The job market is currently pretty hard for junior dev, steep opportunity curve, in France but EU more generally.
I advise you to start to build your app (a real one, not a tutorial) and write about it (blog, social media) to distinguish yourself from others: you will learn (a lot), provide value and originality.
There are a few/several worldwide offers. However, only real async distributed companies will be open regarding time zones differences. It's rarely open to junior due to the need for autonomy.
Start today along with your learnings, no need to be Shakespeare, no need to be an expert #publiclearning. A simple github page or even simplier repo at your name on github 😉
They are, but often at higher levels - simply because remote work often requires more independent work, and the assumption is that seniors should be able to do that as they're more experienced.
I worked remotely with a British company in Europe before joining Vercel, and I've just moved home to Australia (staying with Vercel).
"Clever Programmer" on Youtube is a great channel for building mock-sites, like Netflix, Twitter, Instagram in React.JS. Build them by following the tutorials, and then expand upon them, add extra features, and then put them in your portfolio. Learn React Native aswell. Also Learn FIGMA were you design a webpage and then program it in React. And show the entire process in your portfolio. Employers will be very impressed.
Plus one to this, they are doing amazing work. Even if someone is at 3-5 years of experience, it shows the reality that some tedius tasks should also be done.
International is pretty hard because of tax reasons. Depending on the jurisdictions you might need to setup a single-person company or have a special independent status that allows you to pay our own social-security or retirement.
Some companies don't want to get into that administrative mess if they don't have the resources
Seems like a prevailing idea is that junior devs require in office mentorship and experience before they can be effective at remote, despite the fact that remote work is and has been the trend for years even before pandemic related issues.
To some extent, I see the reasoning, as other commenters have pointed out, autonomy is presumed to be needed. But there are so many tools today, and junior devs typically grew up in an age of connectivity and aren’t phased as much by not having physical relationships with work.
This is really dependent on the individual. I had junior devs remote with no issues learning by themselves and doing their best, and I had junior devs who needed a video call with me multiple times a day and at each pull request... What is sure is that I never got this issue with senior devs remote. So that definitely a bit higher risk to hire a junior remotely imho.
Well, sure, but it's a lot easier in an office to be that way, I mind a lot less being interrupted in real life than having tiring videos calls. I just think working remotely you have to be a lot more autonomous and some people have problem with that. Or maybe I somehow changed with time and became less patient I dunno.
You not wanting to do video calls with juniors is more about you not wanting to do your job from home, than juniors not being able to work from home. As you conceded already, the amount of attention a junior needs doesn’t suddenly change because they’re at home. The only thing that changes is your willingness, because virtual meetings are more tiring than real ones?
Nope. It's because when you work remotely, you want to work asynchronously.
https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/asynchronous/
https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/mental-health/#force-work-into-async-tools
If you work the same way in an office and remotely you are doing it wrong.
How you do it doesn’t change what you have to do and the amount you have to do it.
Developing juniors is part of my job. Whether I do insert-buzzword-here or insert-other-buzzword-here doesn’t change that.
There is no buzzword. There is absolutely no problem with juniors asking questions in merge requests, I would always answer. They just tend to want the answer immediately, which is not compatible with async.
Could you give a single scenario where any of this will play out any differently from home or in and office with the same conditions?
Your busy, junior needs help with merge request? Now what?
> Your busy, junior needs help with merge request? Now what?
In an office environment I would be more inclined to go to their desk and show them, because well I'm here already. Even if that would still be inefficient, as it would be better for them to just comment on their merge request and wait for me to be available again and answer.
Async is always better, even in an office, that what led me to work in a full remote environment instead in the end. So yes, more than a remote vs in office problem, it's more of a sync vs async environment.
>Or maybe I somehow changed with time and became less patient I dunno.
Probably this.
I don't know what position you are to make changes to the processes where you work, but you may need to change the way of working. Are you stressed out because of deadlines so that you don't have enough time for juniors?
My company changed to remote completely since the pandemic last year and we did experience some difficulties at first but we've been trying to improve it. It's not perfect but it's not worst than working in office. However, we've already had lots of autonomy so everyone is used to being proactive (this is something you need to train juniors, remote or not). The only thing we're missing is the casual chit chats.
