Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Show HN: RemoteMore – We connect developers with full-time remote jobs (remotemore.com)
334 points by BorisBorisov91 on Sept 14, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 147 comments



"Pass our screening" -- I both like this, and do not like it. While I agree that not everyone is made for remote work, most of the skills to communicate and work effectively when remote can be taught. So what are you screening for? The underlying personality traits that make or break working remotely? Or the learn-able skills?

Also, while not as important, it is worth noting -- for people like myself who have been working remotely for almost a decade, having to go through a screening is a turn-off.


"and ask you to submit a short video to ensure that you have good fit with working remotely." I don't have a lot of confidence in the measurement of having 'a good fit'


A video prescreening? LOL, I've fallen for this from the candidate end, and now that I'm on the other end I'll never let people like this video-screen the best candidates away for not being movie stars.


Also a great way to discriminate against candidates. “This guy is too old/female/black/etc”


If you have a suggestion for alternative ways to evaluate: - English skills - Communication skills - Independent problem-solving skills

Of course, we are against discrimination. Just the opposite, we want a more connected world where people have easy access to job opportunities regardless of where they live.

I am very interested to hear!


All three metrics you mentioned can be evaluated using writing. In fact, writing makes up most of the communication in a remote environment.


I will think in this direction, thank you for putting some more arguments towards that!

My main concern with this direction is whether we should evaluate for language speaking skills. Second concern is cheating. Third concern, it's more difficult to build.


It's actually easier. Cheating can be discouraged via real-time chat sessions, while async communication like emails or essay-style discussions can be scored via an NLP library like spaCy. If a machine can understand and parse the candidate's writing, chances are it's valid English.


That's an awesome idea! Thank you! I'll talk with some users about it to hear their feedback.


I am disappointed to see OP responding in this thread but ignoring this question.


OP here!

We did a very thorough research about the pre-screening.

We thought that technical skills was the central thing, so we had a technical assessment as the centre piece in the pre-screening. However, surprisingly this did not make much of a difference for the companies. They didn't contact more the people who have passed the technical screening, they almost never looked at the test scores. As long as the person has experience/education, that easy sufficient, and they pretty much always test the person in their stack anyway.

That was the reason why we removed the technical part of the screening.

However, the part that really made the companies interested in getting in touch with a person was the video. It turns out that hiring someone remotely is very much about trust, and even a very short video is really good at building trust.

We think of the video as soft-skills pre-screening, in particular pre-screening for skills that predict success in working remotely. Based on research, talks with lots of people in the remote space, a d our own experience, we have arrived at the conclusion that the skills needed to be successful in a remote position are: - Good communication skills - Good independent problem solving skills (some people include being organized, and to not get affected emotionally if something doesn't work out) - Have some level of intrinsic motivation about the profession, about doing this - Sufficient language skills to communicate

Turns out that a short video is about as good a filter for those things as having an interview with a person. It's also structured format, making it more objective than most interviews.

Of course, the videos are not about how good the person looks visually, but about how the person talks about the topics. We are looking for well structured answers, we are looking for a bit of passion about the profession, we are looking for people who look reliable etc. and not for TED talk level presentation skills.

If you have some comments/questions/feedback about the screening process, I'd be glad to hear from you!

(it is 8am here at the moment)


The problem with video screenings is that as a hiring manager, the "gut feeling" that you get when you see a "good fit" is heavily biased to favor people that look, think, and act like you do. And physical attractiveness absolutely has a measurable effect on that feeling, regardless of whether you are aware of it or not. Those people may or may not be the best candidates for the job. To say otherwise is to deny human nature.


I agree completely - people are unfortunately biased.

But the candidate will go to interview with the hiring manager at some point, this cannot be avoided. Then it is in the best interest of everyone to get those things out of the way as early as possible.

It's also a cultural thing, I believe. I have lived in Denmark the past ~10 years, and in Denmark the human part is very important for building trust - seeing the person, talking with the person. Denmark is not so big on long contracts, it's more about the personal relation.


> But the candidate will go to interview with the hiring manager at some point, this cannot be avoided.

This is not true, in my experience. Most of the people I have worked with remotely did not meet their manager before hire. The decision was based on resumes, project work, emails, and phone calls. I first met my boss in my first remote job almost 6 months after starting the job.

