
How I Find Six Figure Remote Software Developer Jobs - cmorgan8506
http://fullbit.ca/how-i-find-six-figure-remote-software-developer-jobs/
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ben1040
Remote job #3 so far for me, and networking in various ways greased the wheels
for it significantly.

1) went to a local tech meetup, spoke a few times and attended regularly. The
organizer for the meetup worked remotely for the company, they referred me in.

2) I wound up on a slack group for people using my particular tech stack. Had
a crummy day on the job and asked in their hiring channel if anyone was hiring
remote. Someone reached out to me and took my resume, and it led to an offer
in fairly short order.

This job encouraged conference/meetup attendance and speaking. I spoke at a
couple conferences as well at a meetup or two in my company's HQ. Which led me
to:

3) Sent my resume to people I knew at the company, whom I'd met from meetups
and conferences, as well as interacted with on that Slack. The interview was,
as a result, super chill. The vibe really was "from a technical perspective
you're a known quantity to us, we want the rest of the team to talk to you and
make sure you're not a jerk."

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taurath
I've found that in general you're either looking at a 30% paycut from "mid-
level" companies in large cities (IE a 150k salary no stock/RSUs locally would
be around $110k remote, with lots of "offers" of lower than that and a tiny
amount of equity), AND you have probably 200% more competition. Its pretty
competitive unless you're pretty specialized on a domain or new technology.

~~~
anonacct37
I've found it's a common recruiter tactic to try and wring some sort of
concession for you based on your address. In just tell them no. They aren't
competing with the gas station down the street from my house they are
competing with the Twitter office down the street from theirs.

It's possible my career has taken a hit due to being remote for the last few
years but I get paid around $400k and I live in a nice little COL place.

It's remotely possible I could rate 2x that if I was in the valley, but it's
by no means guaranteed. I could also make the same or less.

~~~
jjeaff
At $400k, you would likely be one of, if not the highest paid remote developer
in existence. You must have a very esoteric skill set. And making twice that
in the valley would be pretty much unheard of as well unless you are in a big
management position or someone with a lot of history, seniority, and/or
specific knowledge that is deemed critical to the company and undesirable that
you might be hired by a competitor.

~~~
mentat
It's about differentiating and showing business value. It's not that hard to
generate 10x that value for a business if you know how to apply and scale your
knowledge. I am absolutely sure that this is not top of market but people
aren't calling themselves "remote developer" to get it.

~~~
jjeaff
You don't think $400k is top of market for a remote developer?

It's not about showing business value if someone else can show that same value
for less. I find it hard to believe there are many developer skill sets that
couldn't be retained for less than $400k. (or 4 x $100k remote devs for that
matter)

There are tons of employees that generate far more than 10x their salary for
the business. But salaries aren't set based on your "value". They are based on
market rates.

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volgo
The key to finding a great salary as a remote employee is not to start out
being remote first. Find a medium sized company that doesn't mind people
working remotely, and then work your ass off for them. Then after a while ask
to work remotely on a trial period. When approved, work even harder and be 30%
more productive than everyone else

Once they see that you're doing well working remotely, there's a higher chance
of letting you do that permanently

Currently working remote (domiciled in S. Dakota but working overseas)
collecting a $300k+ California salary.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Way to go!

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sanderjd
I've always been intrigued by the idea of remote / contract work, but I've
always concluded that it requires way too much of the kind of work I hate
doing the most (self-marketing). For a normal job, I only have to go through
the soul-sucking process of marketing and proving myself once over a
relatively short period of time, before spending years doing the kind of work
I do enjoy (actual work). I've always wondered whether folks who do contract
work like this actually enjoy the self-marketing it takes, or whether the
benefits just outweigh this downside for them.

If I could pay someone to do the marketing side for me, it would be a much
more attractive option.

~~~
cmorgan8506
Honestly, I don't do any self marketing in that respect. I treat it exactly
like a normal job. I do almost exclusively contract work, but it's usually
full-time hours and contracts typically last 1-2 years.

~~~
sanderjd
I guess I was referring to the content of the article, which is all about how
the author markets theirself. Is your experience different?

~~~
cmorgan8506
It's my article =P But I don't market myself in the traditional sense. I just
apply to contracts that seem like a good fit. The same as a full-time
developer.

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ujal
A curated list of awesome remote jobs and resources -
[https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-
job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

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mrhappyunhappy
If you like crypto, make something cool and post in r cryptocirrency and let
people know you are available for work. I haven’t seen any devs do this but I
did this as a designer and landed several large crypto projects. The designs I
showcased were for community tools and I enjoyed throwing them together for
practice.

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hbcondo714
> Huge job boards like indeed.com are a little old-school and don’t typically
> have a lot of remote postings

For me, remote jobs are displayed on Indeed by specifying "Remote" in the
Where field of the web page or l query string parameter:

[https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=.net&l=Remote](https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=.net&l=Remote)

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sciurus
The site is down, so here's a cached version

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Ffullbit.ca%2Fhow-
i-find-six-figure-remote-software-developer-
jobs%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab)

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mnm1
I find it highly useful to get right to the point in discussions with
potential employers and discuss salary right away. I've been burned a few
times by companies that simply weren't willing to pay enough. Even if what I
want is fairly higher than what's on offer, for a really good position I might
consider it.

~~~
burfog
It seems a stretch to say you were burned. The company has no idea how much
you are worth (to them, not an abstract company) until they interview you. The
offer you got is not necessarily the same as the offer that somebody else
might get; perhaps your offer was much lower because you seemed like a poor
fit.

~~~
mnm1
I wasted my time on a coding project for them, so burned is indeed correct,
though it was my own fault. I actually never got an offer. They just told me
what they thought would be the maximum as they really liked the project. Also,
I learned never to do that again.

~~~
cmorgan8506
This last round of contract hunting for me was similar. Every single
organization wanted an 8+ hour project to prove my skills but half the
salaries ended up being <80k. So I started having to state base contract rates
up front.

~~~
pards
Have you ever tried quoting for interview projects?

"I've reviewed the spec for the take-home assignment and I estimate it at
about 8 hours which is $1,200 plus tax."

It'd be an interesting experiment at the very least.

~~~
cmorgan8506
I can hear the scoffs already, lol. Maybe this would work if you were being
poached.

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purpleidea
You spelled "goals" wrong on your "about" page. It's not "gloals".

~~~
cmorgan8506
Thank you for catching that. New goal, learn to catch typos.

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henryw
Hired.com seems like another option. I've gotten some pretty good remote only
responses (even though I wasn't looking for remote).

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mrhappyunhappy
Also if you freelance I often look to partner with devs on side projects. Come
join freelancehangout

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courtneypowell
WeWorkRemotely.com, RemoteOK.io, Stack Overflow remote filter

