Remote work on HN: Who is hiring? – 69% jobs in 2023 are remote

Oh yeah, if you're talking about dev shops, don't hire dev shops (the "hired" VS extremely green person phenomenon you're talking about happens in these kinds of companies because their incentive is to sell hours/men, instead of actual value).

Do your diligence, and your technical/communication/leadership interviews to make sure you're hiring the right person.

And if it doesn't work out after 2-3 months, fire the person. It happens in all formats of work whether it's remote, hybrid, or onsite.

Run a background check, sign confidentiality and DP agreements and hire someone who sells you trust. Again, something you would do in any given modality of work.

> they don't care about anything other than keeping those paychecks coming for a while

Don't forget this is all employment really is. Any employee-employer relationship boils down to this regardless of what you have deluded yourself into believing.

Hi. Question: I'm an engineer living outside the US. If I were to establish a consultancy company in the US and offer my services through it, would that fulfill the legal and security concerns?

> and, inevitably, customer data

That's not inevitable (for programmers, at least). Post-GDPR European developers generally keep well away from customer data, and it isn't a big impediment.

Don't work with sanctioned countries. It's common sense.

(Original commenter here) our company has been victim of overemployment with 2 employees (the worst offender found us via Who's Hiring on HN - he had 3 full-time W-2 jobs).

Having been fooled by 2 "overemployed" people (on a team of 20), these fake candidates are distinct in that they're almost always have an unexplained heavy accent yet they say they're born and raised in the US. They also often have Zoom backgrounds that are just... odd (the room will often look like it has shelving and boxes or whatever that don't look like something you would see in the US).

It's difficult because no single data point is enough to prove they're fake, but when you add all the warning signs together, it's pretty obvious.

In my experience, /r/overemployed people are a lot better at blending in with regular candidates.

Re: overemployment, the best counter-offense I've found is to require LinkedIn profiles and to require background checks that include employment verification. Most "overemployed" people are smart enough to not have a LinkedIn profile. This has a side effect of excluding applicants without a LinkedIn, but it's a tradeoff.

Hello i am Marc BOKO, i am from benin and i am backend developer. I am proficient with Laravel.please how to work with us ?

BlueWillow.ai - the developer claims to have been a full time employee since 2021, but the company doesn't appear in marketing databases until March 2023, and the LinkedIn page has posts but nothing earlier than March.

On the phone with the candidate, his ID "was at his brother's house". He also joined the call with the name "Senior Dev" rather than a real name. I asked him why he used a pseudonym, and he mumbled something I couldn't understand.

I politely said thanks for your time, but it's not a good fit.

Bit of a tangent but Canadians should be ticking "Yes" for "are you authorized to work in the US?" because acquiring TN status does not require sponsorship from the employer; the TN is explicitly non-immigrant intent. If a company prefers to hire an American over a Canadian, that's discrimination on the basis of citizenship, which is illegal.

As a non US citizen this has always confused me. Does this mean that to get the job I need to be authorised to work in the US? Or that I will need to be authorised once I get the job?

Can I apply in hopes of moving to the US? Or in which situation would a non citizen be authorised to work?

You just blew my mind.

Pre-Covid I worked in a team that onshored off-shore team members for about six weeks at a time. It worked really well for everyone involved.

You need to win a judgement in civil court first and try to collect on it before you can attach a lien to someone’s house in almost any jurisdiction in the US.

Then how do Zoom meetings not violate this law? You’re literally receiving a stream of photos of the applicant before hiring them.

This does not seem relevant when you're already on a video call. The prohibition on requesting photographs is to prevent otherwise unknown information about their race/gender/etc.

At the same time it makes it shitty for regular folks working remote and like a normal person having bad periods from time to time. There will be way less understanding towards... You are trying to do the right thing, but the dial if turned too tight might blend wrong people.

If you're good enough to pass a senior dev interview, you're probably also capable enough to create some kind of SaaS tool/plugin for applicant tracking systems (or directly in Zoom?) to help employers identify fake/real candidates.

You have potential to make a lot more money catching these bad actors rather than enabling them.

Compensation isn't proportional to the value you produce.

It never was.

The hiring market is a market. Prices in a market are set by supply and demand.

