
Ask HN: The best way to find remote job - shtpavel
What is the best way to find remote job?
Actually i&#x27;m tryin&#x27; to find 20hours\week job to upgrade my Node.js(for now i&#x27;m .NET developer) skill and learn something new with real life project.. 
But I want to get some small salary, 5-15\hour will be okey. 
So where I can find such jobs?
======
tzaman
5-15/hour? You're doing yourself and the industry a huge disservice,
regardless what currency this is in. If you're a .NET developer, I take it you
know what you're doing and even if you want to learn Node.js along the way,
that's not a way to go. Once you're set on a small amount (and charge by the
hour, another big sin we're all guilty of) it's really hard to get more, and
you'll end up doing crappy work for crappy clients. Don't do that.

~~~
shtpavel
Currency - dollar. hm... what is the right pricing?

~~~
drcoopster
I'd multiply that by at least 5 if you're in the US and you're any good.

~~~
shtpavel
Nope, i'm from Eastern Europe.

~~~
hackerboos
Multiply it by 3 then.

Edit: Let me clarify - not saying that Eastern European programmers are better
or worse but the living costs are obviously lower in Eastern Europe than say
Western Europe.

~~~
zura
Not necessary. I'm from Georgia, eastern Europe. I was astonished during my
recent visit in Berlin of how cheap it is, especially groceries/food, clothes,
toys, etc...

I was also comparing prices in San Diego, California, and it was quite on par
with Georgia.

The main reason eastern Europe appears cheap is the human labour - people are
just used to low income...

~~~
insuffi
Can't agree more.

US west coast prices are terrifyingly similar to prices in the Baltic
States(unless you're living in a metropolis such as NYC).

Something to remember: It doesn't matter that you're from Ukraine. It matters
where the company you work remotely for is stationed. If you find a company in
the US or western EU willing to hire you, you can probably ask for their
domestic market rates :)

Good luck.

~~~
zura
Yes. Actually, some companies have policies that they research local salaries
and offer accordingly. Needless to say, I don't work for such companies.

------
jburwell
weworkremotely.com (run by the 37signals/Basecamp folks) and
jobs.joelonsoftware.com (shortcut to Stackoverflow jobs) are two sources of
remote job listings. I am sure there are more -- these are just two with which
I happen to be familiar. I have also found that both of these sites have a
fairly high quality of job listings.

Another approach to consider is seeking freelance work. You may be able to
find work porting .NET applications to node.js which would allow you to
leverage you current skill set to learn a new one. The challenge with this
approach is that freelance rates can be pretty cut throat. Therefore, it would
likely best to view these types of jobs as an opportunity to build
experience/portfolio more than money making.

~~~
tzaman
We hired two developers through WeWorkRemotely (gotten about 100 applicants),
and couldn't be happier. Highly recommended.

~~~
warp
I got hired through WeWorkRemotely fairly recently, I didn't know the
competition could be that fierce! :)

~~~
fecak
Competition for remote work is fierce, and is only going to get more fierce
for as long as it remains rare. For most people that are applying for remote
work, they are applying not because of the work itself or a strong belief in
the company. Their #1 search criterion is for remote work and all other
details are probably a somewhat distant second, and until remote jobs are more
available you will find it a competitive market.

~~~
mrfusion
But on the flip side, companies can get quality talent for cheap salaries, no?

~~~
collyw
They would get a whole lot more productivity out of me. Not being asked to fix
users excel errors and being bugged every 5 minutes. (I know this is true, as
the organization was a lot smaller 3 years ago when I started, and for the
first year I was incredibly productive).

------
danielweber
For remote jobs, clarity of communication is essential.

I hope this doesn't read as mean, since I suspect English is not your first
language, but if you are trying to get hired by an English speaking company,
you need to use proper grammar and spelling.

If you are looking for job in your native language, and just raising the topic
here on HN as the best place to discuss it, then please only read the first
paragraph of this comment. I don't mean to exclude you from discussing things
here.

~~~
mapleoin
Hi, I'm just here to confirm Muphry's law[1].

You missed an indefinite article here: _If you are looking for job in your
native language, ..._

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law)

~~~
lyyons
Muphry's [sic] law, indeed.

~~~
justizin
click the link, it's not [sic] so much as Muphry's law is not to be confused
with Murphy's.

"Muphry's law is an adage that states that when a person criticises another's
editing or proofreading, there will be a mistake of a similar kind in that
criticism. The name is a deliberate misspelling of Murphy's law."

------
stevoo
This is a very hard to question to answer you and there is no actual solution
to give you.

It all comes down to how good you really are. I have been looking for the past
3 - 4 months for a remote job, but since the competition out there is huge and
there are definitely better programmers than me I haven't manage to land
anything yet.

Make a great CV, a personal page, work on github to show your work. This will
help you dramatically since you will be displaying your work and who you are.
( I have all except github as all I do is actually on my own repos )

As for the hours you are willing to put in, then that is more like freelancing
than a full time job. Perhaps try Elance for some freelancing and work on your
own to learn node.

