Chances of getting remote work paying $65k/yr?

Career Advice
#1

I’m thinking about changing my career, and becoming a developer (note: I have no developer experience/skills). The idea started when I read the article at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wj93v5/remote-jobs-travel. FYI. The text that particularly appealed was 1. I could work remotely, 2. the average salary in web/app development is $93k, and 3. I can take free training online and within months be ready to apply for entry-level or junior web developer roles.

I’m left with the following questions, and would love input especially from any current gainfully employed developers!

  1. How many months of free online training would it realistically take in order to be qualified to pursue paid work? What can I expect a salary to be for that first role? What’s the possibility that it be a remote position?

  2. What’s the typical duration of remote web developer jobs?

  3. Within 3 years I’d love to secure a remote web developer paying at least $65k/yr, working a consistent M-F schedule. Is this realistic? Is further education needed in order to make this high of a salary?

#2

Welcome @Dan.

These questions are difficult to answer because timeframes vary for everybody.

I think you would get a lot out of reading other posts in this category, especially those where people describe how they got their jobs after months / years of self study.

You could also search the category specifically for posts about remote positions, since there are added complexities on top of just getting a job, which frankly can be hard enough.

1 Like
#3

Thanks. I’ll check them out. Is there a rough estimate of how many developer jobs are remote percent-wise?

#4

I doubt it.

It depends heavily on the area. Some remote jobs still require you to be in a particular country / time zone.

Many jobs might not be advertised as remote, but can be negotiated into becoming remote depending on the company’s needs.

Many jobs aren’t even advertised, so just getting a percentage of those that are wouldn’t be especially helpful either.

However, remote jobs definitely exist, and can be obtained by self taught developers. So if that is your motivation, the best time to start learning is right now.

That said, you might find it extremely difficult to get your first job being remote. And doing the job remote as a junior developer is hard, too. You won’t have the support structure in place that beginning devs need. A friend of mine scored a remote internship and he found that very hard. He now works full time, on site, at anew company.

A more realistic timeline might be to try and get a junior dev position in something like 18 months to 2 years, and then try to leverage that into a remote position.

But starting from scratch, and depending on lots of variables, getting a job within 2 years is far from guaranteed.

Your best bet is to start learning to code and determine whether this is even something you want to do full time.

2 Likes
#5

Thanks for the advice. Lots to think about.

#6

In terms of frontend web dev:

Without any prior experience but assuming you know your way around a computer, and studying at the very least 40hrs per week, I could expect a student to be quite comfortable with HTML/CSS/JS (which are the core languages of front-end) in about 4-6 months.

From here and with some luck you could find a position as an email dev or some static webdev position. If your JS is good you might find a position developing more dynamic sites but will also need some knowledge of JQuery or another JS library/framework.

Remuneration depends on location and your skills/knowledge, too hard to give a figure

3 years is a much more realistic timeframe. Salaries are dependent on location, a 65k/yr position is very possible for the US and parts of EU, a 65k/yr position in a less developed part of the world is less likely.

You need to pick a path. In web dev you can either go frontend or backend, and with experiece could do both as a fullstack developer.

This should help guide you down your chosen path: https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap

In terms of frontend, to get an entry position I think developers need to be comfortable with:
HTML
CSS
JS + JS Framework (React, Vue, Angular…etc.)
Version Control

1 Like
#7

Just to emphasise, it is likely to be very difficult to get a remote junior role. It is difficult from an employer perspective to train someone when they aren’t actually present, and it is difficult from an employee perspective to train remotely. It’s a really common question on the forums – the nature of the job means remote work is much more viable than in other industries, and the idea that there is a very good wage to be made from working remotely is an extremely attractive one. But hiring someone for remote work requires a very large amount of trust [to just get on with work], much moreso than hiring someone non-remotely.

#8

Thank you! Super useful stuff.

#9

that completely makes since.

#11