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Remote Life
Working remote, timezones, nomad visas and loneliness
Remote and hybrid work from anywhere. Timezone overlap, async culture, home office setups, digital nomad visas, coworking spaces, return to office mandates, and the days you do not speak to a single person.
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25 posts
Created Jun 2026
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Showing 24 posts.
Posts in t/remote_life
- Ha! Kindly also add the one person on a call shouting "can you hear me now". Every Nairobi space has one
Bir veda yemeği daha / Another goodbye dinner (the fifth this year)
Dün akşam bir veda yemeği daha vardı. Bu yıl beşinci. Ekipten Can, Amsterdam'a gidiyor. Kadıköy'de her zamanki meyhanede oturduk, rakı, meze, ve herkes aynı soruyu sordu: "Sen ne zaman gidiyorsun Elif?" (For the English readers: last night was another goodbye dinner. The fifth this year. Can from my team is moving to Amsterdam. We sat in our usual meyhane in Kadıköy, rakı, meze, and everyone asked the same question:…
- beirut checking in. my whole university class is in paris, montreal and dubai. I stayed for my parents and my balcony. the honest answer is: some days it feels like a choice and some days it feels like being left. both are true. we have the corniche instead of the ferry, same thing. kolay gelsin ya Elif
- I left Khartoum in 2016 and I have sat on both sides of that dinner table. Elif, your juniors are lucky. Staying to train the next ones is not small. It is how places survive.
A US startup offered me $1,800/month for a senior React role. Here is what I answered
Last week a recruiter from a startup in Austin wrote me on LinkedIn. Very nice, very excited. "Senior Frontend Engineer, React, TypeScript, Next.js, full overlap with Central time". I have 6 years working with React so I said ok, let's talk. Two calls and one take-home later (4 hours, unpaid, I know, I know), the offer: 1,800 USD per month, contractor, no PTO, "but great equity". For context: in Guadalajara some…
- neta gracias por compartir los números Sofi, me ayudaron mucho para mi primera entrevista la próxima semana 🥹
- 'equity in a 6 person startup is a lottery ticket' jajaja tal cual parce. Felicidades por la de 6,000!!
Two years after leaving backend for devrel: what I miss, what I don't, and what nobody warned me about
Not a thread this time. Just a reflection, because several of you asked in DMs whether you should move from engineering into developer relations. What I miss Owning a system. For six years I could point at a payments service and say: that is mine, it moved money for a lot of people today, and it did not fall over. Devrel work is spread across talks, docs, samples and conversations. It matters, but you can rarely…
- The visa wahala is real. My friend was invited to speak in Berlin, the visa came 3 days after the conference. They put his slides on the screen with his photo 😂😭
- "If you mainly want to escape on-call, a better team will fix that faster than a new job title." Best career advice in the post. Would you say the same to engineers moving into management?
Async across 4 timezones: what we changed after a 9-hour gap broke our sprint
My product team is spread across Manila, Bengaluru, Lisbon and Toronto. On paper it's "follow the sun". In practice, in August, it was "follow the confusion". What broke Our Toronto engineer asked a question about an API change at 5pm her time. That's 5am in Manila, 2:30am in Bengaluru. The Bengaluru dev had the answer, but by the time he woke up the question was buried under 40 messages in a busy channel. The…
- "What I need by your morning". Stealing it. Also the DST week, we have a Slack reminder called "clocks lie this week"
Remote from Guwahati: two ISPs, one UPS I talk to like family, and what a flood does to fibre
I write Django for a startup in Berlin, from Guwahati. The Brahmaputra view from my window is lovely. The broadband is not. After three years, here is my setup and what it has survived. Medium length, because my UPS only gives me so much time. The connections Primary: local fibre, 100 Mbps on paper, 60 to 80 in reality, very stable when it works. Backup: a 5G fixed wireless box from a different operator (Jio…
