Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 515 posts

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

#261

Post by fxtentacle »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #66
fxtentacle wrote: post #11

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…

> 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. This is only half of the story, though. The real question is whether or not the company can accomplish the same thing at similar quality in a similar timeframe by hiring someone with a lower compensation request. The value you produce for a company s…

I agree. At that price point, I expect that I can just forward emails from a customer complaining about an issue and said developer will understand the underlying problems, come up with a plan, talk to related coworkers, and self-manage rollout of the patch.

In short, they save me time and effort because I don't need to babysit them where cheaper and less experienced developers would need my planning and guidance.

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

#262

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

rco8786 wrote: post #137
bitcharmer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, going for equity in these scenarios is a mine field and almost never as profitable as advertised by the employer.

I could not disagree more. Public companies will give you $X amount in stock. In writing. With specific vesting periods, etc. Obviously if the stock goes up or down so does your pay. But there’s no real way for companies to game this against you. Nearly Every highly paid SWE in the US takes a significant amount of their pay in equity. As an anecdote - I take around 70% of my pay as equity and so does everyone I work…

Public companies will sometimes tell you $X amount of stock and not tell you the number of shares, which is what actually matters. For the purposes of the offer, the dont generally use today’s market price as their price per share. In those cases, you can actually end up with less than is offered.

And in pre-IPO companies that’s the norm, but that’s beside the point.

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

#263

Post by gorbachev »

kortilla wrote: post #84
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The easiest way to make a lot more money… Finding two separate jobs that each pay median developer salaries while requiring only half-time input, working them concurrently, and then constantly finding new contract jobs that fit your criteria is not what I’d call “easy” FWIW, I’ve managed remote teams for a long time. It’s not hard to spot the people who are playing games like this to put in half-time.

> It’s not hard to spot the people who are playing games like this to put in half-time. Only if they suck.

Does it matter, if they don't suck?

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

#264

Post by eatYourFood »

indymike wrote: post #171
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. In my experience you shouldn't need to do this. In fact, I suspect doing this creates both a taxation and legal nightmare. You should have a re…

> In my experience you shouldn't need to do this. In fact, I suspect doing this creates both a taxation and legal nightmare. Have worked with both arrangements. Much easier to deal with a US based LLC than anything that is managing payroll. For the contractor the LLC arrangement may end up being better, too because at least in the US corporations pay tax in arrears, and individuals have money withheld in advance. > E…

It’s simple to play invoices to foreign consultants. I’ve been working for American clients for years, I’d never register anything in the US and have to deal with US authorities.

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

#265

Post by alasano »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #193

Well, it is a workers market right now. Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working, but for the last two remote jobs, the offer letter I received was more than what I verbally agreed on with HR. Since I am also 70 years old, I take this as good evidence of how pro-worker the job market is right now. I offer free mentoring (see my web site) and always talk about the importance…

You're certainly a very inspiring person!

"Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working"

I think you may be underselling yourself a touch here ;)

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

#266

Post by ssijak »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #2

You should think about it from the company's perspective: Why should they hire someone at twice the rate at which they can find very good people? As you say most remote companies pay either average or slightly above-average local market salaries as that's good enough for most developers to find these jobs attractive enough (since many prefer remote work) for the companies to fill up their hiring pipeline with lots of…

I'm close to 250k range, with bonuses in the range. And I'm from Eastern Europe. But yeah, your second paragraph is key for enabling that. Or being very lucky.

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

#267

Post by citizenpaul »

Jensson wrote: post #132
bitcharmer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, going for equity in these scenarios is a mine field and almost never as profitable as advertised by the employer.

Getting $100k sticker price worth of stocks per year is worth about $100k a year. If stocks go up they are worth more, otherwise less. On average they will be worth more than cash, and for a big company it is rare for them to go down a lot, so I'd say that getting the $100k worth of stocks a year is at least as good as just getting the cash. Edit: Not sure why people think otherwise. Maybe they are used to companies…

>Not sure why people think otherwise.

Because stock compensation can be vastly different experiences therefor not just as good as getting cash.

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

#268

Post by ssijak »

pembrook wrote: post #167

If you're inside the US, just apply to any private unicorn or public tech company (the ones that get media coverage). Anecdotally, roughly 50% of them are now cool with full remote and virtually all will pay 250k or more in total comp. If you're outside the US, forget about salaried roles. I've found that a vast majority of companies mentioned above will have blanket policies against hiring non-US workers (most HR de…

First part of the analysis is correct. But I care to disagree with the second one starting from here "For all the talk about COVID unlocking the global marketplace of talent, I don't see any evidence of that happening yet." I work exclusively remotely for around 4 years, and I was able to find good remote jobs previously, but after the pandemic started I noticed a large increase of offers and especially noticeable were offers from US companies/startups which were less common before. I'm based in Eastern Europe, but I do spend a lot of time abroad also traveling and I'm happy that a lot of new companies have embraced remote work.

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

#269

Post by ghaff »

eatYourFood wrote: post #250
wpietri wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are doing by-the-hour contract work you can generally set your own terms for which hours you work and how many.

Hourly is unprofessional and a conflict of interest with your client. The worst deal I would sign is a day rate (no logging hours) but fixed scope/duration is far better.

It really depends. In general I prefer charging by the task but that assumes a well-scoped and predictable task. That works for some things and not for others.

Of course, there are a number of professions (law, accounting, etc.) where hourly charges are absolutely the norm. I've done some legal work and it was in some ways very nice to get paid whenever you were "on the clock."

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

#270

Post by hermannj314 »

cj wrote: post #252
hermannj314 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I am not doubting you did the right job firing this guy. But you brought the wrong anecdote to this debate. The original idea was about a 2nd job. Thats all. You are saying that shows bad reputation and moral compass and then trying to shoe horn in the idea that people with multiple jobs are liars and poor performers. Have you ever had to work two jobs? As someone that did and whose parents also did, I dont equ…

Were you and your parents working 2 jobs on non-conflicting schedules? I think is perfectly acceptable to work 6-2pm and 2pm-8pm for 2 employers. But I don’t think it’s ethical to work 2 jobs where the hours are overlapping not on a staggered schedule. > Have you ever had to work two jobs Yes, when starting my startup. I woke up at 5am, worked until 9am on my startup, went to my day job and worked a full 8 hours, the…

This is a great story. So when the original poster suggested working 2 jobs, you didn't tell the story about how you worked two jobs to build your own business and how it is a great idea that brought you success, you instead told the story about how you fired a guy that worked two+ jobs.

I guess that blows my mind, you have a great origin story. It seems we agree on more than I realize, we just assumed very different things.

Congrats on all the success you have had with starting your own business and the hard work it took to make it.

You've helped me to reflect on my own biases with your posts and replies.

Post reply on HN