Remote Java Dev

Remote Java Dev

Remote

Back in Office

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Back in Office

What’s a Remote Java Dev doing back in office you might ask? Well, as a consultant I recently started a new client and so I’ve been working on site for the past month or so. Going back in office for a time is…interesting, I’ll say.

The Good

There are some good things about being in office. It can definitely be a little easier ramping up at a new place when you’re in the same location. It’s also much easier to get to know your coworkers when you can meet them face to face. 

Chatting about non-work related activities too is much easier and more organic. Building rapport is important at any workplace, but is especially so for a consultant. As our time at any one client is limited, we operate under a strong time pressure.

Likewise, it’s easier to build comradery when you’re together with people in the same room. Whether it’s team lunches or gathering at the coffee machine, it’s just easier to talk with a colleague about his or her interests. 

You also share common experiences such as bad traffic or weather in getting to the office. It may seem trivial, but the shared annoyances help form bonds and ultimately trust between people. This pays off down the line both on a personal and a professional level. It’s easier to work with people with whom you’ve built trust.

The Bad

This will be nothing new to those who’ve read some of my past posts regarding remote work. One of the biggest problems is almost always the work environment. 

A wide open floor separated by cubicles is a horrendous location to do development work. It’s unfortunately extremely common.

If you put 100 people in an open space, it’s going to be disastrous for productivity. Maybe companies feel what they save on real estate can compensate for this, but I have my doubts. 

It’s the constant cell phones ringing. The person two cubes over who warms up leftover fish and eats at her desk every day. The unfortunate guy on the other side of the cube wall who has a terrible chronic cough. They all serve to make the work environment extremely unpleasant.

It’s almost never a result of malice. It’s just the gathering of many humans in a small area will inevitably lead to countless distractions.

The Ugly

The meetings. A meeting that runs long while you’re remote is not fun. However, you can at least get something productive done while people drone on. No such luck when you’re sitting in the same room as the other meeting participants. 

When the daily corporate “Standup” lasts 45 minutes, it flat out stinks! Standing there in a room while two people dive into minutiae irrelevant to the remaining group is a huge waste of time and energy. 

Meetings also seem to go much longer than necessary when in person. This is just my anecdotal observation, but I’ve found it to be fairly consistent. The meeting may start about one topic, then is quickly veered off course by several other orthogonal concerns. 

Everyone’s in the same room, so might as well handle that too right? Usually not right, because what may be germane to two people will be wholly irrelevant to the other five. 

It all boils down to time mismanagement. It takes pretty iron-willed leadership to recognize this as it’s happening and stop it. These things are just easier to avoid or mitigate when remote, I’ve found.

The Future

It’d feel a little odd running a blog called remotejavadev.com for very long while not working remotely. Happily, I’ll be switching to working remote only starting in June of next year. My family and I will be moving to the Kingdom of Tonga at that time and we’re beyond excited about it. 

I’ve worked remotely from Tonga a couple times before, but this one will be much easier. Easier because we’ll be living there beyond a few months at a time so I can really settle in and set up a nice work environment. 

Relocating permanently overseas will be a whole new challenge. So if anyone has any advice for soon to be US-Expats, please feel free to reach out!  I’m on Twitter @RemoteJavaDev or can be reached via email at dan@remotejavadev.com

Managing Career Risk as a Remote Developer

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Managing Career Risk as a Remote Developer

When it comes to developers, there’s the regular kind and then there’s us. Managing career risk as a remote developer is an important concern. I’d contend it’s a far greater one than for our in-office counterparts living in a major metropolitan area.

Until that day when remote work becomes the regular kind, we’re going to have to do some extra legwork to mitigate our career risk. Fortunately we have a number of tactics to accomplish this goal. And on the current remote work transformation trajectory, the inherent career risk of being fully remote should only decrease as time goes on.

