I started a blog similar to this the other month, however it didn't really get very far (like most side-projects :D). The main thing I wanted to differentiate with other remote job sites are that "remote" usually means "remote in the US". I wanted it to be focussed on jobs available to Europeans, hence the name RemoteTechJobs.eu.
That was my first hurdle though, there aren't really that many remote jobs in Europe that are advertised. I think that's because companies don't really have a problem finding candidates. I spoke to a recruiter based in London and he said that most remote jobs he has get filled within hours or days rather than weeks for onsite positions.
The other thing I wanted to do was actually put some content in there that would be useful to the candidate to know what it's like to actually work at a company. The top listing on this site is as follows:
JavaScript developer for a massive multiplayer game:
React.js;
Phaser;
As a potential candidate why would I even bother taking the time to reply to that? What would I even say "I've done React.js and Phaser, hire me!"? Maybe I could link to some projects on GitHub if I had something open source, but that doesn't really add up to much. Job listings work two ways, they are for you to tell candidates how great it will be to work for you, and how they won't be stuck working 80hrs/week generating Excel reports for you. This was the second hurdle though, most job listings just don't tell you enough of what it's like to work there.
In the end I abandoned the idea, but I'd still like to resurrect the idea (the site is still up). Maybe just revert to basic listings like this, but if anyone has any suggestions / feedback I'd appreciate it!
Very interesting points. To be honest I created this board out of similar frustrations (applying for a "remote" job ad only to find out that it meant within the USA only). I like your point about how job listing should work both ways - I think that SomewhereHQ comes close to doing this.
Also, good job on getting RemoteTechJobs.eu up and running. Another reason I built the job board (and built it quickly in 2 weeks) was to force myself to get something done and ship it on time. It's great to see other people doing the same.
>To be honest I created this board out of similar frustrations (applying for a "remote" job ad only to find out that it meant within the USA only).
I had/have exactly this frustration. And I've had exactly same idea - create a job board explicitly for world wide remote jobs. Even created free account on redhat openshift with Golang toolset (I was also thinking to learn Go this way)... But then I got a new job :)
It would also help if the "Apply for this job" button actually worked. I clicked on that particular position, just to see what would happen, and got "{"type":"Error","msg":"Hostname/IP doesn't match certificate's altnames"}"
I'd highly suggest making the posting companies list salary and/or equity ranges ala angelist. It sets expectations a lot sooner and cuts through a lot of bs for potential users.
I'd also recommend, having some indication of the listing companies commitment to remote work. Joining a team who is new to remote as one of the only remote workers is not fun. Supplying a short poll to each job creation, that generates a remote score, similar to the Joel Test people used to use, would help build confidence in potential users.
Great initiative!
It seems like remote working is becoming more of a thing lately, which I think is aweseome, after ~7 years in the it-business I've made myself the promise of never taking a mandatory 40h/week inside-the-office-job again. So kudos for helping getting remote offers out there.
That said, I always cringe when I see the "employer confidential" flag on job postings...
I for one would never apply for a job (or even make the first contact) at an anonymous company. The demand for engineers seems to be high enough for me (anyone) to at least be able to check out the work of a potential employer before making contact.
Glad you like it. I've been working independently for about 5 years now and never plan to go back unless it's something really special (maybe SpaceX's Mars project :). Even then I'd want to be able to work remotely.
Point taken regarding company anonymity. Seems a lot of people have issue with that. I added that "feature" in just because I saw it on other jobs sites (e.g. authenticjobs) and felt that not having it would exclude certain potential companies from posting an ad. On reflection though, I agree with you that knowing which company you're applying to would be better so I'm going to make company information mandatory from now on.
Happy to say that as of now no new "Company confidential" job ads will appear on the site (existing ones will still remain until they expire). Company name and URL are now mandatory.
I applied for an anonymous company once. It was also a remote job. They had this website with all kinds of stuff about how great they were, based on a survey of their employees. But no real information.
