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Can Software Engineers Work from Home?
By - Kaustubh Katdare • 1 year ago • 12.7k views
Yes, software engineers can work from home. I've been working from home for the past 15 years.
There is a wider acceptance of remote working among software engineers and the employers after the COVID pandemic. Engineers were forced to work from home; and companies observed that the productivity was not affected.
In fact, because of the zero commute time from home to office, engineers were able to spend more time on the job with more focus.
I recently wrote about work from home for data engineers. Most of the engineering work that involves working on a computer connected to Internet can be done remotely.
There are several tools available that can let you access your office desktops remotely. For example. - Remote Desktop, Team Viewer, RemotePC are the tools that can let you access your main workstation from anywhere in the world.
In order to interact with colleagues, you can use Zoom, Google Meet or WebEx. Video conferencing mostly lets you see and talk to colleagues in real time.
For day to day communication, email is being replaced by Slack and Microsoft Teams.
In summary, there are plenty of tools and software available to let software engineers work from anywhere.
Replies
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Rohit Joshi
Its true. I began working from home during the COVID pandemic. My employer allowed all the staff to work from home indefinitely; and there never was a problem. I do miss hanging out with friends. But WFH allows me to spend more time with family and take breaks in between without being observed or judged.
My only complain with WFH culture is that the meetings are now scheduled late nights or early mornings.
I realised that I've saved a lot of time that I'd spend with my colleagues over coffee breaks and extended lunch breaks. Pre-COVID times, my commute time was a minimum of 2 hours. Now it's zero.
There are advantages and disadvantages of working remotely. But I'll take WFH any day over working from office.
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Kaustubh Katdare
I'm noticing a trend among the VC funded companies to hire engineers from across the geographies. The tools for remote collaboration now make it possible to work with teams asynchronously.
Another perk for working from home is that you can command good salaries. I know software engineers who work for US and European companies from India. Their salary is 5x more than other engineers who work for similar jobs for Indian companies.
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Bruce Wathan
With access to a steady and stable Internet connection, software developers can work from home. An ex-colleague of mine moved to Bali to become a digital nomad. Today he runs his 6-figure agency while traveling all over the world.
Another colleague of mine has been working remotely for the last three years. She's a software quality assurance engineer; and WFH has not affected her job. All my project members meet once a month in the office to review our work, exchange ideas and plan for the next month. It's working pretty good for us.
A friend of mine is an electronics engineer. He's into high-end audio equipment manufacturing. He does about 70% of his work on his computers from his apartment; but has to visit office once or twice a week. Though he'd prefer 100% remote work; the nature of his work requires he visits his laboratory once a week.
I think software engineers are blessed that 99% of them can work from home or anywhere in the world.
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Kaustubh Katdare
My medical doctor friends envy us engineer friends a lot. They were on the field even during the COVID times while we were operating our systems right from the comfort of our home.
I think one of the proponents of WFH for software engineers is that the Internet bandwidth is cheap and Internet penetration has improved all over the world.
You can read the stories of people working from hilly areas or beach-site shacks without any performance issues. What a time to be alive!
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