Retrospect on my remote career in 2024

Hey,

I'm Sergio Pereira, and this is the Remote Work newsletter 👋

Last week I told you about the growing demand for Fractional roles, and how I'm reaping the opportunity as a Fractional CTO myself.

Today, I'm writing the last Newsletter edition of the year. And this is a great opportunity for me to reflect on 2024.

To frame this retrospect, let me use a passage from the great book "Finite and Infinite Games" from James Carse:

• "A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play"

I read this book some 10 years ago, and it changed my views on my own work. My career happens over such a long period of several decades, that it fits Carse's concept of infinite game. Especially ever since I got into this position of working remote with a high income, the only thing I want is to avoid having this lifestyle removed from me.

That's true. A winning year for me is a year in which I kept playing. And 2024 was a winning year for me, since:

• I continued working remote

• I continued having a flexible schedule

• I continued earning an above average salary

I frame it that way to avoid getting trapped into the hedonic treadmill of finding defeats here and there. For example, in 2024 I earned half the income I had earned at the peak of my career as a Full Time CTO, a few years ago. That would have easily slipped in as a defeat, right?

However, 2024 was also the year I travelled the most with my family, and I didn't need to ask anyone's permission to take that time off. It was also the year I launched more projects of my own, most of which will bring revenue only next year. I can't put a money value to that spare bandwidth and flexibility, it's invaluable.

So, let's retrospect on my New Year Resolutions for 2024:

1/ Helping 1000 people find remote jobs

This is a passion for me. Most of the DMs I get on X and Linkedin are from people looking for remote jobs. In 2024 I onboarded 235 members to my private course+community, the Remote Jobs Braintrust. I've also had over 600 people purchasing a plan at the JobsCopilot. In both cases I managed to celebrate with people who got interviews, and who got offers. I found myself chatting through specific questions about offers and contracts with some people on Slack.

It's true that this is shy of the 1000 people mark. But if I count in the DMs I got and the remote job openings I created at my clients, I can tell I'm very happy with this thread of work in 2024.

2/ Launching a SaaS product

During 2024 I launched JobsCopilot.ai, my first micro-SaaS. I got significant interest, and totalled over 600 paid customers. However, it was really challenging for me to find the time to fix all the issues that people reported, and that meant more churn than I wished for. 

I ended up building a small team to help me with the product, and now JobsCopilot is a different beast. We're scraping 400k+ company career pages per week, crunching those through our brand new data ingestion pipeline. People are finding more jobs, and auto-applying way more than before. 2025 looks bright for JobsCopilot, and we'll finally focus on actually growing it.

3/ Fractional CTO work

The core of my work (and income) comes from being a Fractional CTO at early stage tech Startups. In 2024 I had a total of 10 clients, 4 of which transitioned from 2023, and 6 were new clients that I started with in 2024. I managed to work with clients in Fintech, eCommerce, Event tickets, Fine Wines, Education, and Dating marketplaces. With tech stacks ranging from Javascript, PHP, Go, and lots of Python.

In fact, Python is on the rise (for myself and for the industry). I'm seeing a big shift towards AI, and in 2024 I built several AI agents, LLM-based chatbots, and machine learning stuff for data ingestion and clustering. For one of my clients, I built a fully autonomous marketing agency, where each AI agent plays a specific role. I'm starting with a new client in January who's building an autonomous concierge service in the Sports industry, with a similar architecture. I'm fully hooked to building AI agents and autonomous workflows, and if you're too please DM me, I might have excess work that I'll need to offload.

Besides this, there's another project that I haven't written about but which consumed some of my bandwidth in 2024. I've just written a book with O'Reilly, which will be published in mid-2025. In fact, since early 2023 I've been lecturing courses on the O'Reilly Learning platform about AI and Software Development. Started with ChatGPT, then Github Copilot, then Cursor, then best practises for CTOs and Tech Leads. I've also lectured private courses for the Engineering teams at Fortune 500 companies, such as Bank of America and Travelers Insurance. On the back of all this work, O'Reilly invited me to write the book "Generative AI for Software Development", and I accepted. Part of the book is already available in early release here, but in a few months it should be available at book shelves around the world.

Another thing that happened in 2024 that was not in my bingo card: I got "randomly" mentioned in publications with high exposure around the world, such as the Economic Times Newspaper, in India, which has 900k daily readers; or the book The Future of No Work, a best seller with 15000 copies sold in Europe. In both cases, I had followers DMing me photos they took when they recognised me in those pieces of content. Also happened with Youtube videos, screenshots from companies private Slacks, and conversations at large tech events like SaaStr, which I described last week.

As an introvert guy who grew up in a Portuguese village without internet, this is stuff I could have never expected. I don't think I can fully process this exposure yet. But the fact is: I'm getting clients who reach out to hire me and tell me I was very highly recommended to them. When I ask them who recommended me, most tell me a name that I don't recognise. It's usually someone who's followed me for a long time, who resonates with my views and approach to building tech products and remote teams, and who plugs me into such conversations. I can't thank you enough to all these people whom I've never met. The power of online content is truly magical!

I'm happy with my 2024, and I'm looking forward to a great 2025. My goal is to simply continue playing this infinite game where:

• I make enough money

• I'm a part of my children life

• I can travel with my family on every school break

• I don't need to ask for anyone's permission to take a day off

• I can train every day for upcoming triathlon races

• I learn new stuff that I'm excited about

Next week I'll tell you more about my resolutions for 2025. But for now, I'll take a moment to enjoy the holidays with my family. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Btw, In the spirit of Christmas and New Year, I've left the Black Friday discounts on until the end of the year. You can check out my courses and products with these steep discounts today still. Go for it!

PS: If you've read this far, drop me a message with your CV. I'm increasingly hiring remote Software Developers for my clients, the market seems to be picking up. I usually post those opportunities in the Braintrust's private Slack. But in case you aren't there, just send me your CV and I'll see if it's a fit to any opportunity I have.

Thanks for reading this newsletter until the end. You can read all past editions here. Make sure to share it with your friends and colleagues so they can read it too.

See you next Friday,