
Ask HN: Highest paying remote companies? - smattiso
I have 10 years of FAANG experience (Senior SWE). I&#x27;m looking to move closer to my family and my current team isn&#x27;t very remote friendly so I&#x27;m looking for a change. What should I be looking for?
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sabarasaba
You can have a look here:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1PYwbCTY7h0CNHeer9J0VRzE/edit#gid=1279011369).
Found my last comapny in that list, 10/10 would do again.

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ivabz
Resource unavailable for me. Can you please re-paste?

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dbetteridge
Link working for me, think its getting hugged to death though as I got a
google "read only cached version"

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jordinl
Bear in mind many US companies that are looking to hire remotely only want
employees to be based in US... So your experience will be different based on
where you want to live.

The most important job boards seem to be
[https://weworkremotely.com](https://weworkremotely.com) and
[https://remoteok.io](https://remoteok.io). Many jobs posted on the monthly
"Who is hiring?" Hacker News post are for remote positions. A few years ago I
built an index of "Who is hiring?" posts with a search by location and
technology:
[https://hnhiring.com/search?locations=remote](https://hnhiring.com/search?locations=remote)

Edit: given you're FAANG you might find facet useful:
[https://www.facetdev.com/](https://www.facetdev.com/)

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arcsin
I always wonder what is the reason that they ask for US-based. One possible
reason I've heard is that it makes taxes and certain laws easier for them to
follow, in which case it sounds like more a matter of being a US citizen
rather than actually living in the US. Another reason I've seen is that they
still want you to be available to come into the office every so often, which
would be a different story.

Are there any people here who are US citizens but living abroad that have
applied to these companies? What was the response?

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sokoloff
Health care is another consideration. Many insurance companies are (in
practice) US only or even subset-of-US only. That’s been one of the hurdles
for us when we hire remotely (which is generally of the form “excellent
current employee wants to move and we want them to keep working for us”)

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eliaspro
That shouldn't really be a criteria, since at least in Europe there's no such
thing as having your employer provide a healthcare plan for you.

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niij
Not the case in Germany, as I understand it.

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softwaredoug
Pro tip: if you make pay your only consideration, you may end up pretty
miserable. Often companies pay very high because they burn through employees,
and are otherwise a nightmare to work for for a variety of reasons.

(Even worse, you can get stuck in these golden handcuffs as your expenses
catch up to your income, leaving you in a cycle of one miserable job after
another)

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nvarsj
Good pay at least makes such positions more tolerable. Getting paid poorly in
a bad company is far worse, I assure you.

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StavrosK
The corresponding choice would be getting paid poorly in a good company. If
we're doing extremes, you can get paid well in a good company too.

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ehnto
It is a false dichotomy of course, and pretty much every job is somewhere in
the middle of the spectrum. You can also do a lot personally to endure a bad
job if you decide the pay is worth it, but if your life is nothing but your
job then a bad job means a bad life.

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curiousDog
Docker. They made me an offer of around ~210k base + options for a Senior
Software engineer a few months ago. Fully remote! I ended up passing on it for
different reasons on it though.

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darkstar_16
210k base? This probably needs another topic, but is this normal for bay area
companies recruiting at senior engineer level now?

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nvarsj
OP provided no context. So I'll fill in the blanks: Ex-FAANG engineer got an
offer at Dropbox. Dropbox needs to be competitive, so made an offer around
200k + full remote. FAANG in bay area pays 200-300 for senior total comp, so
it was probably a salary cut for OP. If you're Joe Blow in the middle of the
US, you are probably not going to get a similar offer unless you're already on
a similar wage.

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electricslpnsld
> FAANG in bay area pays 200-300 for senior total comp

FAANG pays 200-300 total comp for _new_ grads, these days. My new grad friends
who land at Facebook and Google are getting 140-160 base salary, 70 or 80 in
bonus, and around 80 to 100 in RSU vesting in the first year. Pay is bonkers
right now!

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nvarsj
Okay, in that case OP was probably taking an even larger paycut :).

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ddebernardy
Basecamp without a doubt, if this interview of their CEO is anything to go by:

> We’re taking home lots of money every year. We’re paying our employees
> incredibly well. We pay them top 10 percent salaries in the industry, San
> Francisco rates, even though we’re not based in San Francisco. We have
> amazing benefits. We have all these things because we’re independent.

[https://www.recode.net/2019/1/23/18193685/venture-capital-
mo...](https://www.recode.net/2019/1/23/18193685/venture-capital-money-kills-
business-basecamp-ceo-jason-fried)

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rinchik
Sounds great but not really practical advice. They rarely hire nowadays, also
it gets more complicated with matching of their open positions with your
resume.

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lexda15
Hi there! Someone shared this list last week.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv0BjsWBR7JntDJqRM6_hyjbE/edit?usp=sharing)

There are Remote Open Engineering Positions right now. You can check them
there.

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maremp
Have you done full remote before? If you don't have significant experience in
managing yourself and the fact that you will work alone most of the time, I
suggest you not to look just for money, but instead look for a company with a
culture which suits you. If they give you just a big paycheck to cover up the
shit that you will have to do for them, there is a high chance that you will
burn out and no amount of money will help you.

