A sad cat because job hunting is so bad 😔

Why getting a remote job for developers is broken and what you can do about it

Hi, my name is Luis and I am a 23 year-old python and javascript full-stack software engineer living in the Dominican Republic. In my entire career I’ve worked remotely for five different companies, four of them located on Silicon Valley, for my first two I had to go through the painful, broken and, months-lasting process of “Job hunting”.

Software engineers are currently one of the most demanded professionals of this time, needed in almost all types of industries and having the infamous “technical recruiters” spam the inbox of these poor souls trying to convince them to join a new venture that will completely change the world. The demand is so big companies started allowing people to work outside the office, even if they live a dozen timezones away. They just need good engineers.

This opened a whole new world of opportunities for those living in less privileged countries like me where a straight-out-of-college graduate can expect to earn between 4,000 and 8,000 US dollars a year, compared to remote jobs for software developers which usually start at 40,000 all the way to 150,000 US dollars per year. It is to be expected that people start going crazy spamming the inbox of the same “technical recruiters” desperately chasing this life changing opportunity of working remotely, because after all, it does change your life.

We now have recruiters spamming the inbox of people who aren’t really looking for new opportunities and on the other side people from totally different cultures spamming recruiters with no idea how to do it, what to expect and rarely getting any results. It’s so hard, very good developers try and end up giving up.

Job searching for us is hard and it can take months, in my experience it was 4 months to be able to get started with my first one. It may take you less or it may take you more, but after some time, it just gets easier and easier.

To make this easier for you, here are some tips I wished I knew back when I started:

1. Spend time on creating a good resume/linked-in profile. Yes it’s the 21st century and companies are still requiring resumes but even worse is the fact that people are sending documents that look like a 8 year-old kid’s school paper. Create an organized document where you include your personal and contact details, GitHub profile, your experience in previous companies, projects you’ve worked on, education and export it as PDF. I will go in detail in the next posts into what and how to write a very good resume.
2. Apply only to jobs you really believe you qualify for. It will be overwhelming if you do the opposite and try to apply to as many jobs as you can, you will get tired, you won’t see results, you will waste so much time and you will not get closer to your objective. The idea is to understand what works for you in your specific area.
3. Write a cover letter. The truth is some recruiters see cover letters while others don’t. So just write it, it won’t make you look bad and a lot of companies do pay close attention to what you write, after all they are looking for talented engineers with true passion about what they are doing.
4. Be personal and a little informal in your cover letters. The tech industry is not like the old-fashioned enterprises where you wear suit and tie and speak with words no one understands to convince other people you know what you are doing, the tech industry is driven by passion and results, we all love what we do and we just do it.
5. Don’t give up, continue trying. Job searching is a learning experience on its own, the more you do it the more you learn what job sites work for you, what type of jobs you should apply, how to write good cover letters, how to talk to recruiters, etc… It all gets better with experience and after you get that first job, it will all be worth it.

Following these tips won’t guarantee you will land a remote job right away but they will definitely improve your chances and speed. At upnup we’re working hard to fix this broken system and help people get better remote jobs easily. Visit our site and subscribe to stay up to date with what we’re doing and get early access to our upcoming product. A lot more is coming! 🚀