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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

#461

Post by mark_l_watson »

kevindeasis wrote: post #391
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?

I have written 20 books over a 35 year period. Also, since 1998 I have gone on cycles of working a couple of years and then taking lots of time off. I do most of my writing during the time off periods.

Re: health: I try to walk or hike five to 8 hours a week, if I have time. I am mostly a vegetarian. I try to get a lot of sleep. Also, my Dad is 100 and in good health so maybe I got lucky in the gene pool.

My hobbies are cooking, reading (I have been going nuts with Chinese sci-fi recently), and hiking.

Re patents: there is no way I would try for a patent on my own. My patents were all team efforts with the help of highly skilled corporate patent lawyers.

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

#462

Post by someperson »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #432
someperson wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's no legal issue with working multiple jobs in the US. Most employment agreements pay for 40 hours per week. What employees do with the rest of their time is none of the employer's business. They could be spending all that time driving an Uber, developing an open-source project, do contract/consultant work for a friend's startup, or just play video games. As long as the work is getting done, the employer ha…

It doesn’t matter what’s legal, it matters what the company you work for thinks. Anything else is over analyzing the situation. The bottom line is working for two companies full time concurrently is abnormal and it’s not a stretch to imagine you’re not getting 100% of your employee while they juggle two jobs. I’d also fire the report if I discovered them working two jobs.

Well as long as their other work is never directly competing with the company, and the employee is always getting their work done, I don't see an issue with employees doing side-hustles.

Whether that's developing open-source projects, running a YouTube channel or working 40 hours a week for another team.

If they are competing with the company or not getting a reasonable amount of work consistently done, then that would be an issue.

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

#463

Post by mark_l_watson »

jl2718 wrote: post #450
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…

I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing. It appears that you are not a fulltime exclusive salaried “exempt” employee of any one company, and you have not been for many years if ever. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

My last three jobs (including my current role) are as a salaried employee. I decided the overhead was too high getting consulting work and I also wanted to get back into working on teams.

That said, I do take long periods off work which is when I do a lot of writing.

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

#464

Post by wpietri »

c_o_n_v_e_x wrote: post #368
wpietri wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spend more time at something doomed to fail, is that better or worse?

The failure rate of the average start up is heavily against you. My outlook is that you will have to work through a few failed start ups before you finally build/find employment with a successful one. That being said, it can be soul destroying to see a product/system you’ve worked hard on to never go to market / go live.

Oh, for sure. I have been there more than once with the technically sound product that isn't going anywhere. It's awful. So another way to put my question: Once you figure out why the current startup isn't going to make it, why stay? For some people the answer is, "They keep paying you." But for me the answer is, "You probably shouldn't. Move on to something with a chance."

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

#465

Post by zikduruqe »

ojilles wrote: post #382
zikduruqe wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I've been in technology for 30+ years. I cannot wait for the day, I can close my laptop lid and just walk away. It cannot come fast enough.

A piece of unasked for advice: why wait? Honestly, life is too short. Go do what makes you happy.

Unfortunately I have a family member that depends on consistent medical insurance.

It is one thing to do what I find happy, it is another thing to take care of others.

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

#466

Post by wpietri »

eatYourFood wrote: post #345
wpietri wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a blanket statement, I think that's ridiculous. Hourly is a good choice for contracts where they are looking to buy labor. Which is a common model, because they often see contract labor as a substitute for employee labor. The other models you mention can be much better, but also require the contractor to have both particular skills and enough relationship power to make them work. I have seen well-meaning developer…

You can’t do hourly in London, the lowest you can go is a day rate, hours being 1:1 with fees is a great way to leave money on the table as a contractor. As a contractor you want to structure your deliverables on your terms so you can choose how the spend your time. Alan Weiss wrote a lot about this and his writings changed my life. Also, if you’re hourly in London you can’t claim to be independent and you’ll get sma…

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 start shipping things. So what they sign up for and what will actually help them can diverge wildly.

Now that you have shipped the technically correct but not very useful thing, you collect the fee and then start accepting "change orders" at a punitive rate. At this point switching to another contractor will be even more risky and expensive, so they'll probably just suck it up. Or if you're really good at the game, you then negotiate a whole new fixed-fee contract with a higher price tag, and the deliver what they now think they want.

Bonus points if, as I've seen a big-name global contractor do, you deliver something not even barely working but possibly conforming to specs, and then just walk off the job. Even though the client has contractual obligations that they can't fulfill if the software doesn't work. At that point, the client realizes that a) they still need the software, b) the big-name contractor is the only who can deliver in time, and c) suing is risky, will take years, and anyway the big-name contractor can afford more lawyers. In this case the client signed another multi-million dollar contract with the big-name contractor, easily doubling the "fixed" fee. I lost touch with my contacts there before the thing ever worked, so I don't know how many times the big-name global contractor pulled this off on the same job.

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

#467

Post by loydb »

mnemotronic wrote: post #440
nathanfig wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes by a lot of names (sales consulting, solution engineering, sales engineering, etc) but sales engineer is probably the best literal descriptor: basically your job is to go to prospective customers and engage their engineers/architects and work with them to solve their problems using your company’s software or techniques. If you do a good job, the prospect signs up and you make a commission. Engagements vary- y…

In my limited (2 years) experience, the pre-sales engineer, "solution architect" is someone who knows the product and about 85% of the client's environment and requirements. Their job is to say "Our product can meet all your requirements easily. I could code it up in a week." The sales staff moves in and gets the signature, collects the bonus and they and the pre-sales engineers spend the next 5 days on a private bea…

So, I would describe that as a dysfunctional sales team. I've worked at everything from a 40-person startup to companies with over 100,000 employees. The sales engineers on the teams have been the ones with their hands dirty throughout the entire deal lifecycle, and the first ones on call in the weeks following going live to bug hunt.

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

#468

Post by darthrupert »

aristofun wrote: post #448
darthrupert wrote: post #443

I'm a senior with 20 years experience from a first world country and my salary would more than double if I got what you currently get.

You’re obviously underpaid. Or not as senior as you think of yourself.

Could also be that you're seriously overpaid.

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

#469

Post by seattle_spring »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #457
seattle_spring wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the most important benefit: pre-vesting appreciation. Say you are granted $600k that vests over 4 years. Well lucky you, the stock has 1.5x after year 1, doubled at year 2 and tripled by year 3! That means you've cumulatively vested $225k at year 1, $525k at year 2, and $975k at year 3. If you had cash only compensation, you would have received a total of $450k for that same time period.

I feel like this is the most illuminating comment in this thread, so, thank you. That said, if I can choose between receiving $600k in cash today, and receiving $600k worth of public company stock today with restrictions on when I can sell it, then I will choose the cash, because it is worth AT LEAST AS MUCH as the public company stock (because, again, cash is freely exchangeable to public company stock without restr…

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 ;)

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

#470

Post by ojilles »

zikduruqe wrote: post #465
ojilles wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A piece of unasked for advice: why wait? Honestly, life is too short. Go do what makes you happy.

Unfortunately I have a family member that depends on consistent medical insurance. It is one thing to do what I find happy, it is another thing to take care of others.

I’m sorry to hear that. In a certain way staying, then, means maximizing happiness (decent job plus consistent medical insurance >= new job)
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