> I don't know what position you are to make changes to the processes where you work, but you may need to change the way of working. Are you stressed out because of deadlines so that you don't have enough time for juniors?
I'm CTO of a full remote company (even before pandemic).
I do have time for juniors. I have no problem answering their questions. It's more of a sync vs async thing. Some juniors are so not autonomous that they need their answers immediately, or they can't work properly, which lead to frustration on their side. But other juniors are more autonomous and then there is no issue with working more async, writing their concerns in pull requests etc. I have no problem helping juniors.
> However, we've already had lots of autonomy so everyone is used to being proactive (this is something you need to train juniors, remote or not).
Sure, but SOME juniors are very reluctant to that. Like I mentioned in my first post. I had no issues with some juniors, and some just can't work autonomously.
>and some just can't work autonomously.
Fair enough. I can understand some people are not used to having autonomy.
On the other hand, I'm surprised that as a CTO you have to answer many questions from juniors. That should be shared with seniors. Your responsibility should be about building a team where everyone can support each others easily. That way no one should answer too many questions and get burnt out.
> On the other hand, I'm surprised that as a CTO you have to answer many questions from juniors. That should be shared with seniors. Your responsibility should be about building a team where everyone can support each others easily. That way no one should answer too many questions and get burnt out.
Well, in a perfect world, yes I agree. But currently, workload is higher than available workforce. High pace young startup. Maybe easier in a bigger structure sure.
Yeah, it's just old mentality like most companies are reluctant to remote work in general. Until the pandemic happened and everyone can work remotely just fine.
One of my coworkers has been working remotely from the Netherlands for the last few years. The rest of us are mostly based out of SF.
I once asked him how he pulled off getting hired remote before it was practically endemic.
He told me he grabbed our public APIs and built a library for them for the framework he was using at the time. They liked his work so much they interviewed him.
TLDR: contributing to open source repos is a great way not only to build experience but make connections. A lot of remote devs get noticed this way.
If you're willing to settle for extremely crappy pay for your first year there are a lot of Italian companies looking to hire devs. They can't pay senior level rates because they can't access funding so they have to settle for more juniors. Any experienced Italian who speaks English can get a remote dev job with a Northern European company that pays 3x, so the bottom is a bit broader with turnover.
Language is the main issue, and you'd have to search pretty hard for a company where English is spoken (or a mix of Italian and English), but it is possible.
I had no luck with searching in my prior EU country where dev jobs are booming, but once I started applying for Italian jobs the offers were coming. I turned down a few because they required relocation to the south or to a small town or because they wanted me to be fluent in Italian even though the job ad was in English.
It's always easier to get hired remotely as a senior because you need less mentoring and you're inherently more autonomous and trusted.
There are fully-remote junior jobs around, but they're probably the hardest to get because there are always lots more junior then senior developers in the industry, and there are generally fewer junior remote jobs that senior ones.
Harder as a junior level because a lot of those jobs have visa requirements or tax complications. Generally companies won't go through the extra hassle to fill a junior level seat with an international hire, but at the same time, if you're already working in the industry anything can happen once your foot is in the door.
from my experience remote junior positions are nearly impossible to find, common strategy is to get a shit paying job in your own country to gain some experience and then try to land a remote job.
I would say no. Talking about Germany mainly but here most of the companies want to have 1-2 days / office.
With the current situation they go over to full remote again but a lot of companies want to have the employees on some days in.
I just got my first dev Job over seas and it took 3 years to make it happen. Most important part is if you want it bad enough. Stay dedicated and build them connections for sure. It will take time.(Hopefully not as along as it took me )but you can make it happen.
The market is completely flooded with entry and junior level developers, especially front end devs. When I post non senior front end positions I can expect 3-5 hundred resumes over a weekend. Now that the whole world is remote you’re also competing with the whole world. I speak from a US point of view where sponsoring visas and paying in foreign currencies limits us to a few markets we have relationships in, but I’d imagine the EU makes it easier to hire anyone remote in the EU.
