johnomarkid

Fabrik | Fullstack Engineer | Remote (US or EU hours) | Full-time | Salary: $100-$120k

Fabrik is a CMS for medium to large publishers. Full Stack Engineers at Fabrik are responsible for the core product platform, from frontend UI and testing, to APIs, low-level services, and database operations. Full Stack Engineers work in close partnership with designers, product thinkers, and writers directly to build out new product offerings and tooling across the platform.

Responsibilities: Develop the core Fabrik CMS for writers, and sites for publishers. Be willing to jump into any part of the stack: API, Front end CMS, Sites templates, CDN, etc. Scale the platform by tuning postgres queries, developing caching solutions, and building tooling for monitoring. We work with JavaScript, including Node/Express and React, and Postgres. It is not necessary to know Node and React already, but expertise in web architecture is absolutely necessary.

Requirements: At least 5 years of software engineering experience. Can contribute across the full stack. Independent and autonomous. We are a small team split across several timezones. We don't micromanage, and expect that everybody holds their own. Clear and consistent communication. Again, we're a remote team split across several timezones. Your colleagues need to understand where you are with your work, and be informed on how to carry on from where you've left off.

Apply: Reach out directly to me: jomar at kargopublishing dot com

SEEKING FREELANCER | Distributed US/EU | Remote Only

Looking for a full stack React/Node.js developer with a few years of experience. You should be comfortable building features end to end, and communicating clearly. Experience with CDNs, server side rendering of react templates, and postgres are a plus.

We are a publishing company running a custom CMS built for speed. As we acquire new sites, we need help scaling our infrastructure and building out new features and templates. You'd be joining a small team of 3 engineers working fully remote and asynchronously.

Excellent communication skills are required.

john.omar@distractify.com

He applied to two positions, and the only rejection came days after no response from the manager who advertised his desire for BIPOC to apply and his DMs being open.

SEEKING FREELANCER | Distributed US/EU | Remote Only

Looking for a full stack React/Node.js developer with a few years of experience. You should be comfortable building features end to end, and communicating clearly. Experience with CDNs, server side rendering of react templates, and postgres are a plus.

We are a small publishing company running a custom CMS built for speed. As we acquire new sites, we need help scaling our infrastructure and building out new features and templates.

You'd be joining a small team of 3 engineers working fully remote and asynchronously.

Your rate: $40-$50 / hour depending on experience. We need someone working full time (40hr/week) for at least the rest of the year, and likely longer.

john.omar@hey.com

Yes. The "feed" concept makes sense for my email workflow. I get a few (2-5) important emails that I need to respond to every day, and tens of newsletters that I may read if they pique my interest.

Gmail has "tabs" or whatever they are called which automatically aggregate your emails into different panes. The automatic part didn't work well for me. I'd often find important emails in my "Social" tab, which led to me checking all tabs to make sure the machine learning didn't incorrectly categorize an email.

Hey gives me control over that, and it has been fantastic for the 11 days that I've had an account.

There are other features I love, but the feed has made the biggest impact so far.

Anecdata here. I just rented out my house in Austin last week. We had 14 people vying to sign a lease, and several wanted to bid above the price we are renting for. The real sticker - 10/14 were moving from SF/LA/NY because they can now work from home. Our rent is above market in Austin, but way below what they are used to paying.

All that to say, you may see the opposite of a slowdown.

SEEKING FREELANCER, NYC, Remote

We are a small NYC based publishing company running a custom CMS. We are looking for help migrating Wordpress sites to our CMS.

We're full stack Javascript (Node API, React CMS, static articles). You must be comfortable with Node. Familiarity with Wordpress is a plus.

The Wordpress migration is the most pressing task, but if we find the right person we have plenty of work in the months to come.

Please reach out to john at distractify.com if that sounds interesting to you.

A lot of people are coming from cleaner places, and those places aren't necessarily big cities. Rather, suburbs and rural areas.

That's my point. It's a matter of perspective whether or not you find SF dirty. If you come from a cleaner place, you're going to feel like it's dirty. Berlin isn't much cleaner, and there is a homeless problem too (though likely different in cause), so you're not likely to go to SF and feel like the criticism others are passing is as bad as it sounds.

It's a matter of perspective. Coming from Boston or Copenhagen, SF feels like an extremely dirty and grimy city. So does Berlin.

Parks in Berlin are littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts because smoking and drinking in public are acceptable there. In many US cities you are not allowed to smoke in a public park where children are playing. Some cities banned smoking in all public parks. Drinking outdoors is banned so you don't see many beer bottles.

The problem in SF is different. You can stare into a park in Berlin and see litter. In SF, a park may seem clean but if you stumble upon one hypodermic needle or human faeces, you may not feel like it's so clean anymore.

My neighborhood in Berlin (Mitte) has homeless people hanging around parks and subways stations, but they don't seem to suffer from mental illness at the same rate as the homeless in SF. As far as number of homeless, Mitte vs the Moscone area are comparable.

It's less about the safety net and more about re-entering your career at a similar level. In Germany you'd be hard pressed to explain why you took two years off of your career and now want to come back.

Re Europeans traveling around Asia - Europeans tend to graduate university later than Americans and then embark on one or more internships before diving into their work contracts. It's not uncommon to take a break between those transitional periods to travel for a bit. But it is uncommon to leave your permanent contract to travel Asia for two years.

