10 ms·
Ask HN: Highest paying remote companies?
I have 10 years of FAANG experience (Senior SWE). I'm looking to move closer to my family and my current team isn't very remote friendly so I'm looking for a change. What should I be looking for?
- sabarasaba 8y agoYou can have a look here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1PYwbCTY7h0CNHeer9J0VRzE/edit#gid=1279011369 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1.... Found my last comapny in that list, 10/10 would do again.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- skilled 8y agoWow, what a list! Thanks for passing that on.
- ivabz 8y agoResource unavailable for me. Can you please re-paste?
- dbetteridge 8y agoLink working for me, think its getting hugged to death though as I got a google "read only cached version"
- zerr 8y agoWould be great if it differentiated the companies who pay based on your region/country vs based solely on the contribution (so you can live anywhere in the world while having your 6-figures (in USD)).
- LRHOSHI 8y agoGreat list, thank you for sharing.
- rodolphedutel 8y agoHi! I'm glad you're enjoying my list, I made another one named "2019 Remote Workers Salaries", hope it helps! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VOehQv0bOs2pY7RkKJ8RmlUbuu8UmSgzfvjR0m5hyxQ/edit#gid=1145296357 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VOehQv0bOs2pY7RkKJ8R...
- curiousDog 8y agoDocker. They made me an offer of around ~210k base + options for a Senior Software engineer a few months ago. Fully remote! I ended up passing on it for different reasons on it though.
- tgtweak 8y agoGolang? Seems they've exhausted all the local golang talents and are focusing globally now.
- tejinderss 8y agoThey are still heavily focused on python
- sametmax 8y agoJérôme Petazzoni used to sysadmin for a 100% Python shop in paris, so maybe old habits died hard.
- curiousDog 8y agoYes. The people I interviewed with wer actually pretty smart and competent. I am US based though
- kojackst 8y agoDid they require you to be US-based or did that offer apply worldwide?
- nvarsj 8y agoFrom the Docker website it looks like US only.
- darkstar_16 8y ago210k base? This probably needs another topic, but is this normal for bay area companies recruiting at senior engineer level now?
- stubish 8y agoLooking for probably 50-66% of your current salary. You only need to pay remote employees competitive local rates, not the inflated FAANG rates. And someone in the Bay area needing a comparatively high salary is going to lose out to a similarly scored candidate in Adelaide.
- nathan_f77 8y agoI think this is generally true for average developers, but this probably doesn't apply for a senior engineer with 10 years of FAANG experience. They will be able to command a Silicon Valley salary anywhere in the world. But only if they work remotely for a SV company. You're probably not going to get this kind of salary if you work remotely for a company based in the UK, Canada, or Australia. It's also true that many companies try to get away with cost-of-living adjustments, but you can find plenty of companies that don't do that. So they can just keep looking until they find a great offer.
- dzhiurgis 8y agoProblem with paying employees too much, especially freelancers means that they just wont put the hours in. Why would I work 40hrs @ $100 when I can do 10hrs @ $400?
- nathan_f77 8y agoWhen you hire a remote employee for a full-time job, you're usually expecting them to put in at least 40 hours per week. People will often take that job because they value the stability, want to work with a good team, want to work on an interesting problem, or there are significant stock options at an early-stage startup. When you're a contractor, you can earn a lot of money for short-term projects, but it gets a bit boring after a while. You're more of a mercenary with no long-term interest in the project. I've also found that the projects are usually very dull. If you join an existing project as a freelancer, then the code quality is often very poor and there can be a lot of technical debt. (YMMV.) So sometimes it's nice to join a team and have a vested interest in the project, as a co-founder or an early employee. (I've been a freelancer working 10 hours per week for the last few years, but I'm now thinking about a full-time remote job at a startup.) Consulting is fun, but if you're going to take it seriously (e.g. paying off the mortgage on a house and saving for retirement), then you have to put in a ton of hours over a few decades. That means working on a lot of really boring and tedious projects (and maybe a few interesting ones.) I'd much rather join some startups and get a few "lottery tickets", or build my own projects and support them with part-time consulting work.
- germainelol 8y agoWhat kind of experience have the people here had when applying for remote positions? Did you guys find it difficult to get a remote job (that you enjoy!)? When I was last looking for a job, I applied to several remote positions in the hope I might get one but was unsuccessful in all of them. In general, I found it a lot more difficult compared to the local companies I spoke with. I don't think it's anything to do with my experience, but I suppose you are competing with the world rather than your local area.
- jordinl 8y agoIt's more difficult than finding local jobs. Supply/demand does not work in your favor. Edit: Besides many companies look for previous remote experience. So it's hard to get a remote position without having had a previous remote position.
- Scea91 8y agoYou are right that getting a remote job is probably more difficult than finding a local one. OTH the existence of remote jobs market definitely works in your favour in some situations because you simply have more choices. Fo example, I am a machine learning scientist / engineer currently based in Prague. The ability that I would be able to easily find a remote job definitely increases my negotiation power which would other way be quite limited in Prague because there are not as many great local options in my field here.
- jordinl 8y agoYou're right. As an individual looking for a remote job you also have many more options than if you focused in local jobs. And I would definitely recommend anybody not living in a major tech hub to get a remote job.
- tasuki 8y ago> It's more difficult than finding local jobs. Supply/demand does not work in your favor. Don't both depend entirely on where you're based?
