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The Memo: #27 (161+ remote jobs)

Chris DeLuca

Dec 17, 2019

Hey folks,

I stumbled on this excellent blog post by Patrick McKenzie from back in 2011. Although the post is titled “Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice,” there’s some great career advice that I think is widely applicable.

I highlight three key takeaways below:

Finding a job via a job board is the exception not the rule.
This the hard reality of finding any role, whether in be on-site or remote. My philosophy for people in this community has always been that you should use the job placement as jumping off point. Others have made this point, but I’ll make it again here: there are more remote roles open than are advertised. Find a point of contact and reach out to someone at the company in question. If I can find an email through my network or this community, reach out.
People who are good at negotiating make more.
Being better a negotiating is key. I’ve been collecting salary info to help put people in the community in a better position when they’re negotiating. If you haven’t already, you can fill out that form here, and add your CV and recent salary range.
Grow your network.
This is one of the reasons why I started the community 1-on-1s. If you haven’t yet, sign up to connect to others in the community here.

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Best practice tips on building your own side project

General interest

Interesting community: Rock the Boat is a podcast and community focused on Asian Americans challenging the status quo. This is an interesting model to consider if you’re thinking about launching a community: tell stories that’ll inspire your audience.

“[W]e find that people with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well-being.” Interesting paper and discussion on HackerNews.

I’m really fascinated by this approach to the work week: 5 hours per day, 4 days per week.

Project idea (very hard): build an ad blocker that works on Facebook (read how FB makes that difficult).

The Webb Blog explores the idea of a personal API, which seems really interesting.

I’m starting to think more about design, and how design can be a differentiator in building a community; I’ve been building a personal list of great landing pages, logos, etc.. This one really stood out.

Notes:

Thinking about joining a coding bootcamp? One coding bootcamp has offered me a referral of 5% or about $500 for anyone that signs up. If you’re thinking of joining a coding bootcamp and this is of interest, you can sign up via the unique link they sent and I’ll give you back the referral fee. Email me.
LIV: I reached out to COO & co-founder of LIV, AJ Shewki, and he confirms that the entire team is remote. LIV, which is trying to make VR gaming more interactive, recently raised a $1M round. Setting up a time to chat with AJ, but wanted to give the community a heads up. LIV currently has two positions posted to AngelList: Unreal and C++ Engineer and Web Engineer.

Upwork: aside from its sales staff in Chicago, Upwork will consider remote candidates for all other roles. There are number of product and data/business intelligence roles currently listed.

Chris ✌️

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