A Life Lived Remotely by Siobhan McKeown

Author:Siobhan McKeown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A Life Lived Remotely: Being and Work in the Digital Age
ISBN: 9781910924792
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

NAVIGATING THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

CHAPTER SIX

PANOPTIC PEOPLE

Just when I was considering whether I should expand my writing business, a job offer came my way. I had been working online for about three years. During that time I had got to know many companies that operate fully remotely. It’s not just freelancers who are able to take advantage of working online, it creates a different work landscape for employees too. I didn’t need to fly solo: I could enjoy many of the freedoms of working online without the pain. I recall the decision-making process when I went to my first remote job. I decided that growing my own business wasn’t for me. I wasn’t interested in dedicating all of my time to establishing and growing a company – my priorities were elsewhere. My options were to continue freelancing or join a company. Joining a company would mean a stable, reliable income every month, no more admin work, no more invoicing, no more looking for clients, less task-switching, more focus, and a company to pay my expenses. The trade-off for this security would be that I had less freedom and I would, once again, have a boss. What swung it was that I no longer wanted all of my time to be monetised. I wanted my work time to be my work time and my non-work time to be free. With a stable income every month I would no longer be thinking about the money I could be making with my downtime. This, I hoped, would give me more time to devote to my relationship and the other things that matter in my life.

I went from the scattered and often manic world of remote freelancing, to being a member of a remote team. Unlike independent freelancers, remote teams are highly interdependent on one another, often working together on the same project and relying on one another for information and work product. There are many different ways in which companies operate remotely: some maintain a large head office while allowing employees to telecommute, others have offices scattered across the world, and then there are companies that are fully remote, having no office, or only a small one, with its workforce fully distributed. Since giving up on my freelance writing business I have worked for two fully remote companies, first as a contractor, then as an employee.

All of the remote companies I have worked for have given me a high level of freedom, allowing me to take on and manage my own workload, work when I want, where I want, and be task-driven rather than working to a clock. There may be an element of luck at play, but it’s also true that this level of freedom is necessary for a remote company to operate properly. It is impossible to monitor and track remote workers using traditional methods, so many companies focus on hiring people with the right drive and skills to work independently. For this to work, a successful remote worker must demonstrate many of the qualities associated with entrepreneurialism.

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