Assumptions

This post will apply best to remote developers who want to:

  • Remain remote, without going back in-office 
  • Be compensated based on US major metro area rates
  • Continue to develop or do technical work
  • Have consistent work without long gaps of unemployment

Career Risk

There are three main career tracks for remote developers: FTE(Full-Time Employee), Freelance, and Entrepreneur. While FTE and Freelance will mostly be developing for someone else’s business, Entrepreneurship will involve leveraging your coding ability to create your own product or service. 

Each of the three have their own risk and difficulty profiles. We’ll focus on FTE and Freelancing here as it’s likely to be most relevant to the most people. 

FTE

The easiest and most common remote arrangement is almost certainly the FTE route. You either start in-office and convert this job to full time remote or get hired as full time remote from the jump. 

The risk of working FTE though can be a problem, however. I think it’s helpful to think of yourself as a business. You offer Java development and consulting services for various forms of compensation including money, paid vacation, and other benefits.

As an FTE the business of you has a single client. This client likely pays you a salary for roughly 40 hours of work in a week. If you work more than 40 hours you likely won’t be compensated for it. 

The upside of working FTE is you will get paid reliably every two weeks or thereabouts. While your upside is hard-capped at your salary, ignoring bonuses, so too is your compensation downside. You’re not going to get paid less one year because you mostly did support compared to another year where you mostly worked on valuable new features.

The downside of working FTE is you only have a single client. You are entirely reliant on this single client for your livelihood. If your employer has financial troubles, you risk losing your entire client base. So what might be better than relying solely on a single client?

Freelance/Independent

The freelance or independent model can help mitigate the risk of the FTE single client problem. In the ideal world as a freelancer you cultivate a number of relationships with different clients. In doing so you decrease your vulnerability to losing any one of them.

Unfortunately, this is difficult as a Java developer and even more so as a remote Java developer. Particularly as such a large percentage of Java development is done in the enterprise, it’s not easy to find clients in this space. At least not ones who are interested in short term engagements unless you have a very specific niche within the enterprise Java space.

Rather than working for multiple clients at the same time, you’re more likely to find success working serially. For example, working 6 month contracts at different companies will help build up your client list over time. 

So while you may only work for one company at a time, if you lose your client, you’ll have a number of others at the ready. This requires much more work on your part to cultivate relationships and keep your sales funnel full. It’s simply not enough to settle in at one client and be lulled into a false sense of security.

The risk certainly feels greater as an independent. However, you’re likely just more attuned to it in this model compared to an FTE, though your risk profiles are not that different. An FTE is likely to feel much more secure than she should compared to you as an independent. Put simply, an independent more accurately estimates her risk compared to an FTE.

Mitigation Strategies

Effectively managing career risk as a remote developer requires mitigation strategies. This is far more important for remote developers than in-office ones. As our job choices are fewer that satisfy our one big non-negotiable, remote only.

Network

Building a strong network is an ideal way to mitigate risk. So what does a strong network mean? It means having connections with people who would actually hire or recommend hiring you.

LinkedIn

This is in contrast to the shallow connections we find so common on LinkedIn or that result from one-off networking events. You may have 500+ connections on LinkedIn, but how many of them would actually stake their reputation on recommending you to an employer? If you’re like most people, not too many.

It’s both a blessing and a curse that LinkedIn makes it so easy to connect. The curse is we end up with hundreds of shallow connections that would do us little good if we’re actually in need of a client. If we want LinkedIn to be a good source of leads, then it’s important to cultivate relationships beyond the shallowness of a simple connection. 

In short, a LinkedIn connection is merely an introduction. If it’s left that way, then it’s of little value. Given time is our most scarce and valuable resource, it’s likely to be more fruitful to develop a dozen strong relationships than it is to aim for hundreds of shallow ones.

Resume Adjunct

There are numerous ways we can provide potential clients proof of competence. These serve as a resume adjunct that is publicly available which also supports our credibility. Having an easily accessible portfolio of our work is a great selling point during client acquisition.