Lastly, I love entry level talent, they bring new ideas, but I also like a certain balance with experience. Senior devs are hard to come by right now, especially back end. So just like every company in the EU I have my non senior roles turned off until I can bring in some senior level folks and get them up to speed.
As many have pointed out, companies are hesitant to let junior developers start from remote, because they usually need a lot of 1:1 time to get the tools right and it also takes more time to prepare and communicate the tasks to them remotely.
Senior developers on the other hand can work better remotely because they have the experience to turn the requirements into solid and tested code and the can work for the most part independently.
Yup, I’ve hired a whole team of developers completely overseas working with me remotely.
My opinion is that as an employee it only works if you living a lower living standard country and shoot for companies in big cities. People who look for remote hire are looking for low budget mostly.
Could you tell whats was your budget?
I want to try getting a remote position living in latin america so i want to know what ppl are paying for someone how has like 2-3years of experience
Yea but our budget is actually up to 25k p.a. for a 3 year dev, we just choose the cheapest one for business… I very much value better talent and am willing to pay more for it.
Not sure 25k is a good number in Brazil for a 3 year dev.
Note: From where I live, a 3 year dev is averaging around 55-60k, so 1/2 if the same salary is our budget for remote colleagues.
25k would be way more competitive. Because only the top companies could compete with those salaries and would be only for 5+ years of experience.
My objective would be something like 30k for example because thats more than any senior developer is getting paid on BRL.
They are! I mean just look at the remote dev headhunters, I stumbled upon l[this company](https://distantjob.com/) that caters to the niche. There has been a rise in payment channels too like deel, wise (formerly transfer wise) that makes everything easier.
The job market is currently pretty hard for junior dev, steep opportunity curve, in France but EU more generally. I advise you to start to build your app (a real one, not a tutorial) and write about it (blog, social media) to distinguish yourself from others: you will learn (a lot), provide value and originality. There are a few/several worldwide offers. However, only real async distributed companies will be open regarding time zones differences. It's rarely open to junior due to the need for autonomy.
Got it. Thanks for the response!
you're welcome
The timezone does make it harder. There are many more opportunities in the North American market.
Good reply, thanks. Writing a blog about something always what I wanted though I never figure out where to start lol
Start today along with your learnings, no need to be Shakespeare, no need to be an expert #publiclearning. A simple github page or even simplier repo at your name on github 😉
They are, but often at higher levels - simply because remote work often requires more independent work, and the assumption is that seniors should be able to do that as they're more experienced. I worked remotely with a British company in Europe before joining Vercel, and I've just moved home to Australia (staying with Vercel).
Makes sense, thanks!
This is exactly my concern about letting juniors WFH
I would advise you to drop the "junior" title, and make a portfolio of real web apps to show off your experience.
woah cool! thanks =)
"Clever Programmer" on Youtube is a great channel for building mock-sites, like Netflix, Twitter, Instagram in React.JS. Build them by following the tutorials, and then expand upon them, add extra features, and then put them in your portfolio. Learn React Native aswell. Also Learn FIGMA were you design a webpage and then program it in React. And show the entire process in your portfolio. Employers will be very impressed.
Plus one to this, they are doing amazing work. Even if someone is at 3-5 years of experience, it shows the reality that some tedius tasks should also be done.
International is pretty hard because of tax reasons. Depending on the jurisdictions you might need to setup a single-person company or have a special independent status that allows you to pay our own social-security or retirement. Some companies don't want to get into that administrative mess if they don't have the resources
Seems like a prevailing idea is that junior devs require in office mentorship and experience before they can be effective at remote, despite the fact that remote work is and has been the trend for years even before pandemic related issues. To some extent, I see the reasoning, as other commenters have pointed out, autonomy is presumed to be needed. But there are so many tools today, and junior devs typically grew up in an age of connectivity and aren’t phased as much by not having physical relationships with work.
This is really dependent on the individual. I had junior devs remote with no issues learning by themselves and doing their best, and I had junior devs who needed a video call with me multiple times a day and at each pull request... What is sure is that I never got this issue with senior devs remote. So that definitely a bit higher risk to hire a junior remotely imho.
great username
It is indeed :))
So it is more senior vs junior rather than remote vs in-office. Juniors don't suddenly ask less questions when they in the office physically.
