The question I received the most in Q&A episodes and podcast
episodes is how do I get a job in tech, remote or
internationally? How do I do that?
In this episode, I'll share my perspective and advice and give
you a few tools which I think are key and they might not be
what you expect. So let's get to it starting from
the start. There's one big truth that you
need to be aware of and you need to answer the question, why
would companies hire you? Why would companies even talk to
you, especially in these types of roles where there might be a
lot of competition locally as well as then from
internationally because nowadays it's a global playing field.
Why would it be you? You need to answer that question
and to help you do so, you need to focus on one thing first and
foremost, that is building solid fundamentals.
Focus on your craft. I honestly don't mind what it
is. Front and back and full stack.
Software engineering, infrastructure, cloud
infrastructure, data analyst, data scientist, data engineer,
security. I don't mind what it is.
Pick one, make it your core and become really really good at
that. That is going to be the
foundation and answering why companies should hire you from
all hard skills perspective. If you don't have that yet, then
honestly you need to find a company, likely locally, and
build up that skill. People don't necessarily think
of hard skills. They also think of who am I
hiring from a personal perspective.
So starting locally instead of immediately trying to get an
international job, even though you don't have any job
experience hypothetically and there's going to be a lot of
hypotheticals. Building up that job experience
locally is I think the best step you can do because professional
experience is way different than what you get from your
educational journey, than what you might even get looking
online and educating yourself through YouTube or various means
of newsletters and media out there.
It's very different working in a team day in day out,
contributing towards a product, towards a shared vision, towards
business outcomes as an individual contributor, because
I'm, I'm going to take that path mainly for answering this
question as software engineers. I'll touch on product probably a
little bit later, but that is very different and you need to
build up that muscle, you need to build up that rhythm for you
to be able to relate during the interview process in the 1st
place at all. So step one, building up your
skill. It's very easy though, because
there's a lot of content out there.
There's a lot of time that likely you have and it's a
matter of spending that time. It's going to require a lot of
discipline. Honestly.
You do need to put in the work because otherwise you will never
be able to answer. Why would a company hire you?
Or in this case, why would a company hire me in the 1st
place? Why would they talk to me in the
1st place if my fundamental skills are not there?
Even if you get your foot in the door and then your hard skills,
you don't have good fundamentals.
It's a wasted opportunity because getting your foot in the
door nowadays is honestly incredibly difficult.
So then once you have your foot in the door, getting the hard
skills or having the hard skills to actually back that up is what
you need. Now separately, also while
building up these hard skills, I've seen people think of remote
jobs and that being kind of the Holy Grail to go for.
Also early in career, especially during COVID, everyone was kind
of remote. But nowadays you have options.
You can go hybrid, you can go fully to the office, you can try
and find remote, even though you're kind of local companies
that are OK with that. My advice, and especially for
people that are early in career, go to the office.
All right, you might hate it. Five days in the office.
That's what I did. And obviously I'm speaking from
experience. But now seeing people that
haven't done that, it's different.
You're completely isolated. It's very hard to ask for help.
You need to actually put in the effort to call someone and some
people really don't like that from a calling perspective.
And likely if it's a remote company, people don't mind
outreach and like asynchronous communication and anything like
that. But for me and talk about my
experience going to the office, having colleagues next to me
made it very easy to pair program to ask for help, to even
sit in after hours. And I would spend hours after
work discussing certain technical intricacies, learning
about people's interests. So then our relationship would
be better to execute even better building trust in that way.
Or just honestly, because because I was very eager, people
would just take their time and try and walk me through a lot of
technical concepts and whiteboard even after hours with
me. And I would just have the
opportunity to ask questions and go over it and over it and over
it until I understood. It's kind of a personal kind of
tutoring session to be honest. And I don't think you're going
to have that remote. Why would someone say and do the
same thing remotely? It's more transactional, I feel
like. So especially when you're early
in career focusing on your craft, find an environment where
you can be there in person with people that are actually there
and also enthusiastic to teach you.
I think that's the biggest benefit that you can have
nowadays because there's a lot of options.
And from my perspective, honestly, this is the best one.
Start locally, build up your craft, build up your
fundamentals, and then go from there.
