
Ask HN: What's the best way to get a remote position - inertiatic
As someone who is planning to make the move to working from home in the future, I find myself wondering what&#x27;s the optimal game plan to be able to get to a position where I can get a job like that.<p>Now, this is quite a broad question (what skill to acquire, how to &quot;sell&quot; it and yourself, which companies to aim for, tips to retain sanity as a semi-hermit etc.), so feel free to answer whichever facet of it you find more interesting.
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neerkumar
As many other things in the corporate world, the easiest path is firstly get
that at your current company, where you hopefully have some leverage. You
typically need to wait for 1 yr before asking to go remote.

After that, it becomes much easier to get another remote job: you are already
working remotely, which means you have a strong position from a negotiation
standpoint when you ask for a remote job to future employers, and you have
references showing that you can effectively work remotely.

I know several people who work remotely and they all followed this path.

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quickthrower2
You can always utter the words "I am already working remotely", irregardless.

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bb01100100
Irregardless, you say? So that would be, what, a lack of a lack of regard..
so, with regard then. Jolly good!

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quickthrower2
Ah bait taken! :-)

As much as it pains people, irregardless is a real word [1] meaning
regardless.

[1] [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/irregardless](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/irregardless)

~~~
yesenadam
The page you linked to says "Its reputation has not risen over the years, and
it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead."

~~~
cyfihyfi
Irregardless its still a word

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brudgers
Like any job, the best way is to have an established relationship with someone
in a position to pay. After that it is being able to do the thing a stranger
is willing to pay someone to do. With remote work, that's probably harder
because remote work is not for everyone and there is a significant chance that
someone who tries it out won't like it.

It's worth considering that remote work is likely to make it harder to find
future jobs because remote work usually means less interaction with coworkers
and outside vendors and customers. So it tends to curtail the growth of a
person's professional social graph.

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kevin42
Being willing to travel to the customer site periodically helps immensely. I
own a small company and all of our services work is remote. But I made the
connections face-to-face at industry conferences and through personal
networking.

I get a lot of work from visiting for a few days and going out for drinks
while I'm in town.

One time I got a high six figure contract that was going to go to a competitor
the day after having beers with a few of the guys. I asked them to meet up so
they could let me know what they liked and didn't like about my proposal. We
talked about it for a bit but mostly just hung out.

The thing about remote work is that you still need to maintain the person-
person interaction.

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imhoguy
Starting remote work brings you closer to consulting business which needs:
networking + trust + skills + luck.

Know decisive people, managers, architects, entrepreneurs, also these who are
far from your place - think global. From time to time ask them how their
projects are going on, just let them know that you are available to help them.
If they trust you they will come back after some time. There is always a
shortage of good specialists so your pitch should be remembered.

Know your market - obtain skills which are remotely marketable. Just do some
research what these people use, what stacks, what teamwork tools (Slack,
Github, Stash, wikis, reviews etc) etc. Try to figure out their needs. Make a
tailored CV every time to emphasize your skills and experience which match
their needs.

Then you need some luck. As in every sale process that usually means repeating
the process and constantly researching needs. Being on top with contacts and
skills should help you close the deal, no mater where you are located.

From my experience it is easier to work for global or remote-first companies.
Their main communication happens over distributed medium which is usually
transparent for all remote peers. However if you are going to be just WFH guy
in office-first environment then expect lack of information, dealing with poor
communication tools and being forgotten when decisions are made.

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SirLJ
Be very good at your job... I told my boss one day few years ago, I don't feel
like coming to the office anymore (30 min drive door to door) so I work from
home for a big company that is not officially supporting remote workers...

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jetti
I did the same but only asked for 2 days remote every week. I have an almost 2
hour commute door to door so they were understanding. My last job that I was
full remote was because we were acquired and the company didn't want to pay
for the office when there was an office about 30 minutes from that office.

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shortoncash
People are scared you won't commit code and will do nothing. A long public
commit history on GitHub is good and seems to do a lot. Also, once you have
the job, keep the git active too. The good commit logs help you write invoices
more accurately also and serve as a record.

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kevin42
I'm not sure that's always a positive.

I'm not saying it should be this way, but there are very many companies and
industries where a long open source development history won't be seen as a
reflection of what the developer can do in a job. Not all companies are going
to take an interest in GitHub history.

I think the majority of development jobs are with companies that have a
skepticism of their employees contributing to open source projects because
they don't understand it and are worried about their IP being co-opted into
open source.

~~~
shortoncash
Oh, if I wasn't clear, I meant using git as a form of work record at your
company. If you have a nice commit log, it's easy to point to your own
productivity. I didn't mean keep committing to open source repos.

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cosmie
In a similar vein, do any non-devs here work remote?

A lot of companies where I’ve seen remote work allowed, only (explicitly)
allow it for software engineering roles. And any other postings from the
company will specify a particular office location.

I’ve been allowed to work remote in my current company, but only as a quirk of
the org structure here and getting lumped in with the dev team. I do more of
business operations and analytics work that _usually_ doesn’t report up
through engineering, and trying to find a new job that allows remote work has
been painful.

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twobyfour
My current company has some people in customer service and business
development who work remotely.

Some of that is related to the work (customer service especially) not
requiring much collaboration with the in-office team, and long-time employees
who moved out of town arranging to remain employed remotely. The rest is the
fact that the business development folks are more effective if they're already
located in and have networks in and a finger on the pulse of the specific
geographic markets they're targeting.

That said, the business development job postings do specify markets where we
expect the candidate to be located, just not the same one where our central
office is located.

We also employ contractors in a few departments who work remotely.

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cosmie
That seems to be consistent with what I’ve seen. Thanks for another data point
confirming that. :)

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togusa2017
I did remote job for a year and during the interview it was no different then
a normal job. But wow what an experience I loved every moment of it. Practised
agile, proper documentation and mid night design brain storming session from
team member from Italy. Even if the work is not so top notch take for the
experience

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chuck4932
> Practised agile, proper documentation and mid night design brain storming
> session

What does any of that have to do with being remote? And why is having to work
at midnight a good thing?

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togusa2017
I have learned that practising agile and proper documentation is a life saver
when working in remote when your team mate is not an arms length away or on
different timezone. I was able to appreciate the importance of these two
during remote. At those times I enjoyed working in the night and relaxing /
travelling in the day. So it was an new experience. Just my 2 cents

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itamarst
You're going to be working with less supervision, so you need to prove that'll
work.

Specifically you need to demonstrate you can work independently. This can be
both job title ("senior software engineer" often maps to this) but it's also
about a set of skills you want to demonstrate in your resume, cover letter,
etc..

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JSeymourATL
Toptal has an interesting platform for remote developers >
[https://www.toptal.com/](https://www.toptal.com/)

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JoeAltmaier
Personal reference is generally needed. Work someplace, then leave, then
contract back as a remote worker, as worked out for me.

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eip
Tell them you will do either but your rate is 50% higher to work on site.

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imhoguy
Don't undercharge because you work remotely. In serious business it may be
perceived as lower quality work.

For long term contracts it is better to stick to constant daily rate, whatever
you are on site or remote, as this makes companies planing and accounting
easier. Of course it is fine to charge for travel expenses but that should be
also agreed upfront.

Depending on work arrangement your costs may be even higher with remote gig -
work space, utility bills, software licenses, hardware, occasional travelling,
accountant etc.

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eip
> Don't undercharge because you work remotely.

You misunderstand. Remote is the normal salary you want. The on site salary is
normal salary + 50% inconvenience fee.