~~~
Touche
> It all comes down to how good you really are. I have been looking for the
> past 3 - 4 months for a remote job, but since the competition out there is
> huge and there are definitely better programmers than me I haven't manage to
> land anything yet.

Not trying to be harsh, but if you honestly believe this, you should give up
right now. There will always be people smarter than you, this is a given. But
you will never land a job with the attitude of "I'm not good enough to work
here".

~~~
chrisdevereux
> but if you honestly believe this, you should give up right now

That sounds a bit dramatic, I'd advise changing what you believe.

There will always be things you believe that hold you back, but you will never
overcome them with an attitude of "I should just give up now"...

------
bentcorner
Can people who are working remotely share their experience? What works, what
doesn't?

Some things I've heard about that I wouldn't mind reading about again:

\- Making an office space in the home (I've seen workspaces designed [I think]
for remote workers - do people use these and find they offer value?)

\- Setting up boundaries with family members

\- Communication habits - do you scrum over text chat, or daily video
conferencing? What about large team meetings? Do you share daily status over
email, or is that too much overhead?

\- Working hours - do all-remote teams encourage syncing up time that the team
is online? If you're remote and most of the team is together, do you work
hours that are local to the rest of the team? I've heard it can be hard in
this situation making sure that the rest of the team remembers you in hallway
conversations, since it's easy to forget the one guy who is remote.

Some stuff I haven't seen written about:

\- Logistics - do you need to be the admin for your PC? Do you get a hardware
budget, or is it entirely BYOB?

I'm also interested in how the remote dynamic changes going from small teams
to companies with thousands of employees.

~~~
swah
Also I'm curious if people from "3rd world countries" are also able to find
remote work and where (I'm from Brazil).

~~~
poulsbohemian
My contact info is in my profile and I'm hiring. Have hired several
contractors in Brazil in the past.

~~~
shubhamjain
Any chance of hiring from India? :)

------
tommoor
We wrote an article with some ideas here: [http://blog.sqwiggle.com/best-
places-find-telecommuting-job-...](http://blog.sqwiggle.com/best-places-find-
telecommuting-job-craigslist/)

EG: The AngelList search is very good and you can filter by allows remote :-)

------
j45
I'm really surprised oDesk has not been mentioned. They have merged with
elance, and the type of work you are looking for at the rates you are seeking
(and higher) are routinely listed there.

I would create a profile on that site, most new freelancers there start with a
lower rate to build experience and feedback and in a few months look to raise
the rate.

Feel free to contact me by email and I can tell you what my experience has
been from the hiring side.

~~~
zura
Not sure about hiring side (about quality...), but from the contractor side -
stay away from these sites. It is the race to the bottom...

~~~
artmageddon
While I've heard good things about oDesk(I think there was another one,
eLance?), I have to agree with the sentiment of this. I spent several weeks
trying to get some simple work on freelancer.com so I could build up some
credibility, and every project was either not worth your time("please create a
site just like Facebook, I will pay $100"), or someone who had more projects
completed will come in with a modest offering and be the one who gets approval
for the work. It was pretty irritating. I tried to take an exam for C# that
was offered by the site, but the payment system kept crapping out on me, and
I'm pretty sure I got charged for it without being allowed to take the test.

I want to do remote work, but going through these sites makes me grateful that
I'm actually part of a company that pays me a salary.

~~~
j45
Rentacoder, freelancer, etc are definitely bottom of the barrel in terms of
income and quality of projects.

I've always found the quality and cost of eLance and oDesk to be higher. Now
that they've merged, I think there is something there, the development talent
in Eastern Europe is excellent.

------
city41
It might be tough to get hired in that scenario. You might want to bootstrap
this idea by first doing some of your own Node projects.

~~~
KB1JWQ
Quite; "pay me to learn technology X" is always going to be a tough sell
unless you're bringing another skillset to a problem.

~~~
shtpavel
I think you don't understand me right... Simply: i want to find trainee aor
junior remote job.

------
Touche
Specifically for Node it's nice to have some notoriety, no matter how small.
So create a cool Node module that does something original and email the guys
at dailyjs.com about it. If it gets posted there put that in your resume and
you'll land a job.

But not a lot of companies are looking for part-time programmers, why do you
not want a full-time job?

