Introduction
Hey, can you please introduce yourself?
Hey! My name is Siddhant, and I’m a software developer and entrepreneur located in Munich, Germany. I was born and raised in New Delhi, and after finishing my undergraduate studies, I moved to Munich for further studies and have been working here since.
Work-wise, I focus mainly on backend and infrastructure work, with frontend mixed in every now and then. My programming language of choice is Python. I’ve been working with Python for slightly more than a decade now and really enjoy building things using it. When not working, I like spending time building side projects, working on a couple of open-source packages I maintain, reading, and hiking with my wife and our dog.
The current side-project that takes up most of my time is Developer to Manager, which I launched in October 2018. It’s a platform to help software developers who are considering a career in engineering management. We interview tech leaders at different stages of their careers at different companies and try to get a sense of what it’s like to be in their shoes. So far, we have engineering managers from companies including Twitter, Slack, LinkedIn, etc., and we’re adding more interviews every month.
Motivation for Remote Work
What motivated you to choose remote working?
In my case, remote working chose me.
In 2016, I was working at a small-ish company in Munich when a professor of mine from university emailed me about a project that he and a few others were working on. We talked more, and eventually, we decided that it would be best if we founded a company around the idea and worked on it full-time. So I quit my job and co-founded this startup in the German real-estate software sector with three other co-founders. This is also currently my main day job.
At the time of founding, all the co-founders were based in different cities (but within Germany), and none of us wanted to move to a whole new city, so the decision was already made for us. Looking back, I don’t think that we thought too much about it. It was more of an “alright, looks like we’re all living in different cities, so let’s figure out how we can make things work.”
I don’t think there was a specific motivation for me to choose remote working. I did always love the idea, but at that time it didn’t have as much momentum as it has now.
Initial Months and Expectations
What were your initial months like? Did it live up to your expectations?
The initial months of me working remotely full-time also happened to be the initial months of my working on my own startup as the only technical co-founder. Anyone who has founded a company before knows how much work it can be. This meant that the experience of working remotely was overshadowed by working too much. 🤷♂️
I’ll still try to focus on the “remote working” aspect of the initial months.
The beginning was great! Before starting, I had no expectations of how it was going to be, which was nice because I had no “baseline” to compare it to.
One of the things that I loved immediately was that I was no longer wasting time commuting from home to work and back. Even though my commute before wasn’t that bad (about 30-40 minutes one way), it was still time spent doing basically nothing. So it was really nice to be able to finish breakfast, prepare a fresh cup of coffee, and immediately get to work!
Something else I realized was that suddenly I had so much more time at hand. Not having to commute meant I had roughly two hours of spare time every single day (one-hour commuting and another hour winding up/down). This definitely made me feel a lot more productive.
One of the things I learned fairly early on was that while working from home, I would need to make a distinction between “work”-time and “not work”-time.
When working out of an office, you see people coming in and leaving at more or less well-defined times. This, in turn, trains your mind as to what your own working hours should roughly be like. When working from home, there are no such external triggers, and the transition from “I’m working right now” to “I’m done for the day” is very fuzzy. I realized that it helps to set strict working hours for yourself, and only touch the laptop outside of working hours if you really have to.
Finding Remote Work Roles
How did you find remote working roles?
As I mentioned earlier, in my case, the role found me. But today there are plenty of job boards online with job listings that are 100% remote. Crypto companies, in particular, tend to be more open to remote work. In case you’re looking for a new role, I would advise looking in these places.
Another option is to ask your current company to convert your role into a partially/fully remote one. Depending on the company policy and your role, it may or may not work. But if you feel that you’ll be more productive working remotely, it might be worth a shot.
The Good, Bad and Ugly of Remote Work
What have been the best, good, and worst aspects of remote working for you?
The best has definitely been flexibility. I live really close to the Alps, so the ability to make use of good weather during a weekday to go hiking, and work instead on a Saturday, is super convenient. It also gives me the assurance that my employer trusts me to get work done.
The good is the amount of extra time you feel you have. As I mentioned earlier, working from home gave me almost two hours of extra time every single day, which I chose to invest in working on a couple of open-source projects.
In the last three years, I’ve been able to work on open-source 7 Python libraries. I don’t think this would’ve been possible had I not had the option of working from home.
“Worst” is a very negative word. So far, I haven’t experienced anything that bad. Overall, I’ve loved every single bit of working remotely. The only thing I don’t necessarily like about remote work is how much it spoils you. There have been days when while working, it suddenly hit me: “how the heck did I ever manage to commute to work every single day and back?” I know that this is a very “first-world” problem, but I think that if you’re the kind of person who would enjoy remote work, keep in mind that getting used to the “normal” way of work would be extremely difficult. Once you go remote, there’s no going back.
Your most exciting/ hilarious experience since you started working remotely.
