
Ask HN: Is it possible to find remote job on C/C++? - inlineint
Hi HN!<p>I am an engineer experienced mostly with C++, Python and Node.js, total 6 years of experience.<p>During the last few years I have been having deal mostly with scripting languages, but now I realized that I want to switch back to C++ (or may be better to plain C) because I want to be more close to metal and write code that is really fast. I interested mostly in networking, DSP or implementing of some learning algorithms, and I would like to develop it for GNU&#x2F;Linux.<p>The problem is that I am looking for this kind of job only remotely, and it looks for me like jobs of this type are usually on-site. There is a plenty of remote jobs for Node.js or Python, but it is nearly impossible to find a job that suppose working with C++ or C, is remote and not looking for a guru (I do not feel me a junior, but I am not a guru too).<p>What do you think about it, HN? Am I looking for not good enough, or it is really impossible to find one of such type?
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notacoward
I work remotely (even though I'm only a half-hour from the office) and
practically all of my work is in C. So yes, it's possible to work your way
into such a situation. However, that doesn't mean it's easy to get _hired
into_ such a position. Many employers are quite reasonably wary of hiring
someone who has _never_ worked closely with anyone else on the team. Usually
this means working in physical proximity for a while, though exceptions are
often made for people who have been deeply involved in an open-source project
for a while. Either one serves as "proof" that you can be productive that way,
and that proof is what reassures management enough to hire you.

My impression is that companies which aggressively embrace new technologies
and markets are also more likely to embrace new management/logistical models
such as fully distributed teams. Therefore the pickings overall are better,
but mostly in certain technical areas - notably not in low-level areas such as
networking and DSP (which you mention). I think you'll have to make some
compromise between your preferred technical areas and your preferred working
environment, because the overlap between the two isn't very large.

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chvid
I think the kind of companies that hire C/C++ engineers are not the same
companies that post jobs on rentacoder or whatever it is called today. The
companies that have remote positions that you can "find over the internet"
tends to be small young shops or possibly single persons implementing in PHP,
Ruby-on-Rails or similar platforms that offers high productivity for small
scale projects (at least in the short run).

That are plenty of C/C++ jobs inside banks and telecommunications but they
will not advertise remote job opportunities and if they to, they do it thru
recruitment agencies or consulting firms that subcontracts to freelancers.
However I think it is quite possible to build a relationship with say a
departement at telco thru regular consulting that eventually will let you work
remotely.

It just requires some legwork and that you work on-site in the beginning.

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sbahra
Yes, it is possible. We are hiring, learn more at
[http://Backtrace.io](http://Backtrace.io)

~~~
rpledge
Interesting looking product - Not really obvious that you entertain remote
workers from your website however, you may want to specifically state that.

(Offtopic - do you support non Intel platforms?)

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AdmiralAsshat
I don't think there's a correlation between the primary language used at the
job and the employer's willingness to allow remote working. Investigate C/C++
listings, see if they allow employees to work remotely. Obviously you'll be
expected to appear in-person for the interview, but if they are sufficiently
convinced that you can be left alone to get your work done, they might agree
to let you work remotely.

~~~
Ensorceled
Certainly there is. I'm currently working on a JSF project for a client ...
it's nightmare to bring a new remote developer on board, their environment
configured properly, eclipse working, blah blah blah.

My last Django project, a remote developer had the app up and running in their
environment and was fixing bugs before lunch to get a feel for our code.

C/C++ jobs tend to be more more like the former than the later. Many C/C++
jobs are not even possible to do remote; the last time I managed a C
programmer it was for an application appliance and I would have had to ship
them prototype hardware if they were remote.

~~~
planteen
If your build environment is that difficult to setup and undocumented, that's
a big problem, whether or not you are remote or an on-site developer.

~~~
Ensorceled
Agreed, but that's often the case with large legacy projects. I'm slowly
pushing them to more modern approaches.

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bugmen0t
Mozilla allows almost every job to be remote and Firefox is written in C/C++.
I'm sure there must be other companies :)

~~~
dblohm7
Remote Mozillian here: can confirm!

~~~
zura
But not in every country. HR told me that Mozilla can't hire in Georgia (the
country in Europe). She contacted me because she initially thought I'm from US
state Georgia...

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mariopt
I've been freelancing for quite a while and I think you can find some projects
that you can do in C++. I don't think it's easy to find remote work in,
specifically, C++ for several reasons:

1 - Companies want cheap productivity developers (yeah :S), it's very common
that they force you to use some hype productive new framework/language
regardless of what you think about it.

2 - If a company is going to invest in system level development, it's very
hard to find another new decent C++ remote programmer. This is a very critical
point. If you fire a javascript/python developer you can find another on in a
matter of hours.

3 - If a company needs stuff in C++, probably the company is scaling and needs
to recode some components. Usually they have the budget to hire decent C++
developers non remote.

4 - Myths like "C++ is for genius", "You can't be productive in C++", etc.

5 - C++ is not trending these days and it impacts the hiring and/or project
stack decisions.

6 - Most remote projects are easy shit, you'll be amazed by the quality of
projects and, sometimes, the freelancers hired themselves. Most of the time
the projects don't need a fast runtime but new managers.

7 - Agile methodology is often used as an excuse to change the requirements
every 2 weeks or so, it's not rare to find such management. You need to have
the right tools and community to survive such environments. C++ was my 3rd
language but I never used it during freelancing/remote work. Today I feel very
comfortable using node because I know this kind of stuff happens, and when it
does, it's much better to have things like NPM and a big community just to
remain sane and keep up with deadlines.

