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Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

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21–30 of 65 posts

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#21
Hi. I'm living in the middle-of-nowhere California.

I'm a generalist, have written software for half a dozen of the worlds major corporations. I live 75 miles from OC, SD and LA, but have family obligations that keep me where I am.

If any of this sounds interesting please say hello :)

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#24
For an out there perspective, I am a big fan of fixed price contracts. I know what I can do and what it's worth. Can't speak for others but I want to share because I don't see people talk about it. A product can be dozens of pieces if you can integrate them.

Incentives are what you need to focus on. Why are they working remote? Why are you seeking remote? Are you investing or just using their labor? I appreciate when somebody is honest and treats me like shit over a dishonest time waster. Really, if given a choice I'd go back to a direct a-hole over a shifty smile. A little brief and all opinion, but my 2c.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#25

I keep reading online about how remote teams are so great, but in real life they are tough as fuck and require 5x the discipline and communication skills of in-person teams.

A lot depends on the people and the job the team is doing. I work 100% remote, but it happens to be on software that is for web-based collaboration, so the challenges of remote work are benefits to us (at least in terms of dogfooding our products).

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#26
If you're at an incubator / coworking space, that is the best place. Second to that, meetups. Third, you can start interviewing en masse - but when it gets to that point, both sides decay in quality.

I've gotten most of my work through incubators, people using my open source projects, and finally through HN.

In hindsight, the reason why incubators/coworking spaces were so effective is people can form a connection beforehand and know your personality. They can see that you're in front of a terminal happy getting stuff done, "in the zone" with your headphones, and not yapping about politics or meta stuff.

If you do python, django, or stripe, check my profile.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#27

I keep reading online about how remote teams are so great, but in real life they are tough as fuck and require 5x the discipline and communication skills of in-person teams.

This is definitely true. It's taken us many years to develop practices and most importantly a nose for the type of people that can thrive working remote. It's definitely not for everyone.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#28

I keep reading online about how remote teams are so great, but in real life they are tough as fuck and require 5x the discipline and communication skills of in-person teams.

Also adjust that 5x number based on how many hours apart your time zones are. Remote in the same time zone is really not as bad compared to even just 3 people on different continents trying to collaborate.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#29

As someone that has actively looked for remote jobs, I'm always surprised with how few companies that are open to remote actually publicize that information. They'll both not post jobs on remote hiring sites, and will say a role is based in New York, LA, etc. and only deep in the description will say that they encourage remote workers as well. This is a major plus for certain folks, so I sometimes wonder if companies…

This is so true. You can't really expect us to be actively looking on job sites for every city and expect us to find you.

Sites like freelancer is full of highly questionable jobs with low pay.

Hacker News and whoishiring.io has been a valuable resource to get my resume out there. I'd definitely suggest getting your stuff on each of those sites. In an ideal world, indeed would have a remote section, but they didn't last I checked.

Anyways, OP, it really depends on the developers you are looking for. The strategy for finding FTE and contractors are different, from the search to how you interview, how you deal with them as a worker, to your expectations.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

#30
post #19

Cold outreach. Github Advanced Search is your friend. E.g. query for devs with at least one javascript repository (substitute whatever tech you're targeting), > 5 total repos (show they're fairly active on GH), with > 10 followers. https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=language%3Ajavasc... Search documentation https://help.github.com/articles/searching-users/

Or http://git-awards.com
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