We Work Remotely – New Job Board from 37 Signals
weworkremotely.com
weworkremotely.com
What I've learned so far is that a remote job is not exactly what I thought it was. Considering the mostly globalized state of the web (and even the internet), I thought "remote" meant you could work for anyone from anywhere. As a French web designer planning on moving to a foreign country, I thought I could apply for any remote job quite easily. But most remote jobs actually mean remote but within the US. Or, work from home 3 days per week, and 2 days at the office. Or even, work mostly from home but come to the office once per month.
It was probably naive from my part to believe I could get a remote job easily. I thought working in a field as connected and open as the web would provide me lots of opportunities.
Anyway, I ended up forgetting about remote jobs and settled for a job in either New York (very difficult btw) or London (more likely to happen).
Having said that from experience (I did Paris-London for a while) I think you'd find it hard to telecommute or work remotely between countries for a long period - the time differences, travel time for meetings etc and the lack of physical presence in the city make it more difficult to keep in touch. It is much easier to work for and get work from people in the same physical location. I was surprised just how important physical presence is in order to maintain the contacts which keep work coming in, and reassure clients that you will be available.
The company I work for (and have been with for about two years) has employees across more timezones than I care to count (I am based in London, my colleagues across the US, Panama, Brazil, Switzerland, Italy, Bulgaria, Russia and probably some others I've forgotten -- with one person soon moving to Australia) and we don't have any real issues. We even manage to have a daily standup; some of the team may be having their standup right at the start of their day and some will be having it at the end, but it works.
There are plenty of tools available (Skype, Hipchat and Google Hangouts to name an obvious three) which make maintaining lines of communication between telecommuting teams possible.
I'm not on the job market now (necessarily), but am keeping an eye out for your kind of companies and would love to keep yours on my radar, if possible.
EDIT - My email and all contact info are in my profile.
A lot of our recruitment has been done through networks of contacts in the open source community, which I think starts us out with a pool of self-motivated people who can communicate well over the internet.
We use Skype primarily for day-to-day communication, and of course email is a big part of the picture. But we also just make plain voice calls (sometimes phone, sometimes skype depending on connectivity).
Then we also use Zendesk to keep our workload visible and organized. So, overall, it's a very smooth process.
The managers I was interacting with were not technically minded, so that might make a difference, email was the main medium. But the problems I saw as a small company were more related to staying in touch with disparate clients and cultivating work over the long term than working day to day - the people making subcontracting decisions tended to forget you were there if you were never in the client office. This might depend on size and industry as well as communication - smaller companies probably depend on networking more than larger ones.
You imply being an employee of a company with remote workers. Grey-area is discussing the difficulties of being a remote independent contractor/consultant.
Being remote independent is difficult, since you're not just in the technical position, but you're also in sales (selling your skills). Obtaining leads means networking with decision makers--finding, meeting, networking with them; discovering what their itch is, and you're the right person to scratch it--and more often than not, doing so requires physical presence in social situations. It's hunting for a new job every 6-12 months.
But it is great being in charge of your own destiny.
He's going to need a work visa for one.
I always considered that to be "Tele-Commuting", and remote to mean "never in the office"
I only go into this level of detail because what happens next is potentially of interest. When you have a mix of WFH'ers and office staff, unless they are leaders -- either technical or management -- the WFH'ers get shafted. They are left out of meetings, usually inadvertently and usually ad hoc meetings, but this can have a huge impact on morale and productivity. They are assigned less critical work because the team and leadership often feel less comfortable not having local failover in case of emergency. This may be an organizational failure, but it is a common scenario and one any remote work candidates should be aware of when they interview. By far my highest performing teams are the ones where everyone is co-located, but ymmv.
However, I'd like to point out that we are not at all a recruitment agency, but rather a community of awesome freelancers. We do curate the talent to make sure you only get the best, but we are certainly not recruiters.
The goal is to allow any great freelancer to setup their own shop online without much upfront work. We support them by building tool that ensure security, timely payment, accurate project management and so forth.
:)
The beauty, you can quite literally work from home in your underwear, at whatever hours you choose. As long as you make it clear to the clients how you work on the projects, you get all the flexibility you want.
