How I Find Six Figure Remote Software Developer Jobs | Hacker News Reader

How I Find Six Figure Remote Software Developer Jobs

fullbit.ca

106 pointscmorgan850643 comments

Remote job #3 so far for me, and networking in various ways greased the wheels for it significantly.

1) went to a local tech meetup, spoke a few times and attended regularly. The organizer for the meetup worked remotely for the company, they referred me in.

2) I wound up on a slack group for people using my particular tech stack. Had a crummy day on the job and asked in their hiring channel if anyone was hiring remote. Someone reached out to me and took my resume, and it led to an offer in fairly short order.

This job encouraged conference/meetup attendance and speaking. I spoke at a couple conferences as well at a meetup or two in my company's HQ. Which led me to:

3) Sent my resume to people I knew at the company, whom I'd met from meetups and conferences, as well as interacted with on that Slack. The interview was, as a result, super chill. The vibe really was "from a technical perspective you're a known quantity to us, we want the rest of the team to talk to you and make sure you're not a jerk."

I've found that in general you're either looking at a 30% paycut from "mid-level" companies in large cities (IE a 150k salary no stock/RSUs locally would be around $110k remote, with lots of "offers" of lower than that and a tiny amount of equity), AND you have probably 200% more competition. Its pretty competitive unless you're pretty specialized on a domain or new technology.

Of course, it means you don't have to live in a large city. For a lot of people the reduced cost of living more than makes up the 30% paycut.

If you're already at the top marginal tax rate, saving 20-30 grand a year can be equivalent to earning 40-45 grand a year, and it's not crazy to think living outside the city could save that much.

I bought my house at 27 years of age and my mortgage is ~$1000 per month. That was by working remotely, mostly for Bay Area companies but also others, from a low-cost town in Washington state. I'm sure that it's easier to find new and better jobs when you have a physical presence near a major software hub. The extra difficulty in job-hunting has not outweighed the benefits of affordable housing so far. Living off savings between jobs is easier when you spend under $2000/month on necessities.

I'm investigating similar options at the moment, but having a spouse who isn't remote complicates things a bit. Even so the idea that changing cities (countries, even) wouldn't necessarily mean changing jobs is a relief.

Unless that $150K included tons of RSUs you would still be better off taking the lower pay and not paying the Bay tax.

If you are not looking in the Bay then you will probably still come out ahead by not spending 2 hours a day commuting.

$75/hr * 2 hours/day * 262 workdays/year = $39K/yr lost commuting. Not including the actual costs of commuting (car, gas, tires, parking, sanity).

So outside the Bay it works out about the same assuming you don't generate any additional revenue in the two hours you would have spent commuting.

Yeah, I've found this is the case as well. Ever since I've gone remote, I've faced ongoing pay cuts. I used to live and work in San Francisco, where my salary was quite high. If you work for a company that is not based in SF or NYC, you will take a massive pay cut.

Most companies based out of SF will only hire local employees because they want to justify their huge real estate expenses. If they do hire remote, they all try and pay local market rates for where you are based out of.

In the end, the trade-offs in pay are worth it for me since I've gotten significantly better types of work, and significantly better quality of life. It still irks me though, since I know I provide the same or better value as I did while my butt was situated in SF.

Do you still live within a city? I feel like I'd move to a cheaper area if I could find a good fully remote job.

Is not a major part of the reason for the high SF salaries because of the high cost of living? As much as I hate to say it, I might want a SF salary, but unless I'm paying a SF-level of rent, a SF-level salary's probably going to be harder to justify.

If they will pay equally skilled co-workers a SF rate, why shouldn't they pay you the same?

Another way to put that is why should you get paid the "raising a family" money that another co-worker might get if you don't have a s/o and kids?

Because people aren't paid what they are "worth". You are paid what you are willing to accept. It's much easier to find employees willing to accept lower salaries outside of SF or young people with no family.

Just say you live in SF.

Use this: https://www.earthclassmail.com/addresses/ca/san-francisco

Bad thing is that you have to pay California state taxes and abide by California laws. If you like weed but hate guns you'll have a good time. If you like guns and don't use weed, you'll find some firearm laws restricting. Also, to keep up the charade it'd be good to visit once in a while and visit the DMV after you get a couple of utility bills and a lease so you can get a California driver's license.

The authorities probably won't check too hard cause you aren't causing any troubles. You are paying Cali state income tax and not using any services, where you actually live doesn't matter that much.

I've found it's a common recruiter tactic to try and wring some sort of concession for you based on your address. In just tell them no. They aren't competing with the gas station down the street from my house they are competing with the Twitter office down the street from theirs.

It's possible my career has taken a hit due to being remote for the last few years but I get paid around $400k and I live in a nice little COL place.

It's remotely possible I could rate 2x that if I was in the valley, but it's by no means guaranteed. I could also make the same or less.

At $400k, you would likely be one of, if not the highest paid remote developer in existence. You must have a very esoteric skill set. And making twice that in the valley would be pretty much unheard of as well unless you are in a big management position or someone with a lot of history, seniority, and/or specific knowledge that is deemed critical to the company and undesirable that you might be hired by a competitor.

