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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

#491

Post by wpietri »

eatYourFood wrote: post #483
wpietri wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of ways to screw clients with fixed-fee projects. The most common is to ask the client what they want, write that down, and build it for a fat fee based on the value they imagine they'll be getting. It turns out clients mostly don't know shit about what they actually need. Indeed, for many projects it's impossible to know the right thing to build up front, as much of the data is unavailable until you…

And the clients aren’t to blame? Some will force waterfall on you then change their minds on requirements, am I a charity that just gives work away for free when they change their mind? Many large companies absolutely refuse agile delivery and require fixed scope and cost to get anything done.

How quickly we go from, "Clients should pay for value" to "fuck the clients, they deserve to get cheated".

Yes, waterfall is a bad choice. But no, clients aren't to blame for trusting a vendor to do right by them.

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

#492

Post by citizenpaul »

rco8786 wrote: post #284
citizenpaul wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not sure why people think otherwise. Because stock compensation can be vastly different experiences therefor not just as good as getting cash.

It’s weird to say this though. Because stock comp is purely additive in almost all cases. The amount it adds to your pay is variable, and in extreme circumstances can even be $0. But it’s not like you can really lose money because of equity based pay, under normal circumstances.

You could be compelled to accept a lower salary with the expectations of stock being worth lots of money then it actually (as is the usual case) ends up being less than salary would have.

I mean this scenario only happens at just about every startup if you read peoples experiences though I don't know if there are or if its possible to have a study done on this since the data is likely private.

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

#493

Post by eatYourFood »

wpietri wrote: post #491
eatYourFood wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the clients aren’t to blame? Some will force waterfall on you then change their minds on requirements, am I a charity that just gives work away for free when they change their mind? Many large companies absolutely refuse agile delivery and require fixed scope and cost to get anything done.

How quickly we go from, "Clients should pay for value" to "fuck the clients, they deserve to get cheated". Yes, waterfall is a bad choice. But no, clients aren't to blame for trusting a vendor to do right by them.

> "fuck the clients, they deserve to get cheated".

Why use quotation marks for something I didn't say? Nothing I've said means "fuck the clients" unless you are maliciously taking the worst possible interpretation.

A change that takes a massive amount of time and effort isn't something I should do for free.

I'm more than happy to build a backlog, refine it, and build until there's a RC... so few enterprise clients want to subscribe to the perceived risk, they'd rather spend months specifying everything upfront to make some senior person happy whether that delivery methodology has been proven to work or not.

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

#494

Post by seadan83 »

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?

I created a burner email address:

remoteworkhackernewstempemail@gmail.com

Feel free to email me, I would be happy to refer someone. The pay would be somewhere in the $140-$170k range. It is a good company, tiny team working in biotech and oncology. Feel free to email me and I can share details.

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

#495

Post by baobabKoodaa »

seattle_spring wrote: post #476
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you feel that there's a good chance that the stock of the company you're working for is going to tank, take that as a sign that you should work somewhere else ;) If you get $600k in cash, and you immediately exchange that into $600k in company stock (with no restrictions on when you can sell that stock), how could that possibly be a worse deal than getting $600k in company stock with restrictions on when you can…

Seems like a strawman, as no company is giving you the cash as a lump sum payment like that up front. Even if you get the option, which mostly you don't, it's between: 1. A grant at $Xk, converted to shares on start date and vesting proportionally over 4 years or... 2. A salary bump equivalent to the grant in (1), paid out ~bi-weekly at (1/104)*$Xk. 104 being the amount of bi-weekly pay periods to occur over a 4 year…

It's not a strawman, it's a direct response to grandparent comment in this thread, who said:

> getting the $100k worth of stocks a year is at least as good as just getting the cash

I am arguing that getting $100k worth of cash is always at least as good as getting $100k worth of stocks. You're saying that it's not realistic to have the option to get cash instead of stocks, and that's true but it's besides the point.

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

#496

Post by 0xBDB »

1991g wrote: post #405
lr1970 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how they would know (call all places to see if you also worked there?). It can be tracked during your background check (using SSN). They will make you sign a form that you authorize them to perform such a check. Fail to sign the form - job offer is rescinded. Again, depends on employer.

> It can be tracked during your background check (using SSN). They will make you sign a form that you authorize them to perform such a check. Can you show me a background check service that offers a list of previous employers found by SSN? I did not know that exists. Unless they're consulting the IRS, I don't know how it could exist. Background checks as I understand them, tend to check things like: credit score, con…

https://theworknumber.com/

You can check your own for free. Employers buy in bulk. Mine is completely accurate and includes full and accurate W2 info, i.e., salary and bonus (not stock grant) history to the dollar. Lying on a resume is generally a bad idea.

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

#497

Post by okhobb »

overrun11 wrote: post #477
okhobb wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is actually true. Most stocks do go down (or at least only match much less risky investments like short-term bonds), but the stock market goes up because some stocks go up a lot. This is why all investors diversify. For example, the Russel 3000 Index goes up ~10% a year because they remove bad stocks and replace them with ones that seem better. But, employment at a single company with stock-based compensation…

I agree the stock market has positive skew but in your career you will have enough bets to smooth out the effects of betting on a single stock. Additionally, you're not really making the same bet as an equity investor because your bet has optionality. Your downside is capped at less than a year in loss earnings because if the stock goes down and the company cannot bring you back up to market rate you just switch comp…

I've never been in the situation of a significantly down price over more than a year. Is it normal that the firm will give 'refreshers' to get back to the target comp in that case?

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

#498

Post by darthrupert »

aristofun wrote: post #486
darthrupert wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could also be that you're seriously overpaid.

I would be the case if not many other developers I personally know and their salaries

The answer to this riddle is that I live in an area where salaries are low (Finland, well outside the capital) and I usually value human connection enough that I haven't sought remote work. But now that everything is remote, I might just as well try for that 2x salary

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

#499

Post by wpietri »

eatYourFood wrote: post #493
wpietri wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How quickly we go from, "Clients should pay for value" to "fuck the clients, they deserve to get cheated". Yes, waterfall is a bad choice. But no, clients aren't to blame for trusting a vendor to do right by them.

> "fuck the clients, they deserve to get cheated". Why use quotation marks for something I didn't say? Nothing I've said means "fuck the clients" unless you are maliciously taking the worst possible interpretation. A change that takes a massive amount of time and effort isn't something I should do for free. I'm more than happy to build a backlog, refine it, and build until there's a RC... so few enterprise clients wa…

Yes, I was paraphrasing. We both know you didn't say those exact words, so I thought you'd figure it out. Hopefully now you can.

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

#500

Post by cma »

pgwhalen wrote: post #441
cma wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One grocery store doesn't bury another by being humanly imperceptibly faster at returning carts than the other by a microsecond, and if they were forced by the structure of the market to spend tons of money on that before investing in being open 24/7 which real customers care far more about and provides far more value, it would seem really weird and like something was really messed up with market incentives in the gr…

> One grocery store doesn't bury another by being humanly imperceptibly faster at returning carts than the other by a microsecond One trading strategy being faster than another does not automatically make it better. This is a common misconception.

There are many, I'm only talking about the ones that get an edge through latency arbitrage.
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