TelecommutingTips

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Telecommuting As a Lone Writer
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How to swim in the deep water - A lone writer’s guide to survival
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This document applies to both partial and full-time telecommuting. Note; Some of these tips also apply to lone writers who are onsite as well, depending on the way they write and make connections.

Telecommuting has many benefits related to your personal life that everyone knows about. But working from home can be risky to your career development. I am going to explain how to make sure that telecommuting is a stepping stone to the career path you want, or longevity at your companay, rather than a step into obscurity.

## When You Start

### Plan to Go Onsite

If by any chance, you can plan a week onsite shortly after you start the project, do this! It may not make sense to do this the very first week. You might want to wait until you've been working with the material for a week or so, so that you can plan whom you want to meet, and what you want to accomplish while you are onsite. Here are some reasons why:

* Research has shown that it is easier to let someone go you don't see every day and you don't know. You can't change this job to be 100 percent onsite, but you can make sure that your coworkers and manager connect with you as a human. This will be so important, even if they only communicate with you in slack going forward.
* While you are there during this week, note the times people arrive and leave, and the days and times when people tend to have meetings, when they tend to be out (lunch, breaks), when they tend to be be heads down. This will help you choose the right time to ping people going forward. It will also help you plan your breaks at times that will not cause alarm bells "Chris is never there when I ping her" (forgetting you are in another time zone!) While patterns aren't 100 percent predictable, they tend to evolve (eg., every Tuesday the Engineering team takes a long lunch)

Hold a Launch Meeting Explicitly about Telecommuting With Direct Manager
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Have a meeting, online or in person, with your direct manager, and talk about these things:

* Exactly what Success Means to this manager--Be sure they understand that you will have a ramp up time, if you expect to need one. If you are an onsite worker taking a few weeks to learn the system, they see you there. It's comforting. When you are offsite, they see that your paycheck is going out, but nothing tangible. Ask if there is something tangible you can create so that your manager can see progress.
*  Ask the manager if they are familiar with the tech writing/doc process. If not, explain the process you go through, how you will let the manager know when you have "heads-down" time for example. If you were onsite, you could have on headphones and the manager could see when you are deep diving into doc. You need to provide ways for the management to see you virtually.
*  Ask your manager if there is a time every day where it makes sense for you to take a lunch break. If you want to join a groups like Toastmasters, or a doc group, or something else like that, find out good times for you to attend (if you are in another time zone). Make sure your manager knows fairly set times when you are available.

How to Keep from Going Crazy
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Your onsite coworkers are spending a bit of time every day chatting and connecting. If your company uses a tool like Slack, ask if you can set up some informal channels.