Ask HN: Strategies to land fully remote $250k+ job
From my experience most of the companies scouting for developers are trying to minimize costs and using the “fully remote” positions as a mean.
I almost never faced an HR ready to discuss salaries higher, than my current “above average” full-time salary in my region (~120-180k).
I wonder what should your CV look like and how should you approach the search for companies that can afford expensive developers no matter the geo.
If the goal is not worth the effort in the first place — what alternative scalable ways to increase senior programmer’s income can you recommend?
Scalable means more or less reproducible in finite timeframe without high risks like in “starting your own startup”.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 288 ms ] threadThat said I think $250k is definitely possible for non entry-level positions if you bring strategically important knowledge into a company. If you e.g. work for a startup/scaleup/enterprise in given space go talk to other companies in the same space that want to break into the competitors market or pull off a similar business model. Then you can e.g. say "I helped company X to scale their backend infrastructure to support 100 MM customers and I'm looking for a position where I can apply that knowledge and help you do the same, while having more responsibility / ownership / decision power". That will make you more valuable to a company than saying "I'm a really good Golang programmer". It's all about selling you as an individual with very specific market knowledge that a company wants.
In order to be able to land high paying projects as a consultant, you would need to showcase your skills somehow (open source, portfolio, etc...). This can happen later on though and as a start the easiest way would be to ask for referrals and make it known to your network that you're looking for consulting opportunities.
Making this transition though would imply that you'll need to think about it as a business instead of a job, and start cultivating new skills i.e. communication, marketing, sales, etc...
Freelancing is a good option.
250k a year is 20k a month, for 12 months a year.
20k a month is 1k a day, for 20 work days a month.
How to make 1k a day? Write 2 technical articles.
Btw. as a freelancer you could end up paying less taxes, because more things are deductible. This could mean, you can end up with the same money after taxes without making 250k a year.
How do you monetize technical articles at the rate of $1k / article ? Most firms wont pay that much.
Here's an example https://burke.services/segment.html taken from https://burke.services/
If I write an article that shows how your SaaS integrates with <POPULAR_SERVICE_OR_FRAMEWORK> then this is worth much more than $500.
But you're also paying a lot more in base taxes and lose out on a bunch of bottom line income. I've been a freelance worker for ~20 years and recently switched to a full time position to mix it up.
Your employer pays half of your social security taxes but as a contractor worker you need to pay both ends, that translates to about an extra 7% in taxes. On $235,000 income (let's say you wrote off a total of $15,000 in the year) that's an extra $16,450 in taxes.
Your employer usually matches 3-4% of your salary into a 401k which is yours without any vesting period. On a 250k salary that would be $7,500 at 3%.
Your employer usually pays your health insurance. The absolute bottom of the barrel worst insurance you can get will cost you around $450 / month if you're a contract worker or $5,400 a year. There were even years (2016-2017 I think) where if you didn't purchase your own insurance you ended up paying thousands of dollars in fines.
Your employer may contribute to a number of nice to haves like tax free stipends for internet / phone bills as a remote worker. Let's call that $1,500 a year for everything combined (some of which is direct money in your pocket and some are services you might have access to).
So in the end being self employed results in paying an extra $16,450 in taxes and you net lose $14,400. That's a total of about 30k less. You also have the extra burden of filing quarterly taxes or you pay fines. You'll likely end up having to pay for an accountant too which will be another $500+ / year (not included in the above totals).
Yes, as a freelancer you can deduct a portion of your home office as business rent, computer supplies and other things you need to do your job but for a remote worker there's really not as many deductions as you may think.
I'm not saying doing contract work or being self employed is bad but I think it's important to be aware of these extra costs and things to think about.
There are some tax perks of being self employed too, like being able to fund a SEP account. For most self employed folks you can put 20% of your income or up to 58k in 2021 into this account. It's somewhat comparable to a 401k in the sense that it's a tax deferred account, AKA any amount you put into there will be taken off your income taxes today and you will pay taxes when you start withdrawing the money at about 60 years old based on whatever your income is then.
So in our example above if you had 250k income, wrote off 15k and then maxed out your 20% into a SEP for another 47k you'd really pay income tax on 188k. Keep in mind as a salary worker you'd have 19.5k into a 401k so it's mainly a benefit of about 27.5k of extra income that you're tax deferring.
Note: I'm not an accountant and I might be calculating things incorrectly but it's in the ballpark of a few percent.
Where did you hear that? No accountant I've ever spoken with mentioned it's worth setting up an LLC to save money on taxes as a typical set up where you're a solo developer who runs their own tech business.
I mean, paying yourself less of a salary through an LLC is going to result in paying less income tax but it's not a system where suddenly you're paying way less in taxes AND you get to keep the remainder to do as you please right now as if it's some type of easy loop hole.
There's also regulations around single employee LLCs around all profits being taxed as income for the owner.
the IRS may take a closer look at you if you’re taking less than half your revenue in W2 income but otherwise it’s perfectly legitimate.
[edit: the S-corp election is key. look into that.]
Did you have multiple employees? I think that changes everything, we're talking about a solo business owner in this case.
All profits from a single employee LLC get treated as income tax. Here's a quote from Intuit[0]:
> Single-member LLCs are disregarded entities. A disregarded entity is ignored by the IRS for tax purposes, and the IRS collects the business’s taxes through the owner’s personal tax return. Single-member LLCs do not file a separate business tax return.
This also applies to S-corp election. It's why a few accountants that I've spoken with have suggested that creating an LLC for tax savings as a solo business owner isn't worth it. It just complicates things for no real benefit. You have reduced liabilities but that's separate from saving money on taxes.
As you mentioned it would be a good idea to give yourself a reasonable salary as an LLC employee to not get audit by the IRS which is why you can't expect to hire a friend for $10 / year to instantly make yourself a multi-employee business.
[0]: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/structuring/the-single-membe...
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/electing-s-corporati...
edit: article from the IRS itself (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...)
> If a single-member LLC does not elect to be treated as a corporation, the LLC is a "disregarded entity," and the LLC's activities should be reflected on its owner's federal tax return.
(emphasis mine)
That “if” is significant. As an SMLLC you can elect either C-corp or S-corp (pass through) status, and that changes things completely.
The going rate for a technical article written in ~4 hours is $500? That blows my mind. I'm not saying it doesn't happen -- I've only done non-technical articles -- but that it's hard for me to imagine it being profitable for the publication.
