How I found a fully remote job
Fully remote jobs, even in tech, aren’t as common as you’d expect. At the beginning of the year, I started working for a fully remote company. It wasn’t easy to find a job like this, so in this article I’ll summarize my tips on landing your first fully remote gig!
Remote ≠ Remote
Working remotely comes in many flavors. One version many of us discovered during covid is regular work, just from the comfort or chaos of your home office, with all or more of the same meetings.
On the other side of the spectrum there is async work, where you aim to minimise all synchronous interactions. In a nutshell, as few meetings as possible and lots of smart ways to navigate people working at more or less random hours.
I want to focus on helping you find work, that’s as far on the async spectrum as possible, as it will give you the biggest flexibility.
Expectations about working remote
It’s important to be honest with yourself about whether you want to work remote, before you start going down this path, otherwise, even if the money is good and the work is interesting, you’ll likely be miserable.
Async work patterns
Working async requires solid written communication skills of every single team member. As most communication, especially outside the team won’t happen in conference calls, writing great Docs, RFCs, Bug tickets and Code Reviews carries a much bigger weight.
Study up on the tools and communication patterns that exist in remote organizations. Maybe you can even implement some of them in your current job!
As you have less face time with your colleagues, remote organizations tend to prioritize offline and online team building activities. You might travel occasionally to spend some time together or you might play some online games as a team / organization.
work delivered > working hours
Every company is different in how and to what extent they measure performance, however, in remote organiations it’s safe to assume that you will be judged more on merit, than on whether you show up.
a bit of extra paperwork
Working in tech in the Czech Republic you are likely used to being a contractor. It comes with a little extra paperwork, which you can handle yourself or hire an accountant for.
As many remote organizations are quite young and nimble, you might be lucky enough to get tools like deel which make this part much easier.
the clear upsides
The remote work you can find will likely pay much better than Czech companies, or more specifically, offices located here. These organizations compete for talent globally / regionally so they are likely to pay German, UK or US salaries. That is a 2-3x multiple. This applies to all roles, not just software engineering!
Your schedule shouldn’t be blocked by mountains of meetings, so you can expect to have a lot more focus time at your disposal.
Expectations for the hunt
The job hunt will take a while. You might get lucky and find something within a few weeks, but you are more likely to passively search for the right company with the right position for a few months.
That being said, you are much more likely to find a great job if you invest time hunting. Going through countless job adverts on a regular basis also has the positive side effect, that it helps you figure out what you really want to do. That helps you narrow your search, but also allows you to give a better answer than “meh” to the “what made you interested in this role” question.
Track down the jobs
Although a lot of job hunting can be done passively, I recommend investing at least a few hours spread over a week to skim over a few hundred job adverts. You should try to understand what kind of roles are out there, how they are usually described, what skills they need, and ideally, how much they pay.
I recommend checking my job board review to figure out where to spend time researching.
If you want to go the extra mile, it’s worth keeping an eye on funding news and tech conferences to find growing startups hunting for talent. You can find some really interesting companies like this, so if you are looking for a specific industry or tech, this will pay dividends.
Let them come to you
There are hordes of recruiters out there looking for talent. Sometimes they might annoy you, but most of the time, they are your best shot to even find out about certain jobs.
You need to make sure you are making it easy to be found for the right roles.
After sifting through job adverts, you should know which titles you will aim for. If you haven’t already, write CVs specific to those roles. I can recommend this ebook if you want a solid guide with templates.
Once you’ve got your content ready, update your LinkedIn and other resume profiles you intend to use and then, the waiting can begin.
Keep track
It’s easy to get lost in all this, so I find it best to start a spreadsheet / notion page and keep track of:
applications
who has which CV
when did you submit
stage
last contact
contact person
applied via (recruiter, job board, career page)
companies
name
why they seem interesting
career page link
articles if relevant
When I last hunted for a job, doing this definitely helped me stay focused to keep searching instead of settling for something mediocre.
Good luck on your remote job hunt!