Should you choose a remote job? Would you be good working from home? How can you know? Let’s find out with Luis at Virtual Coffee Chat!
It would help if you considered becoming remote, depending on what your priorities are. Remote work requires discipline and commitment. And the truth is, if you wouldn’t enjoy the job you’ll be doing physically, why would you become remote at it?
However, you may go through situations that make you prefer to work remotely. Maybe your dream job is far away from your home, or maybe you have some disability, and you’re more productive at home.
Have you ever had any of these doubts? Watch the video to know more!
Luis:
Remote work is for you, if, dun, dun, dun, dah… Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to virtual coffee chat with [Luis 00:00:12]. I am your host, and I’m having a sip of my espresso. I hope you have yours as well.
And today, due to some malfunction in my video equipment, you are seeing another shot of my living room. You can see the cat tree just here on this side. This is usually where I work. It’s not an optimal remote work situation. Ideally I’d have my own office, but it’s what you can get. At least I have the couch giving me some separation between my work life and my leisure pursuits. So that’s that.
Today’s topic is we’re going to talk about if remote work is for you, meaning the situations where you might want to consider remote.
Obviously, last week the whole week was about how to find a remote job, specifically how to apply to interviews, how to conduct yourself in interviews, how to prepare for job interviews that are remote, and if you’d miss that, then please go back and watch them. And also press Like, and subscribe to make sure that you won’t miss anything [inaudible 00:01:24].
But should you consider a remote job? Well, it depends on what your priorities are. One of the things that I said last week is that you should not get a remote job if you wouldn’t enjoy doing the thing that you’re going to be doing remotely, physically, non remotely. Remote work requires a high degree of commitment and discipline, so it gets very, very, very hard to be successful at remote work if you’re not doing something you enjoy.
That said, that doesn’t need to be the only reason for finding a remote job. You might have situations that push you into getting a remote job, or maybe pushing is too much of a strong word, but make you want, make you prefer to work remotely.
Let’s say for example that the dream job that you were always looking for is very specific to a limited amount of places on earth. Let’s say you want to be a software engineer in a Fortune 100 company. Most of those will be in Silicon Valley, and you don’t particularly like the valley. You don’t want to choose between working in the valley and living in your little own town with your friends and loved ones. Well, in that case, remote work is definitely for you.
Let’s say that you have some kind of a disability. Maybe you have a disease that makes it very hard for you to move to an office, to work daily on an office, et cetera. I’ve had people in my family with immune disorders that made them randomly lethargic. And that wasn’t really great for their office productivity. And when they work at home, they can make the best of their productivity peaks and really bring their best selves to work and then take rests when they needed to. So that’s another reason, work-life balance and health concerns.
Also, this might be a bit controversial, but a lot of people in big companies do this, and I think that their bosses know. A lot of people want a nice stable job while they’ll build their own business. Now, it might feel that there’s a bit of conflict of interest there, and certainly I can see that perspective. I’ve had a lot of entrepreneurs telling me, “Louis, I really want people who are super commitment committed to my company, to my business. I don’t want people to be using my business as something to get the paycheck while they work on their own side hustle, that they want to create their business.
And I’m like, I get that. But to the people specifically that tell me about that, I say, “Well, weren’t you one of those people once?” Seriously, how many entrepreneurs, how many leaders of a big company, of big businesses, actually finished their degrees, or maybe even not finish their degrees, but decided that they had to build a company, and was that, they built their Fortune 100 company, completely without any kind of launching ramp? No, some were like that, but in most cases they got a job, and they were working. And hopefully they were doing a good work and learning the ropes of running a business and et cetera, and doing good at their job.
Personally, I’ve had a lot of people work with me and then leave to start their own. And I give them my blessing. That’s just the way some things are. Some people want, some people need the cushion, the financial cushion of having a stable job in order to start their company. And that doesn’t mean that they’re not committed. There’s definitely a large, a big thing to be said about being committed and having loyalty to the company who pays your bills.
I think that’d be essential, is again, that they love what they’re doing, even if they only intend to do it until they can launch their own thing. If they enjoy what they’re doing, if they love what they’re doing, if they’re committed, then I don’t see the problem. You’ll get the best out of them while they’re there.
So, definitely it could be a launching ground for your own thing, having a remote job. just make sure that you’re committed.
If you want to know my story, if you want to know why I choose remote work, tune in tomorrow and for a virtual coffee chat with Luis. Just press Like, subscribe, press the little bell icon on YouTube, and you’ll be notified when the next video comes up. That was me, Luis, with Virtual Coffee Chat for Think Remote. See you tomorrow.
