Rands wrote a piece about working remotely. As I am “working” remotely myself for my PhD, I am interested in what this man has to say. It strikes me that he is so negative (in the beginning of his article) about people “leaving The Pond”. He fears that these people loose the connection to the “Mothership” and will become redundant. However, he also mentions a particular example of somebody who did a great job in working remotely.
One of the things that this person does, is keeping in touch with everybody on the Mothership and “reading the Ripples”. This means that he was able to know what is going on, and giving the impression that he is on top of things. I try to do the same thing, but it is not always easy. When I am in Belgium, it’s a main point that I see all my direct collegues and that I know what they are doing. I try to never give them the sense that I am out of touch.
Of course, a PhD can not be compared to work in a real team where everybody works together. What we do does not require us to do a lot of meetings and our work does not really rely heavily upon each other. Right, we have some things in common, and we need to talk to each other, in order not to overlap or to do double work.
From my side, I am absolutely positive about this. Higher concentration, better focus, more efficient days — I tend to spend a lot of time “in the office” when I am in Belgium, but I feel more efficient here — and a very comfortable commute of 10 seconds.
