The 3 problems of remote job boards in 2024

It’s no mystery that most tech workers prefer to work remotely and avoid the hassle of a long commute or being forced to live in an expensive city. Remote work is here to stay and the same can be said for remote job boards. Why is it then that all of them are plagued with the same terrible issues?

Problem #1: job offers have no salary information

How many times have you come across a job offer that is relevant to your skillset but provides no salary info? And no, “competitive salary” or “compensation commensurate with experience” means absolutely nothing. Nada. What some job seekers might find competitive may be way too low for you so it’s literally useless. Mind you, the company has already figured out a budget for this role, they just don’t want to tell you. They’d rather take their chances and maybe find a candidate they can low-ball. This is dishonest and job boards shouldn’t give a platform to these companies.

Problem #2: Some roles are actually hybrid or only consider candidates from certain countries

You find a job offer that is the perfect match but when you’re ready to apply, you see something like this:

or even worse:

(Mind you, these positions were advertised at remote job portals)

The reason is a lot of these job boards scrape the web and post just about any job they find. The result is a lot of low quality jobs that are not actually remote friendly. You, the user now has to spend extra time filtering out these roles.

The sad reality is that most high-paying jobs are only available to folks in the US. Which takes us to the next point...

Problem #3: Compensation is very low outside of the US

More and more companies are hiring remotely since they know that employees would rather work from home. They also know that location is not tied to competence so they are open to candidates from many different countries. Instead of compensating them on their output, some of them follow a location-based model, where individuals working from low cost of living locations are payed significantly less than those living in more expensive areas. This is short sighted and also unfair. In the long run, great performers get poached by companies that are willing to pay them their worth.

In other cases, it’s also a matter of some countries not paying salaries that match their cost of living (I’m looking at you, UK 🇬🇧). While it’s a complex topic (taxes, employment costs etc) the reality is, Europe as a whole still needs to catch up a lot with the US in this area. Until it does, it will continue to lose its best tech talent to American companies. I personally hope that the eu/acc movement can eventually improve things but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

So what’s the good news you say? It doesn’t have to be this way! Enter topsalaries.tech

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on a job board where:

• all published roles must include a salary range (pay transparency is not negotiable!)
• roles must be fully remote across multiple timezones (“US remote” is not enough)
• the top range of the salary should be at least 100k USD/year

And because a meme is worth a thousand words, here’s a little TLDR that I think summarises things pretty well:

My goal is for this to be the #1 most candidate-friendly remote job board and to give top companies the spotlight they deserve.

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