
Ask HN: What skills would get me the best remote job? - needajobb
So, due to family reasons I can&#x27;t move from where I live (Ireland). The available jobs and salaries are incredibly poor here, I am struggling to make ends meet.<p>I feel I should try to aim for a remote job with a company that is willing to pay a much better salary (I am thinking $100k). I am a fairly competent web developer. Web developers are a dime a dozen, so I doubt if companies would really want to pay for a remote worker when they could easily get a handful just round the corner.<p>I am thinking I would need to become competent in a more niche area - an area that companies really need, but it is harder for companies to find recruits for. It would also be easier to become a leading expert in the field due to reduced competition.<p>Say I want to get this job in 1 years time, what skill sets would be the best to focus on - AI, networks, operating systems, compilers etc..? How should I best develop these skills? Presumably I will need to develop a decent portfolio to market my skills.. What would the best way to go around this be?<p>This is probably a fairly vague fingers in the air question, but any pointers or inspiration would be appreciated..
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gain_sky
> Web developers are a dime a dozen, so I doubt if companies would really want
> to pay for a remote worker when they could easily get a handful just round
> the corner.

What exactly do you consider a web developer? If you're talking about the kind
of web developer who codes a web page for his grandma's flower shop in html &
css then I think you'd be right about that.

But if you're talking about one who writes backend code to scale, parse data
and interact with external services or writes frontend code using whatever the
latest javascript framework is these days, then those web developers
definitely aren't "a dime a dozen". And they certainly won't have problems
getting a remote job.

~~~
needajobb
Interesting. Yeah I'm definitely more the latter, I work on fairly complex
financial saas type products..

~~~
cimmanom
Financial sector domain expertise in and of itself should make you stand out.

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constantlm
Not sure if this will help, but this post was on HN yesterday. Skills to learn
for standing out as a web developer: [http://fullbit.ca/learning-web-
development-stand-out/](http://fullbit.ca/learning-web-development-stand-out/)

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scalesolved
As a remote Java developer of 5 years (10 years experience total) the remote
market seems hottest for exactly your skillset,as others have suggested you'd
be best levelling up your current skills.

If I wanted to get a remote job now the best combination of skills/techs in my
opinion would be any combination of the following:

\- React/Vue.js/Angular

\- Node.js/PHP/Ruby

To stand out in the crowd I would do two things:

1\. Blog about the techs you use, it's a great way to get noticed when you
apply for jobs. Posts can be as simple as you want around new things you are
learning and is a positive chance to show off your writing and communication
skills.

2\. Whatever tech stack you choose or are comfortable with you should have a
demo application in Github/Bitbucket be it a React widget that pulls in data
about the weather/stocks etc or if you are fully backend then a rest API or
library to solve a particular tech problem. Focus on good commit messages,
clean code and concise,descriptive and useful tests.

If you do get the chance to interview for a remote position then over
communicate, remote work can be spread across countries and timezones and it's
crucial to make sure information is available for everyone and understood to
avoid blockers.

So if someone reaches out and suggests a time then I'd recommend messaging
back with 'Great, I'm looking forward to meeting you. Just to confirm I'll be
online at 4pm EST and my skype is XXX. Any problems feel free to reach out to
me on email X or phone Y.'

Last but not least, you're not going to become an AI/network specialist in a
year, you'd a competent developer (let's drop 'fairly'). Look at what you can
improve in your current sphere:

\- Is your code clean and understandable?

\- Can you effectively explain technical concepts to folks that are not
programmers?

\- Are your tests useful and effective?

Best of luck!

~~~
Lordarminius
> If I wanted to get a remote job now the best combination of skills/techs in
> my opinion would be any combination of the following...

I am a bit confused. What is the point of combining PHP with Ruby ? Isn't that
an overlap ?