I don’t think I’ve had one specific moment that was particularly exciting/hilarious. However being able to work remotely has helped me establish habits that make work in general more exciting.
For instance, I start my day early, and one of the first things I do is go for a morning run along with my dog. Spending 45 minutes early in the morning would have been tricky had I had a “normal” office to go to. But since there’s no commute involved, I can choose to spend that time running instead.
Similarly, I find it exciting that right after finishing my breakfast, I can just walk over to my desk with a cup of freshly prepared coffee and immediately get to work.
Remote Work Tech Stack
What tools do you swear by while working remotely?
My phone. Not the “smartphone loaded with 100 apps” phone, but just the ability to make regular phone calls.
In remote environments, most of the communication ends up happening over text. As much as the software developer inside me likes text, it’s a one-dimensional format. It’s difficult to convey tone or emotions over text. This often results in people misinterpreting sentences. For instance, if a colleague writes “do whatever you want,” I can either interpret it as if they’re giving me complete freedom to make a decision, but it could also just as well mean that they’re being sarcastic.
For this reason, if there’s something important I want to discuss, I usually just pick up the phone and call the other person. All the more so for topics that might be sensitive. I don’t think we humans have evolved enough to survive in a text-only environment as compared to actually listening to someone else’s voice.
Other than that, at work, we use the standard set of tools—things like Slack, Trello, Hangouts, etc. Since my colleagues are all living “just” a couple of hundred kilometers away, we also try to get together every 2-3 months and have face-to-face discussions.
To be honest, though, I’ve started using fewer and fewer tools. I haven’t completely eliminated them, and in a setting where you’re working with others, you cannot eliminate them. Instead, I try to not keep them open all the time. For instance, Slack is something that’s supposed to be left running in the background, but I only open it 2-3 times a day and then close it as soon as I’m done. My rationale behind this is that if there’s something super urgent, I’ll either receive an email or I’ll receive a phone call. So there’s no point letting Slack notifications distract me.
I feel this kind of setup also depends on the size of the company you’re working in. But for my current company size, it works. 🤷♂️
Advice for Remote Workers
What is your golden advice to a new remote worker?
“Remote work isn’t a job perk; it’s a job itself.”
As I mentioned earlier, I think there’s a group of people who still see remote work as a privilege or job perk.
Hiring people who can be productive while working 100% remotely isn’t easy. The kind of traits you need to succeed in a remote working setup (self-discipline, independent thinking, initiative) are different from the traits you might need for a “normal” job (ability to work well with others in-person, good communication, etc.). You’ll need to look for people who not only enjoy remote work but also have been productive while working remotely in the past.
Most importantly, there needs to be an understanding between the employer and the employee as to what the job entails and how productivity is to be measured. If your employee finishes the assigned work in less time than expected, what’s your company policy? Is it alright if your employee goes to the beach for a swim and works a bit more tomorrow? Or does the employee need to immediately inform you about the “spare” time so that you can assign them new work?
As a company, you’ll also need to find a balance between the communication tools you use. It’s very easy to reach a point where you have too many tools (e.g., Slack, Trello, Jira, Hangouts, etc.), and keeping up with them all takes up more time than actually doing the work. In remote working setups, communication tools are important, but you should work towards keeping them at a minimum.
Looking Ahead
How do you see your career shaping up and your goals?
I’ve always been someone who likes to build things. As a kid, I was always building random stuff like rockets, treehouses, and even a solar-powered car (which never really worked properly 😅). As I grew older, I began to realize that “building” is something I genuinely enjoy doing, and I try to align my work and hobbies around it. I guess this is one of the reasons why I got into software development—it allows me to build things, fail, iterate, and finally get something working.
Going forward, I’d love to continue building things that solve problems for people. In the short term, my goal is to grow the Developer to Manager project and to continue working on my open-source projects. Long term, I’m still figuring things out. But one thing I know for sure is that I want to keep building. 😄
How do you expect remote working to evolve in the future?
I don’t know, to be honest. While I certainly expect remote work to become more “normal” in the future, it’s more of a “hope” rather than an “expectation.” I understand that remote is not something that suits everybody. Not all software products are going to be well-served by a remote development model. Similarly, not everyone is going to be happy about working remotely. So it’s difficult to make predictions here.
However, one thing I can say with some level of certainty is that the number of remote jobs is going to increase. The interest in remote work has constantly been growing, and at least right now, I don’t see why this trend should reverse, assuming all other variables remain constant. This should help the infrastructure around remote work get better in the coming years.
But as I mentioned earlier, it’s tough to predict, so I’m just going to sit back and watch how things develop!
Where can we follow you?
You can find my personal website at https://sgoel.org. This is also where I write articles on topics that are important to me.
I’m not super active on social media, and the only online presence I maintain these days is on GitHub and LinkedIn.
My contact information is on my website. If you have any questions or comments about this interview, me, or anything else really, please feel free to reach out!