Keep in my that these "reasons" are based on my personal experience as a
freelancer. It's possible to find some remote work for C++ but you'll find to
try much harder than, for example,a node/python developer. Try to focus on
areas where C++ is critical. If you contribute to well know C++ open source
projects, it's just a matter of time to get noticed and hired remotely.

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gamesbrainiac
You can find plenty of them over at careers.stackoverflow.com. I'm not saying
this to evangelize them, but see this link:

[http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=c%2B%2B&job...](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=c%2B%2B&jobType=&location=&range=20&distanceUnits=Km&allowsremote=true)

There are plenty of them available and most pay on an international level. Not
the kind of rubbish pay that freelancing sites offer. Since you have some
experience with Python and Node, you'll see that you're good for a lot of jobs
over there.

~~~
inlineint
It is misleading if you examine the search results. At first there are only 5
positions concerned on C++ as a primary language, other just mention C++ as an
additional skill. The other three contain Visual Studio in description of the
job which means that they are looking for Windows developers, and I not
interested in development for Windows.

So there is actually no jobs on stackoverflow careers which satisfy the
requirements I mentioned in the question.

~~~
blub
Indeed the stack overflow search is very misleading and completely useless for
figuring out how many "X" jobs are on the site.

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peterkelly
I'm not sure why the programming language matters. I'm part of a small team
that works remotely for a US company (we're in Thailand), and the company
couldn't care less about what language(s) we use - they hired us because of
what we can build for them and the value we bring to their business.

Having said that, getting the job was more a combination of luck and knowing
the right people than anything else. I expect it's harder trying to find
advertised jobs.

~~~
TorKlingberg
C and JavaScript are suitable for very different tasks, and thus for different
clients.

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FigBug
Do you know anything about audio dsp? I've found jobs in the pro audio
industry are pretty easy to do remotely. I do a mix of VST/AU plugins, small
audio apps and control surfaces. I get most of my jobs through my network of
contacts, but there are a few jobs that get posted here as well:
[http://www.juce.com/forums/juce-jobs](http://www.juce.com/forums/juce-jobs)

~~~
72deluxe
Where do you get started learning about DSP? Any recommended reading?

~~~
kspaans
XIPH has a great video series about it.
[http://xiph.org/video/](http://xiph.org/video/)

(well that's video, but close enough)

~~~
JshWright
"Series" is a bit generous, as it's two videos...

~~~
justin66
...which have nothing to do with programming DSPs.

~~~
JshWright
Well, they certainly contain content that is part of the foundation of DSP.

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Poyeyo
C++ seems very niche for web development, but it is actually very popular for
game development.

Try asking in the /r/gamedev and the /r/gameDevClassifieds subreddits. I'm
sure someone is wondering how to contact a C++ developer.

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72deluxe
I too wonder this. I write C++ for my dayjob and use wxWidgets under Windows
and OSX but have used Qt a long time ago, as well as VCL and MFC. I would
prefer to avoid MFC and VCL nowadays!

I can also write Java (done that for Android), various bits of SQL (used
PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL and Informix), C# where necessary and
PHP/JavaScript/HTML but would prefer sticking to C++ nowadays instead of
front-end web stuff.

Swift/Obj-C is coming along slowly for me.

I am in the UK and would welcome any interest / work.

~~~
72deluxe
Replying as too late to edit: this wasn't meant as a hijacking of the thread
but it could have been better-worded. Apologies.

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flashm
I'm working (albeit freelance) remotely on a project that is 100% COBOL at the
moment. They have offered full time work for me, so I know it's possible.

I know COBOL isn't C, but it's the same concept - systems programming/secure
stuff rather than bashing out websites.

~~~
dcubed
I landed my first programming job writing COBOL(this was in 2012) and have
always been on the lookout for remote COBOL opportunities, mind if I ask how
you found your current gig?

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joelhooks
I wonder if Golang might be an option for you? It's seen huge surge in use,
and is more "modern" so might be more likely to be used by company that
understands benefits of remote.

~~~
inlineint
Yes, I've thought about it. I doubt do they hire me if I read "The Go
programming language book" and say that I have C/C++ experience? Or it is
necessary to spend a lot of time learning Go and contributing to open source
projects just to get hired anywhere? Do Go jobs nowtimes actually require just
general programming experience assuming that Go could be learned in first days
of working?

~~~
swah
I think so. Unless you're writing code for rockets and medical devices I'd say
fake until you make it... or we can call it "on-the-job training".

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alt_f4
I'd ask the same question but with Java. Virtually all the remote jobs I see
are Python/Rails/Javascript and maybe PHP.

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ivoras
Yes, I get occasional such C++ / C jobs on Toptal
([http://www.toptal.com/#hire-astute-engineers](http://www.toptal.com/#hire-
astute-engineers)) - yes, it's a referral link, sosumi ;)

The job and the community are nice enough that I don't mind evangelizing.

~~~
gamesbrainiac
Saying that is the same as saying that there are C++ opportunities on
freelance and odesk. I doubt the OP is looking for a reference to a freelance
site.

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CBABIES
For C++, you'll need to know Qt.

It's probably easier to find an Objective-C job than a C job.

~~~
wyldfire
Qt? Because there are a lot of companies hiring specifically remote for Qt?
It's not my impression that in general, the majority of jobs using C++
expect/leverage Qt.

There's tons of embedded work using C/C++, but indeed remote work is harder to
find there.