Their application was one of the more onerous, asking all kinds of questions, but I put up with it. It took me about an hour to complete.
The promise made on the website was "once we get your application, we'll send you an email with info about the company".
Well, I got an email... and in it was several more questions, plus the comment "we're in europe so we're used to paying european salaries, are you willing to work for less? How much will you work for?" ... but no information about the company.
Won't be doing that again. They basically just wasted my time.
At the same time, some companies that formerly embraced remote employees have decided that it's better to have them under one roof. Recent notable examples: Yahoo and Reddit have told all of their remote employees to relocate or find a new job.
It's management instinct to want to see people. IF they can't see you, I think they feel that maybe you're slacking off. (Of course, the manager never sees you when you write a bunch of code in the middle of the night because you didn't get any real work done in the office.)
These changes, particularly in the Yahoo case, reflect poorly on those managers in my mind, not on the concept of remote work.
The ideal programming environment is effectively remote- every engineer in their own office, with multi-party audio or video (e.g.: google hangouts) for collaboration.
If your primary cost is engineering staff, why would you make them %50 less effective when they're working and on top of that take 2 hours out of their day each day for a stressful commute?
If your primary cost is engineering staff, why would you make them %50 less effective when they're working and on top of that take 2 hours out of their day each day for a stressful commute?
Because the engineers are not the ones doing the accounting or managing. The accountants and managers do. It's similar to how social events tend to be planned by socially-focused people, which is how a shy and/or introverted person can end up being dragged to a noisy bar for their birthday.
I think it's more about cultivating culture. It's almost impossible to build culture with 80% of your staff working remotely on different timezones. There are ways around it but it's just way better to see your team.
I disagree. Denying that online cultures exist is just as silly as denying that quality software cannot be written by remote people. You've just posted to a very distinct culture.
All of my remote gigs have had very different cultures. People communicated, friends were made, etc, etc.
Yahoo was a bit of a freak case. They literally had NO way of telling what people were doing. I don't mean 'they didn't have a system that monitored every keystroke', I mean they had NOTHING. Not even a way to say "did this person complete some problem tickets?" Not sure what happened with Reddit, I hadn't heard of them getting rid of remote workers. Odd because Reddit is exactly the kind of site I would expect to benefit massively from having pretty much the entire staff be remote.
Hi, this is my first potentially revenue-generating project, that I built in 2 weeks. There are still a few features missing (e.g. CV upload) but the general functionality is there - including the Github authentication. Would love to hear what people think :)
Please don't withhold hiring company names. Recruiters do this and usually it means they don't actually have a job and are just canvassing resumes. I don't wish to accuse you of what has become a standard way to bootstrap (fake it 'til you make it) but it leads me to believe the content is imaginary and the last thing people need when they're job hunting (and possibly severely strapped for income) is time wasting leading them down the garden path.
It's not only unprofessional, but I'd suggest borderline immoral. :-)
And if they are real jobs, the first question will be who is the company anyway.
Advice: Please remove "Enforce Github authentication" functionality. Don't help popularizing "Github is your CV" bullshit. Also, since you're just starting, limiting your userbase is the last thing you want to achieve...
I added that in for 2 reasons: 1) I usually get client work based on my github profile, i.e. they like what they see there, and 2) nowadays almost every job ad I see looking for remote web developer asks for a github id.
I appreciate that not everyone has or even cares about Github which is why it's an optional item when posting an ad. However, one of the differentiating factors of RemoteCoder is that it provides for tight Github integration in case an employer is interested in your github work. But perhaps this feature should be off by default? (at the moment it's on by default).
OK, but why only this particular service? If you insist on having some "show me your code" requirement, why not support: bitbucket, sf.net, etc... ? and also just providing tarball of sources.
Very true. I was limited by time and also didn't want to add in more integrations until I obtained some feedback. At the moment RemoteCoder is a small experiment - now that I'm getting feedback I can take it in a more fruitful direction than I would have been able to otherwise.