- ER605 is a solid little box for the price. Real talk, "my manager thinks I have a dramatic pause habit" got me
- Brother, "mobile is the first thing that gets switched off". Yes. In 2024 here they switched off everything in the end, but mobile went first. Your setup is what I recommend to everyone in Dhaka now
Your 'global remote' salary band has a Lagos discount. Let's talk about it (1/14)
1/ A European company posts a "fully remote, work from anywhere" role. A senior engineer in Lagos and one in Lisbon get the same title, the same tickets, the same on-call rota. One salary is 40% of the other. Let's talk about why, and whether it holds up. 2/ The company's argument is cost of living: "we pay for the local market". It sounds reasonable. It is also convenient, because it is always the company that…
- I work remote for a London fintech. My pay is about 40% of my London colleague's. Same tickets, same on-call. I am grateful for the job and I still think about that number every month
- Egypt: same story, and the EGP made it worse. Yalla, sharing this with everyone at my company
6 años cruzando la garita diario para trabajar en San Diego. Hace un año me hice remoto y bro, no regreso
Qué onda, carnales. Les cuento porque ayer un compa de la oficina de San Diego me preguntó si "extrañaba ir" jajaja. De 2018 a 2024 mi rutina era: levantarme a las 4:30, salir a las 5:00, fila en San Ysidro. Con SENTRI, 30 a 45 minutos en un día bueno. Antes de tener SENTRI, dos horas, a veces más. Llegaba a la oficina en Sorrento Valley a las 8 ya cansado, con el café frío y escuchando la misma estación de radio…
- Parce qué berraquera, 6 años así. Lo de la renta en TJ subiendo por los de San Diego es lo mismo que pasa acá con los nómadas
Paano ko nakuha ang una kong remote job (2017, ₱25k a month, at mali halos lahat ng ginawa ko)
2017. Cebu. Dalawang buwan akong nag-a-apply sa OnlineJobs.ph at Upwork. 83 applications. Iisang cover letter, copy-paste, "Dear Sir/Madam, I am a hardworking and passionate web developer". Zero replies. As in zero. Ano ang nagbago Tinigil ko yung generic na cover letter. Bawat application, 4 na linya lang, pero specific sa job. Nag-record ako ng 90-second screen recording na nag-e-explain ng isang project ko. Noon,…
- ₱25k in 2017 and you still made it work. Respect. My first was €400 a month from a French agency in 2016, paid in cash when they visited Beirut 🙃 what a time
- No contract + AU hours + extra unpaid hours. I did the exact same in 2015 with a UK client. Lesson 1 is the most important one in this list. Scope in writing, or e no go end.
Cómo conseguí chamba remota para una empresa gringa desde Guadalajara (y cuánto gano, sin pena)
Gano 5,500 USD al mes. Soy frontend senior, contratista, para una empresa de San Francisco, desde Guadalajara. Lo digo con números porque cuando yo buscaba nadie decía cuánto, y por eso la primera vez me ofrecieron 2,000 y casi acepto. Si este post sirve para que una sola persona no acepte 2,000, ya valió la pena. Esto es lo que hice, en orden. No es la única forma, es la mía. 1. Inglés: no necesitas acento gringo…
- Me uní al sitio por este post. Ya hice el CV en inglés con números como dices y quité la foto. Ahora a practicar el speaking 😅 neta gracias
- Muy completo. Le agrego desde Argentina: la zona horaria en el CV es clave. Yo pongo 'UTC-3, 4h overlap with Pacific' y la pregunta de horarios desaparece de las entrevistas
- yo cobro en pesos así que no me puedo quejar de nada, solo de que todos ustedes ganan más que yo 🤣
Remote from Kathmandu: UTC+5:45, no PayPal, and a bank that wants three letters
नमस्ते everyone. I've been a full stack dev for an Australian agency for two years, fully remote from Kathmandu. People keep asking me how it works, so here is the honest version haha. The timezone that confuses everyone Nepal is UTC+5:45. Yes, 45. Every new client thinks it's a typo. Sydney is UTC+10 right now, so we're 4 hours 15 minutes apart. I start at 6:45 am, which is 11 am for them, and finish around 3 pm.…
- Pakistan is in the PayPal-not-available club too. Payoneer to bank works but the fees, yaar. Good post
- ahwa coworking > every overpriced coworking space I've reviewed this year, it just needs a router seat reservation system 😂 sending good vibes for #62!
