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I'm graduating from university with a computer science degree at the end of this semester and I have begun to start looking for a job. By the time I graduate, I will have about 8 months of work experience as a software developer from internships and part-time jobs.

The city where I live now does not have a ton of software developer jobs and I don't want to move away due to family reasons. So, I was thinking that if I can't find a job in the local area, I could try to find a remote position. Is this something that would be reasonable for someone with my level of experience?

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    Caveat: if a desk job will take 7 years off your lifespan due to inactivity if you let it, working remotely can double that... In addition to making you work twice as hard to be noticed and advance your career.
    – keshlam
    Commented Feb 4, 2017 at 5:15
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    It's more of matter of landing a remote job, than whether you have the experience for it.
    – Kilisi
    Commented Feb 4, 2017 at 7:34

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The answer is circumstantial; there is no set time frame for when you'll have the experience necessary to work remotely. It could be one year, it could be three years- it all just depends.

Though I'd strongly discourage a fresh graduate from picking up a remote job. It is highly unlikely you have the experience or knowledge necessary to be completely, or even mostly, autonomous. This will result in coworker's having to help/teach you over the Internet, which is quite cumbersome on both parties as well as more time consuming than if someone was helping you debug in person. Additionally, a slower progress to autonomy means that you're likely to consistently be behind on project deadlines. This means that you'll be finding yourself quickly burned out in your first job from working long hours to compensate for lack of progress and many nights studying to catch up on the experience that you'd be otherwise getting from coworkers in person. Working under pressure can be a hell of a thing and such pressure is likely to be hammering on you while working alone and facing those first waves of "programmer doubt". Except in this case, instead of when you were stressing about the bad grade you'd get from a project you knew wasn't going to be turned in on time, you now get to stress about getting fired with bills creeping in because you're learning for the first time that you don't know as much about programming as your university made you think you did.

Trust me- nothing alleviates that stress more, or sets you up on a faster track to success, than a senior coworker knowing exactly what you're going through, taking you under his/her wing, and showing you the ropes. When you're working remotely, this face-to-face gained sympathy is not likely to occur. To put it curtly, I think you'll be missing out on several vital opportunities for early financial, technical, professional, and social growth.

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