800-1000 words produced from scratch in 4 hours, including research, editing, and graphics, is going to be garbage one step above what you'd find in a content farm. The same derived with minor modifications from an existing article will be little better than scraped content.
If they offer me to write an article about something I already know, I don't have to do much research.
Writing 1k words takes around 1h if the outline is good, so I have 2-3h hours time to do research about things I already know.
And, yes, a lot of publications pay less than that which is why you see a lot of writers with technical knowledge working for product companies doing content marketing and related.
It's also a question of expectations.
I have many clients who publish anything I write without any questions.
That is, don't take your billable rate * 2080 hours/year and compare that as apples-to-apples.
With the right job responsibilities, this is doable for a software engineer. If you can offset the two jobs a bit by time zone it’s even better.
But you better hurry, once people catch on that this is possible the supply of developers can quickly increase overnight, leading to a fall in salaries from oversupply.
But I wonder if there are companies who understand that 250k developer is not even close to 2 125k developers, but can be much much more valuable asset with proper management.
What makes you think this is so?
It’s going to be a massive elephant in the room before the topic of money is even raised.
I don’t think you can compare engineers to a struggling single parent working 2 jobs at minimum wage. The former signs contracts saying they won’t work for other companies concurrently, the latter likely doesn’t.
If you want multiple jobs, simply work as a 1099 contractor. It’s that simple.
Well, that's where you're mistaken: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/opinion/noncompete-agreem...
As an exempt, salaried employee you are being paid for work, not time. If you can manage to do the work for two employers then they have no cause to complain and you've earned your pay.
If you fail to do the assigned work or are unavailable for sync meetings (probably the hardest part of this arrangement) then they can fire you.
Any parent who is also a FT software engineer has two full time jobs, they just don't get paid for one of them. Cultural inertia around what you 'owe' your employer is not to the benefit of employees.
In this situation, where there are plenty of low level jobs that pay $125k that require 4 hours or less of actual coding time per day, working two of those jobs seems like a totally viable option. As others have pointed out you have to avoid employers that try to prevent you from working more than one job, but there are plenty of those (personal experience) so this, again, seems like a pretty good option.
This differs from low-wage jobs in other industries, where you are paid for your time on your shift, and then have zero expectations of your time outside of your assigned shifts.
I haven't seen a full-time contract that would allow me to take other such commitments from other companies. Whereas when I was a freelancer I had to demonstrate that I have at least 3 roughly equal sized clients to be legally recognized as such.
He ended up getting busted by all 3 companies at once, and all 3 fired him.
Hopefully he can find a new job that doesn’t check references. If you care about your reputation, or if you have the slightest moral compass, don’t do this.
I doubt anyone will reveal the how because it is becoming a cat and mouse game in my organization.
2. His output was horrible. He was an obviously a good senior level developer. But it would take him a week to do something a -junior- engineer couple do in 2 days.
3. Lots of strange and unexpected absences.
4. On a number of occasions I asked how he solved a problem at a prior company, and he spoke about the company in present tense rather than past tense. (A slip up on his part)
There were people a few other signs that were more subtle than the ones above... but ultimately I became suspicious about how such a good engineer's output was so bad, and had a theory he had multiple jobs. So I simply emailed his prior employer to make sure they were aware that he had resigned to work for our company. The CEO of his prior company (where he had been for 5+ years) was shocked to find out he worked for us.
The 3rd company he found through YC Work at a Startup, and through that uncovered he had been applying for a 3rd job and actually accepted an offer from one of them and had begun work.
There are whole blogs dedicated to how to pull this scam off (google it). But morals aside, I wouldn't recommend it simply because the stress of juggling remote meetings, standups, sprints between 3 companies is not easy.
Laws are generally not written for the average, decent person, but to stop the degenerates who would try to murder, destroy, etc, and wouldn't be punished otherwise.
People cheat on remote tests and interviews, for example.
The industry is full of engineers working 9-5 then going home and spending 4 hours on a side-hustle or open-source project (plus another 10 hours on Saturday/Sunday).
Those people can hold down two 40 hour a week software engineering positions. Timezone shifted, yes, but they can get their work done.
Instead, put that extra focus into side work and side projects. If you’re good enough you can even be honest with people. When taking on a contract you can say “I have another commitment and will be working between X and X on X days for you” as long as you get all the work done for your primary job it’s not immoral.
His output was horrendous. I would have fired him anyway based just on that, but discovering he had multiple jobs expedited the firing (and clearly explained why his output was so poor).
It's impossible to trust someone with AWS production keys and access to customer data when they lie to you about something as simple as who they work for. People secretly working multiple jobs are looking for an easy way to make a lot of money. If it's within their ability to secretly work 2 jobs, is it also in their ability to download proprietary company info and sell it to a competitor?
Most employment agreements pay for 40 hours per week.
What employees do with the rest of their time is none of the employer's business.
They could be spending all that time driving an Uber, developing an open-source project, do contract/consultant work for a friend's startup, or just play video games.
As long as the work is getting done, the employer has no recourse unless it gets outright stipulated in the actual contract.
Your conflating of "working two software engineering jobs" and "stealing company data and selling it" doesn't make logical sense.
Working multiple jobs is not an easy way to make a lot of money. It takes time and effort.
Measuring employee productivity over "hours in chair" is the way to go.
The bottom line is working for two companies full time concurrently is abnormal and it’s not a stretch to imagine you’re not getting 100% of your employee while they juggle two jobs.
I’d also fire the report if I discovered them working two jobs.
Whether that's developing open-source projects, running a YouTube channel or working 40 hours a week for another team.
If they are competing with the company or not getting a reasonable amount of work consistently done, then that would be an issue.
My father worked two full-time jobs to raise my siblings and his reputation and moral compass is just fine. Many middle class families do it for survival.
There is no shame in working hard.
The post I replied to projected that (for some reason) into being a bad idea because of some story deceptive, poor-performing, contracting violating, three concurrent jobs.
I stand by my statement. It is not wrong to work two jobs. That was the original claim despite what this other guy wanted to make it about.
No - my dad worked one job during the day and the other at night. Why would you by default assume the worst in people? The original post was always about two jobs. Most people that work two jobs do so legally and ethically.
What on Earth are you all on about adding all these extra conditions to prove the original poster wrong. He never said - get two jobs, work them at the same, make sure this violates your contract, do a poor job, and lie about it.
You all trying to poison the water of this topic by equating it to something else entirely.
> It is not wrong to work two jobs.