Seconded. I have worked remotely for years, I don't have anything on GitHub. My work is all for smaller companies that have proprietary systems, or boring web sites that pay the bills but don't generate any code I want to show off. No one ever asks for my GitHub profile when I am hired for a job -- the people doing the hiring are focused on whether I can solve their problem or not.
There's nothing wrong with having the GitHub account available for companies that want that, but using that as the only authentication and perpetuating the "GitHub is your CV" thing limits the site to that slice of companies and potential employees who know and care about GitHub -- mainly the startups you read about on HN. The other 95% of IT/tech jobs don't work like that.
Lots of developers do really great work in their day jobs committing code to closed source projects, or have private projects in a different VCS/Git location (such as a personal GitLab install).
Whilst worthy, a developer's contributions to OSS or public code commits aren't the only determining factor of their quality/hireability.
It's not the only determining factor, but seeing someone's code is the best way to know that they are good at it. And GitHub is the best place to publish code for this purpose.
From a purely practical perspective, being a developer who exclusively works on closed-source code in 2014 is a bad career decision.
> seeing someone's code is the best way to know they are good at it <
Depends on the context. I have lots of pure crap in my bitbucket and github accounts, because I tinker and explore outside of my day job. I even have one project that is almost complete (that is, it functions without bugs and doesn't make me want to scratch my eyes out when I look at the UI), but because I work on it for an hour here, an hour there, in the capacity of said exploration, the quality of the code is...less than stellar. Yet somehow I manage to be employed without a single gap in my resume.
That I don't have a high-code-quality complete project in these locations says one thing and one thing only about me, with respect to being a signal to employers: I'm not willing to devote myself 100%, heart-and-soul, to programming at my peak for 10+ hours a day.
You're deluding yourself if you think your comment about being a bad career decision applies outside of a small sphere (usually web-dev or mobile-dev for startups seeking a very particular kind of employee (young, naive, willing to work long and hard for relatively lesser pay). I have yet to see a job I'd be otherwise qualified for or interested in list "have a github profile with projects for us to look at" as a requirement, or even a nice-to-have. Certainly that won't necessarily last forever, but right now it's not a bad career decision for a great many (vast majority) to eschew public display of their personal code projects.
Frankly, I view the insistence on public display of personal code in the same category as I view trivia-quiz-interviewing: they're both bandwagon nonsense things that people convince themselves are highly effective ways to measure people.
Showing that you tinker and explore outside of your day job is attractive to potential employers. The fact that the code isn't amazingly architected is not a negative.
> I have yet to see a job I'd be otherwise qualified for or interested in list "have a github profile with projects for us to look at" as a requirement, or even a nice-to-have.
Every job on this job board has such a requirement.
at least for web development it seems almost mandatory.
That may be true, but there's a whole world of programming jobs out there that have nothing to do with "web development". There's all sorts of internal corporate app stuff, embedded system/firmware, control systems / automation of various sorts, scientific computing, simulation software, data mining / machine learning stuff, etc., etc., etc.
> From a purely practical perspective, being a developer who exclusively works on closed-source code in 2014 is a bad career decision.
You mean 99% of developers? There are very few companies who let you work on open source as part of your day job, and if a company only wants to hire devs who work on open source in their free time then I don't want to work for that company.
Most companies don't have you work on open-source as your primary job, but plenty allow you to do so as it affects your primary job. And plenty allow you to work on open-source in your down time.
If you have a job that's exclusively closed-source and with no down time there's a good chance that's a bad job. You have to think about your own career. Unless it's a prestigious position that will make you attractive to other employers, you have to consider that being isolated from the larger software community puts you at a disadvantage in the market.
> If you have a job that's exclusively closed-source and with no down time there's a good chance that's a bad job.
I guess that's where I disagree. I don't know how you can tie "ability to work on open source at work" to how good a job is. What does one have to do with the other?
Also, "down time" is just another way of saying "free time". If I have free time, I won't be in the office. Which brings me back to, I don't want to work at a company that only wants people who work on open source in their free time.