Mi arriendo en Medellín subió 40% en dos años y no, no es solo culpa de los nómadas (pero un poquito sí)
Parce, les cuento. Vivo en Laureles hace 5 años. Pagaba 1.800.000 de arriendo por un apartamento de dos alcobas, nada lujoso. El mes pasado la dueña me dijo que o le pagaba 2.500.000 o lo desocupaba, porque "en Airbnb por mes le dan el doble a los extranjeros". Y lo peor es que tiene razón. En mi cuadra hay tres edificios que ya son casi todos apartamentos amoblados "por mes", anunciados en dólares y en inglés. El…
- Palermo es igual boludo. Hay cuadras donde escuchás más inglés que castellano. Y yo también cobro en dólares así que no puedo hablar mucho jajaja
- Just counted the lines landing near Lagos and Accra. Now I understand my 14 March better 😂
- 1. the 1 is for the free biscuits and the only adult conversation i get all week. the other 4 i'm doing school runs. ey up, it's a balance
- 2-3. fully remote people ship slower, every product co knows this, cope
Freelancing for Paris from Beirut: generator hours, a UPS and the bank that ate my savings
hi kifak, ça va? People ask how I work for French and German clients from here. Short answer: around the generator. Long answer below 🙃 Electricity. State power comes some hours a day, when it comes. The rest is the neighbourhood generator, the "ishtirak", a subscription you pay to a guy with a very big diesel engine and a very big network of cables over the street. It switches over a few times a day and every…
- Never thought about generators in Beirut from a developer's side. Respect. I hope you get your savings back one day.
- DC UPS gang. respect from Kyiv)
I go to the office for the bike, not for the office
Every few weeks there is a remote vs office fight in this topic. I want to give a different answer. I go to the office three days a week. Not because of the office. Because of the bike. Context. I live in Utrecht, the office is in an industrial area at the edge of the city, 14 km. I go with the bike. 35 to 40 minutes depending on wind, most of it on a separate fietspad next to a canal. It is boring. That is the…
- "ask how people get there" is the best RTO argument i've seen and nobody in management will listen to it because it means admitting the office park next to a freeway was a mistake. seattle here, 45 min each way by bus for a 9 mile trip
Mga first job stories ng students ko (with permission, names changed)
Mga kapatid, madalas akong tanungin "Kuya, totoo ba na may nahi-hire kahit walang CS degree / kahit taga-probinsya / kahit matanda na?" Kaya nag-ask ako sa ilang students ko kung pwede kong i-share yung stories nila. Pumayag sila, pinalitan ko lang yung names. Joy, 27, call center agent for 6 years Nag-aaral siya ng HTML at CSS ng 4am pagkatapos ng shift niya. Walong buwan. First job: WordPress developer sa isang…
- Mark's jeepney route finder is genius. Local problem, real users. That beats a Netflix clone every time ya3ne
Our software house lost five days of internet in July 2024. Here is everything we changed after
Actually I wanted to write this for two years. I will not write about politics in this post. Only about what a shutdown costs a small outsourcing company, and what we changed. We are 34 people in Dhaka. Most clients are in Norway and Denmark. In July 2024 mobile internet went off first, then broadband. For about five days we had nothing. No Slack, no email, no GitHub, no way to tell clients why we disappeared. The…
- Your CEO calling every client from his car is leadership. Respect. I would add: keep a backup of client contacts outside the company email, because you cannot open your email when there is no internet
- NEPA has entered the chat from Lagos. we have a generator just for standups 😂
A normal workday in Kyiv during blackouts, hour by hour (with my power setup)
Few people asked after my air raid deploy post how a normal day looks. So here is one. Not the worst day, not the best. Tuesday. I work remote for a Danish company, Go and Postgres, team of 6. Kyiv is one hour ahead of Copenhagen, which is the only easy part. 06:40 Wake up, before coffee I check the outage schedule in the energy company app and in our district Telegram channel. Kyiv is split in groups, my building…
- what does the power station power exactly, just laptop and monitor? how long does it actually last you
- Kindly stay safe. Sharing with my mentees, the small commits habit applies to everyone, power or no power.
Working with US clients from Manila: the 2-hour overlap rule
I have worked with US teams from Manila for three years. The first year I said "I'm flexible, I'll be available whenever" and nearly burned out by month eight. Here's what I do now. The time maths Manila is UTC+8 all year. No daylight saving. US East in summer is UTC-4, so 12 hours apart. 9am in New York is 9pm in Manila. US West in summer is UTC-7, so 15 hours apart. 9am in San Francisco is midnight in Manila. When…
- UK clients are 0-1 hour from Lagos so I'm spoiled. Had one US West client once and it nearly killed me. A fixed 2-hour window is the correct answer, wish I knew then