My Experiences as a Remote Junior Developer

My experiences as a remote Junior Dev Ayabonga Qwabi Ayabonga Qwabi Senior Product Engineer at Simply | Senior Full-Stack Developer | Clojure, React & Node.js Expert

April 20, 2018 Over the past year, I've worked as a remote developer for a Cape Town based company from the comfort of my home in Queenstown and these are some of the challenges that I faced and my solutions towards them.

1. Over Communication is key Working remotely means you aren't in the immediate vicinity of your team which means there's little room for work banter and getting to know each other really well. Sadly for you, the only fun times you'll have with your team are on Slack or during stand up (video-call) meetings. This tends to be an issue when tasks are given and communication isn't clear on what needs to be done, this is where you need to re-iterate to your teammates that you don't have a clear scope of what needs to be delivered or perhaps you don't understand the problem or how it needs to be solved.

You also need to keep an eye on other (non-dev) team members as well, keep up with their conversations and the ideas they share, be it on Slack or any other communication platform because those conversations tend to become tickets and tickets you must deliver.

1. Keeping Notes saves lives To counter confusion and misunderstandings of what was communicated, I have found that taking notes helps clear everything up as you have something to go back to when things are not clear. This is because remote work deprives you of the opportunity to ask your teammates to re-iterate what was said in the manner that suits you best e.g clearing things up on a whiteboard or making figures etc.

2. Be EXTRA a little Creativity is always welcome. I've found out that, it is good for the team to have many optional routes to take towards solving a specific problem, sharing your ideas and creativity helps drive the team in the right direction in delivering the best and most efficient solution towards a specific problem.

3. Initiative is Saxy 😁 In my experience, senior members of the team like to see juniors taking efforts and squashing tickets that perhaps need a more experienced approach. This is because these efforts encourage growth and that growth contributes towards the success of the team.

4. Be attentive and avoid making assumptions At some point, a member of my team felt I wasn't being attentive enough, and that he felt the need to re-explain a problem more than once that I needed to solve. Constant video calling is one of the challenges, as in many occasions things tend to flow from one ear to another, with the impression that you've understood the issue whilst not. taking notes comes in handy in such situations as it enables you to break down the problem into smaller pieces or tasks and provides guidance on how to solve each.

5. Missing team gatherings is a nope Missing team gatherings is bad for morale, always avail yourself for such occasions with the members of your team, they'll appreciate it, you will too, this helps develop a culture within the team.

6. Take responsibility As a Junior dev, you tend to want things to be clear for you (like they did at school 😛) and when they aren't, you tend to lag a lot. You need to be able to take responsibility for your own tickets and consult the relevant people to help clear any misunderstandings. You need to be able to query the company's code base on your own to see if there aren't any reusable tools to help you smash your ticket.

Once a ticket is handed to you, you are responsible for delivering that ticket and that means any relevant information with regards to that ticket has to be handled by you.

Working remotely as a junior takes effort and discipline and as such these are just part of the challenges I've had to overcome. As such I am happy to have had such an experience at an early stage in my career and I hope this will clear things up for next person to take such a role.

AB Qwabi