The End of Nomad Hacker (and How to Get a Remote Job) (#14)

I moved from Substack to Ghost, my advice for how to secure your new international gig, and 28 of the best remote job websites

Apr 25, 2021

Every Sunday I publish a newsletter featuring the best hacks and insights I discover on my journey as an entrepreneur and investor.

The End of Nomad Hacker

This is the last newsletter you'll receive from my Nomad Hacker Substack. 💀

I've decided to move all my writing to my personal website: https://anthonyavedissian.com/. Here, you'll find an archive of my weekly round-ups, book notes, and best resources. I'll also be writing more content like investment memos as standalone blog posts.

As a subscriber to my Substack, there's nothing you need to do - just keep an eye on your inbox for emails from a new domain. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you - what's working, what isn't, what would you like more/less of?

Now, onto this week’s newsletter!

How to Get a Remote Job

April 12th saw England’s lockdown restrictions ease. Pubs, restaurants, cafes and gyms reopened to the delight of many. Coupled with better spring weather, I had hoped for this to improve the morale of my closest friends and family members. Regrettably, however, it seems to have only stoked their desire to escape the UK and travel!

This week, many of my friends reached out to me asking for advice on obtaining a remote job. I found myself asking the same questions and sharing the same information.

Is a remote job right for you?

There are plenty of considerations to make and this varies for everyone. Are you an extrovert or an introvert? Can phone or video chats meet your needs for personal communication? How will this affect your finances - rent, commute costs, etc. What about loneliness?

What motivates you?

Working remotely is similar to being an entrepreneur. No one’s over your shoulder telling you what to do. The best remote workers love their work and take pride in what they produce. If you don’t love what you do, your bed suddenly becomes really comfortable ― especially when no one is telling you to get up and go.

How to find your dream remote job

Most job sites have a decent “remote work” filter, but the last few years have seen more remote-only job boards. I’ve prepared a list of 28 job boards for you to browse in the “Resources” section of my website. Below is a sample of 8, but get the full list here.

AngelList. 1,000s of jobs at some of the best startups around the world. Browse jobs by location, role, market, technology, and salary. Best for startup jobs.

Hubstaff Talent. Find thousands of remote startups, software companies, agencies, and e-commerce businesses looking to hire freelancers. Best for freelancers.

Jobicy. Categorised remote job board with a diverse range of roles from sales and marketing to finance and legal to programming and design. Best for all!

Remote Ok. Categorised remote job board with a diverse range of roles from sales and marketing to finance and legal to programming and design. Best for all!

Remotive. Categorised remote job board with a diverse range of roles from sales and marketing to finance and legal to programming and design. Best for all!

Toptal. Exclusive network of the top freelance software developers, designers, and finance experts in the world. Best for developers, designers and finance professionals.

We Work Remotely. Remote jobs in marketing, design, programming, customer support, DevOps and sysadmin, copyrighting, business/exec and management. Best for all!

WorkinTech.io. Find and list programming, tech and IT jobs. Jobs for developers and designers: front/back-end engineering, design and UX, functional programming and more. Best for creatives, developers, and careers in tech.

Know what remote employers look for

I've hired remote workers before. What we really want is: (1) trustworthy people and (2) people that are passionate about what they do. My advice is to be genuine and evidence your interest. You could start a blog, an instagram account, a podcast, or a YouTube channel within your field, for example.

Tailor your CV for a remote job application

Again, having hired remote workers before, there are a few things I’m looking for.

Tools. Evidence the apps you’re comfortable using - Slack, Asana, Zoom, Loom and Trello, etc.
Communication. I want flawless email communication and a very tightly worded CV. Typos are instant rejections.
Innovation or portfolio. If you’ve done something innovative at work or if you have a portfolio, share it!
Side Projects. Working on a project autonomously shows that you take initiative. Show these off!
Location. Remote is remote, but timezone still matters. Make clear where you’re located and your working hours.
Results. Show numbers and quantify everything you’ve done. If you have marketing skills and you doubled traffic in X period of time, due to Y reasons - include this!
Autonomy. Show you’re a “self-starter” and that you can work on deliverables without supervision.

Conclusion

The job application isn't harder, it’s just a bit different. If you immerse yourself in the remote community and show passion for your work, you'll be sure to separate yourself from other remote job seekers. I hope you found this useful and good luck on smashing those apps out! 💪

Remote work has been so rewarding for me personally. It fits with my working style and I couldn’t be happier writing this post from my terrace in Barcelona on a sunny day. 😎

I’d love to hear from you

Whether you’re thinking of a remote job or actively applying, hit me up and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help! You can reach me on Twitter or email: anthony@djangodigital.co.uk.

What I’ve Been Reading

📚 The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgensen. (10/10). Naval is an entrepreneur and investor who’s constantly experimenting and iterating. Drawing on Stoic and Buddhist philosophy, I found this to be an inspiring thought-provoking book that I’d recommend to almost anyone. It might be one of my favourite books of all time and I’ve already read it twice. Some will find this book quite profound, for me, it acted as a very useful echo chamber to my own thoughts. Please feel free to grab my full notes and review on my new website. (38 minute read).

