I'm really disappointed by searching for a job. I want to change my current, which is a fully remote one. Due to some family issues I need only, and ONLY a fully remote job without any trips. This one fact makes me a bad fit for about 99.999% of all job offers. The rest is more depressing, as I seek for some more interesting job, not a junior one.
I have over 15 years of commercial experience in different areas, I have been payed to program in: SQL, C, C++, Python, Java, SQL, Javascript, Ruby (plus some more).
And this is the problem. For the more advanced positions the companies/recruiters seek mainly for a programmer who has 10 years of experience using only one stack of things. What's worse it is expected that the candidate remembers the whole language/libraries specification, and documentation. I always worked with different versions of everything. When I had to fix a product used in different versions on different platforms, I had to use the exact version that the client was using. So I did.
I'm writing this because I got too many answers like "thank you, your experience is really great, but we got a candidate who is a much better fit for this position". I'm not sure that the whole world looks like this. I'm wondering if I'm looking for the job in wrong places. Or maybe the truth is that for the remote work, with so few positions opened, I will always be a bad fit, because there will always be someone who has been doing the one thing for the last 10 years, and who remembers all the APIs. The sad fact is that I haven't even got to the moment when they ask me "how much do you want to earn?".
So my main questions are: Should I give up my dreams about a remote work with flexible hours? Is there any better way to find an offer than using the mostly known sites like weworkremotely (with no more than 2 new positions per day) etc.? How hard is that to find a remote job company, which not interested in a 10-year-one-job-one-language programmers only?
The first problem is your competition: the instant that a job doesn't require a physical presence, then you're going up against every possible candidate, in every possible location. It's easy to be in the top 1% of candidates in your city, but it's really, really hard to be in the top 1% of candidates in the entire world. Plus, keep in mind that your competition may live in a way cheaper location, and be willing to work for way less money. (Or, they're willing to take a pay cut in order to stay near their family or favorite location or restaurant or whatever.)
Whenever we post a consultant position on our site, we get 200-400 applications in a few days, and they're from a stunning number of qualified people. There have been hiring rounds where I wished we could hire a dozen people because they were all such good fits. Getting to the top of that pile is really, really hard.
The second problem is accounting and taxes. Every time we hire someone in a different US state, we have to deal with different tax laws, business licenses, and health plans. If I had to guess, it costs us 20-40 hours of admin work whenever we add someone in a new state (or when an existing employee moves to a new state.) Adding another country makes it even worse.
Another problem in your case: when you say "without any trips," that makes it sound like you don't even want to come into the office for orientation, or to do planning sessions with the team, or team-building, or even conferences for learning or growth. I'm pretty suspicious when I hear that someone doesn't even want to learn at conferences - that's one of the ways we get the team together each year. I'm not saying you can't learn unless you're at a conference, obviously, but saying no trips at all - that's a tough sell.