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Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

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Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#11

Post by fxtentacle »

Leverage.

If your work improves the productivity of 100+ other people, you're surely worth the price.

If your work saves $500k+ in annual costs, you're surely worth the price.

If hiring you cripples key competitors, you're surely worth the price.

If you can enable new revenues streams through knowledge that only you have, you're surely worth the price.

If hiring you does not increase productivity, reduce costs, fend off competition, or bring in more revenue, then you'll be fighting an uphill battle to justify that salary. But if you do, talk about it. People gossip and those companies who have the biggest multiplier to benefit off your work will be working hard to reach you.

In my opinion, remote or not is less important than you think. The key decisions will be based on whether hiring you at that price is a net positive for the company or not.

EDIT: And if you're outside of the US, set up a local LLC so that US-based companies can treat you like an independent contracting business. That'll make it much easier to hire you across borders. And at that price, you can surely afford the $1000 annually for a tax advisor retainer.

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#12

Post by sgt »

RortyPorty wrote: post #7

Go work for Meta (other MANGA companies would likely work but I'm not as familiar with them). Meta is shooting to have a significant portion of their workforce be remote over the next five years so they're pretty much always willing to offer full time remote. As someone working remote, I can say their location-based pay adjustments really doesn't scale to local cost of living (in a good way). Plus thanks to all the b…

MANGA companies. It didn't take HN long, did it.

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#13

Post by johnebgd »

k__ wrote: post #10
PaywallBuster wrote: post #6

That's high enough that it would be difficult to find alternatives to FAANG and some of them may accept remote or not (highly uncertain), employees are certainly pushing for it but may be difficult to justify the high salary without coming to office in the future when things start getting back to normal

They could be lucky and score a job in an overfunded startup.

Until said startup fails..

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#14

Post by k__ »

ayoubElk wrote: post #3

An alternative scalable way is to switch from a full time job to becoming a freelancer/consultant and set your own rates. In order to be able to land high paying projects as a consultant, you would need to showcase your skills somehow (open source, portfolio, etc...). This can happen later on though and as a start the easiest way would be to ask for referrals and make it known to your network that you're looking for…

This.

Freelancing is a good option.

250k a year is 20k a month, for 12 months a year.

20k a month is 1k a day, for 20 work days a month.

How to make 1k a day? Write 2 technical articles.

Btw. as a freelancer you could end up paying less taxes, because more things are deductible. This could mean, you can end up with the same money after taxes without making 250k a year.

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#15

Post by amacasubstack »

My main trick has been to specialize in things that all companies like a lot (AWS, js, python), jumping gigs, and leveraging Remote Contracting networks [1].

To get to ~200k remote salaries is hard, but not impossible if you make clear what kind of business leverage you bring and what responsibilities you can take.

In addition, you might not actually need such a high Remote salary if you choose to live in cheaper towns. You don't need a $200k salary if you can make your $120k feel like $1M by living in the countryside.

[1] "How I got wealthy without working too hard": https://amaca.substack.com/p/how-i-got-wealthy-without-worki...

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#16

Post by iandanforth »

xwdv wrote: post #4

Here’s a cheap and easier trick: find two easy remote jobs each paying $125k. There’s your $250k a year. You don’t need any particularly distinguished resume. With the right job responsibilities, this is doable for a software engineer. If you can offset the two jobs a bit by time zone it’s even better. But you better hurry, once people catch on that this is possible the supply of developers can quickly increase overn…

Note sure why this is getting down voted. Freelancers and contractors work multiple client jobs all the time. Low wage workers work multiple 'full time' jobs all the time. Are FT software engineers special?

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#17

Post by moreira »

sgt wrote: post #12
RortyPorty wrote: post #7

Go work for Meta (other MANGA companies would likely work but I'm not as familiar with them). Meta is shooting to have a significant portion of their workforce be remote over the next five years so they're pretty much always willing to offer full time remote. As someone working remote, I can say their location-based pay adjustments really doesn't scale to local cost of living (in a good way). Plus thanks to all the b…

MANGA companies. It didn't take HN long, did it.

What I will never understand is how harmless old Netflix found its way into an acronym for the big beasts of tech. Not even Microsoft gets that privilege (for some reason).

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#18

Post by mdm12 »

It is definitely possible to achieve the total compensation you're looking for working remote. The companies generally fall into two categories: FAANG/MANGA/BigTechAcronymOfTheWeek companies that are remote-tolerant, and remote-first companies that are either late-stage startups or recently IPO'ed. The first category can certainly support 250k+ for an SWE at a level similar to L5 or higher. The bar will certainly be higher for the second category (as they don't have stupid amounts of money that FAANG does), so Staff+ will likely be the only positions that offer that type of compensation. Levels.fyi is a great resource to see current TC levels for offers being given by these companies.

I have been recently going down the same path you have, so I can list some options I have encountered, for whatever that may be worth:

* Coinbase

* Confluent

* Addepar

* Gemini

* Ramp

* Reddit (doesn't change compensation based on location like many companies, by the way!)

* Socure

* Benchling ...

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#19

Post by fxtentacle »

amacasubstack wrote: post #15

My main trick has been to specialize in things that all companies like a lot (AWS, js, python), jumping gigs, and leveraging Remote Contracting networks [1]. To get to ~200k remote salaries is hard, but not impossible if you make clear what kind of business leverage you bring and what responsibilities you can take. In addition, you might not actually need such a high Remote salary if you choose to live in cheaper tow…

Great article.

Re: Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job

#20

Post by tyingq »

ayoubElk wrote: post #3

An alternative scalable way is to switch from a full time job to becoming a freelancer/consultant and set your own rates. In order to be able to land high paying projects as a consultant, you would need to showcase your skills somehow (open source, portfolio, etc...). This can happen later on though and as a start the easiest way would be to ask for referrals and make it known to your network that you're looking for…

Keeping in mind things like self-employment tax, health insurance, sick days, vacation, 401k matching, liability insurance, and so on.

That is, don't take your billable rate * 2080 hours/year and compare that as apples-to-apples.

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