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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

I do remote work for this reason. Although I did manage to recently find a contractor position that pays competitively here in Canada, I find that very rarely. If you do remote contract work, mostly for US or Swiss companies, you can make 2-3x a top Canadian salary. Just throwing that out there as an alternative to moving to the US.

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Well this is interesting..

Based on my own experience of finding remote work for US companies.

I usually get lowballed on the offers because I am based in Canada.

In other words, US companies pay average salaries calculated based on my local salary rates.

In fact I just had a phone interview with a SF startup for a remote position and they were shocked to hear that I was asking for an AVG salary rate in SF instead of Canada.

Not sure if this is the norm for everyone.

Yes that happens. I explicitly exclude any US company with a presence in Canada - as that implies an HR department in Canada with Canadian salary guides. I got an offer from IBM that made me laugh. On top of that they wanted to own anything I did on my own time. Stay away from IBM.

How did you find your way into rates like that?

Without really planning it or advertising myself much. I don't have a website even. So I'm not the right person to ask. All I can say is just be persistent, don't sell yourself short, and most importantly always do an excellent job that wows your client. Work harder than your peers. I've always worked 6-7 days a week (always working challenging side projects after work), and after 15 years of doing that I'm better than most of my peers - it's like making a slowly compounding investment in yourself.

I haven't enjoyed life as much as my peers perhaps, although I do have a good time and I love what I do. But I'll retire early in my fourties and spend the rest of my life working on whatever I find interesting, traveling, or whatever else catches my fancy.

Can I ask what sector and languages/frameworks you use?

Not the person you're responding to, but C++ for me. I make a normal Seattle salary while living in Toronto. Which after conversion seems to put me higher than people with 3x my experience in much better paying sectors than I'm in... It's stupid, and it sucks, I wish my company was local, I don't prefer remote. I do much prefer making literally double than I'd make locally though. :/

I hear you, I don't really like remote either. I go to local programming meetups to get some of the socializing I miss out on with colleagues. But at the difference in income, I can't justify doing it any other way.

I do full-stack but focus mostly on backend. I work in any language, platform, or framework the job requires. There aren't that many remote jobs, so being flexible on the technology side helps me get the best. I find Go to be very much in demand right now. C++ is making something of a comeback ever since C++11.

How do you find remote work? I have 15 years experience, and pretty darn good at what I do. I just find it so much easier to get in-person work.

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