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Ask HN: Fallback remote job options for an experienced developer in the U.S.?

• codegeek 4y ago
  What are your requirements to find the remote work. If you can share more, happy to advise since a mid/senior level dev with reasonably popular skill should not have a lot of trouble finding work (in my opinion). So perhaps there is something with your requirements that is not working for employers ? Or maybe you are not as good as you think you are and employers are not seeing the value to match your ask.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    My own requirements almost never play a part, in the very large majority of cases I either get no response or rejected after the application or ghosted or rejected after a pleasant conversation with an internal recruiter. However my requirements are that the work is remote, actual software development work, not abusive and not in a small handful of areas. I don't want to make this about me, largely because there's a lot I won't share due to privacy concerns. However, I've had plenty of happy coworkers and managers over the years and can definitely be some random IC on some random team.
• lazyeye 4y ago
  I've never understood how the people over at https://reddit.com/r/overemployed https://reddit.com/r/overemployed do it.
  • mythhouse 4y ago
    some of my friends do it as squad where they share work and commitments.
    • kilroy123 4y ago
      Interesting, this is the first time I'm hearing about this. I've known a few people doing the two remote job thing. Seems crazy to me, they never had any free time.
    • mozman 4y ago
      they’re going to ruin remote work. already had 2 guys interview, pass, then another guy shows up for job.
      • medvezhenok 4y ago
        I think that remote work doesn't have to imply remote interviewing. You could easily do a remote interview to start and if the company is ready to extend an offer they fly you out to finalize things on-site before you start - or you meet one of the engineers/your manager in person before you start (hopefully avoiding this bait-and-switch).
      • squirtlebonflow 4y ago
        that has nothing to do with OE
        • mozman 4y ago
          OE is holding multiple full time jobs simultaneously right?
          • lazyeye 4y ago
            Yep...some of the people on the overemployed reddit sub claim to have 4, even 5 full-time remote jobs
• Kalium 4y ago
  Look at job shops - thoughtworks, thoughtbot, etc.
  • mythhouse 4y ago
    thoughtworks requires travel to client sites even post pandemic. You cannot request remote only.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    Thoughtbot only has two jobs listed at https://thoughtbot.com/jobs https://thoughtbot.com/jobs, so it's not really a "job shop" if I understand what you mean. Could you please explain a little more?
    • Kalium 4y ago
      I fear you may misunderstand. A "job shop" is a company that has a staff of full time employees where the primary form of work the company performs is taking on contact jobs from other companies. This in many cases is websites, web applications, phone applications, and so on. I hope this clarifies what a job shop is.
      • anon50118810 4y ago
        I see. I've applied to some places like that and I don't think they're much different from other FTE positions as far as availability.
• CyanLite4 4y ago
  Try some of the remote agencies like TopTal, Turing, etc.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    Toptal is the opposite to the sort of answer I'm looking for. Their model is to vet the "Top 3%" of employees to prescreen them for prestigious employers. Turing is similar. I'm looking more for how the bottom 50% can find something quickly at some random employer.
    • CyanLite4 4y ago
      Don’t fall for the marketing hype. They’re an agency especially looking for U.S. based developers.
      • anon50118810 4y ago
        It's an idea. In the past I haven't had good luck with these sorts of vetting situations. Also Toptal/Turing seem aimed at employers who I suppose would reject me now if I applied directly, so applying through these sites feels like the long way around toward more rejection. Not to criticize you specifically, but I was hoping to get much more general advice from this discussion. There are several million developers in the U.S., how are the bottom 500k of them finding jobs? They're not all using Toptal, Upwork or Wellfound/AngelList. These are very HN answers, which I guess we should expect here.