Github

One of the easiest ways to do this is to maintain our own public Github account. It’s the perfect place to build projects that demonstrate your expertise in a given tech stack. It’s also great for trying out new technologies rather than waiting for a current employer to start using them. 

Additionally, by working on side projects on your public Github account, you are separating yourself from the pack. The pack of average in-office developers who don’t worry much about their craft outside of work hours. However, as remote developers, we need to be better than average. Moreover, showing our work is an important step in this process and Github lets us do this for free.

Open Source

The next step up the ladder is contributing to open source projects, both in difficulty and in impact I would argue. It’s one thing to put your own project on Github, but it’s a higher degree of difficulty to collaborate with a distributed team on an open source project. 

To be perfectly up front, I’m not speaking from experience here as I’ve not yet contributed to open source. It’s definitely something I’d love to do and hope to do at some point. However, it can be a challenge to find the time between family, working a full-time job, side projects, blogging, and so on.

Attraction Marketing

There are a number of other ways to raise your profile and help with lead generation. Building a strong Stack Overflow ranking is one. Writing your own blog is my another one that I personally enjoy. The rise of podcasting is fully underway and it’s never been easier to start your own. LinkedIn is another good platform to distribute your content. 

Ultimately these platforms can help us build credibility in our industry. Additionally, they can help us with lead generation and client acquisition. As the more people we can reach who can benefit from our services, the better insulated we will be against career risk.

Continuous Learning

Finally, any mitigation strategy should include a healthy dose of continuous learning. If we want to be a top performer, we must stay on the cutting edge of Java tech. It can be overwhelming, but it’s something we must do to stay at the top of our field.

I like to use several different platforms and media for continuous learning. The three main categories are video, audio, and written word. 

Pluralsight and O’Reilly Safari are my favorites for video content. There are also plenty of other options such as YouTube. Josh Long’s Spring Tips and other videos are always good.

Podcasts are my preferred means of consuming audio content. Some of my favorites can be found here: Best Podcasts for Remote Java Developers. I’d also highly recommend the Pivotal Podcasts.

We have an endless amount of written content on the web. However, some of my mainstays are DZone and InfoQ. I also like the Pivotal Blogs for the vast array of Pivotal products, which are always relevant to our industry. TechCrunch is great for broader industry news too.

Summary

Managing career risk as a remote developer is crucial to our long term survival as non-standard employees or freelancers. Until the broader employment model embraces location independence, it’s vital that we actively work to mitigate our risk.

While both FTE and freelance arrangements can succeed when done remotely, they have different risk and difficulty profiles. FTE is generally easier to find remote only work. However, you are then entirely dependent on a single client. Freelance allows you to defray risk with multiple clients, yet it’s less stable and requires more work with lead generation.

The key to robust career management as a remote developer is having strong risk mitigation strategies in place. Building a strong network is very important. Focus primarily on developing strong relationships with your connections. These are more likely to be fruitful than having many shallow connections.

A strong resume adjunct is another beneficial strategy to employ. Whether via Github, open source, or an attraction marketing medium, it’s valuable to have public work available. This builds your credibility and ultimately makes you easier to hire.

The final piece of the puzzle is continuous learning. We have no choice but to drink from the fire hose so we might as well figure out a way to do it effectively. Pick your favorite media formats whether video, audio, or written content and find ways to work it into your weekly routine.

What’s Holding Back Remote Hiring?

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What’s Holding Back Remote Hiring?

It’s easy to wonder what’s holding back remote hiring still in 2019. We have the technology to work remotely from just about anywhere on the planet. Yet, most jobs still require physical proximity as a condition of hiring. Why?

Inertia

When it comes to what’s holding back remote hiring, inertia is the first thing that comes to mind. Most of the biggest employers in the enterprise world have been in business for many years. 

This long history has certainly led to some calcification in their hiring processes. It’s a lot harder to modify hiring practices when your company size is 10,000 compared to 10. Big companies are slow moving and understandably so. 

