I've found the timezone to be quite an issue. For a start a lot of positions advertised as Remote really mean Remote US Only, but then there are also many companies that aren't too concerned about being outside USA. I'm in UTC+12 which doesn't overlap well with USA or UK. USA is a bit better, but I didn't get one role because they had a 9:00am daily meeting which would have been 4:00am my time, and that just didn't seem practical. There is another person in my town that works for a UK company by staying up all night though.
How to find a remote job
101–110 of 145 posts
Re: How to find a remote job
#102I know that applying on jobs pages is not popular here on HN but, well, sometimes it works. In my opinion, having some projects on GitHub certainly helps, even if they are just hobby projects with no use in real world. So it doesn't mean that you must spend months working on open source projects on the evenings and weekends, hoping to get noticed. Same for technical blog posts. It definitely provides more signal to the person who is reviewing your application.
Also, very few companies are 100% remote, and making remote team work is not trivial, so it's important to ask the right questions when interviewing. Don't forget that's it is a two way street! Personally, I was looking for these two key things:
- at least ~30% engineers should be remote;
- there should be a strong culture of written async communication.
Once I discovered a company which I found interesting ( https://heapanalytics.com ), checked the jobs page, noticed that they are hiring remotely and just applied a few months later. Had several interviews over video chat / slack, no white board coding or CS trivia. In the end it worked out and I got an offer. Totally recommend applying at Heap - we are doing cool and challenging technical things (querying hundreds of TBs of data in seconds and making it reliable), the interview process is great and our small distributed remote team is made up of engineers from 4 continents, from North America to Australia!
Re: How to find a remote job
#103> Upwork, PeoplePerHour and Freelancer are great places to secure remote work. What you’ll find may be more short-term, but that doesn’t mean it can’t evolve into something permanent (if that’s what you’re looking for). Scratch that! Those platforms are useless even for freelancers. Best advice that worked for me is to apply for any job and during the interview process you just say that you will work remote and come…
Out of curiosity, what percent of companies just outright refused to consider remote work? And of those that considered you, how many had no remote engineers or didn't really have the processes in place to support remote work?
Because, I think, working remotely it's not just something that you, as an organization, do. Getting it right, in my experience, requires active effort.
Re: How to find a remote job
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get the down votes, nor the negativity in other threads about TopTal. Working for TopTal for a while now and it has been great. I can better rates elsewhere but I notice that clients are really expecting you to be good so the jobs are more interesting and/or you get more freedom. Also no hassle, every 2 weeks a payment. It's cheaper to hire me directly while I would still be getting paid more but I guess a lo…
I always got the impression (maybe mistakenly) that TopTal was basically like a temp job service for tech workers. Essentially I have been under the impression that one would not be able to work for TopTal while holding down a different job, but at the same time with TopTal you would never have guaranteed work and that their rate of pay would be only in line with what a developer would get at a regular day job except…
If you're based in United States, Toptal probably isn't the best solution for you.
Otherwise, it's a completely different story.
As a developer I've used Toptal in the past and honestly, they're doing a great job. I'm based in central europe where average salary can be as low as $22,000/y. Toptal allows you to 3x-5x that easily by working 40h/week, 100% remote.
It's literally transformed hundreds of lives within my city.
There are tons of long term projects (6-12+ months), and I've never had problems finding a new project (front-end, js). Once I start looking, I expect to be working the next week.
For some, it's a great long term solution. For others who are more ambitious, it's a great stepping stone into the $70-100+/h market.
They do take a pretty big cut, but the developer is still left with tons of cash.
I dropped it after a while, because I started receiving fat offers directly from other clients, but I'd still recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a well developed client network.
Re: How to find a remote job
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always got the impression (maybe mistakenly) that TopTal was basically like a temp job service for tech workers. Essentially I have been under the impression that one would not be able to work for TopTal while holding down a different job, but at the same time with TopTal you would never have guaranteed work and that their rate of pay would be only in line with what a developer would get at a regular day job except…
If you're based in United States, Toptal probably isn't the best solution for you. Otherwise, it's a completely different story. As a developer I've used Toptal in the past and honestly, they're doing a great job. I'm based in central europe where average salary can be as low as $22,000/y. Toptal allows you to 3x-5x that easily by working 40h/week, 100% remote. It's literally transformed hundreds of lives within my c…
Is it something though where you would have to do a normal 40 hours/week on 9 to 5 hours and so couldn't hold down your day job or are there people working a day job and then doing 20 hours of Toptal work nights and weekends?
Re: How to find a remote job
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're based in United States, Toptal probably isn't the best solution for you. Otherwise, it's a completely different story. As a developer I've used Toptal in the past and honestly, they're doing a great job. I'm based in central europe where average salary can be as low as $22,000/y. Toptal allows you to 3x-5x that easily by working 40h/week, 100% remote. It's literally transformed hundreds of lives within my c…
Is it something though where you would have to do a normal 40 hours/week on 9 to 5 hours and so couldn't hold down your day job or are there people working a day job and then doing 20 hours of Toptal work nights and weekends?
You can definately work nights and weekends, but most people don't need to hold down their regular local jobs.
Why would you keep your local $30k/y job when you can work full-time on Toptal for $80k/y?
Toptal covers hourly (min 10h/week), part-time (20h/week), and full-time (40h/week) engagements. Some months I've worked 60h/week (on my own accord).
Re: How to find a remote job
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get the down votes, nor the negativity in other threads about TopTal. Working for TopTal for a while now and it has been great. I can better rates elsewhere but I notice that clients are really expecting you to be good so the jobs are more interesting and/or you get more freedom. Also no hassle, every 2 weeks a payment. It's cheaper to hire me directly while I would still be getting paid more but I guess a lo…
I always got the impression (maybe mistakenly) that TopTal was basically like a temp job service for tech workers. Essentially I have been under the impression that one would not be able to work for TopTal while holding down a different job, but at the same time with TopTal you would never have guaranteed work and that their rate of pay would be only in line with what a developer would get at a regular day job except…
I have had work from anything from two days up until over a year of constant work. Being a contractor always means companies can fire you more or less at will. That's why you get paid more, there's more risk to it.
Re: How to find a remote job
#108Step 1) Become indispensable in your current job. Step 2) Move.
I've seen a couple employees do this to transition to mostly-remote at a big employer. You might have even better luck at a small or medium size company.
Re: How to find a remote job
#109I work remote now. There's good points and bad points. Some Good: No commute. No noise. Fewer distractions. No open office floor plans! Some Bad: More distractions. I miss the physical presence of people. Time zones suck! I miss hallway conversations about the current sprint. Nobody makes an 1800 mile serial cable. [-] Distractions. I don't have people walking by my desk trying to get me to work on their pet project.…
no, but they make an 2896.819km internet cable :) I've made proxies so I can talk to remote serial devices. Mainly for remote support. As conversations like
Me: Type Blah
Them: Did you say bleah?
Me: No Blah
Them: Blah? ok...tap.......tap......tap.......tap
Me: What's it say?
Them: Just a bunch of numbers and letters
are Painful :)
Re: How to find a remote job
#110Freelancing is the way...! Elaboration: I worked for a few companies remote, most I met via angellist. Sooner or later they wanted me to move to their place. When I started freelancing, nobody cared anymore.
Did you switch any of the companies you worked for remotely to clients? Or did you start from scratch?
Started from scratch.
Looked on some project sites, wrote some email offers.