2 jobs vs. 3 jobs doesn't make much of a difference. It is wrong to work 2 jobs if you explicitly tell each company that you are their sole employer.
The thing I don't understand is if someone really wants to work 2 or 3 jobs... why not do it by looking for 1099 contract work rather than chasing W2 roles?
The original idea was about a 2nd job. Thats all. You are saying that shows bad reputation and moral compass and then trying to shoe horn in the idea that people with multiple jobs are liars and poor performers.
Have you ever had to work two jobs? As someone that did and whose parents also did, I dont equate it with the worst in people. You do. I think that says something about the classes we each grew up in.
I think is perfectly acceptable to work 6-2pm and 2pm-8pm for 2 employers.
But I don’t think it’s ethical to work 2 jobs where the hours are overlapping not on a staggered schedule.
> Have you ever had to work two jobs
Yes, when starting my startup. I woke up at 5am, worked until 9am on my startup, went to my day job and worked a full 8 hours, then came home and worked 6-10pm on the startup. After a couple weeks doing this, I let the CEO of my day job know, and requested they sign a contract saying anything I develop outside of regular business hours is owned by me and not my day job. They approved and signed the agreement. I left to build the startup full time 9 months later.
The key here is just being honest and transparent. You can work 2 jobs, that alone isn’t the problem, the problem is working 2 jobs and going to great lengths hiding it from your employers, calling out sick for fake doctor appointments, fabricating stories as to why you aren’t getting your work done, claiming you have fake medical conditions that prevent you from joining meetings.
The sad part is a few bad apples will ruin it for the rest of us. Remote is easy to abuse. The more it’s abused, the less likely companies are to continue embracing WFH post-COVID. The more it’s abused, the more companies will be compelled to do things like install remote monitoring software, etc.
> the classes we each grew up in
Not that it’s relevant, but I grew up with parents who wouldn’t even pay for a $25/mo gym membership, and told me to go find a job. Same with buying my first car as a teenager and paying gas/insurance. Thank god I dropped out of private college after 3 semesters, all of my loans were in my name, no help from the parents.
I guess that blows my mind, you have a great origin story. It seems we agree on more than I realize, we just assumed very different things.
Congrats on all the success you have had with starting your own business and the hard work it took to make it.
You've helped me to reflect on my own biases with your posts and replies.
The take away that I’m trying to communicate (and clearly not doing a good job at) is pretty simple: have integrity, be honest, and act ethically.
Avoid exploiting, lying, and misleading.
If your employer is cool with you working multiple jobs and you’re honest about it with everyone involved, by all means, go for it!
Just my opinion. Pretty simple. I’m just advocating for people to act ethically.
I mean just read this blog post on Overemployed, having been on the other end of that as an employer, it’s infuriating seeing people jeopardizing their whole career and reputation for a few extra bucks: https://overemployed.com/overemployed-journal-week-2-elhapo8...
No it doesn’t. That’s completely dependent on what’s in the employment contract.
But, the sort of industry pearl-clutching about holding 2 jobs is interesting, when employers think nothing of making you work extra hours without comp, or be "on call" without comp, intellectual property clauses for stuff done on personal time, non-compete clauses, etc.
If I’m working multiple jobs yet still finishing my work and probably even doing better than some of the employees working for the company exclusively, I doubt you would be so quick to fire me.
It’s no ones fucking business how many jobs I work. Focus on results. This is the remote work equivalent of on-site managers who want to see asses in chairs.
and some of them may accept remote or not (highly uncertain), employees are certainly pushing for it but may be difficult to justify the high salary without coming to office in the future when things start getting back to normal
My outlook is that you will have to work through a few failed start ups before you finally build/find employment with a successful one. That being said, it can be soul destroying to see a product/system you’ve worked hard on to never go to market / go live.
Note: I'm talking about working remotely in the US, if you want to be remote from a different country Meta may not work for you.
Also remember that the landscape has changed since the initial FANG acronym came into existence.
Harder for you to put a number on your head and try to convince anyone you are worth it.
If your work improves the productivity of 100+ other people, you're surely worth the price.
If your work saves $500k+ in annual costs, you're surely worth the price.
If hiring you cripples key competitors, you're surely worth the price.
If you can enable new revenues streams through knowledge that only you have, you're surely worth the price.
If hiring you does not increase productivity, reduce costs, fend off competition, or bring in more revenue, then you'll be fighting an uphill battle to justify that salary. But if you do, talk about it. People gossip and those companies who have the biggest multiplier to benefit off your work will be working hard to reach you.
In my opinion, remote or not is less important than you think. The key decisions will be based on whether hiring you at that price is a net positive for the company or not.
EDIT: And if you're outside of the US, set up a local LLC so that US-based companies can treat you like an independent contracting business. That'll make it much easier to hire you across borders. And at that price, you can surely afford the $1000 annually for a tax advisor retainer.
This has to be one of the top ten best pieces of advice I have seen on HN.
By local, do you mean a US-based company (eg delaware), or local to where you are?
To be clear, in the US, that would also limit dealing with any LLC who's beneficial ownership is sanctioned.
I've also talked to a bunch of people who have done contract work for US companies, and they all just have a business registered in their home country.
Noone wants to be subject to US taxation voluntarily.
https://www.doola.com
We work with many different banking and payment partners (https://www.doola.com/rewards) and not only help folks go from 0 -> bank account but also keep the LLC compliant in the background (annual compliance, IRS tax filings, and more!)
Now, whether you can get around this by being fully remote and effectively saying "no, CaliCorp came to Nevada to do business with me, not the other way around" -- that's an interesting question.
As long as your corporate residency is in check, you file annual reports and pay taxes you are 100% in the clear.
The best advice to "what state should I form my LLC in?" is: - IF you live in the US: form in the state you live in (to avoid the foreign qualification in another state). - IF you don't live in the US: you can choose any state. The most popular states we see at doola are Delaware and Wyoming but Wyoming is the most popular due to the lower ongoing annual fees ($50 to WY vs $300 to DE) and Wyoming has demonstrated it's willingness to innovate when it comes to regulation (like the DAO LLC legislation passed on 7/1/21.)
For more on DAOs check out this blog post: https://www.doola.com/blog/what-is-a-dao-llc-your-complete-g...)
And for a complete answer to "Best state to form an LLC in" check out this blog post: https://www.doola.com/blog/what-is-the-best-state-to-form-my...
