Ask HN: Advice for finding an entry-level remote job?

Other people have recommended getting into support, and it really is a good option to consider.

A lot of the suggestions here are a bit more long term. There are entry level support jobs in tech that will give you valuable experience, _now_, for a pathway to engineering roles. Many companies will also give you a budget to buy courses, books, conference tickets, etc. Staying in support isn't a dead end, anymore, either. Remote companies will try to pay you based on location, but salaries can get very high once you stack up experience (120k+/year).

Regardless of future plans, you'll have an advantage over trying to learn while doing unrelated work.

Here are a few listings as an example:

https://automattic.com/work-with-us/happiness-engineer/

https://kinsta.com/careers/

https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/2603610

https://system76.com/careers

If you want to talk more about it, lmk, and I'll email you.

The best gambit is to get an entry-level job that will pay for your AWS certificates while you work. Always, always, take advantage of free training when it's offered.

My tips...

Part I: Job postings

1) Collect job postings for jobs you are interested in.

2) Look at the "skills" portion of the job postings.

3) Assess your level of proficiency in those skills.

4) Practice each skill until you feel confident you have a working level of proficiency in those skills.

Part II: Study tips

1) Take note of every acronym or concept you don't understand. Then, look it up and try to come up with your own definition for it. Write down that definition in your own words. At first, that definition may not be correct, but you have to try to keep it as accurate as you can.

2) When you study a concept from a book or website, also take notes. Then, write what you have learned about each topic. Force yourself to explain what you are doing and why.

3) Vocalize what you are doing and what you are thinking. Record yourself and then listen to yourself. Expressing your thoughts in a coherent way will help you later during interviews.

4) Enroll into a MOOC for Algorithms and Data structures.

Part II: Resume

1) Create a 1 page resume that emphasizes your skills and abilities.

2) In the absence of formal education, create a portfolio that showcases your abilities.

3) If you have completed a MOOC, you can list it there.

Part III: Apply

1) Look for referrals among people you know.

2) Announce you are looking for a job.

3) Apply and interview.

Part IV: Interview

1) Don't get too nervous. Stress management is part of the job.

2) Budget your time. Questions may have follow up questions. Ask if there are follow up questions in advance.

3) Explain your thoughts clearly.

4) Ask questions, the interviewer can offer help if needed.

5) Learn about the company, what they do, thier mision, vision, core values, etc. Crunchbase can help you find basic information about a company.

4) Prepare to ask questions. e.g.: what is their engineering organizational structure, what is their culture like, etc. Prepare to answer questions such as why do you want that job, why do you want to work there, etc.

I just got an email from this service: https://developers.turing.com/ They hire specifically remote only. Check them out, since I am not looking for a job now.

I agree with your assessment that a help desk or support position would be a good match for your skills as you've described them. You say you can't find any right now, but the jobs are out there; I know someone who just recently got hired for remote helpdesk work.

Don't constrain your search to looking for just tech industry helpdesks. Helpdesks and call centers can be found supporting all manner of industries and segments, be it remote education software, point-of-sale credit card readers, one of those medical machines that goes beep in hospital rooms, or those tablet-like computers a mechanic uses troubleshoot a car's engine controller. Tech has permeated into society to a greater degree than even us techies sometimes appreciate, and wherever there's a broad enough deployment of something, there's going to be people who need or want technical help with that something.

Start looking up every company you can think of, big and small, new and old, and hunt down their job listings, looking for anything that sounds like it could be mainly tech support work, whether or not the listing actually calls it that. Also worth looking at are contracting and temp agencies, as often tech support is an out-sourced role.

Since you don't have a technical work history yet, look to the time you've spent tinkering, say, during your win98/Ubuntu dual-boot adventures, for example. Find times you had a hard problem to deal with. How did you solve the problem? What was your process? How did you deal with impediments to solving those problems? That's something you'll probably get asked in an interview for a tech support position, and it will be good to have some answers.

Do the same with your customer service experience. Come up with examples when you dealt with a particularly difficult or unhappy customer, and were able to help them solve their problem to their satisfaction.

Once you manage to land a tech position, become a sponge. Start soaking up technical knowledge. Seek to understand the Why behind the How. If you have specific tools, dig into those tools' nooks and crannies. See if there's ways to use the tools better. Become valuable as the guy who's really good at figuring out how to solve a particular class of common problem, or taming some arcane tool your team has to use. And if documentation is lacking, leverage and polish your communication skills to create or improve documentation.

Doing this will set you up for being able to move up from the basic entry level role, into something more advanced that hopefully pays better, whether that's moving up in your original company or finding a better position with another company.