
How to find a remote job - blakenomad
https://www.deekit.com/how-do-i-find-a-remote-job-part-1/
======
pgeorgep
I found a remote job this year on [https://angel.co/](https://angel.co/)

This article seems like an excellent resource, but it doesn't get into the
drive you need to find a remote job (at least early in your career like me).
When I started looking for remote jobs online, it took me over six months to
finally land the right job.

What articles like this don't emphasize enough is when you're applying for
remote jobs, you're competing against a worldwide talent pool. This is a lot
different than the localized competition you may be used to. The increase in
competition makes it exponentially harder to land a remote job.

Some tips I'd recommend: \- Make a list of the job boards/companies that post
relevant jobs and view them daily. If a company is looking to move fast, this
could give you an edge. \- Do something to stand out. (Make a video, send them
something physically, etc.) DO SOMETHING! Don't just assume because you're you
that they will want you. \- Put together a project company's usually ask for,
without them even asking. (Browse the site and make suggestions, look for
bugs, etc.)

~~~
learc83
I've always worked remotely. You're not really competing with the entire
global talent pool if you're applying for an American company.

First, most companies will have a time zone limit.

2\. Companies will require that you can communicate in English extremely well.

3\. You need access to a reliable electric grid and reliable fast internet
(the firewall rules out mainland China completely--1/5 of the world).

4\. Many companies don't want to hire someone from a country without a strong
legal framework accessible to foreigners--they want to be able to enforce NDAs
etc... And some companies don't want to risk dealing with any foreign legal
system at all, even a good one.

5\. Travel time (and expense/visas) to the office in case you need to visit.

6\. You need to pass the "culture fit" interview.

7\. Very likely to run into someone involved in hiring who has a bad
impression of programmers from certain countries after working with terrible
offshore teams. Overcoming this sterotype won't be easy. Related to 6.

Already being in America gives you several huge advantages.

~~~
michaelchisari
8\. You need to be able to work well remotely. This is an skill all its own
that is often underestimated.

~~~
learc83
Definitely true.

------
aantix
Pro Tip : If the first person from the company that you talk to is from HR,
you're doing it wrong.

I wrote up my process in an article on Medium "How to Get a Remote Job, Even
When Remote Isn’t Advertised"

[https://medium.com/@aantix/how-to-get-a-remote-job-even-
when...](https://medium.com/@aantix/how-to-get-a-remote-job-even-when-remote-
isnt-advertised-286f955264a0)

~~~
navalsaini
Nice short article.

Its a bit difficult to do that same if one is from a developing country though
(flying is expensive :-)). A more interesting problem to crack.

~~~
aantix
Agree, there's definitely another hurdle of perception if you're from another
country. But I still think it's doable. It always comes down to trust - how
can I make sure that if I work with you, you're going to commit code that I
won't have to do a ton of cleanup on?

So, you combat that by :

1) Be visible. Have code up on Github that I can see.

2) Offer a month to month contract. 15 day notice for termination. This gives
you and the company an easy way out if things don't work out and the added
bonus of not having to deal with messy tax issues across country borders.

3) Flying is only expensive if your hourly rate doesn't justify it. Honestly,
if you're approaching a company with some incredibly low number, e.g.
$15/hour, even if that's a decent wage for your country, as a manager, I see
that as a signal of cheap, inferior labor. Increase your rate, e.g. $100/hr,
so that you could fly if you had to.

~~~
am8
Hope your code cleanup is more “decent” than your spelling.

~~~
dang
This manages to combine a tedious nitpick with a personal attack.

Personal attacks are not allowed on HN, so please don't post like this again,
and maybe lay off the tedious nitpicks as well.

~~~
am8
I don't see it that way - all I see is a predictable corporate reaction to
pointing out micromanager tendencies.

Also putting down non "first world" coders before they have even been given a
chance. I can see that "flagging" is obviously easier than comprehending and
rectifying the unfair situation that OP is putting these people in. It is
clear that he views such candidates as below him or at least that is how it
comes across.

