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How to find a remote job

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Re: How to find a remote job

#131

Post by [deleted] »

TomMarius wrote: post #94
objclxt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm considering setting up as an Estonian e-resident soon though ( https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/ ) to change where I pay my taxes. Talk to a solicitor before you do this unless you want HMRC to come a knocking. Estonian eResidency is not actual residency, and it won't change the country you're resident in for personal tax purposes. You could set up a company in Estonia, but if you're an in…

The way its done here in Europe (don't know about USA) is to have most of your spending billed to the company as an expense. You take very little to no money out of the company.

[deleted]

Re: How to find a remote job

#132

Post by festivusr »

sarchertech wrote: post #30
kilroy123 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree you're not competing globally as an American. However, you are competing with all developers in the US!

You're competing with all developers looking for remote work. Which isn't close to all. Then, once you have remote experience, in most cases you're really only competing with other developers who have remote experience. It's hard to get a remote job right out of college. But if you're good at your job, and have 5+ years of experience, with at least some remote experience, it's not that hard. Certainly easier than "co…

What is the skillset they're looking for that would be proven out by having worked remote before?

Re: How to find a remote job

#133

Post by justadeveloper2 »

I had hoped that by now a lot more developer jobs would become remote because why not? Everyone commuting is wasting a lot of resources for dubious value. But instead, I have seen remoting as counter to the trend--managers want dev teams "co-located" so they can "collaborate" or whatever. They just don't trust people is what it all comes down to. Maybe rightly so.

Another factor: Internet service hasn't gotten better and mine has actually degraded even though I live in the suburbs of a a major metro area. I'm basically either stuck paying Comcast (a reprehensible company whom I would not be shocked to find out that the C-level execs eat live babies) or the crappy DSL from Frontier, which I pay to be inconvenienced by, but at least am not sending my money to Shitcast and cable tv brain deadness. God I hate how this has all played out!

My co-workers refer to my ISP as "North Korea Internet" because when I do work remotely I end up experiencing random outages or speed dips that make our VPN unusable. DSL topology is weak and Frontier is likely under-investing in their infrastructure while slamming as many customers as possible onto that network.

Re: How to find a remote job

#134

Post by justadeveloper2 »

gedrap wrote: post #103
drinchev wrote: post #24

> Upwork, PeoplePerHour and Freelancer are great places to secure remote work. What you’ll find may be more short-term, but that doesn’t mean it can’t evolve into something permanent (if that’s what you’re looking for). Scratch that! Those platforms are useless even for freelancers. Best advice that worked for me is to apply for any job and during the interview process you just say that you will work remote and come…

Out of curiosity, what percent of companies just outright refused to consider remote work? And of those that considered you, how many had no remote engineers or didn't really have the processes in place to support remote work? Because, I think, working remotely it's not just something that you, as an organization, do. Getting it right, in my experience, requires active effort.

What I have seen is that devs start fulltime at the office and as they gain experience at the company and the trust level builds, then they start working remotely a couple days a week. Some people become indispensible and then want to move and the company will cut a 100% remote deal in order to retain their services. This is really the only way I have seen it work out such that the person maintains any kind of job security.

Re: How to find a remote job

#135

Post by justadeveloper2 »

jomkr wrote: post #21

Here's what I do. Find employees using LinkedIn, find their GitHub profile and any projects they're doing that I find interesting. Create a good pull-request. After it's accepted, I send a follow-up saying I'm looking for work and asking if they'd pass on my CV. I only do PR for projects that interest me anyway, so it's not time-wasting as I'd do Open Source work anyway. This approach hasn't actually got me a remote-…

I'm just curious how much money you have made with that technique? Most places I have worked that pay anything decent don't host public code on github. It seems like great advice until I stopped and thought about it and realized that. Is there really any money in open source work if you're not tied to some major company like Google who is paying your salary?

