Right job, wrong city– getting and keeping a remote job Part 1

I have accepted a new job at Microsoft. I work for a team in Redmond, but, I still live in Ottawa, Canada. I have spent the last 5 years working remotely for Microsoft Canada. I won’t say I’ve mastered the art of working remote but I’ve learned a few tricks to help manage a successful career remotely.

In Part 1 I will discuss:

• How did I end up working remote?
• When do you tell the hiring manager you won’t relocate?
• Why is working remote such an issue?

Coming soon…

• Why would a manager hire me as a remote employee?
• How to thrive in the company as a remote employee?
• Staying sane as a remote employee
• Does working at home impact your career?
• Is it worth it?

How did it start?

5 years ago I got a phone call from an employee at microsoft. At the time I was teaching programming, database and business analysis courses. I was a frequent speaker at Microsoft events. I figured the call was a request to present or help out at a local event. Instead the first words I heard after the usual greetings were “Have you considered your career”. To be honest I hadn’t given any serious consideration to working for Microsoft. Any jobs of interest were in Redmond, Washington (Microsoft head office).  I had two boys in school, and a husband with a good job in Ottawa. For me, moving simply wasn’t an option.

This call was a little different. It was for a job as a technical evangelist at Microsoft Canada. Canada! So no need to move to the US. The title alone was too intriguing to pass up. I submitted my resume and went through a gauntlet of interviews.  But once again location was an issue. They wanted me to move to Toronto. First things first, I convinced them we should go through the interviews and then discuss location. I never told them I would move to Toronto, I simply asked them to talk to me before deciding having me work from Ottawa was a deal-breaker.

When do you tell the manager you won’t relocate?

Rule number one: Don’t lie! I have never told a hiring manager I would move just to get to the interview.  I certainly don’t open the conversation with “by the way I won’t relocate”, but I never lie or mislead them just to get an interview.

When I find a position of interest, step one is always to find out more about the job. Set up a short call or informal meeting with the manager. In Microsoft we refer to this as an informational. It’s a chance for you to learn more about the job, and for the hiring manager to learn more about you. It’s a good idea regardless of whether you expect to work remotely or not!  It is hard to tell from a written job description what a job entails, and it’s also a chance to find out if you and the manager are likely to get along. I’d rather have a bad job with a good manager than a good job with a bad manager (of course what I really want is a good job with a good manager! but I’ve experienced all the possible combinations in my career). If the meeting is going well, i.e. I still want the job and the manager is encouraging me to apply, that’s when I break the news. I explain that I have some bad news, I am interested in the job, but relocation isn’t an option and would they consider hiring me as a remote employee..

More than half of the time, the opportunity ends there.

When the manager says remote is not an option, I always ask if they could wait until after the interview process before making a final decision. I encourage the manager to wait until I have deeper insights into the job, and the manager has deeper insights into my skills. During the interview process we can discuss the specific concerns around having a remote employee and strategies to alleviate those concerns. But, understand, that there are some jobs that do require an in person presence. If this is one of those roles, you are wasting your energy and the manager’s time pursuing the role. Accept it and move on. Finding a role you want remotely requires patience and persistance.

Why is working remote such an issue?

There are a number of reasons a manager may not one someone working remotely. Understanding these concerns can help you determine if the working remotely is a deal breaker or simply an obstacle to be overcome.

The job

Some jobs are better suited for working remotely than others. Does the job require regular access to special equipment? Does the job require organizing in person events? If a job frequently requires your physical presrence in a particular location, then you are facing an uphill battle. In these situations you are unlikely to get the job without relocation.

Company culture

Does the company and the team already have remote workers?

Some companies are very open to working remotely, others actively discourage working from home. If the company has never had a remote worker you will run into all sorts of complications: How do you get IT support when you are having issues with your computer? What is the policy for expensing travel to and from the office? Does time spent in transit count as working hours? If there is an Annual General Meeting, a big in person announcement by the CEO, or a company holiday party will you travel to the office for those occasions?  Does the company understand the impact on your personal life when you have to travel to the office?  Are you expected to travel on weekends? What are the accepted methods of travel (plane? train? car? first class? economy?)

If the company does not have remote workers, do they have people in the office who regularly work from home?

Companies with a work at home policy are more likely to have a way for you to connect to the company network from home, an IT support team who can help you solve issues remotely

Does the company have customers they work with remotely?

Companies who work with remote customers are more likely to have tele-conferencing capabilities so you can easily present screens from your laptop and collaborate with co-workers remotely.  Office rooms as more likely to have cameras and microphones in meeting rooms so you can be a part of larger meetings as well.

