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How to find a remote job

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Re: How to find a remote job

#71
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice short article. Its a bit difficult to do that same if one is from a developing country though (flying is expensive :-)). A more interesting problem to crack.

Agree, there's definitely another hurdle of perception if you're from another country. But I still think it's doable. It always comes down to trust - how can I make sure that if I work with you, you're going to commit code that I won't have to do a ton of cleanup on? So, you combat that by : 1) Be visible. Have code up on Github that I can see. 2) Offer a month to month contract. 15 day notice for termination. This g…

Pretty good suggestions. I did love to charge $100 an hour. Maybe if I spoke at a few conferences, I did be able to charge that.

However, thats a US/Silicon Valley number. Europe, which is closer, will find that number too high for its local developers (as far as I know). :-)

Just sharing for sharing sake... not that it needs an answer.

Re: How to find a remote job

#72
post #2

I found a remote job this year on https://angel.co/ This article seems like an excellent resource, but it doesn't get into the drive you need to find a remote job (at least early in your career like me). When I started looking for remote jobs online, it took me over six months to finally land the right job. What articles like this don't emphasize enough is when you're applying for remote jobs, you're competing agains…

I made a job board for remote jobs in data science: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1054526381348851/

Re: How to find a remote job

#73

Here's a question I'm trying to understand: if I intend to travel while working, where do I say I'm "from"? How do taxes work? Suppose that I have an apartment in some country, not necessarily my country of citizenship, and I will sublet it while I travel. I suppose, to freelance, one needs to create a "company", but where is that company based? Does it need to have an address? If I am a citizen of one country, a res…

Great question. I still run all my taxes as if I'm based in the UK, even though I travel and work remotely. I am taxed as an independent contractor. I'm considering setting up as an Estonian e-resident soon though ( https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/ ) to change where I pay my taxes. In terms of working while in other countries, it's a grey area for sure. I was travelling extensively in Asia last…

> I'm considering setting up as an Estonian e-resident soon though (https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/) to change where I pay my taxes.

Talk to a solicitor before you do this unless you want HMRC to come a knocking. Estonian eResidency is not actual residency, and it won't change the country you're resident in for personal tax purposes. You could set up a company in Estonia, but if you're an independent contractor and all the profits from that company flow directly back to you HMRC may again have questions (and you'll still have to pay taxes on the dividends you receive at the UK rates).

Re: How to find a remote job

#74

Ptoblem with remote job is that it's mostly limited to a developer role. If you wanna go up the chain of command there are less and less options. To be a remote team leader means that you are limited to companies that have all of their developers remote. Basically any kind of management position will limit you to apply to companies that are 100% or mostly remote and there aren't many companies like that yet.

Yes, that's why the best way to increase the numvber of remote companies is to build them from scratch, with a remote incubator. That's what I am doing: http://www.startcrowd.club

Re: How to find a remote job

#75

Here's a question I'm trying to understand: if I intend to travel while working, where do I say I'm "from"? How do taxes work? Suppose that I have an apartment in some country, not necessarily my country of citizenship, and I will sublet it while I travel. I suppose, to freelance, one needs to create a "company", but where is that company based? Does it need to have an address? If I am a citizen of one country, a res…

It depends of they laws of the country where you stay. For example, my country requires me to pay taxes if I live there for more than 6 months a year (180 days). And theoretically you pay taxes where you live at that moment, but if you only stay for a month and them move to another then it is complicated, most people justify that they are on holidays there and pay taxes in their "usual" living country. I think most countries doesn't have laws to regulate this type of things.

Re: How to find a remote job

#76

I hired 100+ senior developers at $50-70K per year for a project, mostly from East Europe/Ukraine/Russia. We were like, "Holy ! these people are so cheap. If I hire people with same level of experience locally, I would have to pay 3-5x more on average." Later, my friend took over this team of developers for his startup. What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers. And somet…

> What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers.

To have a freelancer to put all his eggs in your basket takes some trust as well. I would actually prefer working for one client but if that client quits then poof everything's gone.

> And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers in South Asia, security risk.

WTF. And no clue about that happening during standups?

Re: How to find a remote job

#77
post #2

I found a remote job this year on https://angel.co/ This article seems like an excellent resource, but it doesn't get into the drive you need to find a remote job (at least early in your career like me). When I started looking for remote jobs online, it took me over six months to finally land the right job. What articles like this don't emphasize enough is when you're applying for remote jobs, you're competing agains…

I've always worked remotely. You're not really competing with the entire global talent pool if you're applying for an American company. First, most companies will have a time zone limit. 2. Companies will require that you can communicate in English extremely well. 3. You need access to a reliable electric grid and reliable fast internet (the firewall rules out mainland China completely--1/5 of the world). 4. Many com…

I agree with most of this; but there are exceptions.

Many of these rules can be more flexible/broken at big global companies with remote work availability. They usually have experienced legal teams to iron out some of these pretty quickly.

Eg. We're a remote-first product team of 150+ (at a much larger corp.), currently hiring 3 people in China and several more globally.

I'd say more than anything, we primarily only hire people with 5+ years experience in our particular industry. We can onboard an intermediate or senior person within a couple weeks, but a junior with limited industry-specific knowledge would struggle without someone to tap on the shoulder every 15 minutes for the first couple years.

If I were to give someone advice on getting a remote job (more generally): it's more about networking than anything [even more-so than regular gigs]. You need to build up a level of trust with the people you're going to be working with before even applying. Reach out to a few people at the company you're interested in with questions about the product to establish a rapport, really know why you want to work there (beyond pay or working from home), and work towards having a few beers with them in person (if possible).

Re: How to find a remote job

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree you're not competing globally as an American. However, you are competing with all developers in the US!

You're competing with all developers looking for remote work. Which isn't close to all. Then, once you have remote experience, in most cases you're really only competing with other developers who have remote experience. It's hard to get a remote job right out of college. But if you're good at your job, and have 5+ years of experience, with at least some remote experience, it's not that hard. Certainly easier than "co…

The Stack Overflow poll this year definitely showed a skew towards more experienced devs getting the remote work. Which would imply the competition for remote work is above average in ability.

Re: How to find a remote job

#79

I hired 100+ senior developers at $50-70K per year for a project, mostly from East Europe/Ukraine/Russia. We were like, "Holy ! these people are so cheap. If I hire people with same level of experience locally, I would have to pay 3-5x more on average." Later, my friend took over this team of developers for his startup. What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers. And somet…

> And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers in South Asia, security risk.

How do you not notice something like that happening on your end? So many of the problems cited by anti-remote bosses are not problems of remoteness at all. Sound like management was very checked-out.

Re: How to find a remote job

#80
The hardest part of remote jobs is finding one that will pay even remotely (hehe) what you could make at a local company.

My experience with remote interviewing culminated in getting 3 separate remote offers for anywhere between 35-60% less than my asking salary or the local offers I received.

Part of this might be that my area (Salt Lake City) has particularly high engineering salaries despite what most people expect, but it seems to be a thing across the board, because like others have said they are tapping into a worldwide talent pool where they can get talent that are happy with the company's salary budget.

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