The value you produce only sets an upper limit on your compensation because companies don't want to lose money by employing people.

Salary has never been about the value you provide. It's about the cost to replace you. Companies will never pay you more than you cost to replace.

~200K, inflation adjusted, is historically the salary of a competent senior software developer in the US. Give or take depending on location, so you can expect around this for remote (which doesn't suffer the same labor shortage pressure of some regions).

A friend of mine told me he joined Microsoft right out of college in 1998 for 35K/year + 10% bonus. This is around 70K-80K today. As a Senior II Software Engineer at Microsoft in 2014, I made around 180K total comp, which is around 230K today.

In the past 3-5 years we've seen incredibly distorted job markets. 500K is a salary you often see for CEOs and Directors of "normal companies". It's an incredible salary that puts you in the top 1% income in many states.

I'm not saying software engineers don't deserve a lot of money, and by all means, let's try to get as much as we can, but I'm just saying that the past few years have been abnormal and we're seeing the correction now.

I agree with the parent and grandparent comments.

For me personally, the question is how long I hold out for a job that will pay the bills. E.g., without my kids needing to take out big college loans.

For one thing, I don't want to screw over an employer by taking a job that I know I'll leave as soon as something better-paying becomes available. Hopefully I'll find a decent job before I get that desparate.

Honestly, I'd take 100k TC for a position to keep remote. One caveat, I will be working at 20% of my actual mental capacity. Frequent vacations, using sick time as often as possible, etc. I would not take on anything resembling pagerduty and I wouldn't try to lead anything. Then I'll leave for any job with higher TC. Malicious compliance is the best kind of compliance and is the only way to respond to a lop-sided negotiation.

Companies are exploiting the rift in labor due to inflation, COVID, etc right now. For 2 years the power was in the hands of employees. This left a very bad taste in the mouths of management. What companies want is top-tier labor for bottom-tier pricing. It won't happen. If it does, you'll have a bunch of people with 1.5 feet out the door coasting at work.

> Top pay of market has significantly shifted to hybrid

*In the U.S.

In Canada, top pay is mostly full remote.

It is significantly easier to get a $100k offer than a $600k one as a senior software engineer. Companies who offer lower pay fully understand they aren't poaching anyone from Meta or Netflix any time soon, and lower their bar in terms of how hard the interview is

In other words getting an offer for "tech in a non-tech company" is pretty easy. Getting the Meta offer in 1-shot of 6 back to back interviews, not so much

> it isnt “easier” to get an offer at lower ranges, those companies think they are taking a risk with their comp ranges too

The trick is not to job-shop in bad markets. "Expensive" and "risky" to a startup in, I dunno, Billings, is "holy shit, what a bargain!" in a lot of cities—and not even the top markets, but tier two and three cities. Or to established, larger companies.

Be wary of small companies scraping by in cheap cities. If the pay's non-shit, they'll expect you to be a literal wizard, performing actual supernatural feats, for pay that's still probably on the low side.

The lowest end TC still requires you to do a 7 stage interview + colonoscopy.

They're doing this to age-out a large portion of the industry. No other reason.

What you say is true to an extent but its still easier because there are less or less qualified candidates.

Exactly! It just makes the job market much more perfect. $500k at scale is an economic squander.

This useless administrator[0] who failed King County completely is hired by Seattle for $250/hr.

Paying SWEs $150k-250k is low.

[0] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/regional-homelessn...

> You don't need a double-blind placebo study to observe the shifting market.

Is your data based on just a few of your friends? How is that considered a "shifting market"? My friends and I do not experience what you are arguing. In fact, we experience the opposite of what you are saying.

Can't you only post to blind if you created your account while still employed?

IIRC, I was able to create some kind of limited account after I was laid off, but I couldn't fully participate.

One big problem with blind is that it trends very junior. Much of what’s on there is of little used to people who are older. I actually find most of the comments to be less informed than, say, fuckedcompany.com was back in the day.

I love working remotely in NYC. I love the city, and I love working remotely. Perfect combo.

I think the key part of moving elsewhere is that you have much less access to the in-person segment, assuming moving represents a significant hurdle to you.

