Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by kevindeasis » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

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…

Hey Mark how the hell did you manage to write 20 books?

Im interested in writing books but i cant seem to have enough time to make it a top priority for me

also how do you keep healthy at 70?

would you also say that in your case, tech is one of your primary hobbies?

also any advice on writing your first patent outside of your employer?

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

#392

Post by ghaff » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

eatYourFood wrote: post #390

ghaff wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal work I did was for an expert witness case as a subject matter expert (not a lawyer). There is no way we could have/would have agreed to a fixed fee up front unless it was for a really outrageous amount. (Well, it ended up being a pretty outrageous amount anyway but there's no way we could have reasonably scoped the work.) Most of the work we did in general was for specifically scoped deliverables and we act…

Lawyers are mostly pretty bad at pricing, let’s not use them as a benchmark for our industry. But yes, you did some law work and they want you to charge hourly rather than based on value.

The point is that we would have had no way of pricing "value" up-front. It wasn't our primary business (which we mostly did price based on value). So charging $500/hour (or whatever it ended up being) made a lot more sense for everyone than just throwing a $100K invoice out there when we really didn't have any idea what sort of time commitment we were looking at.

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

#393

Post by revorad » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

aristofun wrote: post #303

revorad wrote: post #82

In my experience, the easiest way to earn more is to work as a contractor. You can charge more, have more control over your time, get raises more often and go on holiday more often (every 6 months). I made a whole video series about getting into contracting. This first one lays out my take on why you should consider it - https://learnetto.com/tutorials/why-should-you-become-a-cont...

How hard was it for you to find a client ready to pay 130$+/hour?

Not sure where you got that number from, but getting about that much after a few years of experience is not very hard at all. I've only worked for a daily rate, never hourly. I'm based in the UK where a senior developer can get contracts upwards of £600 per day pretty easily.

Now with remote work being the standard, you can get much more if you work for good US companies.

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

#394

Post by sofixa » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

Msw242 wrote: post #291

kileywm wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

272 days is very high. Full time work in the US with 0 vacation (typically is 10-20 days) and 0 company holidays (typically is 5-15 days) is 250 days. Perhaps you mistyped?

Don't they have a 4 day work week in France?

Some places are starting to introduce it, but it's very rare. However the standard work day is 7 hours.

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

#395

Post by abirch » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #324

jason-phillips wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I'm 50 and don't feel as though the sun has set on my usefulness yet. I'm definitely experiencing more demand than ever. My personal philosophy is similar and I very much love the work I do. 1. My role is to help the team. 2. Stay humble. There is always a better way to do something and we're very lucky to be in our position. 3. Practice not talking. Let others have the experience of figuring it out for them…

I'm 55. I'm tired of learning. I've been learning for 30+ years of professional software work, and none of it applies to any new jobs I might want to seek (I'm talking about specific languages, platforms, buzzwords, etc.) The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with and still be competent. I can see that by the time I retire, the knowledge I have spent my adult life acquiring will be useless…

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Well, that's true of every day except one, the day you die.

The question is what do you want to do? What's important to you? All knowledge will be obsolete or obvious. The question is what do you want out of life?

I'm blessed to be doing fun stuff with amazing people. Definitely grateful for this amazing life even though it's short. We're all going to be dead much longer than we're going to be alive. Think about what is important to you and go after it.

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

#396

Post by sofixa » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

Jach wrote: post #310

sofixa wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 weeks vacation per year is pitiful. Do people really get on and are happy with only that? I get 5 weeks ( minimum legal in France), i use it to the max and it's okay, but sometimes insufficient.

A lot of people are quite happy working, quite happy with their local environment, and feel no need to take a vacation. For other uses of (paid or unpaid) days off (being sick, funerals, important kid events, 'just not feeling it today', maternal leave, paternal leave, whatever) policies vary so much from company to company and individual to individual; I think this variability is a good thing and gives an additional…

> A lot of people are quite happy working, quite happy with their local environment, and feel no need to take a vacation

I love my current job, the people, the work, the challenges. I still need an occasional break, and I still like seeing different things.

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

#397

Post by intuitionist » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

rco8786 wrote: post #277

intuitionist wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people on HN may be too young to remember the early 2000s, when you’d kill someone for your stock price to be down only 60% over 3 years, but it absolutely happens to good companies too.

We can talk about normal expectations without having to explicitly state that black swan events can happen. If you took a stance of “I’m not going to take any pay in equity because I saw what happened in 2001” you would have left millions of dollars on the table over the last 20 years.

Stocks underperforming cash for three years is hardly a black swan event; it happens in about a fifth of 3-year periods.

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

#398

Post by Hermitian909 » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

StefanWestfal wrote: post #46

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…

Interesting point, would you say it makes more sense to focus on adopted technologies rather then interesting ones in thier growth phase? Concrete: I learned React a while ago but find Svelte interesting and think it has potential. I am no SWE but interested.

Not OP but I have a thought here:

For engineers early in their career, I'd say you probably want to focus on tech that is adopted but not generally viewed as heading towards obsolescence (React or Java are in this category, for example).

Mid to late career it can be smart to latch onto tech in its growth phase if you believe in it. For example if you were early on the Kubernetes train and managed to build those skills well you're worth a lot of money right now. Actually making that kind of judgment call probably isn't smart when you're junior because you're unlikely to have the kind of experience and instincts to consistently pick winners.

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

#399

Post by seadan83 » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

flstk wrote: post #380

seadan83 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to go the employer website or get lucky finding the listing on 'indeed' or something like that. Otherwise, you need to be contacted by the recruiter the company is working with, and the recruiter is unlikely to go beyond LinkedIn and other local talent. That is probably where the disconnect is.

Can you share the URL of the job ad?

With regret I cannot.

1. The position was actually recently filled. We likely will have another opening soon but the posting is not yet up (perhaps will be in a month or two).

2. It would be personally identifiable

Trying to even find examples of such job postings... I think there is a market fit for a new job search website, it should be far, far easier to find these kinds of jobs postings. I'm not sure how a person can find these things without a recruiter contacting them.

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

#400

Post by pb7 » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

lr1970 wrote: post #364

willis936 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a law mandating that all employment be listed? Omitting a high school fast food gig is accepted, why is omitting moonlighting not? It's not lying about education or employment, so I don't see how it is fraud.

Unfortunately, there is no clear cut rules about what constitutes resume fraud. Making up employment records is clearly a resume fraud. Omitting employment could be construed as fraud depending on the context. Omitting ice-cream parlor gig while in high school is probably OK. Working for Google and Facebook at the same time and omitting one might be not.

Who is deciding all of this? Sounds like conjecture.