Best of Remote Work — July 2025
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TechCrunch·44w
Preston Thorpe is a software engineer at a San Fransisco startup. He’s also serving his eleventh year in prison.
Preston Thorpe works as a senior software engineer at database company Turso while serving his 11th year in prison for drug-related crimes. He's part of an experimental Maine prison program allowing incarcerated people to work remote jobs. After contributing to Turso's open-source project for six months, CEO Glauber Costa hired him despite knowing his situation. The program has shown remarkable success in rehabilitation, with Maine's recidivism rate at 21-23% compared to 60% in many states, and college attendees returning at only 0.05%. About 30 inmates now work remotely from the Earned Living Unit, surrendering 10% of their pay to the state. Thorpe transformed his life through education and programming, earning a degree from University of Maine and finding purpose through his technical career.
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Fireship·46wWhen being over-employed goes wrong...
A software developer named Sohon Perek gained notoriety for simultaneously working at multiple Silicon Valley startups remotely, earning over a million dollars annually by mastering technical interviews and managing concurrent employment. His scheme was exposed when startup founders discovered they were all employing the same person, leading to his termination but also making him a folk hero in tech circles. The story highlights the current challenging job market, the rise of overemployment practices, and the vulnerabilities in remote hiring processes.
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JetBrains·47w
10 Remote Development Best Practices
Remote development involves running development environments on remote infrastructure rather than local machines. Key best practices include avoiding pixel-streaming solutions like RDP/VNC, implementing offline-capable clients, using enterprise-grade orchestration platforms, adopting short-lived disposable environments, enforcing zero-trust security, and monitoring meaningful metrics. Modern solutions like CodeCanvas, GitHub Codespaces, and Gitpod provide automated provisioning, cost control, and security features that manual SSH setups cannot match. AI agent support is becoming essential for future-proofing remote development workflows.
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controversy.dev·47w
Is being over-employed unethical or just efficient?
A software engineer is being sued for allegedly working multiple full-time jobs simultaneously without disclosure, raising questions about employment ethics in the remote work era. The case highlights the evolving nature of knowledge work and whether traditional employment expectations still apply in an async, AI-powered workplace.