Denmark may very well be different. And that will make it harder for you to write a product that works worldwide, if you are building a product that matches the culture in Denmark.


Great feedback, thank you, @codingdave! It is the first time I hear about someone being hired without meeting their manager. Do others have the same experience? Please let me know!


I'm working remotely for a telecom, which has a strong remote-worker culture. Some people do go into the office periodically, often in a "hotel" arrangement where your desk is for the day, but I don't. There is an office near-enough that I could, but nobody on my team or related would be there.

I had three interviews, four if you include the chat with the in-house recruiter I started with. The first of the three formal interviews was the hiring manager, by phone. Second was in-person, with a future (possible) colleague. The third was with the manager's own boss, Director in this case, again by phone.

It all went well enough apparently, though have met many of my colleagues in person since then. As a rule though, I'm remote by default. It's all online chat, conference calls, screen shares and so on.


i find that very unusual. when working with someone, making a personal connection is the first thing i want to do.

that said, we don't do it in Free Software and Open Source contributions either. we send in our code, talk to someone who reviews the code via issue trackers, chat and email and we see each other after a few years at a conference.

so yeah, we build a virtual connection, not a face-to-face one. and while it has been shown that occasional in-person meetings are very good for team building in companies and FOSS projects, we do know that it can work well without.

in fact, FOSS contributions are a strong indicator for a good remote worker.


We have a total of 30 remote workers in our company screen sharing etc daily. We also have a policy of not using cameras and not sharing faces by default. Some people like that for privacy reasons and most people turn off video to save bandwidth and screen real estate. Showing you face is a nice to have but if you’re doing technical work it’s far in the list of priorities


That's interesting feedback, thanks for sharing!

With the rest of my team, we do daily stand-up on a video call - just to know each other more, and to understand each other better. Probably we will switch to fewer video calls as the team becomes more mature (e.g. once a week).

If others have feedback on this topic, it would be helpful to read it.


Just because all workers can be trained to work remote does not mean all employers are capable of doing that training for all employees.

There should be cases for skipping the training like yours, but it’s going to be necessary for a lot of companies who otherwise would burn 4 months failing to on-ramp somebody.


Agreed 100%.

Which implies the employers should also be screened - are they 100% remote, or just allow remote workers? Do they really know how to work remotely, or are they new at this? Do they do occasional gatherings of remote people? Is it world-wide remote, or "in-our-time-zone" remote? Are you truly free to live anywhere you want, or do you need permission to move to a state that doesn't already have an employee in that jurisdiction?

These are all potential deal-breakers for remote professionals, so I'd expect some employer screening to gather answers such as these. I wouldn't exclude companies from the site based on the answers, but I'd absolutely tell potential candidates the answers so we can self-screen out of the ones that don't match needs.


Currently, we have a call with the companies to see if they are serious about their position - e.g. what's their budget.

We will require the companies also to have profiles, in which they answer to things such as development methodology, how many people in the company work remotely, do they offer flexible working hours etc.


what about part-time work?

one of the reasons i like remote work is because i have a family to care for, and working 40 hours wouldn't leave me enough time for that.


Part-time, definitely. There are way more part-time positions when working remotely compared to on-site.


May I ask, how do you find working remotely? I imagine the freedom aspect is nice, and the fact that you don't have to spend x mount of hours every week commuting, but were there other deciding factors in your case?

Would you recommend a remote job over a job "on-site"?


Not OP, but I've been happily working 100% remotely for almost 4 years, so I'll share my two cents. Personally, I get a lot more work done from home than I ever did at an office. Offices have lots of distractions, and it's way too easy to waste time chatting up the person sitting next to you. (That might just be me, though; I'm pretty chatty.) Cutting out the commute is a big one as well, not just for the time saved but also money (gas and car depreciation) and mental energy (I found driving 45 minutes each way pretty draining). Plus, I have the flexibility to take a break and walk the dog, or run a quick errand, or play video games—things that wouldn't be feasible in an office.

That said, there are distractions at home, too, and you have to have a lot of discipline. I got almost nothing done in my first couple months of remote work, and it took me close to a year to get into the flow and develop a structure that actually felt productive. (And then I had the opposite problem of working too much because it's harder to draw a line between work and play.) I do miss the coworker comradery sometimes, but my wife and I also have a pretty big group of close friends that live nearby, so I get to socialize with people outside of work fairly often.