I understand that won't give you a 100% security of having a full-time job, but part-time you could actually make more money than if you were to take on a full-time gig. The harder you work, the more money you make, it's that simple.
"True remote work in..."
When I think of "true remote work" I think of a job where location does not matter.
But I like the idea of open office-spaces. I like to work from home, but sometimes I need a different place to get new ideas.
Cases in point:
We're looking for a younger developer ... There will be no compensation for this job
https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/20
You will be working with interesting people, namely me.
https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/10
EDIT: I take back the initial statement, there are a lot more postings now and some of them are pretty good.
Edit: I'm responding to the general idea of startup equity being equal to a lottery ticket. I haven't read the specific job posting in question.
Of course if there is no monetary compensation, maybe it doesn't matter.
It might be worth working for them just for the yucks of the front-seat view when their state employment board comes down on them.
You love Macs, open source software and tools, and cringe when you hear the words .NET
I've heard that about linux every year for the past 14 years, usually from people who've only been using desktop linux for a year or two. Not exclusively, but usually.
Putting a pretty UX on top of Linux and making it easier to use just moves users further and further away from 'Linux' and closer and closer to an OS X or Windows, only without the games, hardware compatibility, and enterprise software options.
Which is the best way for an average user to interact with the machine, is it not?
The ideal OS would be OS X levels of usable, but built entirely on Free Software. Once such an OS exists, it will draw in users, and the games/hardware-compatibility etc will always follow the users.
I don't think most people who've told me "oh, <foo> has gotten a lot better in the last year" even know what the problems are that keep some people away. I think it's largely PR parroting, and a way to seem marginally 'with it' re: linux. "hey yeah, I know ubuntu had some issues in the past, but you should really try it now - it's a lot better!" - just got 2 emails from people in the last week or so asking why I use OSX.
I was a desktop/laptop linux user from 2000-2008. That's about 9 years of "oh hey - things are so much better this year". And yet... in 2008 I still had issues trying to have multiple apps access audio at the same time. I still had issues plugging in an external monitor on a laptop (or 2 monitors on a desktop). I grew tired of rickety perlgtk scripts that were marginal wrappers around Xorg config files that never quite ever worked the way I could interpret the man page info. I've used desktop ubuntu distros virtualbox and vmware over the past couple years - things don't seem to have gotten that much better, mostly because the majority of the developers in those ecosystems don't see these things as massive problems to be solved in the first place (indeed, with some, it's a badge of honor that things are still hard to configure).
Again, the point is "hey, linux is better on the desktop now", in my experience, comes from people who've never really used it for a long time and had moderate expectations not met. Many people I know that use desktop linux expect it to be subpar for many things, and when it's just 'par' they herald this as a big improvement.
That said, I really miss fish from KDE.
I did try OSX for a while, and wanted to like it because I can get it for free at work, but I'm so used to Linux that OSX quirks really annoyed me. Things like package management being an aftermarket hack, pain trying to get functional RAID10, Apple changing core functionality between releases breaking my setup, etc. For me, Linux is WAY easier. :-)
A fair point. Thanks for posting. I never really got good at running Linux on the desktop; I gave up each time I tried, due to a sound driver issue or similar. I suppose if I'd stuck with it, I might feel as you do.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=120003
2011 people having problems with multiple apps trying to use audio at the same time. This is one of the things that drove me away from desktop linux in 2008. 3 years later it still isn't a solved problem. My gut tells me that in 2013, it's still not a solved problem.
I've no doubt that some people get it to work for their use cases OK. But the fact that it was, even 2 years ago, enough of a problem that people still encountered it... architecturally, that's a symptom of something really broken.
I'm not really interested in learning the ins and outs of modprobe and kernel driver recompiles to try to get sound working as I expect it to - it works the way I expect it to on my macbook, which leaves me time to do other more important stuff.
What? Not at all? Not working when you unplug headphones? Not working for Flash?
Google for "osx sound problem" and you'll get plenty hits. What exactly do you think your link from 2011 demonstrates?
And osx is by no means perfect. I just have had far fewer problems related to hardware and drivers than I ever did on Linux.