        • prewett 4y ago
          Toptal has a wide variety of work, not really many big names that I've seen. A lot of MVC-type stuff, six-month-ish projects, and also a number of long-term contracts. You apply to be considered for a project with a 200 word description of why you are a good choice, if you get shortlisted the company has a half-hour chat with you, and if they like you, you're in. The chat has rarely been technical, I'm kind of surprised. I don't see how general advice is going to help you, though. My general advice is: update your resume to highlight themes in areas you want to work, discipline yourself to apply to one or two jobs every M, W, and F, and practice algorithms for interviews. I expect that's not going to be very helpful for you, though, since I assume you're already doing that.
• mikikian 4y ago
  Try Upwork.
  • maerF0x0 4y ago
    I used this once when I was laid off. Worked for about 1/2 my salary to start, but was employed in like a day or two. (And still had 4 weeks of severance coming in). Once i had a bunch of 5* reviews I was able to command more than I was previously earning. (I was pretty Junior at the time). One caveat is that Contracting time is kinda a career blackhole in that if you go back to employment you're both kinda weird because you're used to contracting, and a lot of managers/interviewers don't really know how to see you're experience when you're doing 3 month contracts, sometimes layered, over the span of years. They don't really get it. (Nor realize that contracting is usually really dense experience, so actually more valuable)
    • Gortal278 4y ago
      It's best to group all the contract work under a self-employed listing on your resume. Highlight the technical work but also the project managements skills used, the client facing tie and the delivery of work on a given timeline. I did a few years of contracting/freelance and since i re-wrote my resume it looks better, and seems to be valued the same as fte.
    • euix 4y ago
      Can you be more specific as to what was the nature of the work you were doing? Was it software dev, analytics, etc and can share a rough range of what your initial $ rate was? Also did you ever represent yourself as an agency? A couple of friends and I have been doing a casual consulting agency for just under a year and I was thinking of ways to expand our client base and I am looking at Upwork as a possibility.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    This might work for some people, but it's not really a substitute for salaried work for me, nor would I hope to stick around long enough for my rates to rise to something approaching the low end of the U.S. FTE market.
• nprz 4y ago
  Lots of remote opportunities at both https://www.workatastartup.com/ https://www.workatastartup.com/ and https://angel.co/ https://angel.co/ I imagine a mid-to-senior dev would be able to find work at a company listed there fairly quickly.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    These are the same kind of listings you can find on LinkedIn or many other job sites, not really answering the question of finding especially available jobs.
• joncrane 4y ago
  Do you have an up-to-date LinkedIn profile? Are you making sure to flesh out all your past job accomplishments/technologies used and including the right "buzzzwords?" While I do write code, I'm more of a Cloud Architect and I get multiple recruiters contacting me each week. When it's heavy, I get multiple messages per day. The majority of the positions are remote and while I reject most of the offers due to various reasons, if I were desperate for any job, I think I could get one within a few weeks. It's my understanding that software developers/engineers are in even higher demand than Cloud Architects, so that's why I'm a little confused.
• Existenceblinks 4y ago
  .
  • phphphphp 4y ago
    Depending on the type of job listing on LinkedIn, the applicant count can be wildly inaccurate: if the listing is external, they will often record clicks on the button rather than actual applications! Additionally, even when a company is using LinkedIn's ATS (Applicant Tracking System) you'll find that a great deal of the "applications" are just generic submissions from people who have not even reviewed the job listing. Even in the current job market, the number of high quality applicants who are worth interviewing is low and so a good application will stand out. Forget about the numbers, don't be discouraged, focus on the quality of your application.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• shareyourresume 4y ago
  [dead]
• ohm 4y ago
  Computer security jobs. Performing code review or web application testing.
  • whycombagator 4y ago
    Care to expand? How does a SWE break into that line of work? What companies and what is the pay like?