If a company has grown large, they most likely have been profitable over many years. The larger the company grows, the more difficult it becomes to change. Moreover, change feels riskier as deviation from what’s worked in the past takes a lot of courage. 

Put simply, this is the natural human tendency towards loss aversion manifested at an organizational scale. We humans tend to value not losing over gaining something new.

Therefore it seems more prudent to continue hiring people into an office, because that’s the way it’s always been done. But eventually things always change. And we are rapidly approaching an inflection point. One where the inertia of hiring practices will morph into a significant disadvantage.

Hiring is Hard

Hiring has been a notoriously tough nut to crack. From the largest corporation to the small mom and pop shop, finding good employees is one of the most difficult challenges. 

It’s a time consuming and expensive process for both companies and candidates. The cost of a bad hire can quickly cause exponential deleterious effects on both the hiring and hired. It’s a process filled with risk for everyone involved.

Part of the problem is the tight coupling of benefits to employment here in the States. This tends to force people into seeking jobs regardless of fit. The alternative is to lose access to affordable health insurance. 

Ultimately everyone would be better off if employees needn’t rely on companies for benefits. Then both company and candidate could focus more on role fit. Instead, one side is compelled to get the job at any cost or risk losing health insurance. Unfortunately, we’re still a long way away from realizing this here in the US.

Hiring Managers

We can certainly empathize with the plight of hiring managers. They are tasked with taking on the big problem of hiring. They will also take responsibility for it in spite of its historically intractable nature.

Making a bad hire is something that will reflect poorly on your performance. There is an additional concern though. Did the bad hire look good on paper? In other words, when the bad hire was selected, did the hiring manager have a strong case to present to her director or VP?

Herein lies another key as to what’s holding back remote hiring. Hiring managers take on extra risk when making a hire outside of the traditional path. If a company has traditionally hired in-office, then a hiring manager may perceive hiring a fully remote employee as harder to sell to her boss. 

And if the remote employee doesn’t work out, then the hiring manager could be demeritted more greatly than had she hired a vanilla in-office employee. 

This is ultimately another big reason why we remote workers need to be top performers. It not only protects ourselves, but ultimately protects our managers who step up and hire us.

To be clear though, we’re talking about traditional companies here. Not the new breed of fully remote companies who have already embraced the new reality. Top level organizational support for remote hiring can solve this dilemma, but most companies are not there yet.

Summary

The lion’s share of companies are not remote-only. This means the bulk of hiring is still being done by in-office centric organizations. This creates a number of friction points when it comes to hiring remote workers.

Inertia plays a big role. It’s just easier for organizations to continue doing what they’ve been doing than it is to change course. The bigger the ship, the harder it is to turn.

Additionally, hiring is fundamentally difficult. Hiring a remote worker may be perceived to be more risky in a traditional company than hiring an in-office individual. 

Finally, hiring managers bear responsibility for their hires. In a traditional company, a hiring manager may invite more scrutiny by hiring a remote worker without high-level organizational support. 

I believe all of these friction points will eventually fade away. As more and more of these slow-moving companies are surpassed by remote-friendly companies, they will be forced to change or become extinct.

Remote Work and Backup Plans

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Remote Work and Backup Plans

It’s every remote worker’s worst nightmare. Your internet connection goes down, what do you do? If you’ve been in the remote work game for any length of time, you’ll already have backup plans at the ready. 

Now imagine you’re in the corporate office and the internet goes down. It’s time for a coffee break! As a developer you’re unlikely to be responsible for troubleshooting the network problems so there’s little stress. 

As a remote developer however, it’s a different story. We’re under far more pressure to make sure equipment-related issues do not prevent us from being online. It’s just the reality of a remote worker’s life.

Be Prepared

The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America have a simple motto, be prepared. Good advice for us as remote workers. Our level of preparedness though will depend largely on how remote we are.

If you’re living near a major metropolitan area in a developed country, you don’t need to sweat too much. There will always be a coffee shop nearby with internet access or a computer supply store for any equipment you may need. Cell service is also likely to be excellent. Tethering to your cell phone’s hotspot is often all you need to weather a home internet outage. 