In 9 years of desktop linux, audio was a constant problem. It's been an extremely rare issue on my MacBooks.
What it demonstrates is that even in 2011, the base issues of how audio should even work hadn't really been sorted out. oss vs alas vs pulseaudio vs whatever aren't issues I want to be concerning myself with - this is just one reason I left for the macbook world.
I was using macbooks at the same time for our video editing. Don't pretend they don't spin that beachball crap at you at the worst moments.
Of course people will and should use whatever they want. I have to touch Windows and Macs regularly as well and they're not without problems. Each will have its pros/cons like anything else.
Sounds like you're annoyed with people asking you why you use OSX. I've asked that question myself in the past. I assume people make informed choices, so I'm always curious about the reasons. Personally, I don't mind people asking me why I use Linux.
I will say that the Desktop experience still is the weak point compared with how solid everything else is. Xorg is a pain, but I haven't had to touch it in a few years (defaults have been working fine for me), so that's been fine.
The reason I keep using Linux is not because it's perfect, but because the breadth of amazing and ridiculously easily accessible free software available for the Debian ecosystem is unparalleled (in my experience, anyway).
I can run the same software on servers, desktops, laptops, in the cloud, on crappy old hardware in a way not possible with Windows or Mac. I don't have to ask for permission or deal with licensing issues. I can focus on GSD* instead.
* getting shit done -- see other thread :-)
Sort of like movies I guess - people pushing their favorite actors who were in some remake of something from 20 years ago. The actors are OK, but I'm not becoming a crazed fan over that stuff; life's too short.
As for linux - it's on all the servers I manage, and I can run virtual machines of what I need from linux, mac or windows when required. It's just not my cup of tea for desktop/laptops, and probably won't be for a long time (again). The macbook "just works" far in excess of any hype from the ubuntu crowd (again, thinking back to 8-10 years ago - "it just works!")
On a side note: I have some sound problems every once in a while, but I am a hard user of audio libraries, since I perform in music concerts using live coding... In the normal everyday department, it just works.
I hate myself for posting this comment.
[1] I've personally had success with the instructions at http://shantonu.blogspot.com/ - not that Apple has accepted any of my patches...
I personally use OS X as my desktop OS because it suits my needs, despite contributing regularly to open source. I agree completely that there are many non-'fanatical' reasons to prefer Linux as a desktop OS.
Additionally, many people can't afford to give up having commercial support for their OS as a target for software products (Adobe's in particular, in my experience).
To summarize; "I'll use free software but not if it means neglecting superior proprietary software".
Obviously to each his own in this matter. Linux is great in some areas but not for user experience or corporate support.
Firms like this that dictate the technology stack you'll be forced to conform to are unemployable to any good developer.
Except for those SF jobs, with the whiskeys and the toys and such. I need to get one of those.
These postings (weworkremotely.com), on the other hand, are showing some promise. I'm sure they were mostly bad at first, but presumably, a lot of good companies reading this post are starting to put up their jobs.
http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=C%23&allows...
ironically does not include:
http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/34229/full-stack-web-d...
"We’re looking to hire the best people wherever they are in the world."
I found the posting from the OP's link, BTW; if this is indeed the issue, it looks like careers.so ought to apply viewing restrictions equivalent to the search restrictions, otherwise cross-posts to other job sites are going to confuse other people in the same way it did me.
I wonder how many developers are excellent at:
* UNIX admin (setting up sql + nginx + unicorn on BSD/Linux) Rails/JS/CSS3/HTML5 * TDD * Excellent Closure and/or Scala * Virtualisatin/scaling/concurrency (put another dozens of varying subjects here... and you're spot on).
I mean, I do linux/unix setup/admin writing firewall rules, setting services for FUN at home since 2000 and there's nothing I can't do given a little bit of time some documentation and a guy to ask a few questions if I get into serious trouble.
But saying I or everyone else is a master in all these things, seriously?
My gut tells me that most companies want the miracle-man or don't know what they are looking for. Hope I'm wrong.
Incredible coding skills. Your friends and coworkers describe you as an "animal."
