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Ask HN: How to find remote development jobs?

19 points by bendmorris ↗ HN
I'm about to begin a Master's program in Statistics. Unfortunately, the school is not in an area where there are many tech jobs. I'm looking for a full-time, remote development job with a flexible schedule to work around classes. What are some good places to start looking?

Thanks!

17 comments

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gexla
Depends on the type of job you are looking for. If you need total flexibility, you might try freelancing. You will be more likely to find freelance gigs anyways.
jmoses
I've had fantastic luck freelancing at odesk. They guarantee you get paid for hourly work. Use my refcode. ;) (https://www.odesk.com/referrals/track/jmoses)
tjarratt
Beggars can't be choosers, but a cursory look at some of those jobs are awful. You can choose between doing some college student's cs100 homework for $15, or building a replica of match.com for $300.

Off topic, but how do people determine how much a project costs? Even at a conservative $50 an hour, that's 6 hours to build an entire website. I can see start a rails project with mysql, building the schema and writing some simple controllers that display some markup for viewing profiles, but really - how could you create a complete website from scratch for $300?

kls
People that take this kind of work are a) using something like Drupal and throwing a skin on pre-built work and b) in Eastern Europe or Asia. These freelance sites are not where developers doing highly custom work are finding their gigs. There are a lot of good freelance developers making that rate hourly and worth every penny. If you look at the ads it is always build me Facebook for $100 or a dating site for $200. People grab some Drupal plugins, buy a template slap, it together, collect, rinse and repeat.
krakensden
So, where are they looking for additional work?
kls
Please note I am not endorsing this site because I do not use it, but a few freelancers that I know do and claim the quality of gig is pretty good:

http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/

That being said, it has been a long time since I "looked" for work. But when I did I actively marketed for them and did not hit the freelance boards, So for me, I would most certainly post a "I am available please take a look at my skills if you are interested" here in HN.

I would throw some money into a LinkedIn, AdSense and Facebook advertising campaign and generally actively market myself. Reason being, when you are applying for gigs you are competing in a deep pool with a lot of variables, while the gig is real and you have less false leads, the chances of getting selected over someone just as qualified is lower.

With active marketing, you get more breadth or "surface area" if you will, you chase more false leads, but in the end you have more exposure and are competing in a smaller pool. They have contacted you and generally have only you or a few candidates in mind for a gig. The breadth also does not leave you heavily invested if you don't get the gig, because you have other coming in all the time.

Finally, I like active marketing because you generally enter the project in earlier phases than applying for a posted gig. When I did market, I entered most projects at the planing phase, which I like a lot more than at the build phase, as it gives me an opportunity to address items at that point instead of telling the client at the point that they are ready to build, that they need to go back and redesign stuff.

Now days, Euro and IBM take up all of my and my teams time, so we have not marketed for work in years, any specifics I would give would be rusty. Some of the marketing guru's on HN could probably give you specifics on where and how to maximize your return with a marketing campaign.

dotBen
Sure that happens, it may even happen a lot... but that's not true across the board.

One of my companies works with an Eastern European dev shop on ELance. The company works for ~$18/hr for custom development work, which is done from scratch. Even at that rate it certainly equate to more than $300 for a site, however. :)

For the type of development we're doing it makes sense to out-source to Eastern Europe: For them this hourly rate is high and they perform quality work, for us we get to turn the tap on/off on quality development when we need it, with work turned around very quickly.

I think it is foolish to write off all Eastern European developers (and those from South America, Asia, etc) as code bodgers who slap skins onto Drupel.

gexla
It's a market like any other. From my limited experience I find that the most qualified generally gets the job and rates aren't as important. In some cases I have found jobs in which people from low wage labor countries are charging more than I would have charged for the same thing because they are clearly trying to estimate something that they know nothing about and playing it safe in their quote. In these cases I'm basing off my hourly rate for something I know exactly what needs to be done but I actually jack up my rate based on these other quotes because I don't want to look like the cheap guy. ;)

So, there are good jobs on Elance and Odesk. There are also some real gems. Niche areas are good because there is less competition and the competition you do have may not be strong in that area. Developers posting jobs can typically see past the B.S. and are willing to pay. They know that hourly rates aren't necessarily important and support / flexibility / communication is worth more in project rates. Just because someone charges low, doesn't mean you will save time or money.

kls
I think it is foolish to write off all Eastern European developers (and those from South America, Asia, etc) as code bodgers who slap skins onto Drupel.

Sorry, I must have not articulated my point well, my post was not meant as a critique of Eastern European or Asian developers.

It was more a critique of the quality of projects on those sites as well as the expectations on those sites. It makes the economies of scale only viable to slap together projects and even at a slap together pace, you have to be bidding from a cost of living standard below most of the west. Sure there are some gems on those sites but you have to weed through a lot of crap to find them, most freelancers find it easier to get gigs through their network as opposed to weeding through these sites.

That being said, two of my best developers are from Romania and earn the same as US freelancers, a good developer is worth their weight in gold no matter where they are from.

PonyGumbo
Craigslist worked for me. There's a huge amount of garbage on CL, but I found a remote contracting dev job that turned into salaried gig.
bdmorgan
Speaking from experience of years as a software architect and now a development manager at a very large technology company, unless you've got a HIGHLY impressive track record of experience, no job worth a crap is going to hire you to work remotely. If you're dead set on it, then as others have pointed out, the freelancing approach (Elance, Guru, oDesk, etc.) does work, to a point. On those sites, you'll always be competing against some insanely low-cost (and low-quality) offshore workers but that's not as big an issue. Again, even on those sites, the issue will be a demonstrated track record of excellence. So, best advice would be to take 3-5 projects on those sites of any size doing anything you feel comfortable doing and don't worry about the $$. Hit home runs on those projects and two things will happen:

(1) There's a very good chance those who hire you will hire you again or extend the projects out

(2) You now have ammo to get other better/more lucrative online freelance projects.

Do the online freelance thing for maybe two years and have tons of good real-world experience under your belt and then you have a shot at landing a full-time remote work position.

Just my two cents worth...

bendauphinee
I've been working remotely for a few years now, and I can say that I don't have a HIGHLY impressive track record, but that has not stopped me from being interviewed to see if my skills were worth something.

I suggest if you have a little time and don't need the money badly, cook up a project of your own. Managing even a small project that you aren't getting paid for and progressing in that is a good mark of dedication.

Other than that, spread around your resume, and post that you're looking for work. Never know what will come of it. Heck, I got a job interview and offer from another HN user here, because I asked if anyone wanted my skills.