It's about differentiating and showing business value. It's not that hard to generate 10x that value for a business if you know how to apply and scale your knowledge. I am absolutely sure that this is not top of market but people aren't calling themselves "remote developer" to get it.

You don't think $400k is top of market for a remote developer?

It's not about showing business value if someone else can show that same value for less. I find it hard to believe there are many developer skill sets that couldn't be retained for less than $400k. (or 4 x $100k remote devs for that matter)

There are tons of employees that generate far more than 10x their salary for the business. But salaries aren't set based on your "value". They are based on market rates.

Holy shit. What do you do exactly?

Don't put too much faith in claims like this made by an anonymous account. Most SF-based software engineers don't make anywhere close to this. And we don't have any details about the breakdown between salary/hourly rate, stock, etc. And we don't have any proof at all really.

I wanna believe, but I'm skeptical & I'll believe it when I see it. Would certainly love details!

Ya, for a remote worker, I don't believe it. If it is true, there is more to the story. They would have to be working on something extremely esoteric and most likely, either have some kind of ownership in the company or just a sweetheart deal from management. The rules of economics apply. And if you are remote, you are competing with an enormous pool of labor and there are very few skills that you have to pay $400k to retain.

The key to finding a great salary as a remote employee is not to start out being remote first. Find a medium sized company that doesn't mind people working remotely, and then work your ass off for them. Then after a while ask to work remotely on a trial period. When approved, work even harder and be 30% more productive than everyone else

Once they see that you're doing well working remotely, there's a higher chance of letting you do that permanently

Currently working remote (domiciled in S. Dakota but working overseas) collecting a $300k+ California salary.

Way to go!

I've always been intrigued by the idea of remote / contract work, but I've always concluded that it requires way too much of the kind of work I hate doing the most (self-marketing). For a normal job, I only have to go through the soul-sucking process of marketing and proving myself once over a relatively short period of time, before spending years doing the kind of work I do enjoy (actual work). I've always wondered whether folks who do contract work like this actually enjoy the self-marketing it takes, or whether the benefits just outweigh this downside for them.

If I could pay someone to do the marketing side for me, it would be a much more attractive option.

Honestly, I don't do any self marketing in that respect. I treat it exactly like a normal job. I do almost exclusively contract work, but it's usually full-time hours and contracts typically last 1-2 years.

I guess I was referring to the content of the article, which is all about how the author markets theirself. Is your experience different?

It's my article =P But I don't market myself in the traditional sense. I just apply to contracts that seem like a good fit. The same as a full-time developer.

In my experience, it's not really different in that regard. You start working with a group and provide value and then you work with them indefinitely unless someone else reaches out with a significantly better offer.

I suppose that you're marketing to whoever you're working with, but that marketing takes the form of working systems, quick iteration, and good communication. And really, you want to provide all of these whether remote or not.

My first remote job happened because I hung out in an IRC channel for a technology I was interested in. Technically I was marketing myself or at least networking but it didn't feel that way.

It was just a normal w-2 fte role so there was no concern about being on a contract.

A curated list of awesome remote jobs and resources - https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

If you like crypto, make something cool and post in r cryptocirrency and let people know you are available for work. I haven’t seen any devs do this but I did this as a designer and landed several large crypto projects. The designs I showcased were for community tools and I enjoyed throwing them together for practice.

> Huge job boards like indeed.com are a little old-school and don’t typically have a lot of remote postings

For me, remote jobs are displayed on Indeed by specifying "Remote" in the Where field of the web page or l query string parameter:

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=.net&l=Remote

The site is down, so here's a cached version

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

I find it highly useful to get right to the point in discussions with potential employers and discuss salary right away. I've been burned a few times by companies that simply weren't willing to pay enough. Even if what I want is fairly higher than what's on offer, for a really good position I might consider it.

It seems a stretch to say you were burned. The company has no idea how much you are worth (to them, not an abstract company) until they interview you. The offer you got is not necessarily the same as the offer that somebody else might get; perhaps your offer was much lower because you seemed like a poor fit.

I wasted my time on a coding project for them, so burned is indeed correct, though it was my own fault. I actually never got an offer. They just told me what they thought would be the maximum as they really liked the project. Also, I learned never to do that again.

This last round of contract hunting for me was similar. Every single organization wanted an 8+ hour project to prove my skills but half the salaries ended up being <80k. So I started having to state base contract rates up front.

Have you ever tried quoting for interview projects?

"I've reviewed the spec for the take-home assignment and I estimate it at about 8 hours which is $1,200 plus tax."

It'd be an interesting experiment at the very least.

I can hear the scoffs already, lol. Maybe this would work if you were being poached.

Never do free work. Not even for an interview. Charge full rate plus some. Serious people know your time is money.

You spelled "goals" wrong on your "about" page. It's not "gloals".

Thank you for catching that. New goal, learn to catch typos.

Hired.com seems like another option. I've gotten some pretty good remote only responses (even though I wasn't looking for remote).

Also if you freelance I often look to partner with devs on side projects. Come join freelancehangout

WeWorkRemotely.com, RemoteOK.io, Stack Overflow remote filter

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