They take advantage of people that have an initial negative reaction to doing anything that sounds "legal-y" but really all they are doing is submitting 2 forms (certificate of organization with the state, application for EIN with IRS), giving you some template document for an operating agreement, and then once a year filing a one-page form to keep the company in good standing. If you're paying more than $100 for this, you're being taken for a ride.
EIN is free. You can do all above, in less than 30 minutes.
Not to defend, atlas, or this or any other service, but if they act as an agent or offer a virtual address, they may be why the cost is high. You do need a physical office address, even if it's a virtual office, for service, and paperwork.
You should be able to find the agency/agency of incorporation for the state - https://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform/ this is for Delaware, and right there #2 is registered agent.
Depending who you go to for virtual office, it may be $50-200/month.
Now, is it a business idea to offer this service yourself, rent a space, and also have an accountant, - yes.
--
But it's pretty cheap in general, other countries in the world, the cost of doing business for this meta/paperwork is double or triple.
In Indonesia, Doing a PT. PMA, sort of similar to a LLC, minimum setup cost is about $4000, but it nets you a visa.
Japan, requires $50,000 fiat, getting a hanko - and while it gets you a visa, is much more complicated.
As to justifying the cost for our plan, if you factor in the cost of having a lawyer/CPA do your IRS filings (there can be heavy fines up to $25K for not filing or incorrectly filing form 5472 https://www.doola.com/blog/filing-requirements-for-foreign-o...) and certain CPAs can charge well upwards of $1000 for this filing alone + your annual report with the state + registered agent, US address, our entire perks and rewards database (https://www.doola.com/rewards), and access to us on a monthly bases for free tax consultations, LLC amendments etc, we've heard there is lots of value BUT we are always on the lookout to add more and as a little sneak peek, stay tuned for some bookkeeping, payroll + banking stuff we have in the works (note we can help with all three of these things now but we do it through partners, we have some ideas to more tightly integrate / embed this in to our offering to provide even more value and a better customer experience).
edit: They also helped me open a Mercury bank account
1. https://stripe.com/atlas
2. https://mercury.com
> If your work saves $500k+ in annual costs, you're surely worth the price.
This is only half of the story, though.
The real question is whether or not the company can accomplish the same thing at similar quality in a similar timeframe by hiring someone with a lower compensation request.
The value you produce for a company sets the ceiling for your compensation, but not the floor. The floor is set by market rate compensation that other developers are asking for the same job. Developers also tend to forget that the features they code and ship require input from a lot of other people along the way: Managers to manage it, QA to test it, security team to review it, devops to help monitor it, designers to design it, and so on. If you look at a single feature, estimate the revenue, and then assign 100% of that upside to your own work then an experienced hiring manager is just going to roll their eyes at the hubris.
What you really need is an ability to show that you, specifically, have a track record of accomplishing these things better, faster, and with less headaches than the other people applying for the job. A track record of professionalism, upward movement through notable companies, and references helps greatly.
The key isn’t just to show that you can do these things. It’s to show that the company will benefit significantly by hiring you, at a premium, relative to hiring any one of the tens or hundreds of average developers they can find who will do similar work for less. The ideal highly paid candidate is one who can show a track record of self-managing and big picture thinking as much as possible. If I’m paying someone a premium salary, I expect they will require less hands-on management time and will streamline their interactions with the rest of the team, saving us both time and money. Find a way to show that in the interview.
In short, they save me time and effort because I don't need to babysit them where cheaper and less experienced developers would need my planning and guidance.
In my experience you shouldn't need to do this. In fact, I suspect doing this creates both a taxation and legal nightmare.
You should have a registered company (or any other trading entity) so you can bill as an independent contractor. However, it should be registered in your country of residence. Services like Deel exist specifically to facilitate this sort of arrangement, it's a breeze.
If you register a company in the US, you can't just arbitrarily transfer the money to yourself internationally. You'd need to pay yourself as an international independent contractor anyway. Except then you create legal issues, since there are likely legal issues with a company you run hiring another company you run. Additionally, by operating two companies, you're presumably filing two company tax returns, and paying yearly registration fees for two companies.
I've worked for american startups, and the contract/invoicing was through them
remote.com is another such similar service.
Have worked with both arrangements. Much easier to deal with a US based LLC than anything that is managing payroll. For the contractor the LLC arrangement may end up being better, too because at least in the US corporations pay tax in arrears, and individuals have money withheld in advance.
> Except then you create legal issues, since there are likely legal issues with a company you run hiring another company you run.
For a simple business, this is actually simple (at least the US part of it). Revenue - Cost yields a very modest profit in the US so there's probably not going to be a lot of tax liability. Not sure what the nightmare is. For the group I used, their books were super simple in the US, and equally simple at home.
However, you need to pay tax in your country of residence still. You also need to file with the IRS for the corp indicating zero profit. Plus US registration fees.
You also need to maintain a legal paper trail i.e. the money coming into the US corp needs to be paid out to an international company anyway.
Admittedly, we're based in Australia, and there are Australia-US tax treaties that make the whole arrangement a bit simpler.
If you join a company in a position to impact the productivity of the entire engineering org, then getting $250k base and full-time remote is reality.
Getting an IC position at those comp levels is far more difficult.
To get to ~200k remote salaries is hard, but not impossible if you make clear what kind of business leverage you bring and what responsibilities you can take.
In addition, you might not actually need such a high Remote salary if you choose to live in cheaper towns. You don't need a $200k salary if you can make your $120k feel like $1M by living in the countryside.
[1] "How I got wealthy without working too hard": https://amaca.substack.com/p/how-i-got-wealthy-without-worki...
Concrete: I learned React a while ago but find Svelte interesting and think it has potential. I am no SWE but interested.
That said, I do need something to differentiate myself from any other rando they might hire for less. That could hypothetically be a niche technology. I once met someone who specialized in making databases of 3D artifacts. He made a ton of money bouncing form one defense contractor to another creating their object databases for simulation purposes. That's the "niche knowledge" path.
In my case, that's soft skills. I'm a great communicator with a history of using those skills to land big project successes. In particular, I don't make the business people feel dumb when I explain technical things to them, and being a small business owner myself I have a better balance of understanding between business needs and technical needs compared to most devs.
For engineers early in their career, I'd say you probably want to focus on tech that is adopted but not generally viewed as heading towards obsolescence (React or Java are in this category, for example).
Mid to late career it can be smart to latch onto tech in its growth phase if you believe in it. For example if you were early on the Kubernetes train and managed to build those skills well you're worth a lot of money right now. Actually making that kind of judgment call probably isn't smart when you're junior because you're unlikely to have the kind of experience and instincts to consistently pick winners.
