Freelancing

The fact that women are underrepresented in tech is nothing new. However, while we’ve seen the gender diversity reports from companies like Google, Facebook, and many more, a look at the number of women in the open source community suggests that the numbers might be worse than these reports imply. In this post, Toptal COO Breanden Beneschott shares the results of a study looking at gender on GitHub and considers a few reasons why GitHub is so male-dominated, including a few ideas on how we can make the open source community a more welcoming place.

There are a lot of developers who take good care of themselves and enjoy a healthy, active lifestyle. If you are one of them, you can skip the rest of this post, because I wrote it to help developers like myself, who could benefit from a healthier lifestyle.

Even if you are entirely focused on your career, and think you don’t have enough spare time to lead a healthy lifestyle, bear in mind that good physical health will also boost your productivity.

Remote jobs can be good for you, but depending on your character, they can also have some unpleasant side effects. Burnout affects people in all walks of life and in all industries, so what makes remote workers different?

Recognizing burnout symptoms early is of vital importance, and I cannot stress this enough. The deeper you sink into it, the longer it will take to recover, it’s as simple as that.

Working as a remote software development freelancer has many benefits, but setting up an effective distributed working environment can be a real challenge. In this article, Toptal Engineer Ivan Voras describes how he leverages SSH and a number of related technologies, along with the Raspberry Pi and ownCloud, to be able to work effectively from anywhere.

Some people like the known and predictable. They freak out when their daily routine gets disrupted. But, I’ll bet if you are doing any kind of creative work like programming or design, you are not one of those people. Ordinary day-to-day office work will kill you. It will eventually strip your motivation, creativity or flare for what you do.

Remote work comes with lots of things to take into account when designing your schedule, so finding the right balance that works best for you can be tricky. Here’s how to create a remote working schedule that works best for you, enabling you to get the most out of life while staying productive and effectively supporting your colleagues.

We live in a time where technology has made it possible to work from anywhere, and many people have eschewed the traditional office for the chaotic din of a cafe in Bangkok or a hotel in Prague. Yet, while this trend has opened up unprecedented opportunities, it also brings with it a number of challenges, perhaps the most insidious of which is a lack of ergonomically healthy options in non-traditional workspaces.