRoller study has found that remote workers save up to $7,000 annually. This can be attributed to the following factors:

• Food and drinks. Remote developers avoid daily Starbucks rituals and prefer to home-cook instead. Eating out and drinking out — relatively benign spending categories on the surface — can add up and turn into real sinkholes that bring chaos to your budget. For many people, so-called “social spending” is a problem that is difficult to unearth: grabbing a coffee and visiting bars seems essential for socializing, so even slightly cutting on this category presents a challenge.

• Commute. “Time is money” is a good phrase to remember while waiting for yet another traffic jam to clear up. With the average commute time reaching 52 minutes, you cannot help but muse over commute-associated costs like car and gas prices. More important, however, are these 52 minutes that are quite hard to capitalize on: although podcasts can help to fill this space, more quality activities (e.g. spending time with family or doing something creative) are out of reach.

• Child care. As reported by the Federal Government of the US, full-time childcare costs average between $4,600 to $15,000 annually — a piece of information which many remote workers will probably glance over as they can cut these costs significantly, if not completely.

• Location. This is arguably the biggest money-saving aspect — the ability to escape cities with a high cost of living, while still working for their local companies.

More freedom

Although increased productivity and decreased spending are, of course, very nice to have, remote work offers another benefit that is arguably even more important: freedom. Interestingly enough, you can interpret this term in different ways: for some, it relates to escaping cramped office environments; for others, it means finding like-minded individuals to share and discuss exciting ideas with.

Caveats

Remote web development, however, can pose certain challenges. One of them is finding the work-life balance, which may prove to be quite tricky: being productive often means that you want to become even more productive, so stopping work may actually become a challenge (“I’ll just implement one more feature and then I’m off… well, maybe two more features. Okay, three new features.”) To avoid this pitfall, you can establish a clear system of work-life balance:

• Set work time limits and deadlines: fixed work hours will help you acknowledge that Overworking ≠ Overproductive, while setting deadlines will actually increase your productivity.

• Set up and restrict your workspace: whether you work at home or in a cafe, there needs to be a fixed place where you will work (and which your brain will associate with work) — this will improve your concentration and focus.

• Be active outside of work: we all love web development, but there needs to be time which we use to do other activities: playing games or talking with people. All in all, it will make you a happier person — a nice upgrade, isn’t it?

Another caveat lies in skepticism: it’s tempting to think that remote work is just a fad.

• “Is remote work suitable only for small companies?” — Not really, check out how tech giants like Google and Apple organize their remote teams.

• “Is the growth of remote workforce going to slow down?” — Nope, it’s projected that 50% of the global workforce will be remote by 2020. Only one year away!

• “Is the growth of remote companies going to slow down?” — On the contrary: this number is only increasing.

Going remote: Path 1

When transitioning to remote web development, there are two paths you can take. The first path is called “Alone in the forest” and entails working as a freelancer via platforms like Upwork and Freelancer. In this scenario, you enter the web development market all alone and will have to fight your way through the forest by yourself. Although choosing from a wide range of available clients is a nice feat, many web developers often become overburdened with this wide scope of problems and issues they have to solve: Finding the right client and project? No luck today, will have to try again tomorrow. Conflict with the client? Well, time to brush up on my legal knowledge. A bear raided your tent, ate all of your food and… oh yeah, there are bears here — well, it’s a forest after all.

All in all, working via a freelance marketplace platform is totally fine — you get the freedom to join any project you like. However, you may spend way too much time on organizational stuff — precious time you could’ve used to make money and do something interesting. Additionally, the lack of any guarantees (that the project will be long-term, that the client won’t bail out) is stressful as well — these aspects make freelance platforms more suitable for side gigs.

Going remote: Path 2

The other path is called “Space station engineer” — and this is a whole different journey (there are no bears, for instance). In this scenario, hiring experts from our company, Soshace, will find clients for you. There’s only one requirement and it’s pretty simple: you have to be good. Well, becoming a space station engineer is challenging, but rewarding — here’s how we’ll assess your proficiency: CV screening → communication skills test → professional skills test. If you match our standards, we’ll invite you to join these perks:

• Hand-picked projects: we screen your potential clients just as rigorously — and provide you with projects from the clients you will trust.
• Full-time involvement: your projects will be long-term, lasting several months and paying $20 per hour at minimum.

• Minimal risk: we deal with all bureaucratic and legal intricacies for you.

Arguably, the most important benefit is this: we make sure that you don’t have to worry about problems unrelated to your work. This will bring you peace of mind, which will ensure that you write the best code possible. Ready to get hired?

Author: Denis Kryukov
Copywriter at Soshace.com