- jordinl 8y agoBear in mind many US companies that are looking to hire remotely only want employees to be based in US... So your experience will be different based on where you want to live. The most important job boards seem to be https://weworkremotely.com https://weworkremotely.com and https://remoteok.io https://remoteok.io. Many jobs posted on the monthly "Who is hiring?" Hacker News post are for remote positions. A few years ago I built an index of "Who is hiring?" posts with a search by location and technology: https://hnhiring.com/search?locations=remote https://hnhiring.com/search?locations=remote Edit: given you're FAANG you might find facet useful: https://www.facetdev.com/ https://www.facetdev.com/
- arcsin 8y agoI always wonder what is the reason that they ask for US-based. One possible reason I've heard is that it makes taxes and certain laws easier for them to follow, in which case it sounds like more a matter of being a US citizen rather than actually living in the US. Another reason I've seen is that they still want you to be available to come into the office every so often, which would be a different story. Are there any people here who are US citizens but living abroad that have applied to these companies? What was the response?
- mcjiggerlog 8y agoI would imagine taxes is the case. If they want to hire non-residents (your point about US citizens abroad aside) they'd have to be willing to hire them as contractors.
- sokoloff 8y agoHealth care is another consideration. Many insurance companies are (in practice) US only or even subset-of-US only. That’s been one of the hurdles for us when we hire remotely (which is generally of the form “excellent current employee wants to move and we want them to keep working for us”)
- eliaspro 8y agoThat shouldn't really be a criteria, since at least in Europe there's no such thing as having your employer provide a healthcare plan for you.
- jot 8y ago"Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in San Francisco, but now we pay everyone as though all did": https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-san-francisco-but-now-we-pay-everyone-as-though-all-did/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...
- lexda15 8y agoHi there! Someone shared this list last week. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv0BjsWBR7JntDJqRM6_hyjbE/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv... There are Remote Open Engineering Positions right now. You can check them there.
- softwaredoug 8y agoPro tip: if you make pay your only consideration, you may end up pretty miserable. Often companies pay very high because they burn through employees, and are otherwise a nightmare to work for for a variety of reasons. (Even worse, you can get stuck in these golden handcuffs as your expenses catch up to your income, leaving you in a cycle of one miserable job after another)
- nvarsj 8y agoGood pay at least makes such positions more tolerable. Getting paid poorly in a bad company is far worse, I assure you.
- StavrosK 8y agoThe corresponding choice would be getting paid poorly in a good company. If we're doing extremes, you can get paid well in a good company too.
- ehnto 8y agoIt is a false dichotomy of course, and pretty much every job is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. You can also do a lot personally to endure a bad job if you decide the pay is worth it, but if your life is nothing but your job then a bad job means a bad life.
- ajcodez 8y agoI find the opposite is true. Low pay indicates poor leadership or lack of market opportunity leading to a very frustrating job.
- softwaredoug 8y agoSure. I also am conveying the benefits might manifest in other ways (Cadillac health care, profit share, bonuses, autonomy, growth oppys, etc)
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
- vemv 8y agoIt will be very rare to find companies publicizing high-paid remote offers. They would get swamped with the the wrong applicants. I'd go for well-established US companies which use something you are an expert in. Then I'd try to pull a remote deal out of the negotiation.
- esseeayen 8y agoWouldn't Basecamp (http://basecamp.com http://basecamp.com) be one of the top people. They pay within the top 10% of salaries comparing to SV/SF salaries, and pretty much the whole company is a remote team.
- ddebernardy 8y agoBasecamp without a doubt, if this interview of their CEO is anything to go by: > We’re taking home lots of money every year. We’re paying our employees incredibly well. We pay them top 10 percent salaries in the industry, San Francisco rates, even though we’re not based in San Francisco. We have amazing benefits. We have all these things because we’re independent. https://www.recode.net/2019/1/23/18193685/venture-capital-money-kills-business-basecamp-ceo-jason-fried https://www.recode.net/2019/1/23/18193685/venture-capital-mo...
- rinchik 8y agoSounds great but not really practical advice. They rarely hire nowadays, also it gets more complicated with matching of their open positions with your resume.
- slucha 8y agoHttp://www.Basedremote.com is another doc list with remote companies
- slucha 8y agohttp://basedremote.com http://basedremote.com
- pacomerh 8y agoOpened the first company in the list and saw this very depressing ad : https://www.crossover.com/job-front-end-software-engineer?utm_campaign=AvailableJobs https://www.crossover.com/job-front-end-software-engineer?ut...
- slucha 8y agoyes, I wonder what is the deal with crossover. It looks like some slave-developer plattform... But then for a dev in eastern europe or asia a permanent position with 30k/y is better than most local positions? But might also be wron about this...
- tomaha 8y agoDid you check inside your company. E.g. Google gives a lot of freedom to people with 10+ years with them and I know at least one other company in the same area, which did it with even less. So might not be the worst idea to look for something remote friendly in your current company.
- jlisam13 8y agoGitHub but certain locations are restricted
- maremp 8y agoHave you done full remote before? If you don't have significant experience in managing yourself and the fact that you will work alone most of the time, I suggest you not to look just for money, but instead look for a company with a culture which suits you. If they give you just a big paycheck to cover up the shit that you will have to do for them, there is a high chance that you will burn out and no amount of money will help you.
- bigboris 8y agoCheck out https://www.flexjobs.com https://www.flexjobs.com. They have tags and other criteria that help you find ads by keyword, schedule, full/part time, featured employers, etc.