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I've always worked remotely. You're not really competing with the entire global talent pool if you're applying for an American company.

First, most companies will have a time zone limit.

2. Companies will require that you can communicate in English extremely well.

3. You need access to a reliable electric grid and reliable fast internet (the firewall rules out mainland China completely--1/5 of the world).

4. Many companies don't want to hire someone from a country without a strong legal framework accessible to foreigners--they want to be able to enforce NDAs etc... And some companies don't want to risk dealing with any foreign legal system at all, even a good one.

5. Travel time (and expense/visas) to the office in case you need to visit.

6. You need to pass the "culture fit" interview.

7. Very likely to run into someone involved in hiring who has a bad impression of programmers from certain countries after working with terrible offshore teams. Overcoming this sterotype won't be easy. Related to 6.

Already being in America gives you several huge advantages.

I agree you're not competing globally as an American. However, you are competing with all developers in the US!

You're competing with all developers looking for remote work. Which isn't close to all.

Then, once you have remote experience, in most cases you're really only competing with other developers who have remote experience.

It's hard to get a remote job right out of college. But if you're good at your job, and have 5+ years of experience, with at least some remote experience, it's not that hard.

Certainly easier than "competing with ever developer in the US" makes it seem.

> with at least some remote experience

See, this is the problem. Many companies are open to remote workers. Few want remote virgins.

I'd also add that it's not that hard provided you are a web dev (particularly front end). Non-webdev remote position pickings are rather slim.

Yes definitely true. If there's no possibility of moving to a remote position at your current company to get started, I'd suggest trying remote contract work for a year or so.

>Non-webdev remote position pickings are rather slim.

True on average. But there are a lot of other specialties that have a high percentage of remote jobs. Most paid Linux kernel hackers work remotely IIRC.

Just a note that my remote-first company, which does both web and native app development, is looking to hire both a remote front end and back end developer soon. Tweet me if interested!

The Stack Overflow poll this year definitely showed a skew towards more experienced devs getting the remote work. Which would imply the competition for remote work is above average in ability.

That's not really the full picture though. A big part of the reason it's harder on average to find a remote job is because there aren't many entry level remote dev jobs.

So yes, if you look at the developer job market as a whole, finding a remote job is much harder.

However, If you aren't looking for an entry level job, the difference isn't nearly as great.

What is the skillset they're looking for that would be proven out by having worked remote before?

I agree with most of this; but there are exceptions.

Many of these rules can be more flexible/broken at big global companies with remote work availability. They usually have experienced legal teams to iron out some of these pretty quickly.

Eg. We're a remote-first product team of 150+ (at a much larger corp.), currently hiring 3 people in China and several more globally.

I'd say more than anything, we primarily only hire people with 5+ years experience in our particular industry. We can onboard an intermediate or senior person within a couple weeks, but a junior with limited industry-specific knowledge would struggle without someone to tap on the shoulder every 15 minutes for the first couple years.

If I were to give someone advice on getting a remote job (more generally): it's more about networking than anything [even more-so than regular gigs]. You need to build up a level of trust with the people you're going to be working with before even applying. Reach out to a few people at the company you're interested in with questions about the product to establish a rapport, really know why you want to work there (beyond pay or working from home), and work towards having a few beers with them in person (if possible).

8. You need to be able to work well remotely. This is an skill all its own that is often underestimated.

Definitely true.

> 3. You need access to a reliable electric grid and reliable fast internet (the firewall rules out mainland China completely--1/5 of the world).

Every competent developer in China knows how to bypass the firewall.

Awesome response!

Totally agree with you that maybe it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of what it takes. I actually broke this down in the 2nd part of the article (https://www.deekit.com/how-do-i-find-a-remote-job-part-2/).

The point about the global talent pool competition is valid. My thinking on that would be to leverage what you have going for you.

For me, I was an native English speaker wanting to work with an Estonian startup. I had a native language advantage. So there are always ways to get ahead of those you're up again.

Like the idea of offering value before being asked for it!

FYI the link to 'remote work has certain challenges' is broken, has an extra parenthesis at the end.

Ah thanks for the heads up, changed it.

Six months to land the right job holds for any job or field, remote or not. There's a lot of jobs available, but along with that you need to be picky - it can take some time to find a competitive, ideal option.

Let's say you take 6 months to find the competitive, ideal option. And you get an extra $20K in salary, going from say $100K to $120K (remote). So you sacrificed $50K in opportunity cost.

End of year 1: job A $100k, job B $60K

End of year 2: job A $200k, job B $180K

End of year 3: job A $300k, job B $300K

Of course if it's a startup, the odds are high that it would fold within three years. So unless it's a BigCo job that you are planning on sticking with... it's tough for me to make the argument that it's worth it to walk away from a decent but non-ideal offer. Employers know this and use this as leverage against you.

6 months looking could mean someone is employed during this time period as well.

Wouldn't the ideal be to keep working at the existing job, rather than quiting and looking for 6 months?

I agree with your point that it is wise for job seekers to consider these costs and that companies will take advantage of this. I also think it's a long-term mistake when companies do this.

It's a problem because you end up with an employee who is now being paid below market rate. This is most effective against those who are not employed, but once they are employed they will be hearing from recruiters or start looking for the next job while still on the payroll. Because this company is unlikely to provide aggressive enough raises, their employees will be receptive to new offers. A year or two out, this employee gives 2 weeks notice. Was the win of saving the company a couple $10k worth it? Most likely not.

If employers have trouble both finding and retaining talent, then this is a mistake to leverage this against unemployed candidates. If you don't have this problem you soon will once recruiters discover a company full of underpaid but qualified candidates. People leaving is also a signal to current employees that better deals exist somewhere else.

You have a good point, but keep in mind that unemployment benefits help to cut back on the opportunity cost.

I don't think 6 months is a typical developer job search, and that has nothing to do with being picky.

Almost everyone worth working for is hiring constantly. Hence it's relatively straightforward to run a bunch of interview processes in parallel while still being quite picky about the offer you accept. In most cases, it's highly unlikely that a better option will materialize with additional time (in 99% of cases, it would have existed when you started).

It depends on where you live and how comfortable you are with moving to a different city. Not every city is San Francisco.

Maybe I'm just a bad developer but it does take me 6 months to find any kind of pay/benefits bump.

And no, it isn't easy to do it in parallel because I'm almost always employed so my bandwidth is about one interview a month.

There are remote jobs that only hire local, with a few exceptions for workers a time zone or two away.

I've worked at two such companies, but this kind of work appears to be a kind of dark matter never discussed here.

Most US remote jobs I've seen advertised don't want remote workers that are non-US based. I'd be interested to understand if workers can stray from their timezone once they're embedded in a business though?

>> when you're applying for remote jobs, you're competing against a worldwide talent pool

when a US employer lists "anywhere" under location, this pretty much implies "anywhere in the US".

it's a pretty major ordeal for a US company to directly hire a foreign individual especially remotely, which is why if you look on job boards and see an advertised salary way lower than what a US-based candidate would be asking for - it's almost always advertised by a proxy company who deals with paperwork etc. from what I've seen on major job boards these account for ~20% of remote job ads.

that said - I agree that competition for remote jobs is more intense because there's less of these out there and plenty of ppl interested in getting one even if they have a job but it forces them to go to the office.

I made a job board for remote jobs in data science: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1054526381348851/