Working remotely is definitely not for everyone, but you would have to pay me a LOT of money to convince me to commute to an office every day.


OP agrees :D I've been working 4 years remotely and I wouldn't go switch to on site. We are building our company as a fully remote company.


I worked for 7+ years remotely and turned down Google/Facebook/Uber/Amazon/Netflix because they wanted me to move. I'd rather spend two months on Hawaii than in some "cool open-plan office", distracted to death, getting sick around influenza periods and wasting time commuting in the process.


Ha if you think you won’t get the flu because you work remotely.. by not being in an office, herd protection actually goes down. I’ve had more illness working remotely than working in the office over my 20+ years.

That said, you’re away from coworkers with kids. That’s the sickness that doesn’t help immunity. But once you have a kid of your own, all that worry goes out the window. Don’t mean to be a party pooper, but its all reality out here

*also how does this remotemore site compare to triplebyte?


It's my observation that when I worked remotely and traveled around the world at the same time, I had the best health state in my life; that was incomparable to e.g. a previous employment with open-plan office with colleagues taking smoking breaks all the time, making the indoor air nasty, and being guaranteed to catch some long-lasting small to medium sickness every year (e.g. half of the office coughing a bit for 1-2 months). Now visiting Google/Facebook and seeing desks crammed next to each other... I meet people outside, throw own parties, visit gyms/saunas, so I am exposed to latest "flu trends", yet remote work made my illnesses infrequent (well, they do happen if I can't stop and don't cut working time to 8 hours/day...). Also, the stress is way lower, I don't need to look at a boss' grumpy face that overcompensates for their lack of capabilities by ramping up their controlling/dominance aspects.


OP here!

RemoteMore vs Triplebyte is an easy question.

Triplebyte: "Do you have remote opportunities? No. Right now, most of the companies we work with are hiring full-time in-office engineers. In the future, we hope to offer more remote opportunities."

--

On the remote work and getting sick, I don't have personal observations. I'll leave that question to others.


I love it. I spread 8 hours of work each day across more like a 12 hour day (5 AM MST - 5 PM MST), giving me tons of breaks while actually improving my availability to my team worldwide, as I'm not restricted to an 8 hour window. I can be working with someone in NYC at their 7 AM, while still talking to people in Vancouver in the middle of their afternoon. And I still have breakfast with my kids, lunch with my wife, go for a walk each morning, and have as much of a free evening as any office worker. My coding is done on my own schedule, in my own space, with my own music, set up the way I want it.

So I do recommend it, but it depends on who you work for - if they want you to sit at your desk for specific office hours, and be available instantly via Slack... or if they fill your entire day with calls, then you may as well go to an office, as that scenario I just described isn't possible.


I did a lot of it a few years ago. I liked it but you had to get out in the evening for social reasons.

The hardest part of remote working is stopping. People assume it's difficult to get motivated, but in fact it's knowing when to stop is the problem because you don't have the external cues of people around you winding up, shutting down computers, seeing the office emptying, the commute back. All these are cues to say Stop, You're Done. Without them you can just keep going, and that's not good.


That is indeed the case. Some of my new teammates asked if we should have some time tracking software, to reassure me they are doing their job. But I told them that they have my trust since we have hired them, and if they deliver on the expectations they set, they will keep having our trust.


I've been working remote for the past two years. It was a bit difficult starting but much of that was due to living in a studio size condo in the middle of a large city. I was surprised by the amount of distractions during work hours and since the amount of space was so small, it felt very cramped being in the same room for twenty or more hours a day. I had to get out after work even if just to walk down to the store and back.

I lived in the middle of the city because I hate commuting. Stop and go traffic sucks the life out of me and the stress of making connections on public transportation created terrible bookends to each day so I always tried to live as close to work as possible. Having a remote job allowed me to move out on the exurban edge where I have a much larger space, it's quieter, and I'm close to the mountains so in the summer I can get in a hike after work when I want. I would have gone further out but internet connectivity quickly goes from 1Gig down to unreliable 30Meg on DSL with a small band of 300Meg service in-between.

I do still make it a point to go out and socialize, which does get more challenging being in a less dense area where I haven't lived long enough to build up social connections. As far as work goes, most of the time it is better but being able to get a group together around a whiteboard can't be beat. Remote collaboration tools are constantly getting better and there are some pretty nice electronic whiteboard tools that would be great to have but the expense right now is too high. Hopefully in the years to come the price will go down. Overall I find working remotely to be one of the best benefits of my current job.


