Getting the job - not necessarily harder, but keeping it - definitely. The thing is that these companies need their remote employees to be persons with excepti

Getting the job - not necessarily harder, but keeping it - definitely. The thing is that these companies need their remote employees to be persons with exceptionally strong discipline who are also self driven. So you can be a very good engineer that also performs given tasks within a reasonable timeframe, but if the person managing the team has to constantly hold your hand (which is harder remote) or you are too passive you'll be fired quickly. Regarding the skill level (at least what I've seen until now): Yes, generally these people have more experience than the average engineer (of course I'm not talking about the average Google or Facebook engineer here), but it's nothing insurmountable, almost anyone could do it provided the will to improve.