~~~
shtpavel
Full time job is OK, but if it'll suit my salary requirements. For now i'm, ok
with my current job. But want to move forward. I mean, I want to learn new
techs by part-time job, and then move to full-time.

------
NDizzle
I would set some alerts for craigslist job listings in the larger craigslist
markets.

[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=node.js&is_tele...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=node.js&is_telecommuting=1&is_parttime=1)

Replace 'sfbay' with various cities and see what you get.

~~~
dobbsbob
Indeed
[http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/van/sof/4451591937.html](http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/van/sof/4451591937.html)

------
thibaut_barrere
What I do is "plant small seeds" on the web (like: articles, video talks),
which acts as "ads" for my skills. Then I make sure I can be found online
(twitter, site, forums). It's a midterm strategy but works very well (I've
worked 100% remotely during the last 3 years).

~~~
infinitone
I don't get it- can you give an example of a 'seed'?

Sounds interesting.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Sure - here are concrete example of seeds.

I call them seeds because you have to realize that they will take time to give
fruits. This is not an emergency technique.

Blog posts: from time to time, I was writing an article on my (now defunct but
soon restarted) technical blog. It is currently offline but you can have a
look here [1]. I created linkable content that got some coverage, and some of
my former customers saw the blog and it created credibility to them.

Videos: similarly, I've tried since I think 2009 to give at least one talk per
year. It has to be recorded and available on the web afterwards. Even on small
topics, in small events to get started.

Some video examples:

\- [https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/transforming-data-with-ruby-
an...](https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/transforming-data-with-ruby-and-
activewarehouse-etl) (video at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW863DOXqZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW863DOXqZQ))
=> people contacted me afterwards to do ETL work

\- on bootstrapping [https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/retour-dexperience-sur-le-
boot...](https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/retour-dexperience-sur-le-
bootstrapping-de-wisecash-produit-saas) (video at vimeo.com/85490636) =>
people asked me to help them build SaaS afterwards

You can also just tweet useful, non opinion-oriented tweets and links, and
grow an audience this way (I have around 1460 followers
[http://twitter.com/thibaut_barrere](http://twitter.com/thibaut_barrere) but
started much lower). People looking for skills will find you this way etc.

Hope this helps!

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20121031083446/http://blog.logeek...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121031083446/http://blog.logeek.fr/)

~~~
collyw
Does anyone know a good blogging platform to include code examples (without
messing around with Javascript)? I tried google blogger, but code did not come
out nicely, and it tries to do its own formatting when you save.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
I've settled with Jekyll (static), hosted on S3. I'm using prism.js at the
moment but will probably move the code examples to embedded github gists.

------
keslert
Have you considered picking up freelance node.js work? I run a website called
FreelanceInbox.com that is designed to help freelancers find quality leads
without having to spend time a lot of time searching. You could probably
handle small projects and develop your skills that way.

~~~
mrfusion
Cool site, neat idea. Any chance I could get a week's trial before I sign up?
I'd be more interested in data science, and/or Python/Django work. I can't
tell if you have that.

~~~
keslert
There is currently not a trial option, but it is a 30-day money back
guarantee, so if the service doesn't work, you can just let us know and you'll
get a full refund. Python/Django work yes, but currently no on the data
science.

~~~
mrfusion
I don't see Python/Django on the set of checkboxes, any advice?

~~~
keslert
sent you an email

------
sjclemmy
I would suggest you make yourself easily contactable. Posting this question on
HN might interest a possible employer who would offer you some work. However
they will have a hard time doing so, if your contact details are not mentioned
in your profile.

Update: You have added contact details. :)

~~~
shtpavel
You are right :)

------
ksakhuj
I'm thinking of finding a remote job too. I am an experienced Nodejs
developer/architect. My current gig, I am nodejs lead & initial team member,
in a very popular app. So I have scaled the app to millions.

------
adamzerner
I'm thinking of finding a remote job too. However, I'm inexperienced and a
friend of mine said that people don't tend to hire remotely for junior level
positions. Is this true?

~~~
keslert
Same thing as I mentioned in my other comment. Freelancing is sometimes a good
fit for people in your position. To help you get on your feet, I created a
website called FreelanceInbox.com that is designed to help freelancers find
quality leads without having to spend time a lot of time searching.

------
andys627
Meet other developers (at meetups or coworking spaces) and ask them if they
know someone who's hiring.