I have been recently going down the same path you have, so I can list some options I have encountered, for whatever that may be worth:
* Coinbase
* Confluent
* Addepar
* Gemini
* Ramp
* Reddit (doesn't change compensation based on location like many companies, by the way!)
* Socure
* Benchling ...
If you simply want the $250k because thats what others are getting or something but cannot actually create the value you'll have a hard time getting there. An easy test for this is you feel you are underpaid at $250k vs being in a situation now where you can't get $250k at any job (non remote or otherwise)
That means getting found by sourcers (recruiters) without explicitly making contact with them. Recruiters are, alas, still prejudiced against active candidates when you are trying to claw your way up the seniority ladder.
You need to show up in their searches somehow e.g. sign up for tech talks / seminars, update your LinkedIn and visit their LI profiles (LI will tell the recruiter / exec that you are looking at their profile, unless you have a pro account.)
None of this is particularly duplicitous. If you don’t have the chops you won’t get an offer. But it certainly helps tip the negotiation in your favour a little bit.
Get a job making 120-180 but 4 days a week. It is possible to do this. Make sure it is not an exciting company, but rather a corporate, slow moving one.
Now you can pick up a contract making 100+ per hour. 15-20 hours a week.
Do 4 hours of the main job. Do 4 hours of the freelance work.
You’ll easily be making 250k.
Another thing to note, as a developer you can solve a problem in 1 hour that may take others 4,5, or 10. At your full time job, schedule your work and spread out when you complete tasks.
I’ve found this is a solid way to make a lot of money 200-300k, at non FAANG, and I have been able to fit it all into 4 days every week. I also work less than 40 hours on average. I’m not affiliated with it, but there is a site called overemployed with more tips on doing this.
The key is getting a really slow, easy remote job first. This is easy to manage if you’re a good senior dev
Finding two separate jobs that each pay median developer salaries while requiring only half-time input, working them concurrently, and then constantly finding new contract jobs that fit your criteria is not what I’d call “easy”
FWIW, I’ve managed remote teams for a long time. It’s not hard to spot the people who are playing games like this to put in half-time.
Only if they suck.
You are biased because you’ve found people out, you don’t know how many others are doing extra work on the side, that you don’t ever catch.
Finding the second, part time contract is incredibly easy right now.
There’s 2-3 recruiters per day that email all of us on linked in. All you have to do is say “I’m only open to part time contracts at this time” and every other day you’ll have a request to interview and they don’t mind a part time commitment.
People make this seem so much harder than it is. It’s just networking well, and becoming an expert at your chosen language / field. Then you can easily produce enough output to keep everyone happy.
That's a shame, as that's exactly the fear not-very-good managers have of remote work. I expect we'll see a reaction toward proctological monitoring of remote workers, even professional software developers.
Is it that easy to spot people? I always felt like the baseline for work at my jobs was 2-3 hours a day of productivity + 5 hours of screwing around for most people.
There were always the outliers who seemed 2X-3X productive. Anyway, you would be still doing double the work of the lazy people.
Or do you only go for part-time contracted stuff, so you can prioritize your original job and then fill in the gaps with paid productivity at the part time gig?
I originally was going to try to do the full overemployed suggestion of two full time jobs but it’s much harder.
If you can find two jobs that have zero meetings. Go for it. With one being contract and part time, it’s much easier to set time boxes for things and ensure you are not stressed trying to join overlapping meetings.
I have a side client that I met 11 years ago that I charge $150 per hour for remote development. They feel lucky to get that rate! Most people around us charge $200 per hour but since I work full time for someone else and can’t always be available I give them that discounted rate.
I don’t think they’re hard to find at all for consulting. Being a full time employee for $250k, I agree with you that those are more rare. In my experience you have to possess an in-demand specialty for that or get into management.
Average professional job has about 8-9 paid holiday days, plus vacation time on top. My worst number of vacation days was 10 at my first job right out of college (they had to change after they struggled to attract employees) but every other job has been more than that.
But only accounting for 10 unpaid days per year would barely cover minimum federal holidays, so it’s not realistic. It’s equivalent to saying you’re never going to take time off unless the company is shut down for a federal holiday.
Of course good companies typically don't offer only the minimum.
In general you work 272 days a year and the rest is vacation and days off (this is also the reason we get a different amount of days off every year).
I have about 40 working days off, of which the company can choose the dates of 10.
People whose work is counted in days get special "extra vacation days to catch up" (this is more or less the real name), around 15 per year I think.
I have "3 weeks" but it's only 15 days.
The worst deal I would sign is a day rate (no logging hours) but fixed scope/duration is far better.
Of course, there are a number of professions (law, accounting, etc.) where hourly charges are absolutely the norm. I've done some legal work and it was in some ways very nice to get paid whenever you were "on the clock."
Most of the work we did in general was for specifically scoped deliverables and we actually tried very hard not to do day rates, much less hourly rates, but this was one case it really wasn't avoidable--and, of course, was the way the white shoe law firm operated.
But yes, you did some law work and they want you to charge hourly rather than based on value.
Hourly is a good choice for contracts where they are looking to buy labor. Which is a common model, because they often see contract labor as a substitute for employee labor.
The other models you mention can be much better, but also require the contractor to have both particular skills and enough relationship power to make them work. I have seen well-meaning developers absolutely get screwed on fixed scope contracts. And I've also seen less-well-meaning developers absolutely screw their clients on fixed price contracts. This is an area where blanket statements are harmful.
How do clients get screwed with fixed fee? Clients should pay for value, not hours sat in a chair.
I think the implication is that if one party is capturing the excess value produced disproportionately, that is screwing the other side. Particularly if this occurs because of information that is asymmetric in negotiation.
If my SAP implementation is going to save over 1 million per year in increased manufacturing efficiency, how should I price my services? The floor is set by the cheapest contractors in my market, the ceiling is how ever high I can negotiate.
The client will capture far more value than me over the lifetime of the product. I also don’t want to charge by the hour because there’s a conflict of interest and I want to detach hours worked from fees charged otherwise I’m just slaving away.
Hourly is for blue collar work, it’s not professional at my and your level.
Now that you have shipped the technically correct but not very useful thing, you collect the fee and then start accepting "change orders" at a punitive rate. At this point switching to another contractor will be even more risky and expensive, so they'll probably just suck it up. Or if you're really good at the game, you then negotiate a whole new fixed-fee contract with a higher price tag, and the deliver what they now think they want.