...A little intimidating ain't it? Not sure what an animal developer truly is.
That made me laugh so hard. Sounds like a borderline HR issue. :-)
- were geniuses - top of class - CS only - Ivy League - could recall the ins and outs of pointer arithmetic - Solve binary-recursive-whatcha-ma-callem puzzles in their sleep - are rockstars
I wonder how one can prove to have a track record of getting stuff done. If we exclude hobby projects / open source contributions, I have no idea how I could show any kind of track record. I'm not allowed to talk about the projects I do at work, for example, and I don't have time or motivation for hobby projects after work.
And open source contributions are a lot easier to make than you might expect, when you consider non-code contributions. Opening an issue on github for an open-source library is a great signal. A well-written bug ticket tells me:
1 - You write enough unique software to encounter bugs in other developers' work (i.e., you're not just duplicating the same CRUD work everyone else is)
2 - You understand how to identify common tasks in your application that should be delegated to a library (and don't try to just re-write everything yourself)
3 - The details in the bug ticket show that you understand what information is relevant to solving a problem and can communicate with other developers.
Those sorts of contributions should be possible in most work environments, as part of your normal job responsibilities.
(I do have Githubs, but they are because I like coding for fun, and I don't like coding for fun to find jobs.)
We're looking for a remote Growth Hacker, and we really do mean remote... https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/142.
You can be anywhere in the world, you can work whenever you want. We even just expect 30 hours p/week, with full-time pay.
I know this comment is self-promoting, but we're a small bootstrapped and profitable startup from Australia. It's not easy to get the word out... so am taking the opportunity here.
Thanks!
Kind of a weird place to be.
I wonder if there's some kind of hack that could allow small companies and startups to get around the policy issues without getting various regional governments upset with them.
There is: international tax lawyers. There are rarely real prohibitions on employing people who live outside of your own borders. The main disincentive for companies to hire outside of their own country is potentially severely increasing their tax complexity.
It's not just taxes but also varying labour laws.
The internet might be international, but you are not.
The same issue probably applies to our health insurance plan - it's only useful in the U.S. and would also be expensive to change.
In that scenario I wouldn't care if that was only available to in-country employees, the same way that I wouldn't care about missing out on perks like catered lunches.
Isn't salary a basic piece of information that every job listing should have?
Also, if the job posting doesn't explicitly mention remote/WFH, then we try to avoid posting the job.
I often get recruiters who try to sell me a job based purely on technologies and not what the company actually does. I'll ask them who the company is and they usually wont say, either due to the fact that I haven't sent my CV/resume or they think I am another recruiter that is trying to steal the details.
Browse Secretly · No Middlemen · See Salary Upfront
-They hope to wow you with the position so you'll accept a pay lower than you wanted. This doesn't work when the salary range is listed up front and is so low you won't bother to respond.
-They're going to base their offer on how much you make now. This works when you're trying to move up in your career, they can offer you a little more then you make now but not as much as if you're already getting paid well. Again, they lose this position if they're up front with their range.
When the question "How much do you make right now?" comes up in an interview, I answer "How much I make right now is irrelevant, here is how much I want if I'll be working for you" (said with more tact, obviously).
There's no point using it as a basis if they are not, but if they are, it's a good starting point.
How would you react if the candidate gave you the answer I typically give in this situation? ("my current salary is irrelevant, here is how much I want")
I think you're doing more things right than just not mentioning your previous salary...
When you list out a salary without giving any thought as to the applicant, I would imagine that you'd a lot of resumes from people who treat job searches like college applications (reach, backup, safety), while also weeding out potential winners with an arbitrary value on the job listing that could easily fluctuate to accommodate people who fit great with the company but need more than market compensation to sign on.
That said, I think that a company should be up front about how much they were looking to spend on a new hire when asked. I remember being e-mailed by a family friend who was looking for a developer. I let him know that I was happily employed and that I wasn't interested in leaving unless the price was right. He e-mailed back saying that he didn't want to talk about salary at all until he was convinced that I was a good fit for the company. Sorry, bud, but I'm not putting myself through 3 months of interview hell just to satisfy my curiosity.
