Jumping Home

Around the end of 2009, I found I had been working for the same company for almost 5 years. It was the company that allowed me to leave Manila and set off on my own in a different city. It was a stable company based in the US but with developers here in the Philippines, and the people were great friends and colleagues. I had grown a lot while I was there, and I owed a lot to that company. However, I had pretty much hit a wall and I felt I needed to get out if I wanted to move on with my career. I was at a point when I was pretty much uninspired at work and starting to loathe going to the office.

Enter 2010, and I received a call from a friend. They had an opening for a developer in their company and he wanted to know if I was interested.

Some background on my friend. He's one of the best programmers I know. Pretty much a genius. I'd been aware of his work set-up for some time and I had actually joked to him numerous times that he should bring me in whenever he got the chance.

So anyway, my friend offering this job, was literally an answer to my prayers. He didn't even have to give me details about the job. I was pretty much set to say yes as soon as he asked. So as soon as we worked out the details and I got a better idea of what I'd need to do, I updated my CV and sent it out to him.

Soon enough, I was contacted by the company's ops head and interviewed over the phone. Everything went smoothly and I was asked to fly to Manila just for a face to face interview and to get the contract. Things got slightly delayed at this point since my friend got busy, but eventually, the date was set and I flew to Manila to finalize everything and sign the contract.

And so, 5 years to the day after I started with my old company, I handed in my resignation. A month after that, I started working from home full time. And that's where I am now.

How does working from home compare to being in an office? For me, after a few adjustments early on, I've found that I'm actually a lot more productive in this environment. Being in my industry, it does become difficult at times to separate work time and home time. But it's been fun so far and I honestly can't remember how I managed to make a 9-5 office job work before.