
Show HN: RemoteMore – We connect developers with full-time remote jobs - BorisBorisov91
https://remotemore.com/
======
codingdave
"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.

~~~
Izmaki
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"?

~~~
RussianCow
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.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

~~~
bitL
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.

~~~
o-__-o
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?

~~~
bitL
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.

------
eternalny1
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.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

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donretag
"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.

~~~
rohan1024
They are claiming to pre-screen candidates which in case of remote job I think
is not a bad idea.

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

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

~~~
dudul
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?

~~~
ben_jones
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.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

------
blisterpeanuts
_" 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?

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

~~~
reaperducer
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.

------
firefoxd
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.

------
dudul
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.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

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

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mooreds
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](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=remote+job+board)

~~~
BorisBorisov91
That it is not a job board :-)

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

~~~
SkyPuncher
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...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/things-are-going-so-well-were-doing-a-
hiring-freeze/)

~~~
codingdave
"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.

~~~
SkyPuncher
Ah, I skimmed over that.

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

~~~
bbarnett
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.

------
all2
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".

------
rohan1024
That page has a fantastic TED talk about why work does not happen in office
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XD2kNopsUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XD2kNopsUs)

BTW all the best OP

~~~
BorisBorisov91
Thank you very much, @Rohan1024

------
negamax
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

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

~~~
BorisBorisov91
@Buboard - great to hear! Let's talk some more about this. My email is
boris.borisov@remotemore.com

------
westoque
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.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

~~~
social_quotient
Why is this being downvoted?

~~~
MoronInAHurry
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.

------
z3t4
Would be good with an example video so you know what kind of video you should
do with yourself.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
Many thanks for the feedback! We will implement it :-)

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analognoise
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.

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

~~~
analognoise
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.

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

------
aivisol
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.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bborisov/)

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

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

~~~
johnnyo
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.

------
PorterDuff
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.

------
frequentnapper
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?

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

------
k__
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.

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

------
lawlorino
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")

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

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

------
rom1v
remotemore is a "palindrome" if we group the letters 2-by-2: re-mo-te-mo-re (I
guess this is on purpose)

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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 :-)

------
Tade0
Wouldn't a flat fee work better than a percentage given the obvious workaround
of giving the newly hired developer a sudden, gigantic raise?

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

~~~
BorisBorisov91
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.

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

------
kaushikt
What do you screen in a candidate?

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ForFreedom
The video presentation is a kill.

Are there any other remote jobs listing companies available?

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

fix to > "How does it work?"

~~~
BorisBorisov91
Is there anything else that you've noticed? Do let me know and I'll get it
fixed. :X

~~~
BorisBorisov91
That one is now fixed, the other 2 that were mentioned yesterday will also be
fixed soon.

------
johnmarcus
Onboarding is broken, can't get through.

~~~
BorisBorisov91
I'm sorry to hear! Could you email me more details to
boris.borisov@remotemore.com so we can fix it faster?

------
ayoinc
What program is required for this?