Now, something you might not have thought of is you can
actually move internationally through your company.
So especially when you're talking about a local company,
it might be something that's local that you can go into the
office for that is actually a big international company.
It doesn't have to be big tech. It can be an international
company that has positions open in tech internationally.
If you build up a good reputation locally within your
team, within your org, within your part of kind of your
domain, that can translate towards you actually landing a
job or people helping you. If you are vocal about it, what
your path is, what your career path is, what you want in life
and at this company, they can help you and they can support
you getting there. Honestly, I think that's
something that might be the most feasible.
Starting somewhere at an international company, seeing a
job opportunity that is overseas or across continents.
You've already built up a reputation.
Your manager and their manager, your skip level can help you get
that role. For me, that would be kind of
the easier, easiest potential path to make this happen.
It's still a hard one honestly because there's still
computation likely if it's across seas, if it's across
continents, you will still have to apply formally.
But then people can already put in a good word.
Your foot in the door is not really a step because you
already have that. Then it's just about acing the
interview and people might be more lenient based on how well
of a reputation you have, how good your political credit is
within that organization. But basically your time spent at
that organization is going to be your leverage.
So the better you do that, the higher the likelihood it is that
your reputation, your reputation pays dividends.
Now there's also a part where I've received a few questions in
the same vein. However, they explicitly say
they're from a non-english speaking country and they want
to move to an English speaking country, which means that the
language is going to be core here.
I'm going to take English because English is like the most
internationally, I think accessible language for people
that want to move internationally across
continents here, at least my listeners.
So if English is going to be the language that you speak first
and foremost for me, it makes sense to get really good at
English to be honest, which is kind of a skill that no one
talks about. But if it's very hard for you to
get your thoughts in order and then communicate in English,
yeah, it's going to be a step down compared to other people
that can do that. It's the harsh and honest truth.
So getting really good at English verbally in your
writing, in your reading and understanding of concepts.
But usually through most education that's out there, it
is English in the first place. Then it's a matter of you can
probably have a really good understanding of the English
language. You can probably read and write,
or writing is a different skill in and of its own.
But for me, communication and getting your thoughts in order
and having a smooth conversation with someone is actually going
to be the most challenging. Now, luckily, there's a lot you
can do with regards to practice. One of the things that I did,
which is not really on purpose, it's very much subconsciously.
I played a lot of video games and during video games I would
always listen to podcasts and I think by listening I got better
at speaking. That was one part of it.
And then also doing this podcast, speaking on a more week
to week basis in English continuously.
Also now at home with my partner being American Italian, we speak
English. I mean, I'm English kind of day
in, day out. My Dutch is getting worse and
worse, even though it's still, I mean I'm still Dutch native, but
English is what I use most of the day and therefore my English
is getting better and better to a level where it's actually
really good professionally. At least that's my opinion.
So, but that's what you want to be, that's where you want to be.
You want to get to that level. How you do that?
Honestly, if you have some tutoring, if you have language
classes, if you listen to a lot of podcasts, if you go to
Toastmasters, your local Toastmasters, and you work on
your public speaking. Anything you can do to up your
communication in English is going to pay dividends.
Because especially if you've chosen this international career
path, the better you are at communicating, the more likely
people will want to hire you. Because why would they hire you
with regards to the same skill set, everything, hard skills,
maybe you even as a person, same kindness, same empathy compared
to a person that speaks way better English like that would
just be a waste. So focusing on English as a
language perspective I think is a must.
There's also friends I have which are trying to move from
the UK to the Netherlands and for them speaking Dutch is been
the biggest bottleneck because especially in certain
industries, this is still in tech, but for example marketing
or sales. Yeah, if you're doing it in a
local environment and then Dutch is kind of the main speaking
language. Even though you work for
international companies, learning the language that is
local can still be a bottleneck. So if that is your aim, if you
want to move from English speaking countries to like local
speaking countries, then yeah, learning the language is exactly
the same bottleneck. You will have to learn the
language, except it's way more difficult I think because
English is so ubiquitous. Also in tech it's mainly the
language that's spoken mostly. So I think the inverse is easier
than actually learning a local language.