Team culture

Just because the company has policies in place for remote workers, doesn’t mean the team you are applying to knows how to deal with it. If you join a team in the habit of walking down the hall for impromptu meetings, making decisions in elevators, and having all their meetings in person, you have a challenge ahead of you. Best case scenario you will often find out after the fact that decisions were made, because they simply forgot to start up the conference bridge, or just had a quick chat in the hallway and didn’t think it was necessary to bother you. It’s not malicious! It’s simply human nature. Everyone is trying to get things done, you get caught up in a good conversation you don’t always stop to think, wait there is someone who isn’t in the room we need to call in! The simple fact you are not physically present means there is a risk you end up out of the loop. Worst case scenario (and sadly this can happen) you have someone on the team who actively takes advantage of your absence to make themselves look good an make you look bad. So far as I know, that’s never happened to me! So assume best intentions!

Your work habits

Have you worked remotely before? It’s a different life waking up every day having breakfast and walking 10 steps to your office. No-one popping by your desk to ask if you saw the latest episode of Game of Thrones. No donuts in the kitchen (though you still get the email telling you there are donuts in the kitchen at the office). No-one to sit with at lunch. Instead you have your home with all its distractions: dirty dishes, laundry, house cleaning, weeding, tele marketers calling, odd jobs to be done, maybe kids coming home from school before you finish your work day? It’s not for everyone, and not everyone can thrive in that environment. It takes some discipline to get your work done and stay connected.

Networking

At many companies networking is key to a successful career. It can help you get things done. It can help you get credit and visibility for the things you do. It can help you find little projects that are ‘above and beyond the call of duty’ that get you the raise, the award, or the promotion.  It is also how you will your next job in the company. When you work remotely networking is more difficult.

Your success

I am very fortunate to have work at a company and to apply for jobs with managers who really want to see me succeed. Some of them have had remote employees in the past who were unfortunately unhappy and unsuccessful for one or more of the reasons outlined above. Some teams at microsoft are very dynamic: roles and responsibilities change frequently. The job I am applying for might work remotely, but what happens in 6 months when they re-org? What if my original job disappears? You want to be sure you join a team whose goals you can support in different ways. You don’t want to get caught in a position where there is only one thing you can do remotely. How will you grow? How will you get promoted? How will you keep yourself challenged and motivated?

Elevator meetings

Sometimes the most important conversations don’t happen in the meeting room, they happen immediately afterwards when you are walking out of the meeting and discuss the meeting in the elevator on the way back to your desk. Sometimes a chance encounter in an elevator gives you a rare opportunity to talk to a senior team member in person. Remote workers don’t have this opportunity.

Budget

If you work remotely how often are you going to visit the office?  Will you travel by plane, train automobile? Hotel, meals, and transportation costs add up fast! Spending money for you to visit the office may mean less money for doing business!

Stay tuned for part 2…

Girl Geeks vs Geek Girls and why does it matter?

To get more girls interested in technology we need role models they can look up to. In this post I talk about not only geek girls as role models, but also girl geeks! Because we need both!

I recently returned from the Ontario Celebration of Women in Computing. This event did exactly what the title describes: celebrated women in computing. Microsoft Research was a sponsor and there was high demand for their geek girl water bottles. Shortly after, I was telling a co-worker about the water bottles and we ended up discussing whether a geek girl was the same thing as a girl geek.

This may seem like a trivial discussion, but it helped me clarify something that had been picking at my brain throughout the conference. One of the ways we can encourage more girls to enter technical fields is by providing role models. When we recognize the two different types of girls who enter technical fields, we recognize the need for two different types of role models.

Sometimes, I am asked to act as a role model. Anyone who has seen me present knows I am a passionate speaker. I love having the opportunity to try and get people excited about technology and it’s capabilities. But am I the right role model? The answer, as is so often the case, is “it depends.”

I was good at math. I was told engineering was a good degree if you are good at math. I was a tom boy as a kid. So I was quite comfortable entering a field that was dominated by men and had a perception of requiring strong math skills. I was coding Choose your own adventure games on my TRS-80 computer before we ever had a computer in my classroom. I spent hours playing video games at the arcade (okay I really dated myself there didn’t I?) or playing Dungeons and Dragons.  I was a geek, I just happened to be a girl. I consider myself fully qualified to inspire future geek girls!

But are there girls out there who have the potential to find their inner geek? I know there are! You don’t have to be a tomboy! You don’t have to have math as your favorite subject! You don’t have to own a 20 sided dice, in fact if you don’t even get the reference to a 20 sided dice, you can still find an amazing career in technology.

I have met some amazing girl geeks! Let’s make sure we find more of them to share as role models along with the geek girls!  Let me introduce three girl geeks I have the honour of counting among my acquaintances!

