10 Secrets to Becoming a Great Remote Developer

Very good tips for remote-developers like me:

http://x-team.com/2014/05/10-secrets-to-becoming-a-great-remote-developer/

Excerpts from above article:

Contribute trust every day
It all begins with trust. If you only read one thing here, I hope it’s this.

The very definition of a team is a group of individuals who are bound by trust.
Physical teams suffer from physical barriers (such as a floor for each department) which consequently create tribes and ultimately compartmentalize trust.
physical teams are still able to operate even with weakened trust.
Remote teams, however, live and die by their trust. 

Secret 1: Communicate more than you did with your first girlfriend 

And it’s not just about saying “Hello” every day. It’s about:

When you step away from your desk, you let your team know.
When you realize you’re not going to hit a deadline, you let your team know.
When you have some free time, you let your team know you’re there to help.
When you learn about some awesome new framework, you let your team know.
When you see your team falling behind or bad code getting committed, you let your team know.

You will never collaborate with developers more than on a remote dev team. You are forced to collaborate (it’s collaborate or die, really)

Secret 2: Find time for Focus
It’s really important that you cut out 3-hour blocks of time each day to do nothing but focus on the must-finish tasks of the day. It’s easier said than done, but you’ll love the feeling once you get into a rhythm of doing it consistently.

Secret 3: Find your hedgehog 

And so the idea is to do one thing, do it really well, and you will succeed in life, in your career, and in avoiding getting eaten by a fox.
So find your hedgehog in the development world. If it’s Drupal theming, do that. If it’s node.js, do that. If it’s infrastructure, do that. It doesn’t matter what it is, the point is to focus.

Why? Because companies today only need remote developers when they realize they can’t find specialized developers in their geographic location for niche development technologies.
If, on the other hand, you try to be a jack of all trades, someone who knows front-end, back-end, infrastructure, JS, PHP, .NET, everything…you’re less valuable. It’s much easier to find a jack of all trades within your geographic location. Companies that go remote have specific challenges that require a specific skillset that only hedgehogs have.
The best remote teams are filled with hedgehogs.

Secret 7: Have the right attitude

At X-Team, we have a culture of #sleepcanwait, which means our team doesn’t sleep until they’ve said: “Hey team, how can I help?”
It also makes you feel really good to say that line every day. It feels incredibly good helping out your team every day
Remote teams hire almost entirely based on attitude, because contributing trust every day all starts with having the right selfless attitude.

Secret 9: Your word is everything

When you say you’re going to get something done, you need to follow through with that, and if you can’t, then you need to let the whole team know so they can adjust their own timelines.
Remember: The second you aren’t contributing trust to the team, you won’t be on the team very long. 

Secret 10: Be proactive

If you want to know the #1 secret to contributing trust every day, here it is.
The definition of being proactive is quite simple: it means you make things happen before they become problems.
Proactive means bringing in new ideas around workflow to the team. Proactive means always keeping progress moving forward. Proactive means that you are truly ready to be on a remote team because you don’t need someone to babysit you.
Instead, you are proactive; you get up, you get to work, you know what needs to be done, you check in with your teammates often, and you keep things moving.
If you let laziness seep into your work ethic because you have so much flexibility, you will fail.