Why Working Remote can 10x Productivity
Working remote as a developer can easily 10x your productivity. It might even be the only thing you’ll accept once you’ve had a good, long taste of it.
Having the freedom to optimize for your own personal work style can be a transformative experience. It’s not uncommon to find tasks that once took you days in-office can be knocked out in hours while working remotely.
My experience working remotely falls very much along these lines.
Morning Commute
My morning commute on a remote day is roughly 5 seconds. Although I do have to navigate through a minefield of Legos strategically left by my boys in the family room. You learn to wear shoes in our house or pay the price!
Early Morning
I’m an early riser. I like to do my most taxing work early in the morning when I feel most alert and refreshed. There’s something about early mornings that promote clarity of mind in my experience.
Spending 30+ minutes commuting in the early morning in addition to 20 more minutes getting ready to commute is a massive detriment. It’s easily an hour of highest productivity time every in-office day that goes to waste to satisfy an unnecessary physical presence requirement.
And that’s before considering the added stress of commuting which further conspires to degrade mental focus in the subsequent hours.
Common Occurrence
It’s a common occurrence to get more done before 8am on a Remote Day than in an entire In-Office day. By taking advantage of my predilection for early morning work, it’s much easier to knock out Deep Work tasks which are the backbone of any Java Developer’s value proposition.
Much of the in-office corporate day revolves around meetings. Even as a Developer for a corporation your weekly schedule is likely pockmarked with meetings you can’t decline without raising eyebrows. Given this context, it’s easy to understand how working remotely we can get more done in a couple uninterrupted morning hours than entire in-office days.
Better Equipment
Since I’ve started working predominantly remotely I’ve invested in some much better hardware than I’d be provided with in any in-office setting. If you’re interested in what I’m currently using, feel free to check out this post: Tools of the Trade – Hardware.
It’s bizarre that some companies will pay Java Developers here in the US over six figures and then provide them with substandard hardware. For example, one decent sized corporation I knew of gave its in-office Java Developers two old 19” ViewSonic monitors. The manager by contrast was given two 27” Apple monitors.
Personally, I have no problem spending a bit of money on my own hardware. It’s a small price to pay for the massive benefits of Remote work on my productivity and quality of life.
I think most forward-thinking Remote-friendly employers these days will provide a budget for their developers to buy their own hardware. This is the best of both worlds and a trend that I hope continues. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that happier, well-provisioned developers will do better and more impactful work.
Via Negativa
Optimizing for our own personal work style is largely about removing impediments. Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragile refers to this broader concept as Via Negativa. To me this means removing impediments to the critical subset of things that matter most.
Take commuting for example. This adds virtually no value to my output as a Java Developer and therefore it should be eliminated.
Likewise, environmental factors such as working in a loud cube farm sitting underneath a vent blowing cold air on you all day will degrade performance. Things like these are prime candidates for culling in observing the Via Negativa principle.
Removing impediments to our productivity leaves us more time and attention to focus on things that provide the greatest value to the business. Most notably, solving business and technical problems.
Encourages Output Mentality
One of the most beneficial features of Remote Work for a Developer is keeping deliverables at the front of mind.
It’s too easy and common while in-office to fall victim to the butts-in-the-seats definition of work. The simple act of physically being at work signals to others that you are fulfilling your obligations.
If you’ve worked in the in-office corporate world I’ll bet you’ve seen more than a few people whose simple act of showing up every day and little more was enough to keep their jobs for years.
This is a safety net we don’t have as Remote Developers. In truth, it’s not a safety net at all.
It’s a pernicious trap to fall in where your skills and abilities erode with no immediate penalty. That is until the day your job ends and you’re forced to find a new job with your atrophied skill and obsolete tech.
Being a Remote Developer means we have to deliver. It means we have to prioritize well.
It might be more fun to rewrite a clumsy, yet bulletproof method from 2010 than to flesh out edge cases in a new feature request. As a Remote Dev though, there is no choice. We do the most important things first.
Evening Commute
Also 5 seconds. Although the Legos have usually been rearranged by this point so there is a whole new minefield to navigate.
Summary
Working remote is an easy way to 10x productivity for me as a Java Developer. It allows me to Via Negativa eliminate numerous factors that degrade my output.
These include commuting, environmental liabilities, and poor equipment. When remote, we can better optimize for our own productivity which for me is overwhelmingly in the early morning hours.
Remote work also encourages us to adopt an output mentality. It’s imperative that we prioritize well as there’s no physical presence “safety net” to fall back on.
This is advantageous to both our employer and to ourselves as we continually improve by delivering value.