Things become much more critical when it comes to remote work and backup plans when you live farther away from civilization. What do you do when the nearest Fry’s is thousands of miles away? Or what do you do when your home internet connection goes down and there’s no coffee shop around the corner with WiFi?

Like any smart person would, you have your backup plans ready to go ahead of time.  Your home internet connection may be Plan A. Plan B might be a cell phone with hotspot service just in case. Plan C might be hopping in the car and driving an hour to an internet cafe.

The Essentials

The non-negotiables for us as remote developers are an internet connection, a computer, and phone service. We could even get away without a cell phone by using Skype or Zoom through our computer. Everything else could be pruned away if necessary.

Given our two absolute essentials, an internet connection and a computer, it makes sense to focus here first with our backup plans. Here’s an example of how a friend of mine, who works remotely from the South Pacific for a US employer, manages his internet situation.

A Remote Internet Backup Plan

My friend has two ISPs available at his location, so he maintains service with both. He also has cell service with hotspot capability with two cell phone providers. If those options were to fail, he has the option to drive less than 30 minutes to a coffee shop or internet cafe for WiFi access.

Plans

  • A:  Main ISP Home Connection
  • B:  Secondary ISP Home Connection
  • C:  Cell Phone Hotspot with Cell Provider X
  • D:  Cell Phone Hotspot with Cell Provider Y
  • E:  <30-Minute Drive to Coffee Shop or Internet Cafe for WiFi Access

To be fair, this backup plan may seem a little extreme. However, given my friend’s location in the South Pacific I think it’s an outstanding one. In fact, I plan to duplicate this backup plan when I move back to the South Pacific next year. It adequately protects against all but the most extreme situations, such as a catastrophic internet backbone failure which is incredibly rare.

A Remote Hardware and Software Backup Plan

If we’re living far away from a good computer retailer such as Fry’s or Microcenter as found here in the States, we’ll definitely want to plan accordingly. Having a backup laptop is a necessity for the more remote of us. 

It’s also good to have spares of a Bluetooth headset, wireless mouse, and power cable to name a few other useful items. While we could do without the spares, it’s worth the peace of mind to have them on hand.

Automating the setup of our development environment is another worthy endeavor. Using Docker Compose for dependencies is worth looking into to prevent having to start from scratch in case your main development computer goes down. We’ll of course need to backup our critical development environment files and configuration to an external source as well.

Finally, it’s always good to know what our resupply options are. For example, if you’re living in the South Pacific it might take 3 weeks for a new laptop to be delivered to you. You’ll also need to know which companies will actually ship to your location. These companies can be hard to find for the more remote of us.

Summary

Remote work and backup plans go hand in hand. The farther afield we live, the more thoroughly we need to plan for internet and equipment failures. It’s an added responsibility we accept when embracing a remote work arrangement, but ultimately I think most would say it’s worth it.

The two essentials we need backup plans for are internet connections and computers. A good internet backup plan has several non-linked options in case of failure. Likewise, we’ll definitely want at least one backup laptop, ideally with an automated means of reconstituting our development environment.

A little planning can ease a lot of stress. Especially for us remote workers of whom more is expected. Once you have backup plans in place for your essentials, you can free your mind of worry to focus on more important things, like delivering value to your company.

Further Reading

Pretending We’re Not Already Remote

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Pretending We’re Not Already Remote

It’s a curious phenomenon in today’s corporate world. We collaborate constantly with people all over the globe while pretending we’re not already remote.

Yet glancing at job search websites we see explicit location requirements everywhere. “We need a ROCKSTAR Developer,” the job listing demands! But only if you live in Gary, Indiana.

Evolution of Technology

I suspect the main reason for pretending we’re not already remote is due to the evolution of technology. The incremental advances in technology over the past twenty years have been transformative.

Internet access and smartphones have dramatically changed the way we work and especially for those of us in the software world. One by one, the impediments that required us to be tethered to an office are being removed.