------
drinchev
> 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 to the
office once per XX amount of days.

~~~
gedrap
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.

~~~
justadeveloper2
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.

------
mcone
To find my remote job two years ago, I went down the list of companies in the
Awesome Remote Job list [0] and checked every single one of their career
pages. You can sometimes also find remote jobs on Indeed by putting "remote"
in the location field.

[0] [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-
job/](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job/)

------
radarsat1
Here's a question I'm trying to understand: if I intend to travel while
working, where do I say I'm "from"? How do taxes work? Suppose that I have an
apartment in some country, not necessarily my country of citizenship, and I
will sublet it while I travel.

I suppose, to freelance, one needs to create a "company", but where is that
company based? Does it need to have an address?

If I am a citizen of one country, a resident of another, but I'm working while
I travel in _other_ countries, where do I owe taxes?

These are the roadblocks I find most complicated, beyond just "finding the
job", I don't know how the legal "infrastructure" should work when you are
freelancing and in such an odd living situation.

~~~
blakenomad
Great question.

I still run all my taxes as if I'm based in the UK, even though I travel and
work remotely. I am taxed as an independent contractor.

I'm considering setting up as an Estonian e-resident soon though
([https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/](https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/))
to change where I pay my taxes.

In terms of working while in other countries, it's a grey area for sure. I was
travelling extensively in Asia last year and I was on tourist visas. Although
I know Thailand for example is considering introducing a 'nomad visa' very
soon.

~~~
objclxt
> I'm considering setting up as an Estonian e-resident soon though
> ([https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/](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 independent contractor and all the
profits from that company flow directly back to you HMRC may again have
questions (and you'll still have to pay taxes on the dividends you receive at
the UK rates).

~~~
TomMarius
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.

------
richardknop
From my personal experience, I got remote job offers (with competitive western
salary) in two ways:

\- via my network (so people/clients I have worked with before on site have
approached me with extra work and new projects)

\- from my open source contributions (some of my projects on github and my
contributions led to me being emailed by interesting companies)

So I would forget about "looking" for remote work online. I don't think you'll
randomly find anything which pays well.

What I suggest is to:

1) (if you are a consultant) build a network of clients and acquaintances by
working on projects onsite. It's likely there will be more work you will get
reached out to about. And then you are in position to arrange remote work as
they have already worked with you and there is a trust between the two
parties.

2) Contribute to open source and work on interesting projects/libraries in
your free time. You never know which company will end up using your work and
reach out to you with job offers. Often they will be ok with remote work too.

------
jcadam
Most of the companies I've interviewed with will only consider remote workers
who have prior experience working remotely. I just don't know how to
demonstrate to employers that I have the self-discipline to actually work if
I'm not forced to go into an office full of distractions every day.

In any case, after yet another round of rejections for (mostly remote) gigs,
I've given up on getting out of my crappy job for the time being. It's a non-
programming "architect/sme" type job, but it pays well. I've been focusing my
creative energy on a little side project which I've managed to find the self-
discipline to work on in my free time over the last year (maybe it'll be
successful and then that can be my 'exit plan' from this place).

~~~
johan_larson
Couchbase is happy to hire remote workers, even without previous remote
experience.

I've worked for Couchbase for a year and a half now, and it's a nice place.
We're a mature startup building a NoSQL database, headed for IPO soon (within
a year or two).

And we're hiring: [https://www.couchbase.com/careers/open-
positions](https://www.couchbase.com/careers/open-positions)

~~~
sah2ed
There's no reliable way to tell which roles permit working remotely.

For instance, this one requires being onsite:
[https://jobs.jobvite.com/couchbase/job/oApC4fwp](https://jobs.jobvite.com/couchbase/job/oApC4fwp)

~~~
johan_larson
On paper, yes. In practice, the company has a lot of distributed-work-friendly
DNA from the open source movement, so I would expect the matter to be
negotiable even for positions that explicitly name a work site. How
negotiable? Mumble. I can say that my immediate work group has a manager and
two engineers in Mountain View, and one engineer each in Denver, Toronto, and
Manchester.

~~~
jcadam
Good to know, thanks. I've looked at Couchbase before, but when I saw
locations listed for each position and no "Remote work possible" in the job
description, I assumed you weren't considering remote applicants.

------
hockley
Step 1) Become indispensable in your current job.

Step 2) Move.