So yeah. But also the bar and the
requirements are maybe not as high depending on the country.
We still haven't answered. Why would companies talk to you
in the 1st place? Even though your hard skills
might be really good, even though your communication in
English might be excellent? How would companies judge this?
Especially I hate it when people say in the age of AI because
that's usually what AI generates in the 1st place.
But with AI nowadays, it's very easy to retrieve information,
it's very easy to generate content.
So a lot of resumes that companies will receive are
either going to be bots, the different aliases that might not
even be real, real people, or real people using AI, and the
resume all looks the same. Same hard skills, same tone of
voice, maybe even better than the average software engineer
because they tweak it specifically to this job.
So it makes it very hard, I think from a hiring perspective
to cut out all the weeds, hundreds and hundreds, sometimes
even thousands depending on how competitive the position is to
weed out and choose you to have a conversation with at the table
in the 1st place. Getting your foot in the door I
think is very, very difficult, maybe even the most difficult
it's ever been. Currently, as I'm recording this
in July 2025, let's be, let's be clear about that.
So likely, you're probably going to guess what I'm going to say.
You need to build up a social presence.
I, I, I know, I know some people hate the word social presence.
OK, it doesn't have to be social media, but you need to
distinguish yourself from other people.
And there's a few options. You can do that.
OK, I'll talk about kind of an obvious one, which is writing.
If you love reading, you might be excellent at writing.
Start a newsletter. It can be a newsletter
internally, it can be a newsletter externally, whatever.
Start writing, all right, Make material, get your thoughts in
order. You can use AI because writing
has become, I think, easier and harder.
It's easy to create a lot of content, but then it's very hard
to get to the essence of it. So if you love writing, get
really good at writing. Specifically publish that.
I would say definitely outside of your sphere of influence and
that's where you build up your social credit.
I know you're not going to be a content creator, you're not
going to be a social media expert, but bit by bit, if you
do that weekly, if you set your goals to write a blog weekly, to
write out and send out a newsletter weekly continuously,
you will build up this muscle and you will build up this
legacy of what you've done. And if other people don't do
that, or if a few people do that, then that's at least one
thing that makes you stand out from the crowd.
All right? You will definitely get better
at writing if that's what you do week in, wing, week out.
If you do that continuously, then all of a sudden you're a
year further and you're going to have 52 newsletters.
All right? The fact that people even can
say that number, I've written 52 articles, 52 blog posts, 52
newsletters. This is what I've built up is
incredible. Through that, you might partner
with other writers. You might ask for an opinion on
software engineering at companies that you want to work
with or work for, let's say. Let's say work with.
You might pair up with engineers from companies you want to work
with to create and Co create articles that already is going
to help your little network of people that you know, people
don't remember what they do necessarily.
If I look at my job experience, I don't know what I built 10
years ago, five years ago, but I kind of know the people that I
worked with. I know exactly which people I
liked. I know exactly which people I
didn't necessarily like anymore or not in the 1st place at all,
but I remember those relationships.
So this is a very simple thing. You can do that on the side
writing, you can build up, reach out to people and say, hey, I'm
interested in writing XY and Z. Can we pair up with each other?
Can can I interview you? Can we make an article together?
People are usually very up for that because that also helps
their social credit with regards to content creation and
distinguishing themselves as engineers in the market
nowadays. So people are very, very open to
that and those relationships you can build up on.
Now writing is not the only one since we're talking about
software engineering, contributing to open source,
working on your own GitHub profile, creating little
projects. Honestly, what is your passion?
What do you love with regards to technology?
What what are your fundamentals? What do you want to learn?
Learn out in the open, create as many things as you can to learn
from and show what you're proud of when you actually have an
interview, when you're trying to get your foot in the door.
I saw that recently it was a question in a job application
forum that said what is exceptional work that you've
done? And they really distinctly said,
if this is empty, we will not consider you.
So think of what exceptional work that you've done, all
right? If you have a legacy of writing,
then that's exceptional. That will definitely make you
stand out from the rest. If you have a legacy of
beautiful open source contributions, if you have many
projects on GitHub, things that you think are exceptional,
things that you are proud of, you don't have to think they're
exceptional or they make you look like an expert.