Bonus points if, as I've seen a big-name global contractor do, you deliver something not even barely working but possibly conforming to specs, and then just walk off the job. Even though the client has contractual obligations that they can't fulfill if the software doesn't work. At that point, the client realizes that a) they still need the software, b) the big-name contractor is the only who can deliver in time, and c) suing is risky, will take years, and anyway the big-name contractor can afford more lawyers. In this case the client signed another multi-million dollar contract with the big-name contractor, easily doubling the "fixed" fee. I lost touch with my contacts there before the thing ever worked, so I don't know how many times the big-name global contractor pulled this off on the same job.
Many large companies absolutely refuse agile delivery and require fixed scope and cost to get anything done.
Yes, waterfall is a bad choice. But no, clients aren't to blame for trusting a vendor to do right by them.
Why use quotation marks for something I didn't say? Nothing I've said means "fuck the clients" unless you are maliciously taking the worst possible interpretation.
A change that takes a massive amount of time and effort isn't something I should do for free.
I'm more than happy to build a backlog, refine it, and build until there's a RC... so few enterprise clients want to subscribe to the perceived risk, they'd rather spend months specifying everything upfront to make some senior person happy whether that delivery methodology has been proven to work or not.
I actually get six weeks vacation at my full time US job and I use part of that to work in my part time consulting job.
In my thirties I worked in many different countries for many different companies. Going new places with different cultures and being able to enjoy my time there was always the main driver: i.e. experiences & work/life balance over salary.
I would never trade these experiences for early financial independence at maybe age 50. I think there is a best before date for some experiences in life.
Maybe now it is possible for a select minority to have both. But most of of my friends in their 30s who work 'normal' jobs and have this early financial independence aim it doesn't hold true.
I.e. they will simply not have made these experiences when they reach that goal. Few have ever managed to leave their country of birth for anything else but holidays.
Some personal examples:
Living & working in Japan and thereby traveling the country on weekends or going to a cool club in Tokyo. When you're 35 vs when you're 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same?
Living and working in India and thereby going for a weekend hiking trip in the western Ghats were you're sleeping in an abandoned train station in the middle of the jungle. When you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same?
Living and working in Sydney, going to a party of friends on a yacht on Friday after work and on a diving excursion to the Great Barrier Reef on Saturday morning when you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter? Would it be the same? I was still hung over when I put on the diving gear but it was ok. With almost 55? You would simply have to skip the diving trip.
None of the above are made up. The pandemic-related lockdown made me realize what rich tapestry of experiences my past life choices have afforded me.
I have four people in my circle of friends who are actively working on early retirement. They do 'compensate' a lot on the weekends and when they go on holidays but that is not the same as the above.
But still pitiful and anti-health, on first principles. "Normal" though it may be in a workaholic and ideology-driven country like the U.S.
If it's a trade-off you choose to accept in exchange for early retirement, though, that's another matter.
25 days off (not including bank holidays) is basically a standard minimum (maybe +/- a day or two) in all European countries, not only in France.
Your comment is rooted in a tremendous amount of arrogance and ignorance.
I love my current job, the people, the work, the challenges. I still need an occasional break, and I still like seeing different things.
You said you found your $150/hr 11 years ago. How many other $150/hr clients have you met since then? What makes you say that it’s easy to find them?
I think it’s easy to say that consulting is easy when you’ve had a single, long-term client that pays well. In practice, it’s much harder to find these clients when starting from 0, unless you have such luck to find the dream client right out of the gate.
It’s easy to find clients - one of the best ways I did it was to go to computer stores and tell the salespeople if they got me a new client I would pay them $15 per hour in perpetuity for every hour I charged the client. I had 3 people that made more from me than their regular job.
Then there are chambers of commerce, LinkedIn messages and frankly just putting yourself out there. I met my long term side client studying for a certification while my oldest son was at a baseball clinic. My client saw the book I was reading and walked up to me and said, “Are you in IT?”
I imagine he has covered his business development expense by now.
This is how I do it too, by the way. Long term relationships with good companies. It's more like contracting, but without the 40h expectations of a contractor. ( Unless I feel like working 40 hours in a given week for some reason).
It sounds like he’s basically been employed by this one company for 11 years, albeit on a contract basis.
These positions exist, but they’re not all that common. Usually if a company is paying a single person a premium for many years they’ll just hire a full-time person and be done. The average freelance contract you find should not be assumed to be a decade-long opportunity.
I only give the discounted $150 per hour rate because I work full time at another company.
Since someone else brought up tax advantages - I don’t pay social security tax on my self employed income. Because I max it out on my full time job. I also have an Individual 401k plan that I can contribute 20% of my self employed income as the employer contribution. I can’t contribute my self employed income as the employee contribution though because I max that out at my full time job.
Having combination W2 and 1099 income gives a ton of tax benefits.
That's not too surprising, and depending on what you are doing might be a great deal for everyone. Usually contracting work out is done at 1.7-2x the rate you'd pay an employee. This is because the the consultant has costs and risk that an employee does not. Costs like insurance, accounting, legal, personal benefits (i.e. savings to allow for vacations, healthcare), sales overhead (consultants have to keep finding new clients). Risks like contract cancellation and getting paid on time.
However if your goal is to work to replace your employment you should start out looking at the full picture, and pricing your work accordingly.
Edit: Not sure why people think otherwise. Maybe they are used to companies where you have to pay money to get those stocks? Big companies gives them to you for free, there is no exercise cost.
If you can’t afford a single but if variance then I guess RSUs won’t make you happy. But for everyone else they work just fine (unless your company goes down in flames, in which case you have bigger problems and are probably job searching anyway)
Bottom line, with stock payment, you have a say in their ultimate value. Do good work, company value invreases, you enrich yourself.
Statistically speaking, they're correct.
Recently learned this from the excellent and very pithy Michael Batnick blog https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2020/09/10/most-stocks-suc... who was citing https://wpcarey.asu.edu/department-finance/faculty-research/...
If you keep the stocks after they vest then that is your fault for keeping them instead of selling them.
This claim is patently false. If you receive $100k in cash, you can immediately exchange that to $100k in public company stock. The opposite is not true (if you receive stock with a vesting period, you cannot immediately exchange it to cash). Therefore, getting cash is at least as good as getting public company stock, not the other way around.