Low salaries are not a good thing for the startups!

Here's an article from a French engineer that is currently on the front page of HN: https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150228/https://florentcr...

tldr; he moved to SF because salaries are much, much higher than in France, even considering the social benefits that you get in France.

Other threads on HN have French engineers saying that they love living in France while working remotely for American companies.

I've lived in Paris, Berlin, NYC and California. I'll never understand how European founders can keep saying that 40k euro salaries for engineers is a benefit while they watch so many great engineers leave to American companies.

I grew up in Boston and lived in NYC for 4 years. Never learned how to drive until 2 weeks ago (age 29) when I moved to... Los Angeles.

Most founders aren't in that position, and Sama said that. Startups are mostly about doing the same thing over and over.

Issue #2, that slack is based on synchronous communication, is something that is always ignored. Sometimes I log in to slack and see a conversation that I want to add something to, but it is 4 hours old with 50+ new messages on varying topics. Even with Slack's new threaded messages it is hard to evolve the conversation after all the synchronous folks have moved on to other topics.

Bootstrapping for now.

Yes. The week 1 update goes into that. http://johnomar.com/powwow-progress-week-1/

Industry level salaries are important. In addition to that, how do you create an environment that people want to work in for the next 10 years? I think remote work is a big incentive. Maybe capping work hours at 40/week. That makes people happy. Maybe profit sharing. There are incentives that are more tangible than stock options.

You used Otto as an example. It was acquired by Uber for $680M. Doesn't that mean company names might be less important than you think?

I purchased powwowjs.com (js because it's a javascript embedded app) for $40 after spending 15 minutes thinking about a name I liked. I'd rather spend my time and money building a product that is not yet validated. If the name needs to change, that's totally fine and a lot less time consuming than my current task at hand.

Yup, for sure. In the week 1 update I actually briefly talk about the stack. But future updates will go more in depth with things like db query profiles. http://johnomar.com/powwow-progress-week-1/

Thanks, didn't know that. If the name becomes a problem I am completely open to changing it.

Paris is also good if you're into smog. +1 for Berlin.

If I edit some text in a video that I created, do I need to re-record all of the audio?

I don't speak German. In Berlin it's not a big problem, particularly in certain neighborhoods where even waiters at restaurants may not speak German.

If you spend three months in the Schengen area during any six-month period, you must wait another three months before you can apply to enter the Schengen area again without a visa. If you do not meet these conditions, or plan to stay in the Schengen area longer than three months, contact the embassy of the country where you plan to spend the majority of your time to apply for a visa.

If you are fine with this then that's a good idea. But it's hard to really settle down knowing you need to leave in 3 months, and can't return again for another 3 months. I recommend getting a residence visa like the freelance visa. You can still consult for a US company after getting the visa.

https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/go/schengen-fa...

If you live in NYC check out Maple. Simple, tasty, fresh meals for about $13 (tip and delivery included!). The food leaves me full, yet not bloated and tired.

https://maple.com/

This is misleading. Income of up to $101,300 is excluded. Also, tax credits are given if the amount you pay in the country you live in is higher than what you would have been paid in the US.

Given that a salary of $101k in Europe is unlikely, and that taxes are almost always higher in Europe than the US, you do not need to worry about paying income tax to the US.

You do, however, need to file a tax return.

I don't support these policies, but I wanted to clarify things for people who could get scared away by your comment. It really isn't that bad.

When U.S. Citizens Living Abroad Owe U.S. Tax: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-us-citizens-livi...

I don't want to go into how I got the visa, but I will say that most people get friends with German companies (even single person companies) to write contracts for them :) The contract simply has to state the project, date of future employment, and how much you will be paid upon completion.

The contract can be for future dates. Does not need to be a project that is currently paying you.

I had one German company and one US company. I think it's safer to have at least one German company.

Sure thing, contact me if you need advice. I haven't been through the process in a couple of years but expats talk about it a lot.

Absolute numbers. I saved at least 4 times as much in NYC. Don't take this to mean much since I am one data point.

If you are a programmer/designer you can get a 3 year freelance visa in Berlin, Germany. I currently live in Berlin with that visa.

Your standard of living in Europe will vary. Sure, some places offer free healthcare (not exactly free - see taxes), better public transportation, and decent quality food at lower tier supermarkets. That's all great. On the other hand, you'll likely take a huge hit in salary and pay higher taxes. That does make a difference in lifestyle. A personal anecdote: in NYC I paid $2500/month to live alone in a decent apartment in a vibrant area (East Village). That's a lot of money! In Berlin I paid $700/month for an apartment of similar quality, but because salary and taxes are so low, I wasn't able to save nearly as much as I did in NYC paying high rent, a lot of money for quality groceries, etc.

There are other benefits of living in Europe like 30 days of vacation, ample maternal/paternal leave, and some financial security if you lose your job. That said, it's harder to get these jobs. Because of the risk companies need to take when hiring new employees (ie paying for all the benefits above), there's currently a huge workforce of temporary employees. Everyone is aiming for the seemingly elusive "permanent contract."

I say make the move. You'll learn a lot about the world and yourself. You can always move back to the US.

FYI this comes from the perspective of a software engineer turned entrepreneur turned software engineer.

Berlin freelance visa: https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/305249/en/