I just applied to job listings with 100% remote options, interviews, take home test projects, etc... got hired, still work for the same company... have moved out of the high-rent tech area to low cost of living area while doing so, COULD NOT BE HAPPIER.


Sounds great!


It really depends on the person. Some like it, some don't.


I worked remotely for 10 years, then for the last five have been on-site. Now my company may send me back to remote work because of space constraints.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. In some ways I'd love to go back to remoting because it offers a lot of freedoms that can't exist in an office with other people. But the last five years have taught me that there is a lot of value in structure, routine, and especially physical presence.

The thing that tips the scales in favor of remoting for me is the lack of a commute. Commuting sucks and I hate it and it's terrible. I think if my office was a walk away (right now it's 50 minutes by car or 2h30m by bus), I would probably stick with working in the office. At least the coffee is free.


> ...structure, routine, and especially physical presence.

I agree, but structure and routine can certainly exist remotely, and while physical presence is great, remote video calls aren't a bad 2nd place. You just need a team culture where poking someone on Slack and asking if they have a few minutes to chat is a normal thing. I'm on and off calls with various members of my team all the time.


You should check our blog - the article about reasons to work remotely, and reasons to not work remotely. blog.remotemore.com


Also not OP, but the biggest hurdle I've found is communication. I feel I'm quite good at communication and I do a lot of little things to make other people feel comfortable (like making sure that my work is always visible, discussing problems and decisions I'm making on group chat, etc, etc). One thing I didn't take into account when I first started doing remote, though, is that communication is a 2 way street. No matter how good you are at it, if the person you have to talk to can't deal with you being remote, it can be really difficult.

It helps enormously if the company you work for is remote across the board because then everybody is struggling with the same issues. If you have a team where some people are remote and some people are local, the local people often don't realise problems.

I've found most of the issues arise around meetings. I work 8 time zones away from the main office so it's an extra challenge. People often plan meetings at midnight my time (even regular weekly meetings), or they will forget to invite me. Sometimes people will make decisions in the hallway and forget that I wasn't in on it. Frequently people will optimise for being interrupted in person, but not online. If I need to talk to a stake holder, I'm often in a position where they have turned off notifications on chat and are 2 weeks behind on their email. I literally have to ping someone else and ask them to walk up to the stakeholder's office and knock on their door for me.

Another serious problem is that people who don't live online often have trouble identifying with you as a person when you are remote. I've had instances where people will get really angry with me because they imagine I'm someone who I'm not. Although video conferencing helps, even 5 minutes in person can make a huge difference. Make sure that the company you are doing remote work for has budgeted for some face time every year. Also realise that this means you almost certainly have to travel a bit, unless you live close to the office.

Again with respect to having a remote job in a not-completely-remote office is that you are going to be on an uneven playing field with your colleagues. I've had a PGM once literally try to sabotage me. It's no fun and the worst part is that there is almost nothing you can do. It is insanely easy for a single person to engineer it so that you are mostly powerless. You really need to be able to trust your co-workers in a way that you don't need to when on-site. This is one of the reasons I wouldn't recommend it for someone who isn't already fairly experienced with politics -- you need to be able to keep your cool and wait for your opportunities.

The other main downside is that you are almost certainly going to be at a disadvantage for promotions, etc. Management types trust people who they can see and talk to every day. No matter how good a job you are doing, things are going to sway towards the people they connect with. When remote, it's almost vital to make sure that you keep talking with people, and maintain communication through email or chatting. You need to make sure that your name also pops up on reports and projects so that management remembers that you exist. Again, if you haven't got the experience to know how to accomplish this, then you may have a rough time.

For these kinds of reasons, I highly recommend at least starting out with either part time remote (a few days in the office and a few days remote), or working on a full remote company. I would especially avoid working from a different time zone when working with a company that is not fully remote until you have a lot of experience doing remote work.


communication is a huge issue.

i was working in one team where everything was fine while i was in the office. as soon as i moved away i was cut off from all decisions because the rest of the team was so used to do things through local in-office chats instead of online.

in another company all our communication was online, and it didn't matter if someone was in the office or not.


I would say that the success in remote work is 60% the company/manager, and 40% the developer.

