[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":96},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-remote-work-networking":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":87,"description":88,"extension":89,"meta":90,"navigation":91,"path":92,"seo":93,"stem":94,"__hash__":95},"blog/blog/remote-work-networking.md","What I've Learned From Working Remotely for Over 20 Years",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":79},"minimark",[9,13,20,23,26,31,34,37,40,44,47,50,53,57,60,63,66,70,73,76],[10,11,12],"p",{},"I started working remotely back when Skype was our most reliable video platform—and even that was only \"somewhat reliable.\" This was the early 2000s, long before Zoom, Google Meet, Hangouts, or Microsoft Teams existed. Remote work wasn't a trend or a pandemic-driven necessity. It was just the way I had to work to make my consultancy function and to find opportunities that matched my skills. Over two decades later, I've learned that remote work is simultaneously one of the most empowering and most challenging ways to build a career in software engineering.",[10,14,15],{},[16,17],"img",{"alt":18,"src":19},"A remote software engineer working alone at a home desk, connected to distant colleagues through a screen — illustrating both the freedom and the hidden network cost of two decades of remote work","/blog/remote-work-networking.png",[10,21,22],{},"The journey hasn't been smooth. In the early days, finding full-time remote employment was nearly impossible, especially if you weren't willing to relocate to a major tech hub. San Francisco, in particular, has always been hostile to remote work—even for simple contract engagements. So I spent years doing contract work, which came with its own roller coaster of challenges. When it rained, it poured. I'd have stretches where I had too much work, then weeks or months of waiting to get paid, followed by dry spells where finding the next contract felt impossible. The lack of financial stability made it incredibly difficult, especially when you're trying to build a sustainable career and support yourself.",[10,24,25],{},"Eventually, I started looking for full-time employment, but the transition from contract work to a stable role was harder than I expected. Most companies in major tech hubs weren't interested in remote employees. The remote opportunities I did find came from smaller companies in areas that weren't traditional tech centers. These companies had to adapt to attract quality talent—they simply couldn't compete with the big players in San Francisco or Seattle for local hires. Remote work was their competitive advantage, and many of them did quite well because of it. Then COVID happened, and suddenly remote work went from niche to mainstream. The door that had been cracked open was blown off its hinges entirely.",[27,28,30],"h2",{"id":29},"the-network-problem-remote-works-hidden-cost","The Network Problem: Remote Work's Hidden Cost",[10,32,33],{},"Here's what nobody talks about enough: working remotely makes it incredibly difficult to build and maintain a professional network. When you work in an office, networking happens almost automatically. You see people face to face every single day. You eat lunch together, chat about random things unrelated to work, and build relationships organically through proximity and shared experience. Those casual conversations by the coffee machine or after a meeting create bonds that go beyond professional collaboration—they create trust, camaraderie, and opportunities that can shape your entire career.",[10,35,36],{},"When you work remotely, none of that happens by default. You see people in stand-ups, chat with them over Slack, and maybe have the occasional video call. But building lasting relationships this way requires intentionality and effort that most people don't realize they need to invest. I've met some great people working remotely and built a small network of genuine friends through it, but I won't pretend it's the same as the connections you develop when you're trekking into an office and working side by side with people day in and day out. The network you build in person is just different—deeper, more resilient, and often more valuable to your career in the long run.",[10,38,39],{},"The challenge is especially acute when you're younger in your career. When you're working remotely and only interacting with colleagues through text or brief video calls, it's harder to develop empathy for them as full human beings. You might get frustrated with someone over a code review comment or a missed deadline, and without the humanizing context of regular face-to-face interaction, it's easier to become disagreeable or dismissive. You have to actively work at your communication skills and deliberately try to engage with empathy, which is a skill that develops more naturally when you're sharing physical space with people.",[27,41,43],{"id":42},"the-communication-hierarchy-why-face-to-face-still-matters","The Communication Hierarchy: Why Face-to-Face Still Matters",[10,45,46],{},"I've learned something critical about communication through all these years of remote work: there's a hierarchy of value in how we interact, and it matters more than most engineers want to admit. If I send someone a text message and we go back and forth, that's one level of communication. But if I pick up the phone and have a voice call where we say the exact same words, I'm going to get significantly more value out of that conversation. Then if you compare a voice call to a video call—even if the words are identical—the video call delivers more value simply because you're seeing someone face to face.",[10,48,49],{},"This isn't just about preference or personal style. We're human beings, not robots, and we can't forget that. Seeing each other face to face is fundamentally