Let's say you know you will get a bonus that pays out end next year worth 10k. You can chose to receive 10k cash or 10k of google shares at today's prices. Most would trade the risk for potential upside.
It's a free call option on the stock. If it goes up you keep vesting at the new stock price which might be way above market rate for you position and if it goes down you get refreshers at the end of the year to bring you back to a market rate salary.
You can also have your broker automatically sell.
It is pretty close to cash.
Sure, but specifically in the direction where cash is always at least as good as stock, not in the other direction.
Want to know how I know? Because I'm working at my 3rd company where my 6-figure stock grant is vesting at 7-figures due to appreciation.
Say you are granted $600k that vests over 4 years. Well lucky you, the stock has 1.5x after year 1, doubled at year 2 and tripled by year 3! That means you've cumulatively vested $225k at year 1, $525k at year 2, and $975k at year 3. If you had cash only compensation, you would have received a total of $450k for that same time period.
That said, if I can choose between receiving $600k in cash today, and receiving $600k worth of public company stock today with restrictions on when I can sell it, then I will choose the cash, because it is worth AT LEAST AS MUCH as the public company stock (because, again, cash is freely exchangeable to public company stock without restrictions, and the opposite does not hold true in this hypothetical).
If you get $600k in cash, and you immediately exchange that into $600k in company stock (with no restrictions on when you can sell that stock), how could that possibly be a worse deal than getting $600k in company stock with restrictions on when you can sell?
1. A grant at $Xk, converted to shares on start date and vesting proportionally over 4 years
or...
2. A salary bump equivalent to the grant in (1), paid out ~bi-weekly at (1/104)*$Xk. 104 being the amount of bi-weekly pay periods to occur over a 4 year span.
> getting the $100k worth of stocks a year is at least as good as just getting the cash
I am arguing that getting $100k worth of cash is always at least as good as getting $100k worth of stocks. You're saying that it's not realistic to have the option to get cash instead of stocks, and that's true but it's besides the point.
Because stock compensation can be vastly different experiences therefor not just as good as getting cash.
I mean this scenario only happens at just about every startup if you read peoples experiences though I don't know if there are or if its possible to have a study done on this since the data is likely private.
Nearly Every highly paid SWE in the US takes a significant amount of their pay in equity. As an anecdote - I take around 70% of my pay as equity and so does everyone I work with.
And in pre-IPO companies that’s the norm, but that’s beside the point.
I have never seen an offer from a public company that has a # of shares attached to it. Only a dollar amount. Then it converts based on market value at conversion time.
The vesting schedule is where you need to be careful.
I’m seeing two strategies that are friends are using to get to $250k+ right now and much more…
1. Several have left for left/right coast former startups companies that are publicly traded. Their base comp is $160-180k but they are also receiving a large pool of equity that vests in tranches of $75-100k a year.
2. With everything being remote, several senior engineer friends are working two jobs at the same time. Some are telling their employers and others are not.
Companies are desperate for senior engineers and many are unable to compete with the “we’re remote, have free beer and no vacation policy.”
Be accurate when it comes to the truth but not necessarily the facts.
In the US resume fraud is a thing. Some companies like telecoms selectively check resumes for accuracy. Resume fraud can be a fireable offense.
Omitting isn't the same. If you ask for references, I probably won't list people who will give me a bad reference, either.
In the US employment is at will and can be terminated for cause or no cause at all, no need to go to court. Omitting important facts about employment history can be in violation of company policies. Some telecoms ask you to explicitly submit information for "employment history verification" as a condition of employment.
You can easily lie by omission.. The root of it is deceitful intentions.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/at-will-e...
Anything (or nothing) in the US can be a fireable offense, so I wouldn't worry too much about what you put on a resume.
So it doesn't matter if it's fraud or the employer just doesn't like the employee. The implications are the same.
They get to do that too, but it means they can get taken to court because of it.
If someone’s the kind of person to work 2-full-time jobs simultaneously then I think they’re the kind of person who’s OK hiding some of the facts on their resume.
https://theworknumber.com/
It can be tracked during your background check (using SSN). They will make you sign a form that you authorize them to perform such a check. Fail to sign the form - job offer is rescinded. Again, depends on employer.
Can you show me a background check service that offers a list of previous employers found by SSN? I did not know that exists. Unless they're consulting the IRS, I don't know how it could exist.
Background checks as I understand them, tend to check things like: credit score, contacting references (that you provide), criminal records etc. Primarily publicly available information.
You can check your own for free. Employers buy in bulk. Mine is completely accurate and includes full and accurate W2 info, i.e., salary and bonus (not stock grant) history to the dollar. Lying on a resume is generally a bad idea.
You sign the contract and then never show up anymore?
My current company has interviewed 3 ppl in 6 months, lack of candidates. Someone good, but in the wrong timezone would be a compelling hire.
1. The position was actually recently filled. We likely will have another opening soon but the posting is not yet up (perhaps will be in a month or two).
2. It would be personally identifiable
Trying to even find examples of such job postings... I think there is a market fit for a new job search website, it should be far, far easier to find these kinds of jobs postings. I'm not sure how a person can find these things without a recruiter contacting them.
remoteworkhackernewstempemail@gmail.com
Feel free to email me, I would be happy to refer someone. The pay would be somewhere in the $140-$170k range. It is a good company, tiny team working in biotech and oncology. Feel free to email me and I can share details.
For example in high-frequency trading, there is a small niche developing ultra-low-latency FPGAs or ASICs for trading systems. The work in question is fairly straightforward compared to other industries, but most of the people with the right skillset tend to go to aerospace or other big user of sophisticated electrical engineering instead. The number of positions in the relevant niche is low, but given that there are so few people, they won't care where they are, could sponsor a green card and will pay very well.
That's not to say you won't be earning it. The corporate culture sounds absolutely savage: https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/pj43ar/my_experience_...
I had the position fully automated by the time person got back. Thankfully they took it well and they got more interesting assignments.
2 weeks of my time saved several years of salary for company. I did this many times.
If the HFT firms are earning profits, it is because someone wants to pay them for the liquidity.
It's like walking into a grocery store and the banana you really want it 1$ and you'll buy. Because that's the price that highly sophisticated middlemen between the store and you have determined to be good.
The liquidity argument is abstract and unquantifyable enough to be used as a fig leaf for the industry. Real investors who are in it for fundamental values, dividends or strategy don't need to sell in a nanosecond. Now that you can sell in a nanosecond your deal is bad, as in the moment you hear of the Volkswagen scandal all the trading algorithms are done with their work already.