When it comes to your quality of life, there are a lot of factors besides the cost of living - social circle, weather, job opportunities, hobbies, cultural compatibility etc. For a lot of people, expensive metro areas can also be the only places where they have friends & family or where they can pursue their hobbies. As an immigrant of color, I simply cannot see myself living happily in rural Ohio even if that could be a wonderful place for someone else.

Same. Although, I have also noticed there is nothing 100% remote. Many of the messages even highlight "100% on-site." Best I've seen recently is a 3 day hybrid.

I cannot give much advice on this, because my experience is minimal. I would say pick a domain and learn to stand out in it. I stood out just a little by doing technical research and writing about it, then posting it in chats/social media. Actually, having twitter was essential. We pretty much met over twitter. On twitter every person is equally accessible to you, be they a celebrity or your cousin Bob.

I've heard of ghost jobs so I'm starting to actually really doubt some of this, I've literally seen the same job on the market for over a year now with a new chain of recruits contacting me about it every 3 months. I understand there aren't a lot of perhaps qualified people for that role but come on a year with it open? The repeat open positions are disappointing to say the least. At least change the description! I think a lot of employers are just stacking up resumes and waiting to use them in the future.

I was an idiot and held out for too long. I’ve been out of work for a very long time, much longer than six months. I never experienced a market like this, even when I was trying to enter the market as a teenager with no real experience it took me three months. Now I have six years of experience apparently worth nothing. I should have taken a on site role a long time ago, but I was trying to avoid moving. I figured my luck would turn around for the better at some point. Idiotic optimism.

Now my lease is up and I’m fucked. My savings have been beaten from month and months of attrition and emergency expenses, including somehow owing money on my taxes this year. The rental market is so bad where I am, with people asking more money for fucking rooms than some of the apartments out here, I assume because most of the apartments have 6+ month waiting lists.

I was about to consider an interview coach or just somebody to look at who I am, my resume, online presence and all that and give me very honest feedback. I thought that what I am lacking is a good idea of who I am and I how I present myself. Have you tried anything like that?

Participate in local user groups. In every single group I attend, people are looking to hire.

However, these people are local. They almost certainly want you in-person at least some amount of the time.

And, while I can't say that ageism isn't a factor, I can tell you that the users groups tend to be weighted toward the greybeards.

I do think that the "remote work" thing is a bit of disadvantage for we greybeards. The value of having someone around who is experienced is having a colleague that you can interact with in casual context.

No, we just started chatting on Twitter about some research I've done.

Yes! Good catch. The COVID years still all feel like 1 long year..

I think most of the "but you need human interaction" crowd isn't talking about their social life. It's much harder to collaborate with coworkers when you have no relationship with them. It's not impossible to have a relationship with coworkers when remote, but you have to put a lot more effort in than you would in person. Some companies are facilitating that, but some aren't.

Plus it's just easier than ever to meet people outside of work. If there's no existing group for your interest, be the change you want to see and create one. I'm not saying a person will suddenly have a ton of friends, but even in the antisocial world of LA, my Meetup group gets at least a small handful to show up most of the time.

I totally get being social with your coworkers as a bonus, but it's a little sad to me that people need to rely on that one source. I can count on one hand the percentage of coworkers whom I've actually kept in contact with after either one left the company. Most coworker relationships are a matter of convenience. If that's what people prefer, then cool, but don't act like there's no such thing as human interaction outside the office.

Yeah but it's not a choice to work 40ish hours a week talking and communicating for introverts that's pretty taxing. At least in office we had a few laughs and good times and some face to face. Now it's all the soul sucking without any of the benefits like grabbing lunch together or skivving off a meeting and smoking cigarettes behind the dumpster. After 40hr/s having to go out and do even more socializing is hard because i used my socializing juice up at work

There’s also a risk management side to this. If my social life is built around my office and then I get laid off, that’s a massive impact on my social life. Decoupling reduces that risk significantly.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the return-to-office crowd, like myself, wants. Work relationships and personal relationships serve entirely different purposes for me.

I don't want to be working longer hours, or make work a larger part of my life. I don't particularly care if I have "real" friendships with my colleagues outside of work. I have plenty of friends and family that I already have trouble juggling.

What I want is the camaraderie, greater trust, mentorship, professional networks, etc. that comes from working with people during the day in a shared space.