"Since we're just going into another fundraising round the most we can offer is $80k."
Didn't take that job.
If you do an amazing job, and I pay you an amazing amount. That amazing amount could vary depending on your cost of living.
I agree in a perfect world that you should get paid the same no matter where you are, and globalisation will probably head in that direction. But so will cost of living balancing out too (if people in lower cost of living countries are earning lots more money, the price of things will go up.... supply/demand).
I guess ultimately, when comparing what you pay people, why use the dollar amount as opposed to the benefit to their lives. Shouldn't you be paying everyone an amount that equally benefits them? Why should one person be far greater benefited from their salary? Ultimately it's what you do with the money that matters, not the number on the note.
Because that's entirely subjective and can't be calculated objectively.
Person A in SF might be paying $3000/mo in rent but also has top bands, a lot of popular culture, great shops, and so forth at their front door. These things counteract the lack of much disposable income for them.
Person B in Vietnam might pay $200/mo for a house but may also have frequent power cuts, poor access to healthcare, etc.. but the extra money counteracts these negative points for them.
This is one of many reasons Westerners get paid colossal salaries to work in places like Iraq or pockets of the Middle East. Cultural and security issues (in varying measures) are compensated for by a higher income.
Only the employee knows the amount that is right for them.
Is that really how it would work? What if the Warsaw guy demanded $100k, would you pick the NY guy.
This stuff about cost of living or finding the salary they would be happy with is all baloney. Employers want to pay as little as the candidate will accept. Candidate want the maximum salary an employer is willing to pay them. Anywhere between those two an agreement is possible. Negotiation is (a) figuring out if that range exists and (b) trying to get as close as possible to your ideal place in that range. Same as any other market. Employers (and recruiters are even worse) are trying get have more information than the candidate earlier to help them win at this game.
Employers do the initial advertising, control the process, do it more times, have less at stake. There are some markets where candidates have the stronger hand, but they're unusual. To me, not advertising a salary range is like having separate tourist prices, charging a couple walking into a hotel reception late at night double price, etc. It feels like a dirty trick played by the pro on the amateur.
Not all employers want to pay as little as the candidate will accept. I can state this as fact as I am an employer and I do not do that.
As an employer, I want a happy and loyal staff member. Negotiating them down on price doesn't achieve that. I have never offered less than someones initial asking price, and sometimes paid more.
I think it's wrong to assume the employer and employee have differing objectives. We hopefully both want a successful relationship/partnership. Achieving a salary that both are happy with is part of that.
As for your example, again you assume that the employer makes an offer or the employee demands something. Can't it just be a discussion to find the most appropriate salary? That's how I do it.
However, there is an underlying economic reality here. It's a negotiation over price. The employee has a minimum salary they would accept, some larger amount where they feel satisfied and less likely to look for an alternative job. But, they always want more and if they think they can get more, they will often try. You as the employer also most likely have maximum you are willing to pay and a lower amount that you would prefer to pay.
Even if it manifests as a discussion, this is in many real ways just a veneer over that underlying reality. You are not really offering the Warsaw candidate less then the NY one because they have a lower cost of living. You are offering it because it matches their expectations and they are likely to accept it which is in turn because their alternative are probably comparable. Not advertising a salary range leaves you the opportunity to take advantage of that possibility.
I do think we should be civil and nice and ethical. After all, my problem with undisclosed salary is that it isn't nice. Lets be honest though.
I guess it would feel more fair if the deal explicitly contained a note like "and if you move elsewhere for whichever reason, we'll adjust the salary so that you have at least as good a standard of living as you do now".
(Edit: I see ljoshua beat me to the possibility for issues here but it's important to emphasize that it can be done, just play by the rules to avoid trouble down the line.)
[1] http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-%26-Self-Empl...
Of course, making this kind of thing not worth your while is the whole point of protectionism. IIRC, India has a similar arrangement.
One way around this is presumably to open a branch office in another country, and have contractors work for the branch.
That can't be true for contractors, or sites like Elance and oDesk would not be able to operate as easily as they do. A contractor is responsible for paying his own taxes, whether that is to the IRS in the US, or the tax authority in his own country.