I really think the amount of open-source you work on has nothing to do with how good of a programmer you are or your work ethic. Which is why, for me, asking for a github profile is a red-flag when applying to jobs.
I work remotely for many jobs; have for years. So yes I could be interested in this job board. But its built to suit others I guess - targeted at a subset of opportunities. That's all.
It's not that it's bullshit, it's just that it doesn't encompass everyone which was the parents point.
People who a) work on open source, or b) have enough free time that they're able to publish in their free time are the only people you want to hire? Great, have at it. But you'll quickly be wiping out a lot of people with experience behind them because they have a family.
Some of them would have been the type to actually write code in their spare time when they were younger, you know, before github was around and before they had kids, they're probably still smart, but github isn't their CV and may never be.
That said, code examples are a very nice thing to have, so it goes both ways.
As someone who has interests outside code, and works on propietary software, I don't have code that I have open sourced. Does that make me a bad developer? (In fact, looking at my toolchain and libraries, I don't think anything I'm working with is Open Source at all... yay games)
Let me search for that elusive remote FORTRAN position! :-) I would prioritize this over all others as it lets you search for "european" or technology, or "hip chat" if, for instance, you're sensitive to the chat system the employer uses.
Thanks, that is on the todo list. I was trying to get this done in a short space of time - and because the initial list of jobs was going to be short I felt that I didn't need it for now.
I'm not sure if the github authentication is working. I go to Apply for this job, it takes me to github, I click authenticate, then I get this error on on the github_oauth_callback page on remotecoder.io:
I see on the about page that you built the site with Waigo and Mongo. If you don't mind, could you go into a little bit of detail about the hardware you're running the site on? I had a similar scope site in mind (a few static pages and a form or two) and would like to get an idea of what it would take to run it with minimal issues or bottlenecks.
I like the concept! I'm a freelance developer and working on my own web app for freelancers as well. One problem I have with services like these tho is the chicken/egg problem. I just did a search for contract positions and only saw two. As a dev, I wouldn't want to visit the site again unless I know there will be a lot more jobs posted.
Yep, I always knew this would be a problem. Nevertheless I felt it would be worth putting it out there to gauge the interest in something like this. I'm happy to say a lot of people are interested (and new jobs are showing up on the board too) so I think there's scope to solve this problem. I have a few other ideas with respect to increasing traffic which I hope to apply to it in the near future.
I know that one thing I don't like about https://weworkremotely.com is that many of the listed jobs are not truly remote (they are limited to one country). At least on this board I can filter those out.
I think the term "transnational" would fit what you are describing better than the term "truly remote." The US is a very large place. Someone working for an SF startup from their Florida home is just as "truly remote" as someone working from Mexico, Canada, etc.
One of the key differentiators is the ability to see which jobs are truly remote (like nomadlist does) vs. remote within a particular region. The other is that this job board is focussed solely on coders (whereas weworkremotely also caters for designers, business admin, etc). Hence the optional Github authentication.
The key business problem with job sites isn't getting job listings or even getting employers and recruiters to pay for them, but building an audience and getting exposure for the listings.
Beyond a small Twitter and RSS graphic at the top, there doesn't appear to be much effort on this site to build an audience, yet that's the most important part and what its long-term success will depend on - I advise the creator think about ways to surmount those obstacles.
Thanks, you're right. I was aware of this issue when I was building it, and I do have a few ideas regarding traffic building which may or may not work.
For now I just want to see if such a job board would be of any interest in the first place, especially given that there are other job boards (e.g. nomadlist, weworkremotely) that overlap it. I really wanted to see if some the differentiating factors (e.g. Github auth, remote region specificity) would be of interest to anyone.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. We've had a similar experience building http://www.zonino.co.uk. Plenty of interest from employers but without the traffic it's hard to justify charging. This is where sites like Stackoverflow really stand out because they already have a flow of relevant and highly engaged traffic.
I have several thoughts on this "open-source" software contribution mania:-
1)Will you not hire a "salesperson" if they don't make sales calls in their free time, or a baseball team won't pick a player if they don't play in their free-time?
