I'll start
I have a coworker I've worked with for 8 months and I have absolutely no idea what he looks like. camera permanently off, no profile picture, just a gray circle with his initials. for all I know he's a very productive golden retriever
what's yours
Two years ago I was making about $30K a year working for a local company. Standard salary for my country, nothing unusual. I was comfortable but not saving anything meaningful
I'd been seeing posts about people landing US remote jobs from abroad and figured it was either exaggerated or limited to senior developers. I'm in marketing, not engineering, so I assumed this wasn't for me
What changed was realizing that most US companies don't hire internationally because of employment law – taxes, benefits, liability. But if you position yourself as a contractor, that entire problem disappears for them. They pay invoices instead of running foreign payroll
So I rebuilt my approach. Stopped applying through linkedin where everything says "US-based only." Started looking at boards that filter for worldwide positions – we work remotely, himalayas, a couple others. Also started cold emailing companies whose products I actually used. Short email, one paragraph about what I could do, resume attached
The cold emails had about a 5% response rate which doesn't sound like much but compared to 0% on linkedin it felt massive. Over 4 months I had 8 conversations that turned into 3 phone screens and 2 offers
Took the one paying $80K. As a contractor I handle my own taxes which costs about $200/month for an accountant. After everything I take home roughly $5,500/month in a country where average rent is $400 and a nice dinner is $15
I won't pretend this works for everyone. You need decent English, a skill set that transfers across borders, and patience. The first 2 months I got nothing and almost gave up. But the math made it impossible to stop – even a $50K US role would have doubled my income
The hardest part wasn't finding the job. It was believing a company in the US would actually pay me US rates when they could find someone local for half. Turns out some companies care more about finding the right person than optimizing labor costs