We used to require an office location’s fast network connection, because home-based internet was expensive, slow, and unreliable. This is a solved problem now for anyone near a significant population center worldwide. And with the LEO Satellite Internet wave quickly approaching, this barrier too will fall for even the most remote of us.

In addition, we now carry around supercomputers in our pockets posing as phones. It’s never been easier to stay connected with our co-workers whether via email, Slack, or Zoom.

Even a decade ago I carried on Skype video calls over a high latency Geo Satellite internet connection. Now I could have that same video call on my smartphone with drastically better quality.

The tools and internet connections are only improving as the ratchet of technological advancement continues to turn. Simply put, our tools used to require we work in a specific location. This is no longer the case.

Inertia

It’s the inertia, stupid! This play on the famous James Carville quote sums things up nicely. The corporate world moves slowly to the surprise of no one.

Where have all the major innovations occurred over the last twenty years? Certainly not at IBM and other old behemoths. It’s been the Silicon Valley VC-backed startups that have led the charge. The IBMs of the world are incentivized to move slowly because they have much more to protect.

And so it is with the vast majority of corporations when it comes to job location requirements. We don’t need to sit in the same office as our peers to do our jobs as developers. Yet that’s the way it’s been done for decades so by gum that’s what we’re going to do!

It’s the “nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM” effect. What CTO of an established corporation wants to stick her neck out and remove location requirements? It’s far easier for management to just stick with inertia and keep pretending we’re not already remote.

I believe eventually we’ll reach a tipping point where even the behemoth corporations will embrace remote work. Unless of course they get disrupted and supplanted by an innovator before that happens.

Remote First Companies

Thankfully, not all companies are stuck in the 20th Century. A rapidly growing number of companies are choosing to go fully remote from Day One. These Remote First companies are gaining an early mover advantage by adapting to the reality of today’s connected world.

It’s hard enough to find and maintain product/market fit. Doing so while also mimicking the mistakes of legacy companies can be catastrophic. I believe that’s why we’re seeing rapid growth in new companies where remote first is baked into their DNA.

These innovative companies don’t carry the burden of decades of inertia. They are able to operate in our current reality much more effectively and most importantly, attract a better talent pool unbounded by obsolete geographic restrictions.

Employee Retention

Employee retention for remote workers is also dramatically higher than their in-office counterparts. Moreover, personnel churn is a huge drag on any organization’s bottom line. Just think of the cost it takes to replace a software developer.

Between the time spent by Human Resources, the Hiring Manager, and Technical Interviewers, it can easily cost thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for a single hire. And then there’s the cost of reduced productivity while the new hire ramps up. This will usually last many months and results in a hidden cost to the company.

Early Movers

The number of remote first companies are too many to list. However, there are some prominent ones who have been leading the charge. What these companies have in common is not only a commitment to remote work, but also a commitment to processes that best enable collaboration across distance and time zones.

Automattic, founded by the prolific Matt Mullenweg, has been a trailblazer in the remote revolution. Doist is another highly successful scion of the remote first companies and was founded by the equally impressive Amir Salihefendić.​

The remote first Java world also boasts several highly successful ventures. Toptal, X-Team, and Clevertech all welcome talent worldwide and embrace the core tenets of our new remote work reality. Though not limited to the Java space, they do boast a significant presence in this tech stack.

This is only a small sample of the remote first companies leading the charge. The ranks of the remote optimized companies will only grow in our rapidly shrinking and connected world.

Summary

Ultimately there are two kinds of companies. Those that know they are already remote and those that don’t.

Those that don’t are mostly yielding to inertia and understandable caution towards big changes. Unfortunately for them, ignoring reality often has dire consequences. Just ask Blockbuster.

Companies that know they are remote embrace it prominently. They recognize it’s a competitive advantage for talent acquisition and retention.

Better people with better processes without obsolete geographic restrictions.