You need okay level on both sides. Otherwise, the collaboration breaks down within 2-3 months.


right, and since the company is the one in control, having a bad manager usually means the remote employee is the one suffering the consequences. from getting fired all the way to having to fight to get paid at all...

so how do you vet companies against this?


We have a call with the companies before approving their account. If they look unreliable, we won't approve their account.

We also follow up with the companies and the people they have hired to check if everything is going well.

So far, we haven't had problems. We will introduce company profiles soon, with remote info about the companies (e.g. how many remote vs. non-remote people work). We will probably also introduce some free built-in insurance for both parties as we scale.


A guess -- as an employer, if it's just a random pile of resumes without any screening, I can't be bothered to engage. I can have that any time I like by posting basically any public job ad.


Indeed, especially if you publish a remote job opening, you get a ton of resumes.

With RemoteMore, you can search in pre-screened list of candidates, and you can see their videos, to not waste anyone's time.


So learn these skills before applying.

Unless you are arguing from the perspective of the employer. Then I suppose you will have less offers. But apparently employers mostly care about the social skills (comment by op), so this doesn't matter for most.


depends on how the screening is done. if it's a proper tech interview or a coding test then it's not much different than doing tech-interviews/testing as a service, like codility or karat


I worked remotely for years, then went back to an office environment, now am fully remote again.

If it's up to me, I'm going to be a remove senior dev for the rest of my life. No more offices.

There is absolutely no need. I work on very complex projects and am disciplined, but outside of that there is nothing special required. I discuss issues via Slack, we have occasional team video/voice chats when discussing issues that involve the whole team, and then carefully track issues in JIRA.

Can I play video games all day? Yes, and if the work doesn't get done I'll be fired. It's the same as being in an office. You get assigned work, you either do it or you don't do it, and if it's good and ready when it's due you either do more work or you're fired.

Zero issues with any of it ... and I'm not going back.


Totally. Remote work makes work to be about the work you do, not some other thing such as hours spent in the chair, or office politics.


Are you in the US? I think it's easier for US developers to find remote jobs than rest of the world.


exactly, in a few office jobs i either had a private office or i was sharing a room with people who were not on my team. i could have played games or commenting on hackernews all day without anyone noticing, or i could have worked just as well from home or anywhere else.


"Commission per hire: 15% of annual salary"

So basically getting the same fee as a normal recruiter, without them doing any of the work.

Lower fees will attract more companies. For the standard recruiter fee, I rather just use a firm.


They are claiming to pre-screen candidates which in case of remote job I think is not a bad idea.


So, another TopTal without the Top?


RemoteMore is for remote employment, with TopTal you get pretty much only freelancing.


AFAIK TopTal is mostly remote freelancing, often matching Silicon Valley to Eastern European programmers (not possible unless remote).


Sorry, that was what I meant - TopTal is about remote freelancing. But it is not about long-term remote jobs. Getting projects from time to time fits some people, but some people will prefer to work with one company for the long-run, a d that's what RemoteMore is about.


It's much easier to do remote freelancing/contracting/consulting than employment. For employment the target company has to incorporate in employee's country or you need to have a branch that acts as an intermediary; not sure if you won't be on a legally shaky ground and forced to accept the programmers you connected as your own employees.


How do you pre-screen people to get if they will be a good fit for remote?


Well, that would be their value add. I've been working remotely for over 5 years and anecdotally I'd say there are quite a few characteristics you could evaluate to get a feel of how good someone would be for remote. Some of them I'd say would be asking for how they've worked before, what their daily schedules are like, how they've handled communication, how often they respond to the screening process and such before getting into actual work knowledge.


IMO you’d look for time management and communication skills as well as a strong sense of self-assessment and independent decision making.


Note that the comment you're replying to asked How, not what do you screen for. How do you screen for the skills you've outlined?


Thanks for pointing it out, and ya its really hard to do. I think you identify certain signals and do the best you can in your interview process to flesh them out, for example:

1) History of working remotely successfully in the past

2) Strong verbal or written communication skills, i.e. ability to explain complex ideas concisely or to break down large ideas into consumable smaller ones.

