Hello world!
That seems to be the first line every young developer tries to do, but it has many other meanings for a remote developer. We meet people from all over the world — clients, colleagues, providers — and that gives us the opportunity to share thoughts, experiences, ways of thinking and more.
For example, I am from Argentina, and I have the opportunity to work every day with people from Denmark, Uruguay, the U.S, Russia, Ireland, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Australia, and the Dominican Republic, to just mention a few. It gives me the chance to empathize with feelings, concerns, problems, and habits of people from a wide variety of different cultures, and I tend to discover that we are not too far from each other.
Unleash your remote work potential
Thanks to X-Team and its Unleash program, I traveled to different conferences and meetups with some of my colleagues, spent some quality time in company of a few beers (we do not share only working hours), and had the chance to see that people in Sweden are not happy with their taxes, Russian women prefer beer over Vodka, Spanish, Argentinian and Uruguayan people are the noisiest, and the Polish are very friendly and nice to talk to. It is very hard to experience this kind of situations working in a cubicle on a 9 to 5 shift.
Achievements
All this non-technical knowledge helps us achieve several different goals.
Create good bonds with clients
People from different countries do business in different ways. Getting into different mindsets gives us opportunities to make our clients feel like at home. Is not the same working with an American company or a Japanese one, or even with various countries in Europe; all have their own habits and ideas at the moment of signing a contract.
Better solutions come from better relations
Working with people abroad is not easy, particularly if you do not know their habits and preferences. Having the chance to travel and share time with colleagues and clients from other places provides a great opportunity to adapt one's work strategy having in mind people’s habits. Sometimes, sharing a dinner with someone reveals many tiny details about their personality related to the place where they live and provides great insight that helps improve the way they work or their expectations about the results of a project.
Future endeavors
A remote developer has the chance to work from everywhere, which provides the opportunity to attend different meetups and workshops around the globe. What you get from attending those events is not only the useful information provided by speakers but also meeting people looking for solutions and partners, people to do business with. You do not know whether, during your next conference, you will meet someone who will boost your ideas and help your project come true.
Final thoughts
I consider the opportunity to meet people from all around the world very attractive. It is an experience I would not have been able to make working for a typical, local company.
I think you should not hesitate to try it at least once in your life.
The benefits you will gain are infinite.