
Ask HN: What are the higest paying technologies which have remote opportunities? - jack_pp
I want to get into web dev because as far as I can tell nearly all remote jobs are web dev jobs and it seems pretty easy to learn.<p>I have skimmed a couple of comment threads on choosing frameworks however I&#x27;m interested in what&#x27;s going to give me the highest hourly and good opportunities. I can learn whichever hard to work with tech as long as it can earn me an hourly near ~100$ so does anyone have info on that?<p>I&#x27;m also considering an apprenticeship. If you have projects which you have to decline because they&#x27;re looking for something cheaper or you&#x27;re already swamped you could throw them my way and mentor me if you think you can make a profit from it, I&#x27;m willing to start from the bottom meaning I will work cheap until I get good enough.<p>If you&#x27;re interested shoot me an email at ,, lazar +dot+ claudiu +dot+ florin ,, over at google&#x27;s mail.
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caseysoftware
> _I want to get into web dev because as far as I can tell nearly all remote
> jobs are web dev jobs and it seems pretty easy to learn._

If you're entering with that mindset, the industry is going to chew you up.

Yes, it's easy to get started but that's not going to get you one of the good
entirely-remote jobs. It's enough to get you started doing an apprenticeship
though.

Then you have to learn, learn, learn, and learn some more. Experiment with
tools and practices, be proactive in taking on tasks, and learn from more
senior people. And then learn some more.

The "good" remote jobs come from having a solid resume and some contacts in
the space. The above is how you do it.

~~~
taurath
I would agree with most of the content but not the tone here.

You do need some experience and a skillset and a LOT of learning to be fully
able to contribute well in a remote job. It won't necessarily be easy to
learn, but its certainly possible.

The industry is pretty forgiving in my experience - I was fully remote after
about 2-3 years of working in an office (negotiated heavily) and had no
problems afterwards. If you're going for one of the "great" remote-entirely
jobs remember you're competing against a much larger group of people. So
managers/people hiring can either work with people who know that you can do
it, or they'll try to find someone who is a head above everyone else. Or you
can make your own business if you like.

------
hack_edu
Find a niche whose sole responsibility drives the bottom line.

Advertising is a good one if you have strong networking and rich media
fundamentals. One good web dev with a solid background and comfort working in
advertising can produce better than an entire team of devs new to the
industry. The web and app ecosystems run on ads and _always_ will. People have
been claiming the death of it for two decades now, yet ads generate more and
more every year. You can apply the industry knowledge across the stack and
type of company; big or small, demand side or supply side, consumer focused or
SaaS.

People will also chime in and suggest fintch since its so trendy these days.
But, do you really trust a banker to look out for your bottom line? Exactly.

~~~
popey456963
I strongly disagree that ads will be here forever. Although the amount of
money generated through ads year upon year is increasing, that's mostly due to
the increase in people using the internet, and the amount of time they spend
on it.

The amount of people using adblockers has increased _dramatically_. In fact,
one of the top HN comments is about the rising use of Ad-blockers [0].

There will eventually be a limit where the increasing use of technology is
outweighed by the amount of people using adblockers, and I'd wager it's within
the next 5 years. Then the ad ecosystem will just fall and fall.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/technology/ad-blocking-
in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/technology/ad-blocking-
internet.html)

~~~
mlboss
Advertising always morphs into something different. It is a never ending
business. Billboards, Newspaper ads, magazine ads, radio ads, tv ads, online,
in app, facebook, snapchat and I don't what will be there in future. As long
as we have eyes there will be ads.

~~~
mortar
Or ears! I'd be interested to know if anyone has been served advertising in
Braille.

~~~
mlboss
[http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/11/advertising-in-
braille....](http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/11/advertising-in-braille.html)

------
Tade0
You'll have to go for the technology that's hot right now.

I guess this week it's React, but some say that Vue may surpass it in terms of
popularity by next Wednesday.

In all seriousness though: learn vanilla js and you'll be fine.