You proved my point:
Foreign persons are subject to U.S. income includes: tax at a 30% rate on income they receive from U.S.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw8ben.pdf
The burden is on the foreign person, not the US company. The US company can pay you as a contractor and not withhold any tax (just as they could with a US citizen 1099 contractor). The foreign contractor would have to file the W-8BEN (or not, since the US likely can't prosecute offenders in their home country).
In any case, the whole thing is a pretty arduous procedure in international comparison.
[1] http://www.irs.gov/publications/p515/ar02.html#en_US_2013_pu...
The offshore bit was pointed out to me recently and so I had to set up a proper European Union company in a hurry. Now all is well.
It's easy to subcontract work out to other countries if you're not tied to the idea of having employees, but instead hire companies (companies which already exist, like say small design shops, packaging firms for apps, or tech firms) to perform services for you, rather than individuals.
Take 37 signals for example, when they were a consulting company. A company in say Paris could have hired them to work remotely, without worrying about paying income tax - that's all handled on the subcontractor end if it is a company.
I could also imagine a kind of "talent agency" model, though that doesn't seem to have caught on in tech. (Yet? I'd sign up for that if it provided me with a steady-ish flow of high-quality gigs and sorted out all the legal/tax paperwork for me.)
Back on topic, that's exactly what the original commenter (zura) suggested. You can hire a foreign company for contract work without needing to hand over an entire project - you'll be paying for deliverables/features instead of time, but the end result is the same. AFAIK you have to report it to the IRS, but don't owe any taxes on it.
EDIT: Employees also don't want their home country's protections in case that company in Uzbekistan decides not to pay them.
Would be interesting to know if it is because of timezones as West Coast would work very well for me.
I see no search field. And jobs have no contact field.
I've tried craigslist, indeed, SO, even HN who's hiring. I send off to anything that looks like it might work. Have had zero success.
I can only assume it's a non-desired position. Who wants to give a programmer access to their codebase/databases while no one else is around? :shrug:
For example, "Hi prospective company, I'm using your iPhone app and it really needs an update due to x and x reasons. I specialize in updates of this type; here are some past examples of related work I've done. I think we can strike a deal that really improves the app at a price that makes sense for both of us."
Although, I landed a really great remote C++ job in 2012 from Who is Hiring thread.
Cheeky.
There are many companies of all sizes that support employees domestically and internationally working remotely. IBM, HP, Kaplan, The US Government, a number of major insurance companies, and many other organizations hire remotely. This gives access to a much broader talent pool.
Also, "The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the entire five-year cost of implementing telework throughout government ($30 million) is less than a third of the cost of lost productivity from a single day shut down of federal offices in Washington DC due to snow ($100 million). - See more at: http://www.globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statis...
I've always found it time consuming to filter through all the crappy jobs when searching for good opportunities that allow you to work remotely. I'm actually working on creating a curated search experience specifically for jobs in all industries where people are able to work remotely. We're not quite set to launch yet but for anyone interested in staying updated I'd love you to register here. http://klearsearch.com/
Feedback from this community when we launch would be really great.
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3196-sortfolio-lives
Edit: sorry, yes, my brain got mixed up. I used to use Sortfolio going through lists of agencies and checking out if they have vacancies open.
Looks like their new one is free but you can only list remote jobs - which is kind of awesome
It may seem paradoxical but I did like to know at a glance where the company was located, among other reasons for the fact that it communicates the likely salary (if they're in a small city and I'm in a large one, for example).
Otherwise it looks good (if top-heavy) and it's always nice to see remote opportunities.
One interesting thing for me is having both part-time and remote. While I see many startups might not need a full time finance/controller, I think many could use a part-time one.
Here in Hong Kong, thanks to special offers, 1000 Mbps broadband is only slightly more expensive than 30 Mbps, crazy! I collaborate on a project with a partner in India every day and the experience is quite smooth.
From a UI angle, though, why is everything so big? I had to zoom out two stops in firefox to fit a reasonable amount of content on the screen and make it look 'normal'.
I like that.
I hope some higher quality companies begin listing on this job board soon, however.
Search results: zero.