How hard is that to find a fully remote job?

US small business owner here, 100% remote telecommuting staff. (No, we're not hiring, heh.)

The first problem is your competition: the instant that a job doesn't require a physical presence, then you're going up against every possible candidate, in every possible location. It's easy to be in the top 1% of candidates in your city, but it's really, really hard to be in the top 1% of candidates in the entire world. Plus, keep in mind that your competition may live in a way cheaper location, and be willing to work for way less money. (Or, they're willing to take a pay cut in order to stay near their family or favorite location or restaurant or whatever.)

Whenever we post a consultant position on our site, we get 200-400 applications in a few days, and they're from a stunning number of qualified people. There have been hiring rounds where I wished we could hire a dozen people because they were all such good fits. Getting to the top of that pile is really, really hard.

The second problem is accounting and taxes. Every time we hire someone in a different US state, we have to deal with different tax laws, business licenses, and health plans. If I had to guess, it costs us 20-40 hours of admin work whenever we add someone in a new state (or when an existing employee moves to a new state.) Adding another country makes it even worse.

Another problem in your case: when you say "without any trips," that makes it sound like you don't even want to come into the office for orientation, or to do planning sessions with the team, or team-building, or even conferences for learning or growth. I'm pretty suspicious when I hear that someone doesn't even want to learn at conferences - that's one of the ways we get the team together each year. I'm not saying you can't learn unless you're at a conference, obviously, but saying no trips at all - that's a tough sell.

@alex-yo Your post is almost a mirror of my situation - senior generalist dev with 15 years experience Ruby/Java/SQL and numerous other languages and frameworks too many to list, looking for something more challenging and unable to relocate due to family situation.

I've tried unsuccessfully to apply via the main remote work channels and rarely get a response back. The one time I did, the position was cancelled by the company after I made it to the 2nd round.

Hope you have better luck than me and a commenter can unlock the secret. There are lots of great people like us not able to work in the office.

Honestly, I was expecting post like this.

+1, I've received this '"thank you, your experience is really great, but we got a candidate who is a much better fit for this position". ' from so many companies in last 5 years! Yes,its 5 long years. Strangely some companies tell me contribute to OSS to get better attention. (I'm OSS dev since 2005) I really really suspect they even care about Github profiles/links we share.

As some one from non-US, I face 'time-zone' issue too. To be honest, In last 5 years of searching, I got interview scheduled from Ceph(2011),Google(2012 & 2015) and Platform.sh(2016). Those are the only 3 companies,went beyond the initial thank you email. In recent months, I stopped monitoring/applying to HN whoishiring posts or Stackoverflow remote positions or remoteok, weworkremotely just anything else. There is no point in applying ,if they didn't even care to schedule first round of interview.

Its really hard to me, I hope it will be less harder for you. Good luck with your search!

Where are you based?

I have made a list that could help you https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

There are a few all-remote contracting companies out there. I worked for Art & Logic [www.artandlogic.com] for a few years and they sound like they might be a good fir for you. They especially appreciate generalists. I'd give them a look. Otherwise I'd recommend checking out FlexJobs as another aggregator of remote postings. Finally, the monthly "Who's Hiring" posts often contain quite a few remote positions.

Send your resume to the email address in my profile. My company may be hiring someone like you. 100% remote is fine with us.

Is there a reason you are willing to share for the "without any trips" criterion?

I have been working remotely for some six years. My current employer hires mostly remote engineers, and we're always looking out for good people.

We try to get developers together a couple of times a year, which it appears your circumstances would rule out; correct?

Related question about remote jobs. Do / can US based companies hire non-US based remote developers?

Send me your resume, we are looking for C++ devs.