Over a year ago I’ve started working in Qusion as a full-remote iOS Developer and today I would like to tell you how it’s like working outside the office. But first, I am gonna say a few words about full-remote from my point of view. 

What is remote work? 

You might have heard a lot of definitions, but simply it means any work you do that doesn’t require commuting into an office. In other words, you can work from anywhere. Remote work, of course, isn’t suitable for every kind of job. Generally, it’s for workers who need just a laptop and the internet to do their job. These days, a lot of companies offer to work remotely for one or two days a week, full-remote however means to work fully from home, which means 40 hours a week in total.  

I’m pretty sure you can imagine there's a lot of pros and cons of full-remote. Yet I would like to share the first pro/con that comes into my mind. 

• Advantage 

When it comes to advantages, I think that almost everyone’s first thought is working from literally anywhere (where you have an internet connection, of course). Just imagine yourself waking up, grabbing your MacBook/laptop and starting your workday right from your bed. Comfortable, but it doesn’t sound very productive, right? Instead of staying at home, you might go to your favorite coffee place, enjoy a good morning coffee while completing the assigned tasks. I love traveling and this advantage to work from anywhere gives me the possibility to experience new adventures and visit new countries, while working. 

• Disadvantage 

The first disadvantage, well actually not a disadvantage but more like a minor issue, is that you're not in physical contact with your colleagues very often. In my case, I’m usually alone at home in Brno so I can focus on my work. However, there isn’t any socializing. For some people who prefer spending time alone, this can be the best way of doing their job but I personally like to spend time around people sometimes. 

Luckily, Qusion’s office is based in Prague, which is approximately 2 hours by train/car from my place. So when I miss my colleagues or I need to be there for an important meeting, I just get on the train. Obviously, sometimes you don’t have the possibility to visit your office. In this case, I would recommend visiting a co-working place instead, where you can meet a lot of people that are working in the same way you do and potentially make new friends or do some networking.

What you should know before starting working remotely

The most important thing is to find a place, where you can deeply focus on your work. If staying at home, try to have one room only for work, not your bedroom or living room. Although, it’s comfy to work from your sofa, it’s very easy to “somehow” turn on the TV and watch Netflix instead. Another recommendation, as already mentioned before, is the co-working space. 

Seeing people working hard will motivate you to get in the zone too and you won’t have too many possibilities to procrastinate. Actually, there is one other thing that might be even more important than a place for work: The will to work effectively while not procrastinating.

The last thing I’m going to mention is the internet connection. If you plan to travel and work, definitely check the connection beforehand. For example, during my travels across India, I didn’t make sure to always have a good connection. I ended up having huge issues while releasing a new version of the app I was working on and finally wasn’t able to do it. So I recommend you to check it before - you will save yourself some time looking for a café with a fast internet connection. 

                   

How we work in Qusion

In Qusion, we fully support a full-remote attitude to work while not having any working hours. That means you can work whenever you want as you are the only manager of your time. Our core is in the Czech Republic, but we also have colleagues working from different countries like Switzerland or Thailand. However, in Prague, we have a cool office in the city center next to Riegrovy sady with a big terrace and a fireplace. 

In the office, we have two proper office spaces and a few other places you can choose to work like a huge sofa, standing desk or, during summer, a table on the terrace. So when you feel that you need to change a working space, you can just go to another room. As I mentioned before, it takes me about 2 hours by car to get to our office, so usually I come there every two weeks and stay for a few days. During my stay I try to resolve possible issues in our projects, join the meetings, and have some fun with my colleagues.

When staying out of the office, we have regular stand-ups and sprint meetings so everybody knows what needs to be done and what’s new. Back to the terrace I’ve mentioned before - when the weather allows it, we do a lot of bbq parties there! This image below is from our last reunion after social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemia.

                   

What Tools we use

To keep our work effective, we use several services on daily basis. 

The main ones are following:

- ClickUp - cloud-based collaboration project management tool. Between its features belong task assignments, comments, notifications, alerts, ... the list is long, but it’s really useful. One of the best functions is that you can view tasks in an agile dashboard and mark them as resolved, in progress, or any other custom statuses.

- Slack - A messaging system that supports two methods of chat - direct messages and channels. This workspace also supports a lot of add-ons which help to work more

effectively.

- Toggl - A system that tracks how much time we spend on assignments, whole projects, etc.

- Figma - A  cloud-based design tool which our designers use as the ultimate collaboration tool. This web-based tool allows real time demos and let's you share and access them with ease.

Expectations vs reality 

My expectations about ideal full-remote work are to have the possibility to work from anywhere and whenever I want, but especially to work on interesting projects. Put it differently, I wouldn’t like to be stuck with working on one product only. Currently, we are working on a lot of client projects, but we do our own as well - check out the latest product Q365.  

When I started writing this article, I was sitting in my home office. And now, when I’m about to finish it, I’m at a café enjoying a coffee that gives me the energy for the upcoming tasks. As far as I can tell, my expectations met reality in all aspects!

I hope that this article will give you at least some idea about how the full-remote in Qusion looks like. I’ve got a couple of other ideas to share here on the blog, so stay tuned! If you have any experience with remote work, let us know!