I'm not sitting with a church community or sports team during my 9-5. I've had a couple co-working memberships during the last couple years - most people just go there to sit and work quietly. Maybe you make some small talk here and there. Except for the people working with their colleagues who are also in the co-working space.

> Am I the only one in that situation? What do you do?

What I did (decades ago) was realize that when I was working from home, I needed to treat it the same as working in an office. What that meant was: I need a room that is exclusively "the office". When I'm in there, I'm working. When I'm not working, I'm not in there. And everyone else in the household has to adhere to one rule -- if my office door is closed, they cannot disturb me for any reason other than an actual emergency, just like if I were in an office outside of out home.

Try telling your partner to leave you alone?

Also, what’s your workspace? It helps if you work in a separate room with a door. Working in a central open spot like the kitchen table invites more interruption. Of course this is hard to do if you’re in a small apartment.

Tough one. Sounds like you need to communicate your needs to each other better, and agree some mutual boundaries.

While returning to the office as an escape may alleviate some symptoms, I would still recommend that you work on your relationship.

Edit: your partner may also have needs too, this isn't just about you getting what you want. It's about communicating better and respecting each others needs.

I'm in a similiar boat, and I finally got a co-working space. Do it for your mental and relatinship health. If we want to be incredibly over-reductionist, $300 per month is a lot cheaper than a divorce :-D

My kids and wife know there is a rule during work hours:

When my office door is closed, I am not home (except for emergency, say broken limb or something). It takes some training, but they become accustomed to it.

You need to stress to your partner the importance of focus during work. This took an exceptional amount of effort for us because my wife is bipolar and when things are bad, her contributions become a trickle. Summer is always a trying time, because all the kids are home and she gets overwhelmed easily. Thankfully my employer is incredibly accommodating, so if I need to step away and resolve anything at home, they have faith that I'll see to my obligations.

There's certainly value in having a dedicated work area if possible. Your brain really likes having demarcation lines between work and home, so emulating that can help immensely.

It is important to note that WFH is NOT a silver bullet. It is not a solution for every employer/employee. It works incredibly well in many technological scenarios because of remote access and whatnot, but there are limiting factors. Both in bureaucratic requirements, "culture" fits, and domestic situations. What works for me in the Great Plains due to cheap(er) housing may not work in metro areas where some families are living in small apartments.

Don't feel obligated to make WFH succeed in your situation if you don't want to simply because its en vogue. I have dear friends that tried WFH and _hated_ it. Another option is co-working space or otherwise getting out of the house to focus on work. I find myself going to a local hiking trail area during spring/autumn to work outdoors, and it is refreshing.

Definitely sympathize, you are not alone. I have a wife and two young kids. I love her but for a long time my wife just did not consider me as "at work" when I was working remotely. She had zero qualms about coming into our home office to chat or see if I could change a diaper or whatever. I'm happy to help out if I'm between tasks (hell that's one of the perks of WFH, and everyone takes breaks wherever you're working. I'm taking one to write this post!) but it was all day every day and driving me up the wall. Plus toddlers don't care about work hours, if they want to see daddy they're going to come see daddy. We had plenty of conversations about how disruptive it is to have someone tap you on the shoulder while coding to ask if you can run to the grocery store for milk. But it never went anywhere. To her, if I was physically in the house, I was available to do stuff at any time.

To be honest we never "solved" it. Eventually the younger reached kindergarten age and my wife returned to full time work. I wish I had better advice. The suggestion to have a dedicated office space with a door is a good one, but if your partner does not respect boundaries that won't be enough. If finances allow, you could look at leasing a part time desk in a coworking space or even a dedicated office. I know it feels silly to pay for office space when you can do the job from home, but if it's damaging your relationship, it may be worthwhile. Some employers might even offer a stipend for remote workers to help offset costs. The fact that you refer to your partner as a nagging micromanager tells me something has to change.

I hope this post doesn't make me sound like a dick. I have immense respect for my wife for choosing to pause her career to care for our children. Raising kids is HARD, harder than the work I get paid for to be honest. We're partners in life and parenthood. But my role in the partnership at that time was to hold down a job and that's a lot harder to do when you're being interrupted 10 times a day. Hope you are able to work something out.