3) Higher education background, indicating the ability to push through benign task and consistently reach performance goals (c's get degrees)

4) Aligned long term-goals for example, engineer foo wants to hit a certain salary level by gaining an expertise in $tech_x, and at the same time your company has domain experience in $tech_x that could facilitate for your employer

5) Ability to break down past projects in the context of "how would you do it differently with a do-over" or "what are some examples where you mismanaged technical debt"

None of these ideas are perfect, and execution in the interview is perhaps the hardest part. I myself am a college drop out which makes it ironic that I would suggest people with degrees make for better remote workers, but when it becomes a search for signals a degree from certain tiers of universities is too hard to pass up as a hiring manager who just wants to do a good job.


OP here - ^ that's one very good a answer!

Yes, pretty much like that. I wrote one long reply in this thread on what we're looking for and it is about the same as this post above.

I would qdd to it that experience with working remotely successfully is a great predictor, but it leaves out the candidates that have not worked out remotely so far. In that case, the focus becomes on the other indicators.


The recruiter fees start at 20%, and they are usually 30%+.

Also, with our service, the companies get instant access to lots of pre-screened developers, which they don't with recruiters.


Pre-screening is nice, but not much of a value add. Sourcing candidates is the hard part, and this service can only present the candidates that have entered profiles. No outreach, no advertising at any level.

Perhaps C-levels are 20%, or maybe in the Bay Area, but the standard elsewhere is 15%.


fwiw 15% is really low in my experience, across a range of locations and hiring at all levels . More common would be 1/4 or 1/3 1st year salary, with 3mo trigger (or clawback)

Of course YMMV.


I am in CO, ~30% is pretty standard for anything in tech.


"We will review your profile and ask you to submit a short video to ensure that you have good fit with working remotely."

Why is a video needed? Seems counter-intuitive; someone's age, appearance, and presentability are probably less important in full time remote work (should never be a factor in any job, but the reality of course is that there is a likability factor for on-site workers).

The only thing I can think of is if some of the employers need to video conference a lot, and want people who don't look like hideous monsters, or some such thing. What am I missing here?


Why is a video needed?

Yeah, it seems like a liability in some jurisdictions, as it gives a potential employer a way to discriminate against people of a certain age, ethnicity, or other protected characteristic.

I know that photos are common on CV's in certain parts of the world. But there are very important legal reasons that they're anonymized in others.


Probably avoiding people presenting themselves as a skilled Dev but actually being a dozen folks in sweatshop.


Form what I read on HN, that doesn't help. You can hire someone to do the interview for you, and then get the remote job.

Similarly, some people will interview well, know all the right answers, and then sell or outsource the job to someone who will do it for less.


On the internet no one knows that you’re (not) a dog.


What's the relationship with the employers? I find the main issue with job website that are posted here is that there is usually zero relationship.

Meaning it's mostly information copied from the career page of companies. That's why most these job boards disappear after a couple years.

I suggest if you gather enough interest here today, use it to get actual connections with employers, even if it's a handful.


The "Developers hired through our service" section is super fishy. I googled the 2 devs presented and found their Linkedin. The guy hired "in Portugal by a Danish company" doesn't list any Denmark based company in his profile. The one hired "in Spain by a German company" seems to live in Eastern Europe and doesn't list any German company in his employment history.

Also, including Basecamp, Gitlab, Zapier, Trello, etc logos without having a formal relationship with them probably opens the door for legal actions.


The guys have not updated their LinkedIn profiles - but feel free to reach out to them to ask them! The company that hired Klaus is now hiring 2 more remote developers through our service.


Probably a good idea to limit the hiring examples to people who have updated their LinkedIn. :) Make the additional exposure a fringe benefit.


Sorry, what makes this different than all the other remote job boards that have been posted at HN over the past years?

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=remote+job+board


Interesting how few still have a working website.


I think a lot of Show HNs are experiments. Which is perfectly fine!

Also, a job board is a very low barrier to entry business with high margins if you succeed, so I'd expect there to be a lot of failed attempts.

We also don't know what kind of winddown the ones who shut down had, hopefully it was graceful.


Yeah, it doesn't have to be negative.

They might have re-launched with proper funding under a different name for example, in that case you might not want the previous site to point to the new one.


That it is not a job board :-)

You create your profile once, and the companies contact you with remote work job offers.


How many companies are actually on the platform?

I'm currently in the market for a remote job, but have a hard time seeing how this would deliver me value over actively applying to remote job board positions.

