People always ask me the same thing. “How do you work remotely?” “What do I need to get started?” “Isn’t it really hard?”
And the honest answer is that it’s not as complicated as people make it seem. But it’s also not as easy as TikTok makes it look where everyone’s a digital nomad in Bali answering emails from a hammock.
What I have noticed is that there are things nobody tells you before you start. Things I learned the hard way, and that I see most people repeating over and over.
You think you need to be a programmer
When people hear “remote work” they immediately think tech. That you need to know how to code, that you need a data background, that you need an engineering degree. And yeah, there are a lot of opportunities in tech, but those aren’t the only ones.
I started working at a trading company that isn’t even a tech company. My job is frontend, sure, but the company does something completely different. And before that I worked at a delivery company where I was the only developer and everyone else was in operations, marketing, customer support.
What US companies look for isn’t whether you’re a programmer. They look for whether you can do something well and whether you can communicate in English. That’s it. If you know how to do something a company needs and you do it well, you’ve got 80% of the path covered.
The setup doesn’t matter as much as you think
There’s a culture around remote work that’s basically a product catalog. Standing desk, ergonomic chair, ultrawide monitor, 4K webcam, RGB lighting. You see the setup and think you need to spend $3,000 USD on equipment before you can start working.
My first remote setup was a beat-up Toshiba Satellite on my kitchen table. No mouse, no external monitor, no chair worth mentioning. Just the laptop, open, and me typing. That’s it. And somehow I made it work.
Now I have a more complete setup, but that’s because after years of doing it I know what I need. Not the other way around. It’s not “first the perfect setup, then I’ll start looking for jobs.” It’s “first I get the job, then I improve my setup as I figure out what I actually need.”
People spend months buying equipment instead of sending their resumes. That doesn’t make sense.
Your English doesn’t have to be perfect
This was my biggest fear. I spoke English but with mistakes, slow, insecure. I thought no company would hire me like that.
And technically I was right in part. Nobody hires someone who can’t communicate. But communicating isn’t the same as being perfect.
In my interviews with US companies I speak with errors. Sometimes I search for words. Sometimes I mess up pronunciation. But I communicate. And that’s what matters.
What I discovered is that confidence matters more than grammar. When you stop being afraid of sounding bad, you speak better. Not because your vocabulary improves overnight, but because you stop blocking yourself.
My English isn’t perfect. But it works. And that’s enough.
You don’t need remote experience to start
People think there’s an impossible catch-22. “I can’t get a remote job because I don’t have remote experience, but how do I get remote experience if nobody gives me a remote job first?”
But the reality is that if you’ve already worked with digital tools, if you’ve already communicated with clients through chat or email, if you’ve already organized projects in any system, if you’ve already worked independently without someone hovering over you… you already have remote experience. You’re just not seeing it that way.
What companies need isn’t that you’ve worked from home before. They need to know you can solve problems without someone supervising every minute. And if you’ve done that in any job, you already have what’s necessary.
The real benefit isn’t the money
Okay, yes. The money is a huge benefit. I went from earning $15,000 MXN at a presencial job in Mexico to $120,000 MXN working remotely for a US company. That’s no small thing.
But what actually changed my life wasn’t the salary. It was the time.
Before I used to lose 2 hours a day in traffic. Back and forth. Energy burned just getting to an office to sit in front of a computer, exactly what I could have done from home.
Now I use those 2 hours for my own projects, to be with my family, to exercise, to actually live. And when you work remotely and have extra time, you can build things on your own. Start a side hustle. Learn something new. Or simply do nothing, which is also worth something.
You don’t have to be a digital nomad
There’s this idea that working remotely means traveling constantly. That you go from Airbnb to Airbnb, that you’re in a different country every month, that your life is a roller coaster of experiences.
I did it. I lived in Cancún, traveled, worked from different places. And it’s fine if that’s what you want. But it’s not the only way to live remotely.
I work from home now. I have an office, I have my routine, I have my neighborhood. And I’m just as remote as the guy in Bali. The difference is I don’t need to document my life to make it look interesting. I just need to do my job and live my life.
The luxury of remote work isn’t traveling. It’s choosing. Choosing where you work, with whom, and how you organize your time. If that means staying in your city, perfect. If that means traveling, also perfect. There’s no right way to do it.
What you actually need
If you’re thinking about starting to work remotely, you don’t need a perfect setup, or a college degree, or specific experience, or to be a programmer.
You need a skill that someone is willing to pay for. You need to know how to communicate in English, even if it’s imperfect. You need a LinkedIn that looks professional. And you need to start sending applications even though you feel like you’re not ready.
Because nobody feels ready. I didn’t feel ready when I sent my first resume to a US company. I didn’t feel ready when I had my first interview in English. I didn’t feel ready when I started working without anyone supervising me.
But I did it anyway. And that’s how things get built. Not by waiting until you’re ready, but by starting and figuring it out along the way.
It’s not that complicated. It’s just simpler than people want to admit. And that’s what nobody tells you about working remotely.