Ask HN: Is it possible to find remote job on C/C++?

I don't think there's a correlation between the primary language used at the job and the employer's willingness to allow remote working. Investigate C/C++ listings, see if they allow employees to work remotely. Obviously you'll be expected to appear in-person for the interview, but if they are sufficiently convinced that you can be left alone to get your work done, they might agree to let you work remotely.

Yes, I get occasional such C++ / C jobs on Toptal (http://www.toptal.com/#hire-astute-engineers) - yes, it's a referral link, sosumi ;)

The job and the community are nice enough that I don't mind evangelizing.

For C++, you'll need to know Qt.

It's probably easier to find an Objective-C job than a C job.

I wonder if Golang might be an option for you? It's seen huge surge in use, and is more "modern" so might be more likely to be used by company that understands benefits of remote.

I'm not sure why the programming language matters. I'm part of a small team that works remotely for a US company (we're in Thailand), and the company couldn't care less about what language(s) we use - they hired us because of what we can build for them and the value we bring to their business.

Having said that, getting the job was more a combination of luck and knowing the right people than anything else. I expect it's harder trying to find advertised jobs.

Do you know anything about audio dsp? I've found jobs in the pro audio industry are pretty easy to do remotely. I do a mix of VST/AU plugins, small audio apps and control surfaces. I get most of my jobs through my network of contacts, but there are a few jobs that get posted here as well: http://www.juce.com/forums/juce-jobs

I too wonder this. I write C++ for my dayjob and use wxWidgets under Windows and OSX but have used Qt a long time ago, as well as VCL and MFC. I would prefer to avoid MFC and VCL nowadays!

I can also write Java (done that for Android), various bits of SQL (used PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL and Informix), C# where necessary and PHP/JavaScript/HTML but would prefer sticking to C++ nowadays instead of front-end web stuff.

Swift/Obj-C is coming along slowly for me.

I am in the UK and would welcome any interest / work.

You can find plenty of them over at careers.stackoverflow.com. I'm not saying this to evangelize them, but see this link:

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=c%2B%2B&job...

There are plenty of them available and most pay on an international level. Not the kind of rubbish pay that freelancing sites offer. Since you have some experience with Python and Node, you'll see that you're good for a lot of jobs over there.

Yes, it is possible. We are hiring, learn more at http://Backtrace.io

I'm working (albeit freelance) remotely on a project that is 100% COBOL at the moment. They have offered full time work for me, so I know it's possible.

I know COBOL isn't C, but it's the same concept - systems programming/secure stuff rather than bashing out websites.

I've been freelancing for quite a while and I think you can find some projects that you can do in C++. I don't think it's easy to find remote work in, specifically, C++ for several reasons:

1 - Companies want cheap productivity developers (yeah :S), it's very common that they force you to use some hype productive new framework/language regardless of what you think about it.

2 - If a company is going to invest in system level development, it's very hard to find another new decent C++ remote programmer. This is a very critical point. If you fire a javascript/python developer you can find another on in a matter of hours.

3 - If a company needs stuff in C++, probably the company is scaling and needs to recode some components. Usually they have the budget to hire decent C++ developers non remote.

4 - Myths like "C++ is for genius", "You can't be productive in C++", etc.

5 - C++ is not trending these days and it impacts the hiring and/or project stack decisions.

6 - Most remote projects are easy shit, you'll be amazed by the quality of projects and, sometimes, the freelancers hired themselves. Most of the time the projects don't need a fast runtime but new managers.

7 - Agile methodology is often used as an excuse to change the requirements every 2 weeks or so, it's not rare to find such management. You need to have the right tools and community to survive such environments. C++ was my 3rd language but I never used it during freelancing/remote work. Today I feel very comfortable using node because I know this kind of stuff happens, and when it does, it's much better to have things like NPM and a big community just to remain sane and keep up with deadlines.

Keep in my that these "reasons" are based on my personal experience as a freelancer. It's possible to find some remote work for C++ but you'll find to try much harder than, for example,a node/python developer. Try to focus on areas where C++ is critical. If you contribute to well know C++ open source projects, it's just a matter of time to get noticed and hired remotely.

I'd ask the same question but with Java. Virtually all the remote jobs I see are Python/Rails/Javascript and maybe PHP.

I think the kind of companies that hire C/C++ engineers are not the same companies that post jobs on rentacoder or whatever it is called today. The companies that have remote positions that you can "find over the internet" tends to be small young shops or possibly single persons implementing in PHP, Ruby-on-Rails or similar platforms that offers high productivity for small scale projects (at least in the short run).

That are plenty of C/C++ jobs inside banks and telecommunications but they will not advertise remote job opportunities and if they to, they do it thru recruitment agencies or consulting firms that subcontracts to freelancers. However I think it is quite possible to build a relationship with say a departement at telco thru regular consulting that eventually will let you work remotely.

It just requires some legwork and that you work on-site in the beginning.

Mozilla allows almost every job to be remote and Firefox is written in C/C++. I'm sure there must be other companies :)

I work remotely (even though I'm only a half-hour from the office) and practically all of my work is in C. So yes, it's possible to work your way into such a situation. However, that doesn't mean it's easy to get hired into such a position. Many employers are quite reasonably wary of hiring someone who has never worked closely with anyone else on the team. Usually this means working in physical proximity for a while, though exceptions are often made for people who have been deeply involved in an open-source project for a while. Either one serves as "proof" that you can be productive that way, and that proof is what reassures management enough to hire you.

My impression is that companies which aggressively embrace new technologies and markets are also more likely to embrace new management/logistical models such as fully distributed teams. Therefore the pickings overall are better, but mostly in certain technical areas - notably not in low-level areas such as networking and DSP (which you mention). I think you'll have to make some compromise between your preferred technical areas and your preferred working environment, because the overlap between the two isn't very large.

C++ seems very niche for web development, but it is actually very popular for game development.

Try asking in the /r/gamedev and the /r/gameDevClassifieds subreddits. I'm sure someone is wondering how to contact a C++ developer.