Honestly, if this is what you're proud of, that's what you
communicate specifically. And it's beautiful that with
software, you can put everything on GitHub.
You can build up your GitHub profile with really cool and
awesome projects. And honestly, I think people
will definitely look towards that.
With regards to how does this person stand out compared to
another person, That's definitely one way.
Now an easy 1 and that's it's, it was never really the intent.
The intent was always to share knowledge.
But podcasting makes you really, really good at communicating.
All right. And this is similar to a
newsletter. If you love listening, then you
might be really good at starting a podcast.
I know that's a bigger leap than reading and writing, but follow
along with me because kind of that's what happened with me.
Inviting people and building up your network through a podcast
is, I wouldn't say easy, but it gets easier and and easier, all
right? If there's a testament of work
that you've done, if you've done many episodes, you build up this
legacy and the people see that and it builds credibility.
So it makes them easier, makes it easier for guests to say,
yes, That's the stage I am in now.
It's taken four years to get there and it was definitely not
there the first year. However you put in the effort,
it's not an easy path. It definitely requires
discipline. You build up your network and
you can use that potentially to get a job in the future, not
just locally but definitely also internationally.
Because especially if you do remote podcasts, then you can
just talk to someone that's completely in a different
country, create an episode together, share knowledge from
their perspective, either internally or externally, again,
with regards to an organization or just who they are as a person
and their career path. It makes you a better
communicator. Again, going back to English as
a main language, likely you'll want to choose English if you're
going to create a podcast. But in the end, you can leverage
those net, the network that you build up, the people that you
interact with. Always be kind, always be
empathetic, always be kind of try and be the best version of
yourself. Make it a pleasant experience
for people that you work with. Even though it's a small
interaction, collaborating on an article or creating a podcast
episode together, people will remember you.
So make sure they remember it in a good way.
So I hit on blogs, GitHub profile, podcasts.
Now funny thing is, a lot of networking also happens in
person locally, meetups. They can also happen remote
nowadays. But finding community, either
through meetups or conferences or online.
There's a lot of forums still, people trying to help each
other, Discord servers about very specific things, AI being a
big topic, but finding your community, engaging and
interacting and helping people. You can even try and mentor
other people or guide them with regards to career path and
fundamentals and educate. You can try and create trainings
or give trainings or explain technical concepts on YouTube if
you want. Finding and building community
is one of the best things you can do because that in essence
is going to have the biggest reach with regards to people
that you interact with. Again, the news article, the
podcasting, it's usually one-on-one.
It's very specific with a person, but if you interact with
the community, if you go to meet up with like minded people that
have the same fundamental knowledge as you, you learn not
just about the fundamentals, but also how they are applied in
different organisations. And you sure, that might be a
local thing, but you never know. Those people might move abroad
and then you might see them elsewhere.
Or you can go on Twitter and build your own or find your own
community. And those are definitely
international. I think it's a really, really
great idea from a networking perspective to communicate, to
try and help, honestly, to still be kind of your version of you
with regards to kindness. Never be an asshole.
People also remember assholes. But yeah, it's this mindset of
abundance, right? It's not dog eat dog.
There's enough knowledge to go around.
So share as much as you can and you pay it forward in that way.
You never know what's going to come back.
It might not ever come back, but hopefully it does, especially if
you keep at it with regards to your discipline and your
efforts. Let's say you've done all of
that, all right, your craft is really good, great fundamentals,
your English is great written and orally.
You are at a company or not necessarily, but you're ready
for that step to move internationally or look for a
remote job specifically and you have social proof.
All right, you can say this is what I'm most proud of.
A legacy of articles or blogs, a legacy potentially on YouTube,
legacy with a podcast legacy with regards to projects you've
contributed to or you've created it yourself.
What is next? This is enough in my opinion to
get your foot in the door and it's not going to be a
guarantee. All right, It's still statistics
in the end, you still have to try many, many times.
However, you can apply on websites and not just websites.
If you see a position that you think you're a great fit at with
regards to your craft, with regards to your domain
experience, with regards to your career experience so far, you
know exactly what you need to do with regards to applying to that
job at the company's. Profile page, the company's
career page, that is one thing. I think usually that's what
people do and they leave it at that.
