DaedTech

Mitigating Risk When Depending on Remote Work

A while back, I wrote a post about remote programming jobs and why you ought to go looking for them.  I’m probably the poster-person for remote work these days, given that my work is 100% remote, and that my wife and I take full advantage of that to vagabond.  Oh, and I love it and have never looked back.

When I wrote that post, someone weighed in with a question in the comments.  So let’s make today’s reader question Tuesday post about remote work.  Here’s a slightly abbreviated version (you can read the full question in the comments).

The Reader Question about the Risk of Remote Work

My wife and I have just recently talked about a medium-to-long term plan of moving out of our home in a metropolitan area in California to somewhere more rural in another state.

Certainly there are the considerations of leaving family and friends but on top of that is the concerns I have over how it will affect my career.

I’ve done pretty well for myself thus far, both in terms of salary and in terms of the kind of work I’ve been able to do all at companies where technology is a strategic asset to the business.

My worry is that there won’t be enough good remote opportunities, or that I won’t have the connections to score those jobs (all the jobs I’ve had except for my first were achieved in large part because I had former colleagues already at the new company who asked me to join them).

I’d be interested to hear what social media channels you recommend. I’d also be interested to hear what people have to say about working remotely from a rural locale.

Answering the Explicit Questions: Remote Work from a Rural Location and Social Media

I’d be doing a pretty bad job of answering reader questions if I didn’t actually answer the questions.  So let’s do that first.  Though I will elaborate on the subject of risk after I do that, since that’s really the core issue here.

First of all, remote work from somewhere rural, for me, mostly isn’t any different.  I have an office at our house in Michigan, and we have good internet.  When I’m there, it’s the same as working anywhere else, suburban, urban, or whatever.  The main difference is that I don’t have much access to throwback stuff, like printing things out, signing, faxing, and whatnot.  I’ve mostly optimized my life not to do things like that, but on the occasion that I have to, it can be a headache to drive a ways for these sorts of chores.

And, as for social media channels, I actually don’t recommend that as a solution.  So I can’t really speak to which ones help remote workers.  Social media can be fun and provide interesting interactions.  But unless it’s with people you know through some other channels, it creates relatively superficial relationships.  These aren’t the sorts of things that help you close six figure deals.  (And that’s exactly what programming jobs are.)

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The Coding Dev Manager Can Work, But It’s Hard In Traditional Orgs

Today, for reader question Tuesday, let’s consider the idea of the coding dev manager.  In my experience, most companies draw a fairly sharp line between individual contributors (they code) and managers (they don’t).  But in startups and Enterprise Silicon Valley companies, you’ll have additional rungs of the corporate pyramid where people still write code.

Who is right?  Well, in my estimation, startups and Enterprise Silicon Valley.  Er, at least, they’re less wrong.  (Let’s talk “right” when we stop modeling our corporate structure after ancient militaries.)

But, as the asker of today’s reader question points out, this still-technical manager struggles to spend much time writing code.  (When he refers to “the book” he’s referring to my book, Developer Hegemony.)

The Reader Question about the Coding Dev Manager

Hi Erik,

I really enjoyed the book. One question I have regarding the efficiencier/partnership model for developers.

In my last job at [redacted], I was leading a large team working with [redacted]. We followed a similar model where we worked with customers on business problems, and then designed the technical solution ourselves (obviously updating them along the way), and then delivered it. As the team lead of the initial project (and eventually the overall engagement lead of 3 projects), I found myself spending less and less time programming. Towards the end it was < 10%.

In your book, you mention that it is possible to still be programming yet work on these other areas, but in my experience the “other” areas end up taking so much time I ended up not really coding. Sure if we have a team full of “T-shaped” people everyone can share various burdens, but from the client’s perspective they typically want 1 counterpart who they can go to to make the final calls. Is this an inevitable fate, similar to section 3 of your book that as the person’s value increases they go further and further away from coding?

Also, a Tweet on the Subject

For a bit of additional background on the subject, check out this tweet from last week.  More interesting than my tweet is the responses, in the context of this discussion.  (None of which I replied to — apologies, folks, I’m terrible at Twitter.)

There are a lot of technically talented people that start successful businesses and remain deeply involved in the development of that tech. The idea that you can’t run the show and be at the top of your code writing game is both counterproductive and nonsensical.

— Erik Dietrich (@daedtech) March 13, 2018

The doubts in the responses to my tweet are important.  People see the following failure patterns for the coding dev manager.

• You don’t actually wind up coding (as expressed in the reader question).
• You kinda do both things, manage and code, and both kinda suffer (Doug).
• You don’t actually wind up leading (Grant).

And then there are a couple of points that maybe staying “at the top of” one’s tech game isn’t that hard or even necessary.  (I’m inclined to agree with both ideas.)

So overall, what we’ve got is the million dollar question — how can you be both a programmer and a leader?

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