Meet Marwa and Alaa from Bahrain, together they form Team Butterfly! They love nail polish and observed the constant challenge faced by others with the same passion to find a specific color. Their solution? An app that allows you to design your own custom nail polish, pick your color, select your finish: glitter, gloss, matte, and then send it to their printer to get a sample that provides just enough polish for a single application! These girls have found a way to combine their love of fashion with technology! They have also got a brilliant business idea. Which is why they took home third place at the Imagine Cup World Finals.

Meet Sage Franch (@TrendyTechie). Sage is one of the Microsoft Student Partners I work with from Dalhousie University.Her blog, Trendy Techie,  is a blend of fashion and technology topics! She’s blogging about how to use the Kinect sensor one week and about Tentacular knitwear scarves the next. What’s really exciting is when she gets a chance to combine the two as she did with her post about MeU, a wearable LED display that attaches to fabric and displays custom information through your clothes.

Finally, meet Genevieve L’Esperance, who used to describe herself as a Tech Diva. She is currently a Microsoft YouthSpark ambassador but I first met her at the 4 Girls coding event in Montreal.  Genevieve decided to become Microsoft certified after hearing a woman speak about a tech school she wanted to create for young women in Bangladesh with the help of Genevieve’s mom. Genevieve was only 14 at the time and jokes that she only agreed to attend the Texas conference so she could buy new cowboy boots. But when she listened to the woman and heard her express such heartfelt desire to teach girls in an area with extreme poverty, she was inspired to further pursue technology and teaching.

Since she unleashed her love for computer science and her desire to spread it, Genevieve has devoted countless hours to teaching programming to girls. She works not only to show them the skills but to convince them that the field is a viable option. She learned that in part from her mom, who worked as a model at tech trade shows before becoming a successful entrepreneur. She attempts to show girls how technology is opening doors for her with the hope she can convince them it’s not just for boys

So if you are talking to young students about careers in technology, make sure you tell the story of a geek girl and a girl geek! You never know which story will inspire the next young woman to seek out a career in technology!

The world needs more geek girls

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being involved at an event that exposed grade 5 & 6 girls to science and technology, the event was fun but it does address a serious issue: the shortage of girls in computer science and engineering.

My son covered his ears as the girls screamed, cheering on their teacher and classmate competing in the 50 metre sprint in Kinect sports on the Xbox. My son was seriously outnumbered yesterday as 218 girls from grades 5 & 6 descended on McGill university for the 4 girls event organized by Clumeq and GenInc and sponsored by Microsoft. The girls spent the day going to different sessions to learn about science and technology.

The day was kicked off by Marie-Jo Leroux of Ubisoft who talked about life as a video game producer. I think I may have enjoyed that presentation more than the girls as she gave us a behind the scenes look at making games like Driver: San Francisco and IronMan. She delivered a great message: my job isn’t easy, but I love what I do, so I don’t mind! Find what you love, your career will choose you!

So why doesn’t the technology career path choose more women? I don’t know the answer, they were asking that question when I went to university years ago as well (I won’t admit how many years ago). Maybe events like this will help. Some of the girls may have been surprised by how cool and fun science and technology can be hopefully they will come to love technology as so many of us do.

McGill student Genevieve L’Esperance, former Microsoft Student Partner and intern, did a workshop using SmallBasic that gets kids to explore programming. She has delivered this workshop at many Teaching Kids Programming events outside of Canada and was very happy to finally have a chance to do it in her hometown! Quoted in the Montreal Gazette she says “I have one or two girls in my classes, I have no biases toward anybody, but’ it’s nice to have like a sister in class”

In my workshop I talked about the different ways to interact with computers, and we discussed how programmers have many tools to choose from and you have to figure out which tool is right for each solution. The kids compared drawing with a mouse to drawing with touch on Windows 8 and Windows Phone, they compared using calculator with a keyboard vs a mouse, we tested the accuracy of voice recognition on the Windows phone and of course they thoroughly enjoyed testing the motion recognition of Kinect. We finished on a more serious note talking about how these new capabilities of voice and gesture open up new possibilities and truly give those of us in the technology field a chance to change the world for the better.

Hopefully reaching girls early in their education and exposing them to the capabilities of science and technology will draw more girls into the field. For Canada to compete globally we need a strong pool of students entering science and technology. Depsite above average wages the computer sector struggles to fill many positions. There is a decrease in university enrollment in fields such as Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Software Engineering. Girls are a source of talent that could help fill these gaps.

As a student, or a working professional you can help! Speak at a high school, speak at an elementary school, show them what they are missing. Here are a couple of great resources you can use when speaking to school kids about the computing field: Computers unplugged, Teaching Kids Programming. I may be an evangelist for Microsoft, but we can all be evangelists for a career in science and technology!