~~~
owebmaster
Vue isn't going to surpass React. Unless it migrates its API to clone React.

~~~
kls
Have to agree, those of us that work on seriously large systems and have a
strong foundation in design principals and system architecture are not going
to switch to a system that takes us back to procedural controllers and weak
components that are not self encapsulating.

It's sad that React get's such a bad wrap when it really is a simple
framework. But somehow react gets a bad wrap for the entire Javascript stack
(npm, webpack, etc..). React does not require these, but experienced software
developers who have been bite by lack of dependency management, build
management, etc etc tend to favor this stack because they need maintainability
of code base. Sure it's a little more learning curve than throwing jquery on a
page, but once you learn the js build stack the benefits outweigh the
investment. I too believe React is here to stay for a while, it's a well built
framework built buy guys that value proper design and prudence over magic that
morphs into spaghetti.

------
owebmaster
Remote work isn't for people still figuring out how to do a job. It is
obviously best suited for pros/seniors so the best advice would be to become a
sênior Engineer first.

------
itamarst
While knowing a particular technology is useful, there are other prerequisites
to remote work.

In particular, you need to be able to work independently, and employers have
to be confident of that as well. If you have no work experience that
demonstrates the ability to work independently you are unlikely to get remote
work.

~~~
johndoez
Good point.

Perhaps starting off with some short-term consultancy gigs to build it first
would help.

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ben_pr
A few years ago Bluecross Blueshield in Chattanooga would hire almost anyone
that wanted to learn Cobol and train them, I have a friend that got in on
this. I also have a relative making insane amounts of $ as a Cobol developer,
but honestly Cobol is no fun (for me) and I wouldn't do it. There are a lot of
Cobol devs retiring now and in the next few years and not many people want to
replace them.

I can't think of anything that is Web Dev, Remote, $100 hour, and less than 5
years of experience.

~~~
pavel_lishin
But are those Cobol jobs remote?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Any job can be remote if you're in demand and the employer needs you more than
they need you.

Find their pain points and negotiate.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Typo: the employer needs you more than you need them.

------
clueless123
You got it backwards.. First find the high paying job with remote
opportunities.. then learn what you need. :)

~~~
jamesmp98
> _" then learn what you need."_

But how do I learn the 5+ years of experience?

~~~
selectnull
To literally answer your question: by working 5+ years in the industry.

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gwbas1c
Most likely, it's probably some obscure language or stack that pays high
because they can't find anybody.

I suggest brushing up on Cobol or Fortran, and techniques to bang some web
services in front of those creaky old servers.

------
zer00eyz
Find a stack you like and don't just learn to use it learn how it works.

The money will be good no matter what you choose, but if you enjoy it your
skills are going to be sharper. When you can do things faster/better than the
next guy the money will follow.

------
shuzhang
You're going to find that you will change frameworks and tech stacks fairly
frequently over the years. Focus on proving you can learn quickly and solve
large problems. Best bet for long term roi is probably to learn patterns, web
architecture and vanilla js. With that said, react/redux are good bets for
library/frameworks to learn for now. And node.js if you want to avoid picking
up another language for backend development for now.

------
MK999
Some time ago there was a thread about some app that got popular which the dev
busted out in a few days because he knew his way around heroku hackathon-
starter / node.js [https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-
starter](https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-starter)

------
jack_pp
Well then I guess I'll start doing some personal projects using some arbitrary
stacks, find a job based on that and suck it up for 5 years.

~~~
i336_
That's one approach, but be careful you don't burn out. I'd also say that tech
moves fast enough that you'll need to finetune your approach if you want
something to run with for 5 years.

If you want something that'll be good for 5 years look at stacks/technologies
that have existed for a little while and are known to be fairly stable/mature,
eg everything from jQuery (ubiquitous; embarassed I don't yet know it myself)
to Go (newish, but very pragmatic, fewer surprises/less conflict than other
offerings, by some margin; on my todo list).

Rust and React are wildly popular in their own ways (they're totally
unrelated) but much newer, and I understand they're sufficiently chaotic
enough that people can't quite tell if they'll die out next week or stick for
the next 5 years, even though they're going incredibly strongly right now.

Most of tech fits into categories like this.

Also, about doing personal projects using arbitrary stacks, that's an
excellent idea, but note that the general goal here is learning - I read in a
thread on here the other day that building stuff purely to advertise
competence is almost never a good idea. A commentator noted that the most
you'll get in that case is an "oh, okay, nice" unless your project is relevant
to the company (hard) or truly generally unique ( _really_ hard). Best case
scenario is that a headhunter trawling GitHub notices it.

Hm, now I think about it, it might also be worth it to consider the
ramifications of the _kind_ of things you build. If they're things that would
gather a small userbase but would be difficult to charge for, maybe think
about how "yay I got a job from making this but now I have no time to maintain
it" would work out. Handoff? Established GitHub organization you can add other
users to? etc. Users remember their customer-service experiences :P

------
farm_code
See the latest trends at
[https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar](https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar)