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vemv
It will be very rare to find companies publicizing high-paid remote offers.
They would get swamped with the the wrong applicants.

I'd go for well-established US companies which use something you are an expert
in. Then I'd try to pull a remote deal out of the negotiation.

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germainelol
What kind of experience have the people here had when applying for remote
positions? Did you guys find it difficult to get a remote job (that you
enjoy!)?

When I was last looking for a job, I applied to several remote positions in
the hope I might get one but was unsuccessful in all of them. In general, I
found it a lot more difficult compared to the local companies I spoke with. I
don't think it's anything to do with my experience, but I suppose you are
competing with the world rather than your local area.

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jordinl
It's more difficult than finding local jobs. Supply/demand does not work in
your favor.

Edit: Besides many companies look for previous remote experience. So it's hard
to get a remote position without having had a previous remote position.

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Scea91
You are right that getting a remote job is probably more difficult than
finding a local one. OTH the existence of remote jobs market definitely works
in your favour in some situations because you simply have more choices.

Fo example, I am a machine learning scientist / engineer currently based in
Prague. The ability that I would be able to easily find a remote job
definitely increases my negotiation power which would other way be quite
limited in Prague because there are not as many great local options in my
field here.

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jordinl
You're right. As an individual looking for a remote job you also have many
more options than if you focused in local jobs. And I would definitely
recommend anybody not living in a major tech hub to get a remote job.

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tomaha
Did you check inside your company. E.g. Google gives a lot of freedom to
people with 10+ years with them and I know at least one other company in the
same area, which did it with even less. So might not be the worst idea to look
for something remote friendly in your current company.

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esseeayen
Wouldn't Basecamp ([http://basecamp.com](http://basecamp.com)) be one of the
top people. They pay within the top 10% of salaries comparing to SV/SF
salaries, and pretty much the whole company is a remote team.

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bigboris
Check out [https://www.flexjobs.com](https://www.flexjobs.com). They have tags
and other criteria that help you find ads by keyword, schedule, full/part
time, featured employers, etc.

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slucha
Http://www.Basedremote.com is another doc list with remote companies

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slucha
[http://basedremote.com](http://basedremote.com)

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pacomerh
Opened the first company in the list and saw this very depressing ad :
[https://www.crossover.com/job-front-end-software-
engineer?ut...](https://www.crossover.com/job-front-end-software-
engineer?utm_campaign=AvailableJobs)

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slucha
yes, I wonder what is the deal with crossover. It looks like some slave-
developer plattform... But then for a dev in eastern europe or asia a
permanent position with 30k/y is better than most local positions? But might
also be wron about this...

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qualsiasi
In Italy a junior dev gets 28k$/year so I think even western/southern Europe
may be interested.

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jot
"Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in San Francisco, but now we pay everyone as
though all did": [https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-
in-...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-san-
francisco-but-now-we-pay-everyone-as-though-all-did/)

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jlisam13
GitHub but certain locations are restricted

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stubish
Looking for probably 50-66% of your current salary. You only need to pay
remote employees competitive local rates, not the inflated FAANG rates. And
someone in the Bay area needing a comparatively high salary is going to lose
out to a similarly scored candidate in Adelaide.

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nathan_f77
I think this is generally true for average developers, but this probably
doesn't apply for a senior engineer with 10 years of FAANG experience. They
will be able to command a Silicon Valley salary anywhere in the world. But
only if they work remotely for a SV company. You're probably not going to get
this kind of salary if you work remotely for a company based in the UK,
Canada, or Australia.

It's also true that many companies try to get away with cost-of-living
adjustments, but you can find plenty of companies that don't do that. So they
can just keep looking until they find a great offer.

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dzhiurgis
Problem with paying employees too much, especially freelancers means that they
just wont put the hours in.

Why would I work 40hrs @ $100 when I can do 10hrs @ $400?

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nathan_f77
When you hire a remote employee for a full-time job, you're usually expecting
them to put in at least 40 hours per week. People will often take that job
because they value the stability, want to work with a good team, want to work
on an interesting problem, or there are significant stock options at an early-
stage startup.

When you're a contractor, you can earn a lot of money for short-term projects,
but it gets a bit boring after a while. You're more of a mercenary with no
long-term interest in the project. I've also found that the projects are
usually very dull. If you join an existing project as a freelancer, then the
code quality is often very poor and there can be a lot of technical debt.
(YMMV.)

So sometimes it's nice to join a team and have a vested interest in the
project, as a co-founder or an early employee. (I've been a freelancer working
10 hours per week for the last few years, but I'm now thinking about a full-
time remote job at a startup.)

Consulting is fun, but if you're going to take it seriously (e.g. paying off
the mortgage on a house and saving for retirement), then you have to put in a
ton of hours over a few decades. That means working on a lot of really boring
and tedious projects (and maybe a few interesting ones.) I'd much rather join
some startups and get a few "lottery tickets", or build my own projects and
support them with part-time consulting work.

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mxuribe
While i have little experience on the remote side of things....i can assure
you that working for The Man at an office in a conventional, non-remote way,
also takes "a few decades" to pay of a mortgage, save for retirement, etc. ;-)

