One thing you have to watch out for when you start working remotely in the web hosting world is how many hours you work.  Now some might think you should be working as much as you can, while this is true – you also need to have limits.  Any web host who would hire you as a remote worker should get you a set number of hours per week to work.

Don’t do more for less. When looking for a remote position with a web hosting company, many hosts may ask you to do as much as you can.  You should do your work assigned to you, however don’t let them get away with not giving you a set number of hours a day to work.  Any remote position should have the same benefits of a regular “going to the office” job, meaning you should work X amount of days, get X amount of days off and work a set number of X hours per day.

I can speak from experience, as somebody who will usually go beyond the call of duty, and as somebody who was fooled into this in my first remote web hosting job.  At the time, I was inexperienced and thought it might be normal to be on call 24/7 to help out with answering e-mails, or working live chat for a web hosting company.  What was the end result?  I was so burnt out I didn’t take another remote web hosting job for two years.

Now, I am not saying any web host out there will go out of their way to screw you over, sometimes they need all the help they can get and they might forget about the fact that they are overworking you.  If there is one thing I could tell every remote web hosting tech out there, to sum things up, it would be don’t allow yourself to be available 24/7.

So when you sign up to work remotely for a web hosting company, be sure to get it in print in your contract your weekly hours, days off and when or how you get paid if your asked to work overtime.  Both the web host an yourself need to be clear on these limits so that they can get the expected work out of you, and you don’t get overworked in the process.