How hard it is to find an Elixir job for junior devs?

For me it was a long way to go before accepting that beeing open to contract work and at least partial self-employment would be the proper way to go.

Also not every company might be open to contracting people, as with or without NDA, the trust level is completely different between contractors and employees.

And as I have mentioned already, national law might regulate cross border contracts. Especially for the US, a reason I hear very often, is that the company has to make sure that the employee/contractor has to have a US work permission.

Last but not least, consider this: A company in A-land hires a contractor from B-land, and one of these countries puts ā€œIT-servicesā€ under an embargo after the project is half way done. This is another reason why remote jobs often are limited to a certain region, where such embargos are highly unlikely, like US only or EU only.

I wish it was not like it is, but it is the world we are living in, and I hope that my grand childs will live in a world with less terretorial thinking, but I know it canā€™t be changed from one day to the other.

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Weird thing. As a contractor it shouldnā€™t be a problem at all. I have worked as a contractor for US based companies and all what was needed was W-8BEN document that I am foreigner. Nothing unusual, as in the end it is B2B contract where you export service overseas.

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I was just repeating what others have said to me. So of course there might be slight misinformation.

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I work on a small Elixir team at a startup in the US. Our experience is that finding devs with Erlang or Elixir experience is somewhat difficult, and the ones we do find are in demand and get competing offers. We fill many of our junior positions via our intern program (former college interns taking full time offers), so most positions advertised externally are more senior. In my experience, larger teams are more likely to hire junior devs externally, but itā€™s riskier than recruiting former interns.

I totally agree that what gets put in job advertisements is a wishlist, not real requirements. Apply if you think you could do the job, regardless of the specific requirements. What can help with limited work experience is to have a strong portfolio of work, either from personal projects or hacking on open source. If thereā€™s code on GitHub I can look at, thatā€™s ideal. As an engineer who reviews resumes, I will make a case to a skeptical hiring manager if I think a junior or non-traditional candidate had strong skills.

Companies Iā€™ve worked at do sponsor H1-B visas and green cards, but they wonā€™t hire foreign candidates to work remotely. This is because thereā€™s a large burden to becoming an employer in another country. You may need to incorporate in that country, and you must follow their employment and tax laws. My previous employer did have a couple Norwegian employees that worked remotely from Norway, but they were very valuable, experienced hires that they couldnā€™t have gotten otherwise. Other European employees all moved to London (pre-Brexit) and worked in a central office there.

Doing contract work as a foreign worker is easier legally, assuming itā€™s for a specific project, but you need to bring some specific skills and experience to the table.

The opportunities for remote work domestically are better now than theyā€™ve ever been. My current employer allowed very little remote work before the pandemic, but now weā€™re looking to hire nationwide for some positions.

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Ive found a bunch in Brazil.
And theyā€™re really good.

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What about working as an independent contractor?

Depends what you mean by independent. As a contractor I can leave at any time but I can be let go almost anytime as well. :003:

Thatā€™s what I mean, I understand my position as an international developer and Iā€™m mostly looking for experience with fair pay.