Remote work: A sweet spot between working for a company and for self

I have been working professionally on and off between corporate and start-ups. Then I got an opportunity to work remotely for 2 years. In my opinion, I found remote work to be the sweet spot between working for a company and working for self.

Let me explain.

I’m 27 years old, a curious soul and seeking meaning in my own process of work-life balance.

At my first company, I got to learn how to speak with clients, the art of writing emails addressing to juniors till chief executives. The moment I was kept on a bench I realized it wasn’t me.

Without giving it much of a thought I moved into a very small company of hardly 5–10 people, where I got in touch with a start-up which eventually offered me a role full-time. Where I impressed the hell out of the founders with my work and then somehow my resume floated in the tech market and got a generous offer to work with smarter people with higher potential to mentor me.

Avoiding the maintenance work I moved back into corporate where my speed of progress slowed down. However, I came to realize I began writing scalable and efficient code.

Looking at which my bosses who started their own company eventually hired me to work remotely in their start-up where I became interdisciplinary with programming skills. I saw myself moving back and forth the backend (platform), frontend (website), cross-platform mobile applications, and QA automation. Also, got to mentor/lead a successful global team of 4 forward with empathy, kindness, challenging and a humble outlook.

Now, I will be moving back into corporate, working remotely to solve problems in the field of big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Looking at the pattern of my career I realized that currently, remote work is where I found my sweet spot. These days it is easier to find remote jobs where the company trusts its employees with their work instead of micro-managing their employees.

Just like working for yourself:

Remote work becomes a similar “workstyle” where you are self-motivated, aware of the dos and don’ts. Responsible for your actions and just know, how to get things done. Basically, taking ownership of your work.

Realize the importance of communication and how it is the blood for working remotely. I do not agree with people who are suggesting one has to be around their employees physically to grow into a leadership role. While working remotely, how Jeff Bezos said: “why it’s always Day 1 at Amazon” makes a lot of sense.

These days most of my friends work remotely so I hardly feel left alone. Rather, I get to talk with others about various problems they are trying to solve lately.

I believe in minimalism so I hardly ever wanted to wear cool new fashionable clothes for society or coworkers.

Despite working remotely I hardly find time for myself which is something I am constantly working on. I enjoy my work so much that weekend goes by slowly.