    • ohm 4y ago
      Usually good consulting companies would hire former SWE that wants to switch to security. During interviews, basic security questions are asked, most are covered under security+ certification. But companies might skip asking them and instead ask SWE code related security questions instead. Such as how to prevent OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities. Most of the major ones are covered here https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/Glossary.html https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/Glossary.html Code review job would involve running commercial tool such as checkmarx or fortify and then reporting on issues that tool finds. For web application testing these two sites are a good start. https://portswigger.net/training https://portswigger.net/training and https://www.pentesterlab.com/pro https://www.pentesterlab.com/pro Most web app testing is performed using this guide https://owasp.org/www-project-web-security-testing-guide/ https://owasp.org/www-project-web-security-testing-guide/ Hands on is the best way to learn web app testing. Companies give you 24-48 hours to test vulnerable web app. After you send them report with findings if they like they have final interview round. Some of the better companies are ncc group, bishop fox, nettitude, google certified security companies and others. You can find them as sponsors on security meetups like bsides. Some of the more technical ones are https://cure53.de/#publications https://cure53.de/#publications. You can read their reports. Also https://www.trailofbits.com/ https://www.trailofbits.com/ As for pay it’s decent but the ceiling is lower than SWE. Entry level positions usually make below 100, senior low 100, manager mid 100 and more senior positions are around 200. After that it’s harder to move up. Lastly the job itself can get pretty boring at times. Code review is something most people try to avoid. It’s useful when combined with web app testing to perform greybox testing. Web app testing can be boring as well, when testing multiple web apps in a row that were tested multiple times and not finding anything decent. What makes up for all of that is excitement from testing newly developed or older web apps with lots of vulns, performing network pentesting and developing new tools for different projects. It’s a great feeling when you publish a new tool and lots of people start using it and appreciate your work.
• chairmanmow 4y ago
  I didn't see it mentioned here, but worth pointing out if it wasn't obvious it's the 4th quarter of the fiscal year and hiring drops off - it's the worst time of the year to land a job. That being said, I may have some advice as far as how to land a job under less than ideal circumstances - it requires a bit of salesmanship, both in how you layout your presentation and who you are speaking to/targeting. Are you creating a custom cover letter for each job you apply to? How do you apply - do you submit a form or do you try to get your resumé to someone's email either HR or someone related in the department where the position was posted for? If you're willing to work for low pay, are you sorting job listings where the bad pay shows up first? Are you labeling yourself as a "mid-level" engineer in your application or do you use your cover letter to demonstrate your comfort and experience with the skillset or domain? Creating a nice cover letter that shows sincere interest, thought and understanding of the industry and the duties that come with the job then getting it into someone's hands who knows who to pass it along to or is a decision maker is your best bet. Writing all those cover letters though can be draining, I know, I once did it manually and could get one a day done, maybe - never got a job that way. At some point, I realized all the best cover letters stuck to a format, and job listings weren't too different either. I made a spreadsheet that could draft cover letters for me, I'd just add a row for a job listing in my spreadsheet, select from some dropdowns (or add to the list as necessary) and then it would pull some statements relative to those parameters in and generate a cover letter that usually needed less than 5 minutes of editing (the cover letters could get long winded and sound conceited sometimes, good problem to have) to be ready to send out. I also added some job/skill type parameters where I could rank my compatibility for a job, like if two jobs were the same except one used PHP (not that experienced) on the backend, and one used Ruby (more experienced), I'd be able to prioritize the one that was a more likely fit. Once I built this spreadsheet to generate cover letters and rank jobs, I literally got the first job I applied to despite being mostly self-taught and trying to break into the industry. I just sent it to hr@companyiwasapplyingto.whatever and got a callback in 10 minutes too, FWIW. Pretty sure the general gist of this advice applies to any job - send a nice cover letter!
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    I appreciate the instinct to try to help me personally, but as I said in another comment I'm keeping a lot back for privacy reasons so it's difficult for me to engage in that sort of discussion. There are issues with my overall situation that make job searching difficult, which I won't share, going beyond tweaking things, which is why I've asked for help identifying, basically, boring unprestigious developer jobs where I might have a better chance. I've generally looked at smaller employers with simple applications that I assume go either to an internal recruiter or the technical team. I don't think these are situations where there's a need to bypass a lot of bureaucracy. Deliberately searching for lower pay is a good idea if done carefully. If it's too low then the job might be abusive or not actually a software developer role. Maybe $80k is the floor depending on industry and location. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the major job sites let you search that way, but I might be able to figure something out.