I'd much rather have Google's Project Starline than traditional AR/VR. It seems perfect to replace in person meetings (no goggles). Unfortunately, that is the only value, whereas AR provides virtual workspaces and is likely cheaper in mass production and space requirments (don't need large screens).

Given Google's history, my guess is that Starline is on the chopping block even if showcased at I/O with a scaled back price tag. I hope I'm wrong.

That sounds about ideal to me.

Any tricks or issues you've had to figure out while pairing? My thought was just "assign a couple of people to a non-trivial ticket and see what happens". But I'm curious if that's really naive.

> Remote work was far less common pre Covid though.

That was my point: Remote work was a unique benefit given to those who could handle it.

During COVID everyone started pretending that remote work was for everyone. Companies shifted a lot of people remote and then learned the hard way that many people can't be productive remote.

Now the pendulum swings back, with companies pretending that nobody can work remote because they let the bad apples spoil the whole batch.

> This was most likely also happening in the office

Not in this case. They even had a chart showing the sharp decline in several different metrics when they let people go remote.

If you subtracted out the outliers, most of the company was fine going remote. About 20% of people dropped their productivity to a fraction of before, though.

Some people can't handle remote work. I think it's time we stopped pretending like everyone handles remote work just fine. That lie is making it harder to get companies to admit that they need to differentiate between employees who can and cannot successfully work remote.

It all depends on need. The idea that everything needs to work the same way is unsound. Arguably, the company I work for doesn't need to bring everyone into the office every day; we seem to be doing quite well. Another firm that believes it sees better creativity when people are in the same physical room may be better off not having their workers be remote.

And like you say, not every company necessarily gets a benefit from having an 8 hour day. Depending on the nature of the job, the remaining hours of the day can be a diminished return, in which case one might as well give up on the game of charades and just allow their employees to go home.

I think the idea of measuring productivity by hours spent is absurd.

I manage my teams by tasks accomplished. I really don't care if they were able to complete it in 2 hours and take the rest of the day off.

I simply acknowledge formally what happens in practice anyway. The average "8 hour workday" only contains about three productive hours [1].

For me, it varies wildly. Some days, I'll get in "the zone" and 12 hours / and thousands of lines of code will fly by. Then I'll spend the next day or two in a brain funk waiting to recharge.

I've learned to embrace my "bursty" productivity patterns and to structure my delivery expectations around them. If I get trapped into a X number of hours per day butt-in-seat situation, my overall productivity declines sharply.

[1] https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver...

> One could easily argue the side that is saying we should stick to the working conditions we had all this while under which most people were hired,

This is an appeal to tradition. It can be the right choice, but you need to be to justify it rather than say "That's how we've always done it".

As a hothouse flower of first world privilege erected atop an underclass who does everything for me, grocery delivery has been the best thing ever for me as well. ;D

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. If half the people you're interacting with are in the office, isn't there something to still be gained by interacting with them in the same physical space? There might be a detraction by having the other half work remotely, but why would that outweigh the positives of working in-office? All you'd have to do is get the remote workers on a call or Zoom, which you'd do at home anyway, except you could also meet in-person with other coworkers. I guess I don't see how there's "no point." Apparently, in your example, the positives of just working at home outweigh the advantages of working in-office when both are proportionally 50/50.

> As soon as one person goes remote, the in-person experience is significantly degraded for everyone else.

Does the office fall apart when someone goes on vacation or is sick? If not, why then would one or two days away from the office have such a big impact?

> That's very interesting. My experience has been the opposite, that people who are pro-remote are intense about it, that they often deny there being any benefits to working in an office and get angry and dismissive toward anyone who says they want to work in-person.

There is a difference between arguing that remote work is better and insisting everyone work remotely. I've seen lots of people say remote work should be an option. I have yet to see a single person, on Hacker News or elsewhere, insist that everyone be required to work remotely. On the opposite side of the argument, I've seen plenty of people argue that in-person work should be required for everyone on the other hand.

Would it be fair to say that you skew towards preferring in-person work? I think a possible takeaway here is that we notice people making arguments that we disagree with more than we notice people making arguments that we agree with.