You can only sell in a nanosecond because someone else is willing to buy in a nanosecond. And if your goal is to earn money trading in time horizons of minutes or hours or even days, you probably are not equipped to do that as a retail investor.
Why should you have the right to dump VW after the scandal and not someone else? What about an investor that did not read the news until the next day?
> The deal will be incrementally worse as these firms extract value, your price will be the one that all of these firms deemed "meh".
No one owes you arbitrage opportunity. If you think the banana is worth $1, then it is worth $1. Maybe a nanosecond ago you could have bought it at $.999999, but as long as you still think it is worth $1, then what is the problem with paying $1?
If we let go of the mentality to "dump VW after the scandal before someone else" we find ourselves with bad news about VW and new conclusions about a good value for the stock and people buying and selling accordingly after all have ready their morning paper. A small Tobin tax or other technical measures can prevent unethical actors from taking the banana out of your shopping cart and pricing it within nanoseconds.
The supply-and-demand maximalism is a holdover from anticommunist thinking and ignores market distortions like Zillow's real estate buying.
And whoever wins by 20ns gets rewarded the same as the previous guy who was winning by 21ns. The magnitude of latency isn't rewarded, just coming in first, so more and is spent on less an less absolute improvements, none of which have been relevant to human reaction times for decades.
So why are the HFT firms earning profits? There is no law that says people are obligated to do business with them. There is no law that says people have to buy at the prices HFT firms are selling at and sell at the prices HFT firms are buying at.
It makes no material difference to the profits of a buy and hold investor. If it did, buy and hold investors would not trade with HFT firms.
While for obvious big moves it might be all about latency, most events are more about the quality of your pricing, incorporating correlated information, edge requirement and risk management that decides what you go for and what you don't, and for those smarter trades you usually have microseconds to spare.
To this I would say: grocery stores (which serve as a sort of middleman to a whole host of necessary goods and are clearly crucial to the economy) close overnight without much outcry.
(To be clear, I think grocery stores are far more important to the economy/society than HFTs, but I think your argument for why is poor)
One trading strategy being faster than another does not automatically make it better. This is a common misconception.
One convenience store would likely "bury" another if it were one block closer to its customers than the other. I wouldn't say the food store industry was "really messed up with market incentives" because of it.
A block closer is massively human perceivable, but we're talking about stuff far below human reaction times.
The buy side are typically pension or hedge funds that act based on predictions they have about the future to maximize long-term the value of their portfolio. The sell side are either banks or specialized HFT firms that only know the instantaneous price of things and their short-term correlations (and not how they might evolve long-term), whose goal is to collect the difference between bid and ask price, tabling on the fact they can sell back their inventory to someone else before the price goes against them. They expose themselves to the risk that price moves before they can do that, and the difference in price between the bid and ask reflects that uncertainty.
The sell side is essential for the buy side to function, and the competition between them leads them to them providing the tightest possible margins and therefore the best price for investors.
The HFT players provide the tightest prices by being very fast to react to market changes and get out of their risk, which is why it's highly technology-driven.
Thinking they have no value shows lack of understanding of market dynamics. Without HFT firms, investors would just be paying large commissions to banks instead.
Spend time with business people on “why” they are doing something.
Learn Excel.
After awhile you will be incredibly good at highly useful business process stuff.
My first though was “there’s no way this is paying what you typically see for Jane Street developer salaries”.
Learned more in demand stuff and my pay is top notch.
Not sure I'm up for working in such a toxic environment, but the technical challenges seem very interesting.
> If they don't have an FPGA engineer, or have a very small team, they are not serious about finance, or they are just dumb.
are FPGAs that core to Finance writ large?
But like all industries, there are many factors that contribute to success. FPGA work might help improve things a bit even if you're not the best.
There is some truth to this statement though, if such a firm is trying to pursue a certain kind of strategy - to compete on latency, some of your business must be in hardware.
So if you are tempted to do financial industry work, make sure to price in the risk of lost work time, years of therapy, etc. It was a fascinating experience and I learned a ton, but financially it was not a net win for me in the long term.
The thing to do is talk to headhunter firms. I've always maintained a number of relationships with the leading firms in my area (quant trading) and they'll call now and again. But if you don't know them, get in touch and they'll usually tell you if you're useful to them.
[0]: I'm sure there are exceptions of people who self taught themselves and are great, but it is significantly harder to break into than software.
It can be useful to have a high-level idea of what people do so that you can show you understand what's asked of you and you can more easily find the right role.
When you are able to advise company leaders, then you magnify your worth and theirs, because you advance their projects and their employees. This makes you significantly more valuable in ways that the leaders are seeking.
In my experience, this necessitates you becoming an expert, such as in one specific technology, or one kind of integration, or one industry sector need, or in one kind of business leadership technique.
The pandemic seemed like it was winding down (remember those naive days of 5 months ago?) and I decided I don't want to go back to the office, ever. Got a kid on the way, and I decided that the time I spend commuting would be better spent with my child. And my employers was making lots of whining noises that sounded like "we're never going to make this easy on you".
First, pick the right companies to apply to. Are you applying to one that 'also offers fully remote positions', or one where everyone is remote? Are remote employees first class citizens? A simple way to measure this: how high in the leadership do you have to be before you must live in a particular city (or some set of cities) to do the job? If the CEO is working from home, you know this company takes remote pretty seriously.
Edit a bit later: The reason I mention 'do they take remote seriously' is that companies that don't take remote seriously are the ones who still think in terms of 'city = salary rate'. Remote companies don't care.
In terms of CVs, no need to make it much different, imho. Maybe call out that you worked well remotely during the pandemic, and any other 'my coworkers aren't in the same physical space as me' experience.
Don't reveal your current salary during the interview process. The only salary you need to share with them is another company's competing offer.
Good luck. The market is excellent for developers right now.
Could you share your cv please?
boatman at list dot ru
My CV: 9.5 years at Amazon. Was able to pass the interview and leave a good impression. I think the latter was more important than the former.
I made a whole video series about getting into contracting. This first one lays out my take on why you should consider it - https://learnetto.com/tutorials/why-should-you-become-a-cont...
Now with remote work being the standard, you can get much more if you work for good US companies.
You just need to be good in coding, data structures and system design - and be able to show this in the interview - achievable with some practice.
Companies advertising "remote" or "fully remote" jobs are almost never looking for worldwide remote candidates. Your location and cost of living always play an important role in compensation.