Further Reading

Working Remotely from the South Pacific

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Working Remotely from the South Pacific

There’s remote work and then there’s REMOTE work. The former is working from home in a major metropolitan area in the United States. REMOTE work on the other hand is working from a tiny island thousands of miles away from the US mainland. Over the years I’ve had a few stints working remotely from the South Pacific and it’s amazing how well it worked!

South Pacific

The Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific is a second home for me. The small archipelago lies 1800 km north of New Zealand and 8600 km from Los Angeles. The population is about 100,000. To put it succinctly, it’s REMOTE.

I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tonga and met my wonderful wife there as well. Though we’ve been living in the States for the past decade, we’ve made several months-long trips back to Tonga. These happy occasions gave me the opportunity to really stress test working remotely from the South Pacific.

Internet

Internet connectivity is the one non-negotiable for just about every remote developer. In a place like Tonga, this can be a challenge.

Although Tonga has recently been connected to the Southern Cross Cable providing fibre optic connectivity to the main islands of the country. It’s quite amazing that a place as remote as Tonga is now fully on board the high speed internet.

It wasn’t long ago however that Tonga relied solely on geostationary satellite communication to connect to the outside world. This mode of communication meant a latency of around 600ms in the best of circumstances.

Surprisingly, while this may matter greatly if you’re trying to play Call of Duty, it actually didn’t matter that much for real world development.

On each trip back to Tonga I had WiMax internet set up at our home. A quick install by the ISP provider of a wireless antenna mounted on a pole had me up and running in an hour.

Home Office

I use the phrase home office a little loosely here as will soon become apparent. Some people’s office is a coffee shop where all that’s needed is a laptop and an internet connection.

My office was a small 8’ x 10’ corrugated tin shack. Inside I sat on an REI camp chair with my laptop and I might as well have been working at the local US Starbucks. Though incidentally Tonga does not have a Starbucks or even a McDonald’s for that matter. Being REMOTE has its virtues!

For extra comfort I’d keep a cheap fan blowing in the shack as Tonga is quite hot and humid most of the year. Mosquito coils were also a necessity to keep the blood thirsty mozzies at bay especially in the early morning hours.

Work

It’s natural to assume that working remotely from the South Pacific would be difficult. It’s also easy to assume that being several time zones away and having a long-distance internet connection could be problems. Ultimately, I found these assumptions easily refutable when faced with the reality of my own experience.

I attended numerous conference calls while in my little tin shack home office in Tonga. I signed up for a US Skype phone number and forwarded my US office phone to this number while I was abroad. This made it easy to communicate by phone or IM, which were the primary means of communicating at this former small employer.

It did take a little longer to connect over the network to resources back in the US. For instance, my local development environment app server would usually take about 2 minutes to start up.

Over a satellite internet connection it took about 4 minutes to start up. Fortunately, tools at the time like JRebel and File Sync allowed for hot swapping of changes to eliminate the need for frequent app server restarts. This was in the pre-cloud days where on-prem data centers were the norm.

One of the more interesting things I did was connect via NoMachine, which is a Remote Desktop app, to my office computer back in the United States. It worked though!

You’d think over a satellite internet connection that it’d be completely untenable, but while certainly a little slow it was doable. It’s not something I’d recommend for more than the occasional operation yet it’s still amazing that it was even functional.

On one occasion I had to reload hundreds of thousands of rows in Salesforce from an ETL job. In spite of the distance though, I was able to successfully run the ETL job from a tin shack in Tonga.

Of course these days with Tonga having a fibre optic cable backbone, these kinds of things would no longer even be surprising. The distance just doesn’t matter that much any more.

Summary

This is ultimately a case study of working remotely from the South Pacific as a java developer. It proves that whether you are in a coffee shop in the US or a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific, your location just doesn’t matter that much any more.

As long as you have a laptop and an internet connection, you can do your work and do it well. You might even work better from a tiny island as you no longer have to deal with the stresses of the modern US urban existence. A clear mind is a tremendous competitive advantage.

Further Reading