Ask HN: Where do you find great remote developers?

Depends on definition of "excellent". Usually great engineers tend to live in the most expensive places, because 1) they can afford it 2) there are many companies which offer relocation. So here you just have to pay a big buck (and compete with top tech companies for the talent), so devs can pay for the housing and expensive life, let's say in SFBA.

If you're not looking for stars with Google on their resumes or 5 year SV experience, which is also OK, there are plenty of engineers who can do a great job without Google on their resumes. Maybe little bit slower, maybe not. If you can't find them, your interview process is broken.

If something doesn't work right, it means you're looking inexpensive talent in expensive areas, or exceptional talent in places where you can't find it. You're remote, but talent often is more about geography.

Also, use GitHub (or git-awards.com) for your search. I have pretty popular repos, in the top 100 JS devs for San Francisco, email is specified in profile, but recruiters don't reach. They just don't use this channel. They only know about one site - LinkedIn.

Take a look at where great companies hire outside of the US.

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Estonia, New Zealand - all not very well "known" as offshore, but great because there's plenty of people working at local companies that you can poach at a discount compared to your head office. Now start invading their local hangouts.

Generally speaking you should advertise where those people hang out weekly or daily. Pay for an advertisement in the latest tech-framework-that-relates-to-your-work-newsletter with a project donation, that really specific podcast that people who work in your stack listen to, StackOverflow (targeted), subreddits, Slack and Discord channels all centered around your stack.

LinkedIn and recruiters generally won't get you the crème de la crème, because it's not as cost effective for them.. You have to work to find them. So go out, seek and offer!

You still need to separate the wheat from the chaff. Compare yourself to your old colleagues, do they make a lot more than you? Are you more effective than them? What about the reverse?

There are plenty diamond in the rough engineers. By nature, a vast quantity of people don't know their worth, and what's available to them - so don't just seek those that already know, seek skills and reward them for those skills.

Agreed. Making remote work well requires just about everyone to be firing on all cylinders: you, your team, and especially your manager.

And side note: The common wisdom about don't be the only remote person on a team is true. I've done it, and it absolutely sucks.

A lot of posts on the "Who is Hiring?" Thread (at least the good ones) that happens every month will contain contact information of people at the company often times who are in charge of the actual hiring. I assume this is what that was referring to