~~~
humanrebar
I've seen a couple employees do this to transition to mostly-remote at a big
employer. You might have even better luck at a small or medium size company.

~~~
alexilliamson
I did this easily at a 100 person company.

------
jomkr
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-job yet, but I think that's more
down to my lack of interviewing technique.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
> This approach hasn't actually got me a remote-job yet

~~~
softawre
Sure - but I think it's good advice regardless.

------
gedrap
I know that applying on jobs pages is not popular here on HN but, well,
sometimes it works. In my opinion, having some projects on GitHub certainly
helps, even if they are just hobby projects with no use in real world. So it
doesn't mean that you must spend months working on open source projects on the
evenings and weekends, hoping to get noticed. Same for technical blog posts.
It definitely provides more signal to the person who is reviewing your
application.

Also, very few companies are 100% remote, and making remote team work is not
trivial, so it's important to ask the right questions when interviewing. Don't
forget that's it is a two way street! Personally, I was looking for these two
key things:

\- at least ~30% engineers should be remote;

\- there should be a strong culture of written async communication.

Once I discovered a company which I found interesting (
[https://heapanalytics.com](https://heapanalytics.com) ), checked the jobs
page, noticed that they are hiring remotely and just applied a few months
later. Had several interviews over video chat / slack, no white board coding
or CS trivia. In the end it worked out and I got an offer. Totally recommend
applying at Heap - we are doing cool and challenging technical things
(querying hundreds of TBs of data in seconds and making it reliable), the
interview process is great and our small distributed remote team is made up of
engineers from 4 continents, from North America to Australia!

------
elliotec
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 expect, but it seems to be a
thing across the board, because like others have said they are tapping into a
worldwide talent pool where they can get talent that are happy with the
company's salary budget.

~~~
derefr
> 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."

~~~
elliotec
That's very interesting, and makes sense.

------
ben1040
I'm on remote job #4 right now. Here's how I got each.

Job 1: Referred by a friend who worked for the company. She joined the company
about 5 years prior, after being cold-emailed by an internal recruiter.

Job 2: Friend referral. I met the friend by way of a local developer meetup
and we got to know each other over the course of a couple years. My friend was
referred into the company by a friend of _his,_ who had moved out of town to
take a job with this company.

Job 3: Internet referral. I'm on a developer slack community and the position
was posted there.

Job 4/Current one: A mishmash. People on the team knew me from developer
conferences and a couple meetups in NYC (job #3 was based in NYC as well, and
I would attend meetups when visiting the office). One or two of the people
were also on that slack. My resume was ultimately brought in, however, by a
local friend of mine. He got the job in a similar manner as the friend in job
#2; a local friend of _his_ moved to NYC to join the company.

------
stuaxo
The salaries on upwork seem laughably low. I went travelling with the idea of
maybe doing some bits like this, but it made no sense - I would have spent all
my time working for very little money and no time to do what I liked.

Remote working can work if you already have a client-base, but I can't see how
any of these sites are viable for someone who wants 1st world wages.

