The economics of remote work, and what separates you from a USD salary
Hey,
I'm Sergio Pereira, and this is the Remote Work newsletter 👋
Last week I showed you that the job market is way more dynamic than I thought, with thousands of new remote jobs being added every week. I'm finding all these insights among the millions of jobs scrapped weekly for JobsCopilot, and it's fascinating.
Today, I'll write about the economics of remote work, and tell you what lies between you and a foreign clients hiring you remotely on a US salary.
That's the dream for most of you reading this newsletter today. Some of us got it, but many others are still looking. There are 2 big challenges:
1 It's competitive, with thousands of people around the world seeking the same high paying remote jobs.
2 It's way beyond individuals. There companies with proper sales teams sneaking in to grab those budgets.
This second point is what I'll tell you about today. Most of these are outsourcing companies, software development agencies and so on. And their business model is super simple:
• They have a Sales team in the US closing US clients paying at the lower end of US budgets.
• They employ a Software Engineering team usually on LCOL countries, like India, Pakistan, Portugal, Argentina, Philippines, etc.
• They earn big USD rates, but pay low local wages to the people doing the actual work.
Often they charge $100/h for your time while paying you less than $20/h. This happened to me on my first job, at a consulting company.
It's obviously frustrating when you realise that you're at the lowest level this stack where each entity is taking some share of the client's budget. And you are taking the smallest portion, while having most of the work.
I've landed my first remote job at a US company back in 2016. And have landed multiple other jobs and Fractional clients after that, mostly US companies.
Today I'm telling you 3 ways to find direct employment at a remote company, and get all that budget for yourself, without middlemen:
1/ Search in job boards
This is an obvious one, because you know that these companies already have:
• Defined the exact profile they need to hire.
• Allocated the budget for this salary.
• Set aside bandwidth to interview candidates.
The challenge of applying through job boards, is that you'll be competing against hundreds of applicants. The same reasons why it's easy and convenient for you to apply to dozens of jobs there, it's also why thousands of other people will apply as well.
You need to bring your A game. You're competing with candidates all around the world for each role. Job boards are the most popular place where people find jobs. Also, please don't waste your time on Linkedin, use these job boards instead.
2/ Track remote companies & be first to apply
While the number of remote companies around the world is larger than ever, it's still limited. And when job seeking, most of us filter only the ones in your industry, or using your tech stack, or some other narrow down criteria.
This means you can probably keep a close eye the remote companies that interest you, and track new job openings immediately when they post them. You can even grasp what's going on in the company by the number of jobs, the roles, and the descriptions in those. It's the best way to figure out if the company could be interesting to you.
In case this sounds like too much work, you can use a tool like JobsCopilot.ai, which tracks 400k+ companies directly on their careers pages, and it detects new job openings for you. Soon it will even apply on your behalf too.
3/ Build your network and reach out to companies
This is what I described as "Farming", in this recent tweet.
Building relationships with Recruiters, CTOs and Engineers at remote companies is powerful. Building a personal brand, even better. It takes time, but you won't regret it.
Just before we wrap, a quick announcement. If you're one of the 200+ members of the Remote Jobs Brainstrust, please check your calendar for this invite:
• Fireside chat with Kurian Benoy, on Thursday 18/July @ 11.30am UK time
We celebrate Kurian's new job, and we learn from his approach to job seeking, which got him 2 offers on the table. See you there!
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.
If you're interested in sponsoring this newsletter, send me an email or DM.
Cheers,
Sergio Pereira,
Startup CTO & Remote Work Lover