However, in the age of LinkedIn, I used the age again.
Nowadays with LinkedIn, it's very easy to see who's
recruiting for which company. So if you really think you're a
perfect fit, feel free to send that recruiter a message and
tell them exactly why. Why they should choose you over
anyone else. Don't be an asshole about it.
Be very kind about it. Talk about your excitement
finding this role. Talk about why you would love to
work at this company, specifically why you would be
the perfect fit. Don't try and be cocky.
Try and be honest with regards to your experience and where it
matches on a skill level and on experience level.
And then also share what distinguishes you from anyone
else because usually that contributes to why you would be
perfect for the job. Have you done something similar
with regards to a project that you can see on GitHub that you
can share to this recruiter? Have you written something that
is very specific to this domain, the domain of the company that
is very relevant? Have you done the same with
regards to podcasting that shows your communication skills as
well as your experience within this domain?
Share that with the recruiter in that intro message.
That's it. They might look at your profile,
you might see that they might not ever reply, but when they
do, they are interested and you have your foot in the door.
That's it. All right, where everyone goes
to the career page of a certain organization, fills out their
resume. They might not ever hear back,
but when you speak to a person, when you're honest and authentic
about yourself, why you can actually communicate why you
think you're great for the job or why the job really excites
you and how you've distinguished yourself online that people can
see without even having a conversation with you.
For me, that is right now the best way to get your foot in the
door. I'm not saying spam recruiters.
I'm saying bring something to the table, all right?
If you're not going to do it authentically, then honestly,
recruiters will not want to talk to you.
Also for the future, if right now it's a good time, they might
reply and say now is not a good time.
They might still say it's really cool what you've done and that's
really good for your confidence. But reaching out to people
nowadays on LinkedIn, if you're doing it the right way,
authentically, what you think is a great fit, Honestly, I think
that's a really good approach. I've seen it work.
I've seen it work with myself, even though I haven't landed any
other job, but still interview because I think the skill of
interviewing is very, very important.
And that's what I used to get my foot in the door.
It has worked more often than I would think otherwise for jobs
that I think are incredibly highly competitive.
And still, you might get a reply, you might get a reply.
And honestly, that's nowadays the best thing you can hope for,
either a +1 or a -1, even if it's a -1, you never know for in
the future. So that would be my advice to
distinguish yourself from the herd getting your foot in the
door. Now lastly, there's many, many
resources when it comes to how to get hired, specifically about
the interview process. Way much more than I can
actually share with you in this episode today.
So definitely do your research with regards to how you should
prepare for an interview. When it comes to software
engineering, I think it has evolved.
It used to be traditional league code exercise.
You do it in your own time, then you come in for a system design
interview and then maybe a few more rounds with the teams.
It can be up to five to six rounds is what I've seen.
However, I think with AI and with tooling nowadays, lead code
exercises become more and more easy to solve.
So companies are pivoting to see what works for them.
They are putting more focus not just on the hard skills, but
also on the system design and also on the collaboration
aspect. It's not just I recently had a
conversation with the CTO of Polar Steps.
They do a full day in office exercise, 8 hours,
collaboration, communication, trade-offs, being pragmatic with
the regards to the work that you do and also executing and being
very commutative about it. Very, very challenging
internationally. They're not going to fly you
over to do that. They might do the same thing
remote. All right.
I know a person that's interviewing, they have exactly
the same, but then remote, which is incredible to me.
But also this is a remote job. So in the end, that's what
you're going to do in the 1st place.
So it makes it a really good process and part of the
interview to actually go through and and evaluate.
So more and more companies are trying to go beyond just this
lead code, especially when it comes to software engineering.
But system design, I think it's quite established.
It's quite trainable as well. There's a lot of content online
on YouTube. Definitely check it out.
Become really, really good at that.
It is this rhythm and this muscle building a system,
testing and validating assumptions, having a
conversation with someone for a few minutes, then putting some
stuff on paper, having a dialogue, making it very, very
simple, very, very pragmatic. Making some trade-offs with
regards to why we do XY and Z, why we scale, what are still
assumptions and why does it matter or why does it not
matter? Can you still pivot or is this a
hard lock in? Why does that matter in the 1st
place for the domain and the customer case?