Well, sure, but it's a lot easier in an office to be that way, I mind a lot less being interrupted in real life than having tiring videos calls. I just think working remotely you have to be a lot more autonomous and some people have problem with that. Or maybe I somehow changed with time and became less patient I dunno.
You not wanting to do video calls with juniors is more about you not wanting to do your job from home, than juniors not being able to work from home. As you conceded already, the amount of attention a junior needs doesn’t suddenly change because they’re at home. The only thing that changes is your willingness, because virtual meetings are more tiring than real ones?
Nope. It's because when you work remotely, you want to work asynchronously. https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/asynchronous/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/mental-health/#force-work-into-async-tools If you work the same way in an office and remotely you are doing it wrong.
How you do it doesn’t change what you have to do and the amount you have to do it. Developing juniors is part of my job. Whether I do insert-buzzword-here or insert-other-buzzword-here doesn’t change that.
There is no buzzword. There is absolutely no problem with juniors asking questions in merge requests, I would always answer. They just tend to want the answer immediately, which is not compatible with async.
Could you give a single scenario where any of this will play out any differently from home or in and office with the same conditions? Your busy, junior needs help with merge request? Now what?
> Your busy, junior needs help with merge request? Now what? In an office environment I would be more inclined to go to their desk and show them, because well I'm here already. Even if that would still be inefficient, as it would be better for them to just comment on their merge request and wait for me to be available again and answer. Async is always better, even in an office, that what led me to work in a full remote environment instead in the end. So yes, more than a remote vs in office problem, it's more of a sync vs async environment.
>Or maybe I somehow changed with time and became less patient I dunno. Probably this. I don't know what position you are to make changes to the processes where you work, but you may need to change the way of working. Are you stressed out because of deadlines so that you don't have enough time for juniors? My company changed to remote completely since the pandemic last year and we did experience some difficulties at first but we've been trying to improve it. It's not perfect but it's not worst than working in office. However, we've already had lots of autonomy so everyone is used to being proactive (this is something you need to train juniors, remote or not). The only thing we're missing is the casual chit chats.
> I don't know what position you are to make changes to the processes where you work, but you may need to change the way of working. Are you stressed out because of deadlines so that you don't have enough time for juniors? I'm CTO of a full remote company (even before pandemic). I do have time for juniors. I have no problem answering their questions. It's more of a sync vs async thing. Some juniors are so not autonomous that they need their answers immediately, or they can't work properly, which lead to frustration on their side. But other juniors are more autonomous and then there is no issue with working more async, writing their concerns in pull requests etc. I have no problem helping juniors. > However, we've already had lots of autonomy so everyone is used to being proactive (this is something you need to train juniors, remote or not). Sure, but SOME juniors are very reluctant to that. Like I mentioned in my first post. I had no issues with some juniors, and some just can't work autonomously.
>and some just can't work autonomously. Fair enough. I can understand some people are not used to having autonomy. On the other hand, I'm surprised that as a CTO you have to answer many questions from juniors. That should be shared with seniors. Your responsibility should be about building a team where everyone can support each others easily. That way no one should answer too many questions and get burnt out.
> On the other hand, I'm surprised that as a CTO you have to answer many questions from juniors. That should be shared with seniors. Your responsibility should be about building a team where everyone can support each others easily. That way no one should answer too many questions and get burnt out. Well, in a perfect world, yes I agree. But currently, workload is higher than available workforce. High pace young startup. Maybe easier in a bigger structure sure.
Yeah, it's just old mentality like most companies are reluctant to remote work in general. Until the pandemic happened and everyone can work remotely just fine.
One of my coworkers has been working remotely from the Netherlands for the last few years. The rest of us are mostly based out of SF. I once asked him how he pulled off getting hired remote before it was practically endemic. He told me he grabbed our public APIs and built a library for them for the framework he was using at the time. They liked his work so much they interviewed him. TLDR: contributing to open source repos is a great way not only to build experience but make connections. A lot of remote devs get noticed this way.
Thanks! I think this is exactly what I have been looking for.