All I can say is true for me, but as an introvert in a creative role (is it fair to call programming a creative role? I think so) being in an office around other people, especially open floorplan offices where we're all able to glare at each other from across our desks, stymies my ability to be creative. I just feel the pressure of being watched all day, and sometimes it clams me up. And then after work I go home feeling exhausted, mentally, and defeated for not getting what I wanted to get done. And when I need help on something in a remote role, I'm able to articulate the problem statement very easily over text, which my coworkers (one or two in particular) are very helpful at pointing me to a solution asynchronously while I hack away at it. So to your argument about the reason that "remote wins", I'd argue there are more reasons that it wins. But that's just for me, and I imagine many other people that also prefer remote.

I don't think in-person work is going anywhere though. I do agree with your perspective that hybrid work seems likely to not be ideal for people that prefer in-person. In fact, I'd argue that hybrid work is not ideal for people that prefer remote either. In my experience you usually have managers questioning your motives for going remote in those hybrid environments, making you feel like you're an inconvenience to the team, and pressuring you to come in some days on a commute that may not be convenient. And then one day some upper management changes, and the new person just decides they prefer an all in-person workforce and tells all the remote people to come back in or be let go. For your sake, I hope you find an opportunity that is 100% in-person. And I also hope those hybrid environments become fewer and farther between.

> I think the long-term response is going to be more sorting of companies into all-remote or all in-person, with fewer companies in the "hybrid" space that's so common today.

I think the long-term is going to be a small percentage of fully-remote (mostly new co's), a small percentage of full office (mostly legacy co's) and a big plurality of hybrid companies where everyone is mandated to come to office on the same days of the week. I am seeing more and more SV companies taking that approach.

Started a poll here to get more data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36868543

> As soon as one person goes remote, the in-person experience is significantly degraded for everyone else

"Remote work" didn't start with "work from home" it started with offshoring and satellite offices.

Why is it acceptable to "significantly degrade the in office experience" when it benefits the company but not acceptable when it benefits the employees?

I call BS. I'm not commuting to an office just to be on calls with people in other timezones for a majority of my time there.

This is exactly the problem. You have one remote member and literally everyone has to work around it.

I've been the only remote person on a team before. It was a horrible experience. I hope you're able to find a different arrangement soon.

Lucky you live anywhere close to any kind of interesting work.

There are many people who like going to the office, but

- don't like to commute

- don't like to live in the city where the office is

- don't want to pay insane rents to live in a studio

Personally, I quite like the office and really miss socializing but it's a tradeoff and I chose full remote.

> The number of people who actually like going to the office (either part or full time) is far higher than you'd expect from reading Reddit and Hacker News.

I think most people like an office setting. Even remote work proponents like myself enjoy the office every now and then.

The problem is really two things.

1.) The commute is brutal. If you live in any decent sized city and have a family, it's likely that you are far enough away from the office that you have to drive 30+ minutes in pretty horrendous traffic. That's not only lost time that you could be spending with your family, or even doing work, but it's mentally exhausting. No one is refreshed in the office after a shitty commute.

2.) Often offices turn political. The dynamics of in person work can cause many issues that just don't happen when you work remote. Remote work, when done correctly, is mostly about contribution and output. In an office, low performers can outshine high performers simply by being present and seeming busy. Remote work mostly fixes this.

Does the location it's posted really affect that significantly? Isn't it similar to any job board?

> That's fair, honestly gives you an advantage that you enjoy it.

I probably wouldn't if it were any longer, TBH. 30 minutes one-way is more-or-less my limit.

It's also terrible for the environment. IDK, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but I do know that I need it to reset my brain before work.

> My secret to getting away (its not forced though, lol) is a mini sauna.

That's awesome! How mini are we talking? I've seen some tiny ones!

I feel like in a hybrid work situation it's unfortunate that it can fall into the worst-of-both-worlds type situations.

Shifting coordinating doc habits are hard, but a lot of times they're being generated in pieces in an uncoordinated way already. Or it could be a matter of team leadership pointing back to the right contexts - issue discussion etc.

They're not, but it's the summer right now, so they're home.

Thanks I was reading too fast indeed and since I am in the market now and I know the number does not match up so I wrote it fast, did not realize it's HN specific. Still a larger sample pool like linkedin might be helpful than HN's data.