By Adora Nwodo

We are living in future shock as the tech world around us is rapidly evolving. While this is true, it’s important to understand what this change means and what we and businesses can learn from this. One major change that I have seen in the tech corporate world recently is that many big names are outsourcing remote Software Engineering teams through reputable hiring service companies. A good internet connection and a laptop are now enough for an African developer to comfortably work full-time for a USA/UK company without leaving their bedroom. This culture is rapidly spreading as companies like Remotebase are making remote engineers easily accessible to businesses. This is a blessing in disguise for the hiring managers as outsourcing teams through companies saves them time, logistics, and operational costs.

Before giving you the generally applicable reasons, I’d like to share a personal story with you. I work in big tech and March 2020 was the beginning of something different for me. Moving my workstation home, the concept of remote work was still entirely new to me. However, I realized that I stopped dealing with the early morning traffic that exists in a lot of “big cities” and I was able to build more things while being flexible with my time. I work with people in different time zones and I had initially struggled with managing that in a work-from-office scenario. If I had a meeting at 6:30PM WAT, it was technically outside “Nigerian” work hours. How did I handle that? Remote work flexibility helped me choose my work hours (12PM-8PM) that span across the two time zones I deal with and that has been an insane blessing to me. Oh, and did I mention all my promotions have been as a remote employee? 🙂

If you’re still reading at this point, I want to believe you have become interested in remote work, even if that wasn’t the case before. This is a phenomenon that I believe isn’t going anywhere and I would give you more reasons why:

  • Access to Software Engineers Globally: Diversity in a team can increase creativity, innovation and success, because of the different backgrounds and perspectives introduced. However, hiring and relocating diverse talent comes with challenges in the visa process and can be expensive for smaller companies that want to hire a lot of diverse talent. Having access to developers across the world and being able to hire them remotely has proven to be a blessing for these sorts of organizations. Today, Silicon Valley companies like Agentnoon, Fireflies, Capbase and Fabric use Remotebase to build their engineering teams and this gives them access to a wide pool of tech talent all around the world.
  • Access to Global Companies:
    While there are people willing to relocate to a new country for opportunities, it’s important to understand that relocation is a huge life change not everyone is ready for instantly. Some developers want to relocate now, others want to relocate later but still work for these top companies they love, and others don’t want to relocate at all. The remote culture makes global companies accessible to developers without the offer of an immediate relocation if they don’t want it yet. As a software engineer, joining software engineering communities like Remotebase gives you access to top companies in the US and beyond. You can be paired with them and start working remotely. This is a good starting point for getting the international work experience that you desire.
  • Flexibility: What do you do in a work-from-office scenario where you are blocked on the tasks you’re working on for the next two hours? Most times, nothing. You try to keep yourself busy with things that don’t matter to pass the time. In a work-from-home scenario where this same incident presents itself, you’re able to do other things on your daily TODO list outside the context of work and come back to your desk in 2 hours. That way, you’re not wasting productive time on unproductive things.

Another example of flexibility in remote work is the ability to choose flexible work hours. Except you’re required to be in a meeting at a particular time, you can work whenever you want, as long as you get the job done.

This also means that generally, the motivation and happiness index is higher in developers who work on flexible working hours. 

  • No Commute: This is one of my favorite benefits of working remotely. You save money and time you’d have spent in traffic and it’s less stressful which is better for your health. This can also be a good statement by the businesses to contribute towards a greener cleaner environment, whilst saving huge overheads alongside.  
  • International Work Experience: In my Software Engineering career, I’ve been in conversations with people that emphasize the need for international work experience and how it helps their resumes look better. As a talented developer working remotely, you can choose to work only for international organizations. 
  • You Can Become a Digital Nomad: This means you can work from wherever you want whenever you feel like it. I’ve seen people on social media share their experiences and journeys about how they go to different cities and work from different places. Even with that travel, your ability to do good work isn’t affected and you’re able to live the full life that you want. It’s important for tech businesses to endorse this lifestyle and opt for remote developer teams. 
  • Helps You Develop Other Skills: As a remote worker, communication and collaboration are done virtually which requires more intentionality than physical interactions. This means that doing well in the era requires self-development which would be good for work and would also be a good life skill to have. So, it’s a win-win. 

I believe, remote work culture is something that has made corporate life more bearable and we should all take leverage of the benefits it offers. To me, companies like Remotebase are an excellent alleviation point for ambitious developers who want to work for global clients from the comfort of their homes. If you are a developer who wants to make it big in the global tech industry, I would suggest you explore their website and apply for your dream developer job. Outsourcing engineering teams through companies like Remotebase seems to be the smart competitive move business managers can make for quicker results and lesser operational cost (team assembled within 24 hours) of running tech teams. 

Want to know more about remoteBase? Visit www.remotebase.com

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