------
Berunto
How does an submission from someone who prefere to write clickbait headlines
with an blogpost with nothing new or special get so many upvotes?

~~~
rijoja
It is written by Blake Moore who roams the world and works as a growth hacker.
With emphasis on "growth hacker." Source the about author.

Maybe Hacker News have been (growth) hacked?

------
dep_b
I did some freelance jobs on the side while I was still working full-time, all
of it being remote even if the client would be in the same city, then I would
just drop by for demo's and meetings. My full-time job consisted of working in
remote teams for mostly US customers. While I was working for a certain
customer through my day job I was the only person in the building working for
that particular customer and there was no real necessity to be in the office.
I was effectively fully remote from that point.

At a given point I got a new customer that basically wanted to hire me for 20
hours per week, which would mean I could sustain my life with it and I left my
day job. Building upon that I landed two customers through LinkedIn, one lead
through YouTube (some intelligent comment somewhere...that was pretty weird
though!), some more work from local and remote customers I had before and then
I rolled into TopTal.

TopTal has a steady stream of really interesting work. I had a pretty sudden
drop in work from one customer and I could fill it up in a week or two by
taking TopTal work. Now I remain on one TopTal client and for the rest I'm
working directly for customers. TopTal pays a bit less but is a lot less
headache and most of the work is pretty good. The sites that are recommended
in this article didn't do anything useful for me.

I still don't know _really_ how I manage to keep a full roster apart from
TopTal but somehow customers know how to find me. Lot of referrals too.

------
JustSomeNobody
I work remote now. There's good points and bad points.

Some Good:

No commute. No noise. Fewer distractions. No open office floor plans!

Some Bad:

More distractions. I miss the physical presence of people. Time zones suck! I
miss hallway conversations about the current sprint. Nobody makes an 1800 mile
serial cable.

[-] Distractions. I don't have people walking by my desk trying to get me to
work on their pet project. However, that stack of dishes that needs cleaning
is very distracting.

~~~
keithnz
no, but they make an 2896.819km internet cable :) I've made proxies so I can
talk to remote serial devices. Mainly for remote support. As conversations
like

    
    
       Me: Type Blah
       Them: Did you say bleah?
       Me:  No Blah
       Them: Blah? ok...tap.......tap......tap.......tap
       Me: What's it say?
       Them: Just a bunch of numbers and letters
       

...

are Painful :)

------
bhanu423
I joined Aftership.com last year as remote employee, they have a vibrant
engineering culture and they have very convenient remote friendly environment.

I think significant efforts are required from the team & company to make
remote jobs possible and convenient, so its important to find a company that
have remote-friendly workflow.

In case, anyone here is looking an interesting node.js remote experience, can
email me.

------
mderazon
Ptoblem with remote job is that it's mostly limited to a developer role. If
you wanna go up the chain of command there are less and less options.

To be a remote team leader means that you are limited to companies that have
all of their developers remote.

Basically any kind of management position will limit you to apply to companies
that are 100% or mostly remote and there aren't many companies like that yet.

~~~
mostafab
Yes, that's why the best way to increase the numvber of remote companies is to
build them from scratch, with a remote incubator. That's what I am doing:
[http://www.startcrowd.club](http://www.startcrowd.club)

------
k__
Freelancing is the way...!

Elaboration:

I worked for a few companies remote, most I met via angellist.

Sooner or later they wanted me to move to their place.

When I started freelancing, nobody cared anymore.

~~~
blakenomad
Did you switch any of the companies you worked for remotely to clients? Or did
you start from scratch?

~~~
k__
Started from scratch.

Looked on some project sites, wrote some email offers.

------
gwbas1c
The article came across as some fluff mostly to promote Deekit's product.

------
jdswain
I've found the timezone to be quite an issue. For a start a lot of positions
advertised as Remote really mean Remote US Only, but then there are also many
companies that aren't too concerned about being outside USA. I'm in UTC+12
which doesn't overlap well with USA or UK. USA is a bit better, but I didn't
get one role because they had a 9:00am daily meeting which would have been
4:00am my time, and that just didn't seem practical. There is another person
in my town that works for a UK company by staying up all night though.

------
taneltanel
I've been working remotely for 4-5 years now. Started the remote work thing at
my previous workplace.

Tried a 9-5 job last summer, it was the worst.

Now have 2 remote gigs. Found one via Github, other one via a Facebook
freelance group.

------
rijoja
Is it just me or does this article feel like something written together in one
hour, based on information that one easily could find in 15 minutes, just to
serve as a platform for selling their templates? I've come to expect a higher
standard from hacker news frontpage.

------
dsego
Join toptal.

