Hey, remote workers: Philly has a holiday party made just for you this year

For remote workers in the Philadelphia area longing to break out a festive sweater and chat over a punch bowl for few hours, we have some good news: Two local tech leaders have come together to host a holiday party next month just for you.

The event is meant to bring together remote workers in tech and other industries and to reinforce the idea that the city is home to employees of plenty of “hot” tech companies, said Pam Selle, a senior software engineer at HashiCorp.

Selle — who’s honored on our inaugural RealLIST Engineers list — and coworking space Indy Hall’s Alex Hillman are organizing the event, which is slated for Tuesday, Dec. 10, at a TBD local restaurant.

“Our hope is that this fun, friendly, and inclusive gathering will help us all learn who is working remote in Philly, including who is remotely employing Philadelphians,” the party’s event page says.

Amazon, Microsoft, GitHub, Airbnb and Automattic all have people working remotely in Philly, and many folks aren’t aware, Selle said. She hopes to change that.

Selle herself has been a remote worker for the past three years. Her coworkers have off-site meetings, but she said she does miss the ability to bounce ideas off of people IRL, and general human social interaction. For those reasons, and because her work is open source, she sets up shop at Indy Hall.

“I’d really love to meet more people from various industries, because software is a little more obvious, to me, as a remote-friendly opportunity, but there are so many opportunities out there,” she said.

Find more information about the Remote in Philly Holiday Party here. Folks who work remotely full- or part-time are welcome to attend, and Selle said tickets will likely go up on the site this week.