The last time I was looking for a job I tried pretty hard to find a remote job. I tried to match my interests and skills pretty closely to the jobs and came up with a small list, all of which ultimately fell through.

One of them was close and gave me a fair chance with interviews, but most of the rest simply e-mailed back saying that they were looking for someone who already had remote experience. Great catch 22

IME, the best way to get that is to work at a larger, more developed company that's remote-friendly.

For example, I used to work for LivingSocial. They're based in DC, but have offices + developers around the country.

I worked in their SF office with a handful of developers and the other half of our team was at the headquarters in DC.

Also, developers on related teams were scatted across the country. Occasionally, getting help from someone meant snagging their time over Skype/Hangouts.

Now, I can put on my resume that I have remote experience.

This link lists some companies that would be a good start (CMD+F 'remote DNA'): https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

Thanks for the pointers! I'll take these into consideration next time I'm on the market (which might be this year... I'm not a huge fan of my commute)

> There are two places to find jobs on HackerNews. First, the official job board, where you can find job listings from YC companies.

I haven't seen any remote jobs from YC funded startups. And also, I thought YC startups don't favour remote work, by reading responses/replies on HN.

This is a shameless plug, but we have several remote developer positions we are hiring for as well:

https://www.twintechs.com/about-us/contact-us/careers/

Sorry, just before I continue, does your remote also include international developers.

Sorry to say it, but in most cases we require US citizens. There are a few rare exceptions, but overlapping typical US business hours is always required.

Not exactly relevant but maybe someone with experience sees this. I am really trying to break into freelance work and having an impossible time putting the pieces together. Any tips for newcomers to the freelance world? Looking to just get a few gigs under my belt and not sure what sites/sources are best to find work.

I'm not in the freelance world, but I've heard good things about the "Freelancers' Show" from a friend who is - http://devchat.tv/freelancers

looks promising, thanks!

It's a pity there aren't more Senior .NET developer positions for remote workers. The vast majority of them seem to be for Ruby on Rails.

I think it's because RoR allows one developer to make an app quickly while .NET is more for a team. If you're someone who needs only one developer for your Rails app - because you were the only developer and have to move on to do something else or your current developer is leaving, you are more likely to tolerate his not being onsite if you can give him high level instructions; however, a remote team is much complicated to handle.

I'm not sure I that I agree with this. I've worked on plenty of projects utilizing ASP.NET during my days as a freelancer where I was the only developer. However, it might be that this is primarily a perception problem, where the types of companies using .NET simply prefer to have their team on-site, as opposed to companies utilizing RoR which may be younger and more forward-thinking, resulting in them being more open to remote workers.

Or do as I've been doing, tailoring my skills to match the market, it's no bad thing and makes life interesting.

Yeah, I agree with this. Been contemplating whether to invest time in learning RoR for a while now, though I've also been using ASP.NET for over a decade now, and leaving the Microsoft ecosystem would be a drastic change for me.

I've tried doing this by practicing NodeJS lately... But it looks like I need to publish code in GitHub to prove that I'm not a charlatan. It's rough doing that in addition to a job and a side project though

Why don't you find a way to work Node into your side project? If you modularize what you build in node nicely, you can break it out into its own repo and post it. :)

Also, I personally take advantage of failed side projects from the past by open sourcing them. Really helps in interviews!

Yea I'll find a way of doing that ultimately. The last thing I wrote in Node was for internal use for the company I work for. No way of putting that on GitHub!

there is also http://remoteok.io/ which launched recently

I've worked remote for 2 years and I miss it deeply today.

I keep trying to find another position like that but most of them pay a lot less the on site. So...

Great article, going to come back to this in like 3 months when I'll be looking for work again.

I decided, that my next job will be remote. But it's hard to find something allowing european timezones, that would not be web dev.

What about the traditional marketplaces like sologig, elance, o-desk, etc.? Losing favor among quality talent?

I think you will find there is a connotative difference between the words "freelance" and "remote". That is, "remote" is often intended to mean full-time work from home as an employee or 9-5 contractor. Whereas freelancing is... freelancing. In any case elance, o-desk, sologig, etc are for freelancing and not for finding 9-5 work, generally speaking. Nevermind the fact that elance, o-desk, etc are just price war races to the bottom...

Not necessarily true. You occasionally find the client on elance or odesk who knows you get what you pay for, but it is not hard to find the guy who wants you build a "site like facebook" for $500. On the other hand,, you can find that guy on Craiglist too.

That could be a cute business model, build Facebook once and then sell it over and over again to every guy that wants it for $500...

"No but what I want is different!" "Yep, uh huh, sure, removes duck animation"

Great article, thanks.