important to how we process information, build trust, and develop working relationships. I know a lot of engineers try to avoid turning their cameras on or minimize video calls because they find them distracting, and I understand that impulse. But working remotely for over 20 years has taught me that showing up with your camera on, looking presentable, and being fully present during team interactions—even if it's not every single day—is essential to maintaining the human connections that make work sustainable and fulfilling.",[10,51,52],{},"And then you take it one step further: actual face-to-face interaction. When you're physically in the same room with someone, there's a completely different dynamic at play. The same exact words could be spoken in all these scenarios—text, voice, video, and in-person—but at each level, you derive more value from the interaction. This is simply a fact of how human communication works. We pick up different cues and information at each level. With text, we only get words. With voice, we get tone and inflection. With video, we get facial expressions and body language. But face to face, we get a fuller picture of the person—their energy, their presence, their humanity. This creates empathy and understanding that's nearly impossible to replicate remotely, no matter how good your video setup is.",[27,54,56],{"id":55},"the-real-benefits-why-ive-stayed-remote","The Real Benefits: Why I've Stayed Remote",[10,58,59],{},"Despite these challenges, I've chosen to work remotely for over 20 years because the benefits are genuinely transformative for my life. I can take my kids to school every morning. I can show up and be present for them in ways that would be impossible if I had to commute to an office and sit there for eight or nine hours a day. As a single dad, this isn't just convenient—it's essential to how I've been able to raise my family while building a career in software engineering.",[10,61,62],{},"The practical advantages extend beyond just time with my kids. I can pick up a sick child from school without it being a major production. I can run necessary errands like going to the bank during business hours without using vacation time. I live in an area where my kids can go to better schools that don't cost me a fortune—not San Francisco-level private school tuition—and they're close to family members who aren't in a tech hub. These quality-of-life factors would be impossible if I had to live in an expensive tech city just to have access to good employment opportunities. Remote work has given me the freedom to build the life I want while doing work I'm passionate about.",[10,64,65],{},"But—and this is crucial—these benefits only work if you're purposeful about addressing the network gap. If you work remotely and you're not actively, intentionally building your professional network, you're missing the key ingredient that office workers get for free just by showing up every day. You need to make time for video calls instead of always defaulting to Slack messages. You need to show up with your camera on and be present. You need to find opportunities for in-person meetups, conferences, or team gatherings when possible. And most importantly, you need to approach your remote colleagues with intentional empathy and communication, recognizing that the default mode of remote work tends toward disconnection rather than relationship-building.",[27,67,69],{"id":68},"what-this-means-for-your-remote-career","What This Means for Your Remote Career",[10,71,72],{},"After more than two decades of remote work—from the early Skype days through the COVID transformation to today's hybrid reality—I've learned that success in this environment comes down to one thing: intentionality. You can't rely on proximity and passive interaction to build your career the way office workers can. Everything about professional growth in a remote environment requires active effort: building relationships, maintaining networks, communicating with empathy, and showing up fully present even when you're just a face on a screen.",[10,74,75],{},"The tech industry has changed dramatically since I started. Remote work is now widely acceptable in ways it never was before, though certain cities and companies—San Francisco, I'm looking at you—have tried to close the door again post-COVID. But the fundamental challenge hasn't changed: building meaningful professional relationships remotely requires you to be more deliberate, more consistent, and more human than the default mode of digital communication encourages. You have to actively resist the pull toward transactional, text-only interaction and instead create moments of genuine human connection.",[10,77,78],{},"This doesn't mean remote work isn't worth it. For me, the benefits have far outweighed the challenges, and I've built a successful career as a software engineer while being present for my family in ways that matter deeply to me. But I'm under no illusions that it's easy or that the network I've built remotely is equivalent to what I might have developed in a traditional office environment. It's different, and that difference requires conscious effort to overcome.",{"title":80,"searchDepth":81,"depth":81,"links":82},"",2,[83,84,85,86],{"id":29,"depth":81,"text":30},{"id":42,"depth":81,"text":43},{"id":55,"depth":81,"text":56},{"id":68,"depth":81,"text":69},"2026-07-07","Two decades of remote work — from the unreliable-Skype era through the COVID boom — taught me that the real hidden cost isn't productivity, it's your network. Here's why face-to-face still beats video, why video still beats voice, and why remote success comes down to relentless intentionality.","md",{},true,"/blog/remote-work-networking",{"title":5,"description":88},"blog/remote-work-networking","fMEZiJJS6TiRdTD_kyxRGwgxqHH1MXuYUi-fI0uALos",1783435943331]