----

Quick EDIT: I just noticed Basecamp as the first company in your showcase. Basecamp has been on a hiring freeze for 18 months now with a public blog post about it.

Are you actually working with those showcase companies or simply mention them because they're well known remote-first/remote-friendly companies.

Post: https://m.signalvnoise.com/things-are-going-so-well-were-doi...


"We aim to bring all of those companies on our marketplace"

Sounds like they are not working with them at all, but want to. If I were them, I'd be worried about those companies coming down on them for mis-use of their logos.


Ah, I skimmed over that.

Looks like this site is going to be a hard pass for me. Questionable ethics touting companies like that.


It's a rough in, I guess.

Site has spelling errors, you sign in with linkedin.. but, you still have to enter all your details (job experience, skills, etc).

There's no way to change your email address, or delete your account. When you click on 'contact', you have to use email.. they don't have a build in messaging app.

I'm guessing it's very much a work in progress. Which is fine, but ... not for me yet.


Pretty standard "made you look!" SEO strategy, just like how Walmart and Amazon list products on their sites that are out of stock.


Looks like a "growth hack" :|


But they post their summer vacation photos on the company web site. What's more legit than that?

https://remotemore.com/about


A lot of mega companies faked it until they made it


Fair enough. So it's more of a LinkedIn with a focus on remote work?

Thanks for the explanation!


Something doesn't need to be different. Variety helps the ecosystem as a whole.


Thanks, Wolco :-) We thought the internet needs this, so we built it.


I don't want to have to add a photo to my profile. Doge.jpg! I choose you!

Once a value in the "city" line of salary selection is selected, I can't unselect it. If all I want is remote work, and I accidentally click that line there is no way (that I found) to undo it. Except for starting over. Which I did.

I'm interested in what you do for a "profile review".


That page has a fantastic TED talk about why work does not happen in office https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XD2kNopsUs

BTW all the best OP


Thank you very much, @Rohan1024


Toptal has definitely cut out a brand name for themselves. But most good companies has their in house recruitment team. I wonder how RemoteMore will value add to them. This is one trend I really want to accelerate


One thing on our roadmap is - resources (series of videos) on best practices for managing a remote team.

We see ourselves mostly as helping the companies to adopt remote work, and in this way helping the developer community. Most developers are ready to work remotely, it is the companies that need to get ready (as a whole, in general).


If you have any ideas, i m all ears (making a similar community)


@Buboard - great to hear! Let's talk some more about this. My email is boris.borisov@remotemore.com


One thing often not discussed with remote work is the legal aspects of it. It’s easy to say you want to work for a company on the other side of the world.

What if there’s a disagreement in the team and the employee goes rogue and puts the code out in public? You can’t do much unless there’s a legal entity in the country of employment.


You are bringing up a very good point. We will build the solution to this - we will incorporate in different countries, and offer to take care of the legal part as a service. Then it is real employment and not freelancing like on other platforms.

It makes a lot of sense to allow people to work together regardless of where they are based. So someone needs to build the solution to make it easier/better.

Btw, Remote work doesn't have to be across countries.


in my company we have hired people before so they could work for clients in other countries. they stayed with us until they found a better legal arrangement.

this can be risky. effectively you are taking on the responsibility for the employee based on local labor laws (which, depending on the circumstances may not let you fire an employee) while you still have a contracting relationship with the company, who can cancel their contract at any time.


Why is this being downvoted?


Probably because it's a bit ridiculous for some random guy that set up a website to suddenly declare that he's going to solve this complex international legal issue.


What if they do it locally? The information is already out there. Having someone in jail doesn't help you.


No, but they're presumably less likely to do it in the first place due to the deterrent


"presumably less likely"

The words every investor wants to hear.


Would be good with an example video so you know what kind of video you should do with yourself.


Many thanks for the feedback! We will implement it :-)


There's never any remote FPGA or circuit design work posted.

I know it's niche, but a ton of embedded stuff requires or utilizes them, and it's a relatively difficult skill to hire for. So you'd think it would be a great fit for remote work.


Doesn't that have a pretty big hardware dependency? That seems like the biggest challenge of working remotely.


Last time I consulted for a startup, they sent me something like 15k worth of hardware, and I just expensed stuff like cables.

You can get a big bad FPGA development board for a few grand, but finding people who are any good at all with FPGAs is really difficult.