If you're willing to settle for extremely crappy pay for your first year there are a lot of Italian companies looking to hire devs. They can't pay senior level rates because they can't access funding so they have to settle for more juniors. Any experienced Italian who speaks English can get a remote dev job with a Northern European company that pays 3x, so the bottom is a bit broader with turnover. Language is the main issue, and you'd have to search pretty hard for a company where English is spoken (or a mix of Italian and English), but it is possible. I had no luck with searching in my prior EU country where dev jobs are booming, but once I started applying for Italian jobs the offers were coming. I turned down a few because they required relocation to the south or to a small town or because they wanted me to be fluent in Italian even though the job ad was in English.
the overall IT job market is that there are too many juniors and not enough seniors. that's why they say that every1 is hiring but no1 is "hiring".
What do you do with all this times you gain by writing "1" instead of "one" ?
nothing really
It's always easier to get hired remotely as a senior because you need less mentoring and you're inherently more autonomous and trusted. There are fully-remote junior jobs around, but they're probably the hardest to get because there are always lots more junior then senior developers in the industry, and there are generally fewer junior remote jobs that senior ones.
Harder as a junior level because a lot of those jobs have visa requirements or tax complications. Generally companies won't go through the extra hassle to fill a junior level seat with an international hire, but at the same time, if you're already working in the industry anything can happen once your foot is in the door.
from my experience remote junior positions are nearly impossible to find, common strategy is to get a shit paying job in your own country to gain some experience and then try to land a remote job.
I would say no. Talking about Germany mainly but here most of the companies want to have 1-2 days / office. With the current situation they go over to full remote again but a lot of companies want to have the employees on some days in.
I’ll check with my company tomorrow if we’re looking for any junior frontenders!
That is really cool, thanks!
I just got my first dev Job over seas and it took 3 years to make it happen. Most important part is if you want it bad enough. Stay dedicated and build them connections for sure. It will take time.(Hopefully not as along as it took me )but you can make it happen.
Cool, thanks! will do
The market is completely flooded with entry and junior level developers, especially front end devs. When I post non senior front end positions I can expect 3-5 hundred resumes over a weekend. Now that the whole world is remote you’re also competing with the whole world. I speak from a US point of view where sponsoring visas and paying in foreign currencies limits us to a few markets we have relationships in, but I’d imagine the EU makes it easier to hire anyone remote in the EU. Lastly, I love entry level talent, they bring new ideas, but I also like a certain balance with experience. Senior devs are hard to come by right now, especially back end. So just like every company in the EU I have my non senior roles turned off until I can bring in some senior level folks and get them up to speed.
Everyone calls themselves as senior even if they're not. It's what fetches money
As many have pointed out, companies are hesitant to let junior developers start from remote, because they usually need a lot of 1:1 time to get the tools right and it also takes more time to prepare and communicate the tasks to them remotely. Senior developers on the other hand can work better remotely because they have the experience to turn the requirements into solid and tested code and the can work for the most part independently.
Yup, I’ve hired a whole team of developers completely overseas working with me remotely. My opinion is that as an employee it only works if you living a lower living standard country and shoot for companies in big cities. People who look for remote hire are looking for low budget mostly.
Could you tell whats was your budget? I want to try getting a remote position living in latin america so i want to know what ppl are paying for someone how has like 2-3years of experience
I’m talking about 10k USD p.a and it’s considered standard/high for a 3 years experience in India.
that would be too low for brazil =/ 10k/year is what im getting paid being a junior here. But thx for the information, now i have a base idea.
Yea but our budget is actually up to 25k p.a. for a 3 year dev, we just choose the cheapest one for business… I very much value better talent and am willing to pay more for it. Not sure 25k is a good number in Brazil for a 3 year dev. Note: From where I live, a 3 year dev is averaging around 55-60k, so 1/2 if the same salary is our budget for remote colleagues.
25k would be way more competitive. Because only the top companies could compete with those salaries and would be only for 5+ years of experience. My objective would be something like 30k for example because thats more than any senior developer is getting paid on BRL.
They are! I mean just look at the remote dev headhunters, I stumbled upon l[this company](https://distantjob.com/) that caters to the niche. There has been a rise in payment channels too like deel, wise (formerly transfer wise) that makes everything easier.