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I don't know if this is the right forum to post, but since what I'm about to ask could be catogorized as a soft skill we'll give at a go.
I was verry hesitant to post this question under my own profile, since it's pretty personal and I don't want this post to colour peoples opinion of me when I'm responding to someone else's post, but since the public of this site seems matture enough I wanted to hear some other peoples opinion.
I don't reaally know how to wrap the question properly, so I'll just throw it out there.

I have adhd and am socially disabled, which is basicly just a medical excuse to be an ass .
No, all jokes aside, it does make it hard for me to find my place on the workfloor. I really don't like to be arround people and I can't be exspected to respond "normal" to social conventions. I can't, for example, work for a boss, I have a major issue with authority and can't function in a normal office enviroment.
For the moment I'm webdeveloper at the ministry of internal affairs in Belgium, since no one there has any clue of anything IT related, I can do my own thing and don't have to answer to anyone, enless the goals aren't met offcourse.
The downside of this job is that it still requires me to be on location, granted I do have gliding hours, but I still have to be in the office by 9hr30.
The mainreasson for choosing this careerpath is ofcourse my passion for coding and everything IT related, but also a big factor was that I was expecting to be able to work more from a home office.

In the olden days a programmer would hide in a cubicle or would complete his task at home without ever or hardly physically meet the client/employer/task giver how ever you want to call it.
But with the agile and scrum taking the foreground, that's noi longer the case.
I know that's conceived as a possitive thing by most, but for people like me that really sucks.

Lol... I said I don't know how to wrap it... We're finally comming to my question...

Basiclly what I want to hear from you guys are simply your thoughts on what a good alternative would be for me, keeping in mind that I live in Belgium, I could imagine that for example in America remote jobs are more common.
I also have three childern, but am no longer together with the mother, so moving is for the moment not an option.

Most of you will most likely sugest selfemployment and it's not like I haven't thought about that, but I'm kinda affraid to take the plunge.
I'm kinda to nonchalant (is that word used in English?) to keep the books and it's also a big responsibillity, what if you don't find any customers and don't have the means to support yourself.
Or worse, what if I do find custommers, I can imagine they're more difficult to deal with then a boss...

Sorry for my English, but I'm not native
 
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Daniel,
Like you said, this is probably country specific. My two suggestions:
  • Look for remote work in other EU countries. Where theys peak English or another language you speak. A country bigger than Belgium is probably more likely to have remote jobs
  • Go to the local Belgian user groups and network there. Try to find out if anyone knows of a place where you can work remotely
  •  
    Daniel Demesmaecker
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    Thank you Jeanne for your responce. My problem with that is I graduated less then a year ago, I was stuck in deadend job for a long time, before I decided to go back to school, and it's hard to find a entry level position that allows you to fully work remote.
    Most of them are senior level positions with at least 3 to 5 years experience and require you to still live in the vicinity.
    I never heard of someone living in Belgium and working in America without having to fly over like 6 months a year or so...
    My childern are 1, 3 and 5 years old, they're way to young to not see me for that long...
     
    Bartender
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    Hi Daniel,
    This is a very good question. I have an alternative solution.. is it possible for you to improve yourself to get more comfortable with people ? Maybe you can go out with like-minded folks. Maybe you can socialize in some other way like volunteering for holidays and other events. If you get more comfortable with people, you would no longer have to look at changing your work profile. I know that it is easier said than done. I have little to no idea about how you feel and how difficult it would be for you to start socializing, but I know for sure that it would help you.

    Just a thought
     
    Daniel Demesmaecker
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    Hi Francis

    Thanks for your response. It's not like I'm a total social paria, I do have some friends and I did manage to father 3 childern, so...
    But hanging out with friends and the atmosphere at a Belgian worplace are two different things.
    I do like the idea of finding more like minded people.
    I actually already do vollunteer for a non profit organisation that organisizes holloday's for childern of home's with a low income.
    And I'm currently looking to start a coderdojo in my hometown.

    Since I rather surround myself with programmers then with other people wit social anxieties that might actually be a good place to start, only downside, the it-community in Belgium especially programmers, is verry small what makes finding vollunteers not easy, so it might be easier to vollunteer at an exsisting one...

    Non a less, I'm most productive at night and just don't function in a nine to five mentality.
    Ideally I would get up when I feel like it and then just code through the night
     
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    Ah, my long-lost twin!

    I can deal with small teams that I meet with on a regular basis, but I don't care to have to constantly reach out to strangers, and I'm definitely not much on being ordered what to do.

    It's actually not that hard (at least in the USA) to find positions where you can do a job that doesn't require a 40-person development team. I've spent most of my career being the entire team on some critical projects. Even in large corporate environments sometimes.

    I do prefer work-at-home situations where I can be self-directed, choose my own hours, and not contribute to the corruption of the planet by fighting traffic (and ruining my mood) every day. Those are, alas, harder to get, since Management doesn't feel like anything is getting "done" unless they can see a line of drones all parked on their butts in chairs like so many inflatable Bozo the Clowns.

    Which is especially ironic, since my natural biological rhythms make me most productive when I work an early morning stint, stop and take a nap/wander around in nature/tend the garden and come back and work another stint or 2 later in the day. something not very compatible with having to commute 35 minutes to a closed environment. Plus, of course, the commute time is potentially productive time burned to no productive purpose. But then, the appearance of productivity tends to carry more weight than actual productivity, as we tend to learn pretty early in our careers.

    As for socializing, I'm here on the Ranch.
     
    Daniel Demesmaecker
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    Hey Tim

    Good to hear I'm not alone. You're my new role model lol.
    I loose 4 hours a day commuting, although I take the train so it's not totally lost.
    I always take a pillow so I can nap in the morning
     
    Tim Holloway
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    Daniel Demesmaecker wrote:Hey Tim

    Good to hear I'm not alone. You're my new role model lol.
    I loose 4 hours a day commuting, although I take the train so it's not totally lost.
    I always take a pillow so I can nap in the morning



    One place I worked, I could take the bus. It's about a mile from the route terminus to my house, but the walk is good exercise, and in the morning, I could just about exactly read the newspaper between departure and arrival at work.

    The job dumped me for cheap overseas labor (and subsequently earned a city-wide reputation as a place no one wanted to apply for employment to). And anyway, they moved their business offices near downtown to catch a tax break and public transport here means that I could either get off downtown and walk 25 minutes or I could sit and wait for 35 minutes, at which time 3 buses heading that way would all arrive at the same time, so I'm glad I missed that "opportunity". The old building has new tenants, but the buses have since been re-routed and don't go by there. Urban sprawl is one reason why mass transit in Florida is a joke. The other is the routing.
     
    Daniel Demesmaecker
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    I know what you mean... I work in Brussels and from my hometown it's actually faster to take three seperate trains, then the direct one, just cause the direct one takes a D-tour.
    Even that being the case, I always take the direct one, just because then I don't have to transfer.
     
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    Daniel Demesmaecker wrote:. . . faster to take three seperate trains . . . I don't have to transfer.

    That reduces the risk of missing a connection if your train is late. It also allows you to do some useful work on the train without having to stop work for each change.
     
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