What are you working on?
Interview with Haley, a VP of Operations shares her stellar remote work strategies
As the head of operations for a fully remote content marketing agency, I spend most of my time working with our team and customers. We’re focused on continuing to elevate our employee and customer experience next year, and bringing on awesome new team members obsessed with content to help!
Haley has figured out the way she works best as a VP of Operations. See her principles of remote work and the unique advice a former boss gave her about breaks.
Read full interview from Interview with Haley, a VP of Operations shares her stellar remote work strategies.
Interview with Ascencia, a content marketer, and avid gig economy professional
For most of my clients, I work as their content manager. So I research topics, assign topics to writers, and format them on WordPress.
But for one client, Caldera Forms (now acquired by Saturday Drive), I work in their marketing department. We’re still transitioning and getting to know each other at Saturday Drive, but it’s been really nice to be able to work remotely in a team.
A forgotten two-year-old Upwork account allowed Ascencia to become a content marketer—see how the gig economy has offered her an alternative path to success.
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Interview with Harry, an IT Architect who works from home
I'm currently doing full stack web development for Solomon Page located in NYC. My projects are split roughly 50/50 between internal systems and tools and public facing websites like our open opportunities listings.
Harry has worked remotely for almost 10 years as a senior mobile, web and desktop developer—learn how he balances work with family.
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Interview with Artur, an engineer who found purpose as an Intrapreneur
Automattic is the company behind WordPress.com — a platform for starting a website (or a blog) quickly and without any hassle.
I care deeply about helping people earn money and focus on tools and features that let them sell products or services and market them on the Internet.
I started as a JavaScript engineer, but with an education in both psychology and computer science, I always liked to blend disciplines and had trouble with boundaries (primary school teachers did not appreciate this). However, over these three years, I have been able to shape my role and call myself an Intrapreneur.
My goal is to get stuff done and provide customers with the best possible tools to accomplish their own goals.
Sometimes that means implementing a new feature, convincing a team to tweak their existing project, or advocating for a particular approach.
Any work environment is teeming with potential and people wanting to accomplish things. Your programmers may have a great understanding of the publishing business; marketing folks may have great UX ideas, and system admins can come up with excellent copy.
Bigger businesses tend to silo people in their job description responsibilities. This tactic results in the whole company working towards having a cleaner codebase, nicer designs or slicker social media campaigns. However, nobody will work on the actual thing that makes the customer happy.
The customer does not care if your front end team has recently updated its data layer approach to the latest framework. Conversely, in small businesses, entrepreneurs are responsible for everything, and no task falls outside of their responsibilities.
They want the job done. Period. They can never say "Oh, we did all we were responsible for, and the failure is the other team's fault."
That dose of accountability and ownership resonates with me, but I don't want to run a small business (I've learned that lesson early in my life). That is how I arrived at being an Intrapreneur.
I've recently lead a project that provides remarkably easy Mailchimp integration, and now I am working on a billing system that will empower users to sell goods and services with less friction than ever before possible on a WordPress site.
Artur realized entrepreneurship wasn't for him—see how he carves out his creativity and purpose as a remote Intrapreneur at Automattic.
Read full interview from Interview with Artur, an engineer who found purpose as an Intrapreneur.
Interview with Meryl, a digital marketer and master of home office organization
I love what I do because I work on a variety of things.
One project is managing a client's ads on LinkedIn. Another involves writing web copy for a new company.
Any minute now, I'll be writing a marketing plan for a new client. I oversee social media for clients and my own accounts, of course. Just started working with a client whose Wordpress website was spammed and had a lot of problems. Been working to resolve them one problem at a time.
I'm always cooking up a script and creating videos because video has helped me in so many ways. This especially applies to the series about captioning. Next month, I'll be at a conference doing a demo on how to caption videos.
Video allows people to get to know me beyond words on a screen.
I'm not shy about sharing my experiences as a person born deaf. I want folks to know that people with different abilities, or diffabilities, can provide valuable insights.
Those things that people may view as a disadvantage are often an advantage. Video helps me show that.
Meryl K. Evans is skilled at creating a home office that leads to remote work flexibility. See her advice for creating a successful workspace, and hear about her journey into freelancing.
Read full interview from Interview with Meryl, a digital marketer and master of home office organization.
Interview with Maggie, a senior product manager at HubSpot
I moved to HubSpot in January 2019. I work remotely three days per week for the business enablement team. I'm a senior product manager, working on HubSpot's billing platform. The billing platform team allows customers and internal teams to manage and purchase HubSpot subscriptions. We make sure all the cogs are well oiled and working properly in the background.
Remote work allows Maggie to live in a small town and excel in her career. Hear about how she stays professionally connected, and her essential career advice for remote workers.
Read full interview from Interview with Maggie, a senior product manager at HubSpot.
Interview with Ben, a web developer who freelances from home
I've been working a lot of projects for a specific US customer (I'm Canadian), for more than a few years now. I've built everything from a distributed shipping label generation and printing system to an experimental Tensorflow-based spam classifier. Currently, I'm working with their purchasing department to improve their daily tools.
Learn the tips and tricks Ben uses to stay productive while working remotely on a hybrid team
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Interview with Nathan and Connor, owners of Freeeup
Today, we run FreeeUp.com full time. FreeeUp is a marketplace connecting virtual assistants, freelancers, and agencies with digital businesses in the eCommerce and marketing spaces.
As I said above, we founded FreeeUp out of frustrations we were having with the other online hiring platforms. We wanted a more reliable way to find top talent remotely.
FreeeUp interviews and vets thousands of freelancers every single week then only allows the top one percent into the network. We take care of the pre-vetting, and interviewing for business owners, saving them time on the front end of the hiring process.
As businesses post jobs, we introduce them to one qualified candidate from the network at a time. Businesses can meet as many freelancers as they need until they’ve found the best one for their work.
On the backend, FreeeUp protects businesses from turnover. In the rare case that a freelancer has to quit, FreeeUp will replace them immediately and cover any applicable replacement costs.
Thinking of creating your own remote startup? See how Nathan and Connor built a successful and effective remote team from scratch.
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Interview with Jenna, a freelance writer who works remotely to help manage her health
I’m currently working as a freelance writer, so all my work is done remotely.
I have a background in sales/retail and my last job was a supervisor position at a call center handling benefits administration – the company didn’t really allow remote work except on a few occasions, so this is my first time working entirely from home.
I left that job after 3 years due to health reasons and stress/burnout late last year (7 months ago) and started officially working freelance in December. I’m also working on some of my own projects - blogs that aren’t live yet and also getting my professional website set up.
Jenna started working remotely after realizing her office job was causing health problems—now she works as a freelance writer and writes about self-improvement
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Interview with Patryk, a Front-end Developer & UI Designer
For the past year and half, I have been co-leading the front-end development of PRNCPL, a database system tailored for art shows 🎨 .
The project is owned by MCH Group, but we're working in more of a startup environment.
My journey with PRNCPL is ending soon, and I'm switching back to being freelance from the beginning of October 2018.
Patryk has learned that there is no reason to wait for the flow - once you start working, it will happen naturally.
Read full interview from Interview with Patryk, a Front-end Developer & UI Designer.