🇦🇲 Joe Biden recognises the Armenian Genocide. April 24th is the day that the world commemorates the Armenian genocide. After 106 years, this week, Joe Biden finally broke with his predecessors to recognise the mass killings of Armenians in 1914 as genocide. This comes as a huge win after a tough year for Armenia battling covid, Azerbaijan, Turkey and internal politics. (1,000 words).

🚀 CumRocket’s Whitepaper. CumRocket is a deflationary token that operates on the Binance Smart Chain. CumRocket’s main goal is to tap into the porn industry and provide a novel 18+ NFT marketplace where users will be able to buy, sell, swap and collect exclusive 18+ content. Creators charge for private content, get paid in crypto, and tipped in $CUMMIES. Who said I didn’t have a good eye for investments!? (10 pages).

👋 Jeff Bezos’s 2020 Letter to Amazon Shareholders. Jeff Bezos is the Michael Jordan of CEOs… so if you loved The Last Dance, you’ll appreciate Jeff’s final letter too. “The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen. You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it… To all of you: be kind, be original, create more than you consume, and never, never, never let the universe smooth you into your surroundings. It remains Day 1.” (4,000 words).

🌐 Unwitting Collaboration & Web3 Experimentation. Paddy McCormick makes the argument for why we should all experiment with Web3. “Prices may crash and specific applications may go bust - that happened in Web1 and Web2, too - but it feels like we’re on the precipice of something really big. I don’t expect to make a lot of money; I’m doing it to experiment, to help to push the boundaries of how value is distributed, and mainly to learn.” I couldn’t agree more and it’s why, when my friends ask me to transact Crypto for them, I always encourage them to learn and do it themselves. (2,900 words).

🇸🇦 How Saudi Arabia’s AI Powered NEOM Megacity Will Actually Be Built. A fascinating insight into the city design that’s intended as a global blueprint for others to follow for generations to come. While people refer to NEOM as a city, it’s more akin to “a country within a country,” with a distinct regulatory system and as large as Belgium! “Technology changes faster and faster every year,” he says. “But what we are designing is… a region that’s technology-driven and future-proof. We are designing it to be ready to evolve [over] many years. It’s not going to be an easy job, but… it’s the mentality we have.” (4,500 words).

💕 How to avoid half-heartedness. "If you tolerate too much half-heartedness, it’s probably because you’re half-hearted. As in: anxious and ambivalent, looking for reassurance. As in: bored, along for the ride, not really sure about your own feelings and opinions. As in: external locus of control vs internal locus of control. You probably don’t have anything in your life that really tethers you to yourself—you don’t have conviction about what you love, so you’re hoping that someone else will provide you that certainty. I think that people come alive when they’re serious about what they love—when they choose to pay careful attention to what feeds and sustains them." (1,000 words).

What I’ve Been Listening To

🏙️ Scott Galloway interviews Dror Poleg. They discuss how NFTs could change the way we compensate employees and why you should think of offices and cities as consumer products. Dror also shares how crypto assets will come into the real estate space and why he’s particularly bullish on Ethereum. (00:57:36).

🎮 Kevin Rose interviews Sebastien Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox, a decentralized gaming virtual world, and President of The Blockchain Game Alliance. They discuss the practical use of blockchains and NFTs for securing digital property and rewarding creators in virtual gaming worlds. (00:35:52).

💰 Jason Calacanis interviews Ken Nguyen, Republic CEO. They discuss the democratisation of finance and how we can make early-stage investing available for everyone. (01:11:40).

The Tools I’ve Discovered

📈 Buffet FAQ. If you’re into investing, you’ll love this resource. It’s a compendium of Q&A sessions with Warren Buffett covering everything you would want to know regarding investing.

🌟 Index Ventures’ OptionPlan. Creating an option plan for a startup can take months. This website can sort it out in a couple of months.

🐦 Excerpts From The Twitterverse

Ismail Akbulut @ismail_i_ak

I’m a Turkish-American, today, I am #Armenian, I feel the pain of being wiped out of my homeland, I feel the suffering of being sent on a death march, I feel the torment of my loved ones being killed, I fear that the existential threat of my people continues. #ArmenianGenocide

Sam Altman @sama

"You get credit for moving towards the goal, not for getting ready to move towards the goal, and certainly not for getting ready to get ready to move towards the goal."

Brian Chappatta @BChappatta

*opens Terminal* *checks trending markets content* (Bloomberg) -- Fans are driving Dogecoin higher to mark a day known for celebrating pot smoking. *closes Terminal*

Lucas 🔥_🔥 @0x_Lucas

Coinbase has ~1,250 employees and did $4.8B in 24h volume Uniswap has ~12 employees and did $1.6B in 24h volume If that's not a testament to the innovation in #DeFi, I'm not sure what is

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Cheers,
Anthony

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Nomad Hacker by Anthony Avedissian