~~~
dep_b
I don't get the down votes, nor the negativity in other threads about TopTal.
Working for TopTal for a while now and it has been great. I can better rates
elsewhere but I notice that clients are really expecting you to be good so the
jobs are more interesting and/or you get more freedom. Also no hassle, every 2
weeks a payment.

It's cheaper to hire me directly while I would still be getting paid more but
I guess a lot of people want a trusted intermediate.

Rates are negotiable but they'll naturally prefer to pay you less, like any
company. Perhaps it's more interesting for people that live in countries that
have relatively low wages, but you'll have to be able to converse fluently in
English.

~~~
bigtunacan
I always got the impression (maybe mistakenly) that TopTal was basically like
a temp job service for tech workers. Essentially I have been under the
impression that one would not be able to work for TopTal while holding down a
different job, but at the same time with TopTal you would never have
guaranteed work and that their rate of pay would be only in line with what a
developer would get at a regular day job except being paid hourly rather than
salaried, thus effectively enabling TopTal to pay below market prices.

I'm not saying any of this is fact. I'm asking for clarification since you
have first hand experience.

~~~
oldboyFX
If you're based in United States, Toptal probably isn't the best solution for
you.

Otherwise, it's a completely different story.

As a developer I've used Toptal in the past and honestly, they're doing a
great job. I'm based in central europe where average salary can be as low as
$22,000/y. Toptal allows you to 3x-5x that easily by working 40h/week, 100%
remote.

It's literally transformed hundreds of lives within my city.

There are tons of long term projects (6-12+ months), and I've never had
problems finding a new project (front-end, js). Once I start looking, I expect
to be working the next week.

For some, it's a great long term solution. For others who are more ambitious,
it's a great stepping stone into the $70-100+/h market.

They do take a pretty big cut, but the developer is still left with tons of
cash.

I dropped it after a while, because I started receiving fat offers directly
from other clients, but I'd still recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a
well developed client network.

~~~
bigtunacan
Is it something though where you would have to do a normal 40 hours/week on 9
to 5 hours and so couldn't hold down your day job or are there people working
a day job and then doing 20 hours of Toptal work nights and weekends?

~~~
oldboyFX
You can definately work nights and weekends, but most people don't need to
hold down their regular local jobs.

Why would you keep your local $30k/y job when you can work full-time on Toptal
for $80k/y?

Toptal covers hourly (min 10h/week), part-time (20h/week), and full-time
(40h/week) engagements. Some months I've worked 60h/week (on my own accord).

------
Lapsa
it's not that easy to find a good remote job. even with relatively good CV.
very rewarding though. I wake up, make a cup of coffee and I'm at work. found
it via twitter - made a list that followed all remote job listing twitter
accounts I could find and just spammed. getting through interviewing is the
hardest part.

------
pvaldes
9 filter ruthlessly.

Because if your goal is to find a remote job as soon as possible, you will be
scammed in 4,3,2...

------
vonnik
My two bits: Contribute to some open-source projects. Great way to get
noticed.

------
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.

------
starbuxman
[https://www.SkipTheDrive.com](https://www.SkipTheDrive.com) only focuses on
remote jobs as well.

------
CoreXtreme
I hired 100+ senior developers at $50-70K per year for a project, mostly from
East Europe/Ukraine/Russia.

We were like, "Holy __! these people are so cheap. If I hire people with same
level of experience locally, I would have to pay 3-5x more on average. "

Later, my friend took over this team of developers for his startup. What he
found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more
employers.

And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers
in South Asia, __security risk __.

Today, we try to hire onsite as much as possible.

It require very high level of trust to hire someone remote.

~~~
dsacco
_> Later, my friend took over this team of developers for his startup. What he
found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more
employers._

That sounds like something inherent to the sort of candidates you hired, not
remote employment in of itself. I can't imagine a remote employee having
enough time to work for two different companies unless they have no
requirements for being immediately available at any time (like meetings, or
debrief after a deadline).