2)IMHO hiring should be a "selection" process and not a "rejection" process. Your application at this point looks like a "rejection" system.
3)Having github/open-source contributions is based on a lot of factors such as availability of free-time(being a good engineer dosen't necessarily mean one has to write code in their free-time), passion for a particular project/domain etc. Too much of anything causes burn-out.
4)Just because a lot of companies have this criteria, it does not make it a valid one. There's a lot of "herd" mentality in technology recruiting.
5)As a business decision I would think you should make open-source contributions optional and let the employers decide if they want it or not.
I agree with all of your points, and indeed Github authentication is optional for the jobs posted on the site. I admit I did initially have it turned on by default (because I really liked the feature) but now it's off by default given the general feedback I've received. And I'm glad to see that companies who do care about it are using it when posting their ads.
A good job board is often a by-product of an active community. Look for Stackoverflow, Github, and even the now defunct 37Signals Jobs (rebranded in WeWorkRemotely).
If you could build a community around it, then companies will be happy to pay (and I've learnt this lesson the hard way!). Follow petercooper suggestions and best of luck!
Sorry, that seems to be a problem on other similar job sites too. I haven't yet thought about how to solve that problem, any ideas are welcome! Plus, with contract work I've sometimes had to negotiate with a client - I thought it would be better to therefore leave that detail to when the employer is having a conversation with the candidate.
Displaying a range for the salary/rate is certainly a good starting point. Obviously the final number is going to be decided based on experience and after some negotiation, but at the very least I'd like to not waste my time applying for jobs that pay a maximum of $50k if I'm looking for a minimum of $75k.
Call me old school, but I've always felt the term "coder" was a diminutive, while "programmer" (as used in the title) is more appropriate.
I think of a coder as someone mindlessly implementing logic that someone else has laid out before them... while a programmer is someone who comprehends the problem, develops an algorithm and implements it.
Of course, these days with so much work being about setting up a UI on whatever platform, there isn't as much algorithm development.
I fear that 'coder' is akin to 'lab geeks' for scientists etc. It suggests that all that's needed is code (or pipetting test tubes), rather than it being part of a larger engineering discipline.
In my experience, those terms are mostly used by people who don't understand what you're doing (or in this case, the domain was available)
"RemoteCoder" sounded shorter and sweeter as a name which is why I went with it. So it was really about marketing, no offence to developers/programmers (I'm one myself after all ;)
I took a look at an ad for an android developer but it sounded a bit too involved (I don't want to be his CTO, I just want a small project). My first impression however was that I couldn't write a comment. The person wanted an android app and maybe a website. I was going to suggest also advertising for web developers that have used phonegap or something. Comments could also help the person explain what exactly they require.
Sorry about that! I built this in 2 weeks in between doing other stuff (travelling, attending events) so I had to make some hard choices about the essentials. And editing was left out of that. However, I'm surprised the actual rendering looks that different - which job ad did you post? (see my HN Profile for the email). I can edit it manually for you.
UX suggestion: some of your abbreviations introduce needless cognitive impedance. Expand "perm" to "permanent" and "cont" to "contract". It'll make it easier for users to parse the words. If you are worried about the expanded words taking up too much space, consider icons.
I'm pretty sure that shorter words (abbreviations) like that are easier to parse than the full version. Perhaps you were looking for the verb understand?
The job board is RemoteCoder but already looked at a Rails/EmberJS job posting and they are looking for candidates "hopefully" within 2 cities they mention and definitely within Australia. If a remote job board is to succeed, IMO, I think those posting should not be allowed.
Just saw that myself, thanks for noting it. One feature I want to add at some point is the ability to "flag" a job ad as either misleading or inappropriate - but this would have to be implemented in tandem with basic CRUD functionality, in case the creator made an innocent mistake. In this case I shall contact them and find out whether the ad criteria needs to be adjusted.
