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Comment by Volundr | Hacker News Reader

US, looking for remote. 15+ years experience been looking since early January, and I still don't feel like I have traction. Worst job market for engineers I've seen in a long time. I have hope it'll improve in March when budgets are finalized, but at the same time I'm preparing for it to be a long one. First unemployment in my career, up until now I had employers coming to me.

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I suspect the remote aspect is the biggest thing slowing you down. I go in once a month, which is practically a remote job, but those who moved during the pandemic and wouldn't fly in and take a hotel on their expense once a month had to leave

There are 1000 different flavors of mixed home-office working right now, but not that much fully remote

I agree. Having a hard remote only rule changes your opportunities. The key is being flexible.

True. I work remotely in a different state from my company's HQ, but I travel to the office for about a week once a quarter. I actually feel safer with this arrangement than if my HQ were local, because everyone around me is slowly getting forced back into the office. First on an as-needed basis, then one mandatory day per week, then three days a week. Most big companies will be back to five mandatory days a week soon enough, it seems.

I'm not so sure, at least I know plenty of people in tech hubs that are in a similar position. Certainly anything that reduces the number of jobs you can accept will limit your opportunities, but I'm not sure being open to in-office would immediately solve the problem.

In the end it doesn't matter. Due to family concerns relocation is not an option, and anything local would be a huge pay cut. I'll go that route if I reach the point where I need to, but I'm holding off for now.

You might have to take a paycut even working remotely. A lot of companies now pay what you'd expect locally rather than in a tech hub. So, if you worked remotely from San Francisco you'd earn more than if you worked remotely from somewhere rural.

I fully expect to, if for no other reason than the market is no longer on my side. It's a question of degrees.

How exactly do you go about explaining something like "I live in another state but I'd be happy to fly in for 1-3 days a month" on a resume

(Asking for a friend)

Omit it on the resume, mention it during screening.

"I can come to the office on a regular basis"

Then negotiate the definition of "regular" with your comp.

> but those who moved during the pandemic and wouldn't fly in and take a hotel on their expense once a month had to leave

...did anybody actually agree to that?

Maybe I'm off base, but requiring employees to pay for mandatory business trips out of pocket seems insane to me. Is that even legal? It's a camouflaged pay cut, from one point of view (probably actually worse when you consider taxes).

I'm curious how others feel.

That isn't what the OP was saying. These are people who /were/ local office employees, moved away during the pandemic and aren't coming back into the office from time to time to make an appearance on their own dime.

Do you know python and AWS ? My company is hiring.

AWS, yes Python no. One of the few programming languages I haven't had cause to learn. I can learn in no time but I have to assume at the moment you've got plenty of applicants who hit that bar. If you do want to talk my e-mail is in my profile.

A better answer might be to try to set up a phone call/email/etc with the other person and then you can back up your claim of 'no time' with real data, like "I have all this other background in networking and operating systems or whatever, and I also already know how to program in languages X,Y, and Z, and wrote these pieces of code at companies A,B, and C, so Python should be much easier for me than someone who just left university and meanwhile I bring all these other things to the table."

Remember: people don't (always) hire resumes. People hire people.

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