Re: How to find a remote job

#136

Post by curun1r »

vram22 wrote: post #129
curun1r wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not what he was referring to, but for someone planning to work for a Western company and live in Thailand, you might consider the Thailand Elite [1] program. It's 500,000 Baht ($14k) which is good for 5 years and allows stays up to 6 months per visit, meaning much more infrequent visa runs. It also comes with black car airport transfers and priority lines through customs, so it makes traveling back and forth…

Which parts of Thailand did you visit, and which did you like more/most?

I visited Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Koh Lanta, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao.

Bangkok was my least favorite. Traffic is terrible and it got kinda depressing to be offered sex as often as happens to a white man when he goes there.

Chiang Mai is amazing. It's beautiful, has a huge expat community, the people are much friendlier than Bangkok and the food is amazing. It's really easy for foreigners to live/work from there.

Phuket wasn't my favorite, but I only stayed in the town, which doesn't have much of a reputation.

Koh Lanta was pretty, but the beaches weren't particularly picturesque. I spent some time working at a coworking facility (Kohub) which I can't recommend highly enough. It's a little dead in Green Season, but not too bad.

Koh Phi Phi is a lot more picturesque, but it's a party island and I didn't get a decent night's sleep in my time there. It's kinda like Vegas in that it's great for about 36 hours and then starts to get old pretty quickly.

Koh Samui and Koh Phangan were really pretty but also really touristy. I'm not sure I would opt for an extended stay in either. Koh Tao is a diving island with mediocre diving, so there's not much point going there if you're not learning to dive in some capacity. But it's a great place to get an Open Water or Rescue Diver certification.

If I were working a remote job while in Thailand, I'd probably choose either Chiang Mai or Koh Lanta to start. But it's easy enough to move around, so unless you've got kids, there's no reason to settle on just one place.

Re: How to find a remote job

#137

Post by vram22 »

curun1r wrote: post #136
vram22 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which parts of Thailand did you visit, and which did you like more/most?

I visited Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Koh Lanta, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao. Bangkok was my least favorite. Traffic is terrible and it got kinda depressing to be offered sex as often as happens to a white man when he goes there. Chiang Mai is amazing. It's beautiful, has a huge expat community, the people are much friendlier than Bangkok and the food is amazing. It's really easy for foreigners t…

Thanks for the in-depth answer; that's some useful info.

Re: How to find a remote job

#138

Post by elliotec »

derefr wrote: post #90
elliotec wrote: post #80

The hardest part of remote jobs is finding one that will pay even remotely (hehe) what you could make at a local company. My experience with remote interviewing culminated in getting 3 separate remote offers for anywhere between 35-60% less than my asking salary or the local offers I received. Part of this might be that my area (Salt Lake City) has particularly high engineering salaries despite what most people expec…

> The hardest part of remote jobs is finding one that will pay even remotely (hehe) what you could make at a local company. If you live outside the US, it's the opposite: the goal is to find a job that pays a US programmer's salary, which is usually far more (yes, even outside SV) than what you could make at any "local company."

That's very interesting, and makes sense.

Re: How to find a remote job

#139

Post by dep_b »

emilp89 wrote: post #124
dsego wrote: post #19

Join toptal.

How difficult are the interviews? I talked to one guy who said that they are.

Don't worry about the interviews if you're able to have a conversation in English. The interviews are there to weed out the people that can't communicate. There are some technical tests that can be daunting, because they're a bit skewed towards algorithms. I had to take the tests twice actually because I simply wasn't able to pass it the first time, outside of the US people aren't as fixated with algorithms but I still think it's a fair test. You can retest in x months unless you really painfully screwed up some part of the hiring process.

Make sure you're properly prepared for the tests, have your environment set up. My mistake was to use a Playground for a live coding test that would completely screw itself up once the code I entered became more complex. Very painful.

I don't think they only hire the best of the best of the best but anyone that gets through their hiring process is definitely a useful programmer, no doubt.

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