I tried it with FF 33.0 (on OS X) and couldn't reproduce the issue you're seeing. However the font is a Google Font that's downloaded on-the-fly from their server - I am now hosting the font on my server so hopefully that will fix the issue for you.
I'd love to actually have a purely remote job. I work from home quite a lot but I can never find any 100% remote jobs which don't pay graduate salaries :(.
Seems a real gap in the market given most companies don't even have any seats for you
Great concept, cool idea.
Unfortunately: you hot link to google API, there's no search, and all of the jobs are web dev. The last one isn't really your fault I know, just a personal frustration.
Yeah, sorry about the lack of search and the hotlinking. I wanted to build this quickly and validate it before going any further. As for the job types, yeah I know - I have to admit that when I build this job board I initially had remote web developers such as myself in mind.
Which is totally fine! I'm more of a systems programming kind of guy, and it is still doable remotely. Just seems to be a distinct lacking of those job positions for remote work.
That's true, I'm not even sure if there are many such remote systems programmings jobs out there waiting to be advertised. In any case I'm open to adding that in as a category if the demand for it goes up.
great job on launching something! i'm working on something similar in this space. i think you will have a hard time attracting users (and therefore jobs), being that there are already remote job boards out there. chicken/egg markets are though to enter, thats why i'm trying a different angle with my project.
especially weworkremotely will be a though competitor, since developed by the guys from basecamp they get a lot of trust from companies, and having a book about remote work helps attracting visitors as well...
Very true. I also have another angle I wish to pursue with respect to this. But it's good to know that there's interest in such a job board. Furthermore, my focus with this board is on developers and developers only. WeWorkRemotely focus more broadly than that.
It's focussed purely on developers (hence the Github integration that some jobs require) and it provides clarity on whether a job is truly remote anywhere or remote within a specific region.
First I really wish you success on this. The bigger it gets the less wasted commute time.
That said, how would this be different from StackOverflow Careers? They have a search option for remote and it seems like companies are actually respecting what the checkbox means.
Thanks. It's good if companies are respecting that checkbox. On other job boards I've used (e.g. weworkremotely) remote often turns out to really mean "remote within country X" or "telecommute". This was one of the frustrations that led me to build this board (plus, I thought it would be a fun thing to build!).
I filled out the entire job posting and it won't let me submit. Anyone else having this issue? says I need to fill out everything above but everything is filled out.
Hi, it's probably an incomplete company URL (need the http:// part) and other such things. One immediate improvement I intend to add on is form field highlighting - so it will show you which fields are yet to be filled in correctly.
We post sys admin / "DevOps" roles on https://www.wfh.io -- but to be honest, the # of these we get (or see online) pale in comparison to development roles.
Thanks. Yep, that's on the todo list. Time was short and I predicted that initially there wouldn't be so many jobs so I prioritised other features over search.
You only need one if the employer has specified that you need one when creating their ad. It saves them having to ask you for your id in your application - better yet, it allows us to verify your github profile for them and even send them a short-line summary of your work.
That was my first hurdle though, there aren't really that many remote jobs in Europe that are advertised. I think that's because companies don't really have a problem finding candidates. I spoke to a recruiter based in London and he said that most remote jobs he has get filled within hours or days rather than weeks for onsite positions.
The other thing I wanted to do was actually put some content in there that would be useful to the candidate to know what it's like to actually work at a company. The top listing on this site is as follows:
As a potential candidate why would I even bother taking the time to reply to that? What would I even say "I've done React.js and Phaser, hire me!"? Maybe I could link to some projects on GitHub if I had something open source, but that doesn't really add up to much. Job listings work two ways, they are for you to tell candidates how great it will be to work for you, and how they won't be stuck working 80hrs/week generating Excel reports for you. This was the second hurdle though, most job listings just don't tell you enough of what it's like to work there.In the end I abandoned the idea, but I'd still like to resurrect the idea (the site is still up). Maybe just revert to basic listings like this, but if anyone has any suggestions / feedback I'd appreciate it!
Edit: Formatting.