Seems like you know something others don’t. Maybe you should build this?


Why your contact address is in Berlin but phone number in Denmark?

Also: please fix "How does it works?" to "How does it work?" on the front page.


We used to live in Denmark with my co-founder, we got investment in Germany and we relocated. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bborisov/


Ugh that's an embarrassing typo - we were changing that page, sorry for that. I'll fix it tomorrow (it's late in the evening here at the moment).


Is there a way to see potential job descriptions before signing up?


You don't see the job descriptions - the companies see your profile and get in touch. This approach is better for the developers, you don't need to make lots of applications, just 1 profile.


Not necessarily better for the developers. If you don't have any recruiters or jobs I'm interested in, its a lot of work to create a profile and no benefit. In fact, it could just create a bunch spam for shady, underpaying gigs.


On the contrary, you'll get contacted for a bunch of stuff you have no interest in. Just like on LinkedIn if you happened to mark yourself open to offers.

Is much better as a dev to just send an app for a few jobs.


But there is close to zero motivation to make a profile if I have no idea what companies might see it.


It sounds like a reasonable idea for another job shop who gets a cut, perhaps dealing with some of the contractor's paperwork over time. The more the merrier. Good luck.

What I would like to see are contractor middlemen who are more technically specialized. An embedded systems one would be a great thing.


I've been working remotely for past few years and have been a team lead before and now am a consulting senior dev. But I would like to move into a leadership role such as management or even directorial. Are those available remotely?


Yes, you should target the more mature remote companies. There are even fully remote companies (Zapier, GitLab and so on), so it's definitely possible.

The companies that are very early on their remote capabilities typically avoid hiring remote juniors, and remote higher-level management positions. The reason is that those levels require communication with more stakeholders which means more mature remote practices. Project management type of positions are typically not too difficult to have remote.


I work remote for 4 years now. One year as employee and three as freelancer.

I think the last one fits me perfectly, because of the time/space freedom both freelancing and remote work bring.

I sleep till noon. Only work a few months a year and have plenty of time for my relationships.


I hope you are screening based on actual skills and not just what they look and sound like.


I tried making a profile and noticed a few points of friction:

1) LinkedIn syncing does not seem to work, had to enter everything manually.

2) required entry of end date of your current employment in the experience section

3) Spelling and grammar errors (e.g. "Freelancng")


Thank you very much for the feedback!

1) LinkedIn, unfortunately, doesn't allow the use of their API for hiring products. So we cannot pre-fill the profile using their API. We're thinking about two possible solutions: - To add a checkbox for permission to import data from LinkedIn manually. - To write something that gets the data automatically from LinkedIn.

The problem with the automatic solution is - what does LinkedIn think about that? Are we allowed to do it?

If anyone has feedback, or experience with this topic, it will help us very much!

2) We'll fix this in about 2 sprints

3) We'll fix this in the next 2-3 days.


15% + my info? With so many remote job boards out there I don't see a benefit.


remotemore is a "palindrome" if we group the letters 2-by-2: re-mo-te-mo-re (I guess this is on purpose)


Yep, we like this name for multiple reasons. It is a palindrome. Also, it repeats the same sounds in two words, which typically make the words sound better. It's easy to pronounce, and spell, etc.

But most of all, it shows what we stand for: More Remote work :-)


Wouldn't a flat fee work better than a percentage given the obvious workaround of giving the newly hired developer a sudden, gigantic raise?


Wait, I can only read the terms and conditions and privacy policy AFTER I login (thereby agreeing with them)?!?


You can read them before logging in - just click on their link? Do let me know if it still doesn't work and we'll fix it asap!

EDIT: I see the problem now, on the main page the links work, on the app page they don't work properly. To be fixed asap.


"Headquartered in Berlin" you probably should have the legally required information about your company and a privacy policy. Not worth the potential trouble.


What do you screen in a candidate?


The video presentation is a kill.

Are there any other remote jobs listing companies available?


Typos on various pages : "How does it works?"

fix to > "How does it work?"


Is there anything else that you've noticed? Do let me know and I'll get it fixed. :X


That one is now fixed, the other 2 that were mentioned yesterday will also be fixed soon.


Onboarding is broken, can't get through.


I'm sorry to hear! Could you email me more details to boris.borisov@remotemore.com so we can fix it faster?


What program is required for this?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: