Comment by sarchertech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sarchertech | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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

Definitely true.

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).

> 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.

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?

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