That whole thing. Go through it, go through it
over and over and over again. Use ChatGPT and just talk to
your phone and ask them to evaluate you as an interviewer
would. It makes you become better at
this process. All right, once you get your
foot in the door, it is nailing the interview.
You might not nail every interview, but the more you do
it, the better you get at it. The conversations you're going
to have with many, many people, those you can also practice for.
So definitely do it in advance to an interview and don't be too
harsh on yourself when you fade an interview, likely it's going
to be inevitable. It might not even be you, all
right. They might just say, well, we
thought we needed this role and this person, but in the end we
decided we don't need it. We don't have budget anymore.
We're we're in the middle of a reorganization.
All right, there's no more role. Basically, you could have done
nothing. It's just part of the
organization that changed, but you still feel bad and you have
to be able to cope with that. All right, this is a long and
hard path. You're going to have many Nos,
some part of it in the organization, some part of it
how you could have done better in the interview.
Don't sulk. Don't sit too much on it.
I know it hurts, especially when you find your dream job and you
don't nail it. I've also had that.
It sucks. Play that over and over and over
in your head with regards to the interview process and in half a
year or a year from now that usually have this, you can apply
again policy and do it again. Do better, practice more,
practice harder, learn from your mistakes, do it again and do it
over and over and over again. That is the only way basically
to get a yes in this interviewing game.
Now, there's one recent experience which I've had with
regards to product and I've never gone through many, many
product interviews. The funny thing about product is
it's very specific and especially at this company,
again, highly competitive. Definitely if I were to pick a
few jobs would definitely be up there with regards to my dream
jobs. And I biffed the interview.
I was incredibly sad honestly. I still feel a little bit salty
with regards to the conversation and how much I could have
practiced more and more in advance.
But the fact that I've gone through this, that I exactly
know where things went well, where things did not go well.
Honestly, it was mainly getting my thoughts in order, likely
because I've never done this type of interview, but now I
know exactly how I would get my thoughts in order.
I know exactly how I would prepare for that.
I would go again in a year if they'll have me because of this
experience. So even though the no hurts, it
is a lot of experience and experience is still experienced.
It's like XP points in a game, in a video game.
Level up and keep doing that. There's no Max level here.
You can always get better. I think that's the best advice I
can give you with regards to interviewing.
Now to conclude, build up your craft.
Get really, really strong fundamentals.
Pick one thing, pick a few things.
Doesn't matter. Become really, really good at
that in an organization. It's not going to happen
magically that you get a remote job or an international job
without any job experience. Build up that experience.
Secondly, look for opportunities in your current company
internationally. Are there opportunities?
Talk to your manager, your skip level, vocalize what you want to
do. You want this international
career path or you want these remote opportunities?
Talk about them. See if there's a path for you
within that company. Build up your social presence.
Blogs, articles, podcasts, YouTube content, community
online meetups, conferences, speak, engage, find your
community, Discord, service, anything you can do to build up
social presence. It will answer the question,
what exceptional work have you done that I can actually see
online that you can point people to that will help you get your
foot in the door. Become really, really good at
English. That will be the spoken
language. When you collaborate
internationally, it will be the written language.
You will have to be really, really good at English, all
right, That will distinguish yourself from other people.
Now use all of that to get your foot in the door, don't you?
Supply companies, look for people, look for great matches,
talk to them. Bring something to the table,
though if you don't, you lose credibility.
Be yourself and be your best in every interaction with people
from the company or with any people in your network.
Now, once you have your foot in the door, nail the interview
process and this will not be 100% nailing every single time.
All right, you will hear no. It is inevitable.
It might not be you, but it can definitely still be you.
And when it is you, work on why it was the case.
Get better at the next time. Don't be afraid to reapply at
the same company, but apply and keep applying and don't take no
for an answer. Keep getting better at the
interview process, no matter which role you want.
Continue and do this over and over and over again until you
land that job. That is my advice.
That's my thoughts and perspectives.
I think this episode was way longer than I intended it to be,
but I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.