• cloudedcordial 4y ago
  My past employers include some lackluster companies that not too many people knew. I found those companies by browsing the local startup incubator's press releases. When the times were good, I attended some tech-related meetups (virtual or in person) to learn what others did. There are some smaller venture capitalist firms such as 8VC that work with many startups. You may learn about opportunities that not too many people are aware of. Just like what at least one other person have said, ensure that you've an up-to-date LinkedIn profile. In addition, have someone in recruiting or in software development to read over your resume. Remote jobs could receive many applications because the applicants are not bounded by their locations. With the number of applications, it is easy for the recruiters and the hiring managers to stop reading weak applications even if you are experienced. I used the paid resume review service from levels.fyi.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    I understand what you mean about looking beyond job sites. One problem with that though is that I'm not interested in extremely small startups, because I think they would be a terrible fit for me, so by the time an employer is large enough to be in my target market, people will have heard of them. Another angle is looking for jobs at smaller employers in industries outside of tech. With that though, you have to first identify all these little companies, then dig down to their jobs page, and then maybe you find the jobs aren't remote, or don't match your skills, or maybe they don't list any tech jobs because those are all hired through an external recruiter. This is why job sites exist. I'm not sure how to look for these jobs specifically. Also, if you like, see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34111780 regarding my situation.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• vonseel 4y ago
  I’ve almost finished reading through your entire original thread from a month ago, because I’m kind of in the same boat as you. Why do you decline nearly every piece of advice the community here offers? It seems like each time someone makes a suggestion, you come up with a reason why their advice doesn’t work for you. I’m just pointing this out because otherwise you seem well-spoken and eager to find work, but perhaps you are making things harder on yourself by being inflexible. Anyways, good luck with the search, I don’t really have any tips but stop calling yourself a mediocre developer and talking poorly about yourself. You may be just as good of a developer and just as smart as anyone at some big tech company, but the other guy had opportunities you didn’t get which led to his success.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    I didn't actually ask for personal advice in either the other post or this one. The other post was to raise awareness, start a discussion and possibly generate some sympathy toward job seekers. This post asked for general advice on finding developer jobs toward the lower end of the market and on working with recruiters. A tech equivalent of some of the advice given is when someone asks for help with library X, and a bunch of people recommend they use library Y instead. That might be good advice except if the first person has unspoken reasons why they have to use library X. This happens all the time. I don't hold it against anyone for trying to help even if they're answering a different question. It comes from a good place and it might help someone else, and I sometimes engage with it, but in the end it's just not very helpful to me personally. I'm not sure we can talk about HN as a monolith but I think there's a bias here where posters who are successful in their careers run into the just-world fallacy in the hiring context. If someone is struggling then they must be doing something wrong, or they just aren't good enough. It can't be that things sometimes aren't fair, and that the best way to help is to answer what's being asked even if the situation is something you're having trouble understanding. I've described myself as mediocre to keep the conversation general and to head off accusations that I'm sabotaging myself with a huge ego. However, based on lots of objective evidence and my own subjective opinion, I'm actually a good developer. Based on past experience, many of the employers who have turned me down sight unseen would have been happy with me as an employee had they given me a chance. As I've said elsewhere though, there are issues with my overall situation that I'm unwilling to discuss here, and things aren't always fair.
• jacknews 4y ago
  I don't get it, it looks like this is an anon account just for this find-a-job endeavor, but you can't discuss the big issue that is holding you back? Is it drugs? A criminal record? You blew up the systems at your previous employer? You met Jeff Bezos, and then called him a gauche bald-headed jerk? Just come out with it.