~~~
aregsarkissian
He means pick a combination with one selection from each front end and back
end category. For instance you can pick vuejs from front end and combine it
with php/laravel on the back end

~~~
scalesolved
Yup indeed, I wasn't super clear but that was my intention!

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lacker
If you enjoy being a “fairly competent” web developer, why not work on that
and become a “very skilled” web developer? You can make more than 100k that
way, and the world needs a whole lot of web developers. If you aren’t sure
where to start, try picking some specific tools and contributing to the open
source ecosystem. The world can still use cool new React libraries.

~~~
needajobb
Not sure I particularly enjoy being a web developer, it just seems to be where
I have landed. I do love coding of all types though. There are definitely some
open source libraries I am interested in though. I guess this leads to further
questions, say I were to contribute heavily to a decent project, would this be
sufficient to get a company's interest up (in your opinion) - or do you think
it should just be one part of my strategy?

~~~
stevekemp
It's hard to say. Some employers will be pleased, impressed, and weigh in
open-contributions. Others won't care in the slightest.

If nothing else I've found such things can come up in interviews, and be
useful points of reference. It's better to say "Yes I've done XX, YY, ZZ and
you can see examples in this project I published .." than to not have good
examples.

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mr_spothawk
if your interest is getting the most money, it sounds like portfolio building
could be a good use of time in the short-term. for instance... if your current
portfolio is worth a 50k/yr remote job, and you improved your portfolio making
ability (say, with a redesign or a retelling of your work history, etc...) for
the next 4 weeks, and got a job offer for 75k/year... then you would have
increased your take by 50% in 4 weeks.

if you don't think your current portfolio could/should be improved, then I
would suggest that you look at the companies you're interested in working for
and understand the sorts of work they need a remote developer for... and
target that skillset.

alternatively, start your own thing on the side... do it for 2 years while
doing a remote job that you can handle with 75% attention.

good luck.

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nkristoffersen
Look at remoteok and search the HN hiring post for remote roles. Review the
skill sets listed, and work towards gaining those skills.

If you have those skills then work towards selling yourself better.

Believe in yourself!

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muzani
It's a supply vs demand thing. I doubt anyone is hiring remotely for AI and
blockchain right now. Things like this are usually done face to face because
they require a lot more communication.

Web skills are still in very high demand and still in low supply. JavaScript
is used for TVs too. Java is used on a lot of systems. Few people go past the
1 year mark.

If you really want a niche, ironically, you might want to learn legacy
systems, as they pay a lot but are very hard to recruit for. You can also
learn a whole stack of systems, get certified with Google, AWS, Microsoft. I'd
actually bet on Chinese systems as a fast growing market. So maybe look at
Alibaba or Huawei systems.

In general, I recommend learning some low risk, low return skills and a few
high risk, high return skills. The low risk skills will get you a job, the
high risk skills will get you promoted.

~~~
GFischer
I definitely don't agree with "learn legacy systems". There are high-paying
jobs for those, but not remote (I've worked in a language that's in very high
demand on the defense community but you need US citizenship AND security
clearance to get those very high paying jobs).

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masudrhossain
You can try getting some freelancing work at
[https://upwork.com](https://upwork.com) and then build a strong enough
reputation or portfolio to take your business elsewhere (like your own
website. Just use [https://www.thinkmain.com](https://www.thinkmain.com) to
set it up and you're good to go.)

The goal with it would be to move to your own website eventually. Upwork fee's
are around 20% from what I hear.

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bkovacev
Define fairly competent - Is it 4-5 years of experience on production scale
system with great traits like commenting, documenting, automated testing and
owning code? Or is it something closer to 2-3 years of experience, worked for
a company didn't own much code? Market is hot at the moment for the former.

My company is hiring a remote web developer - if you're interested. Salary
goes between 80-100k depending on experience. Contact is in my profile.

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jayec
It depends on where your skills already lie. If you do front end work you
should learn one of the big frameworks. Love them or hate them, they're here
to stay. You should check out some of the remote jobs boards and see what
people are asking for. You may as well start applying now instead of waiting
for a year, at the very least you'll get a more in-depth knowledge of what
people are looking for.

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falcongod082
I'm a developer myself, and the skill that has been the most beneficial to me
by far has been the ability to make decisions.

