Can Frontend Devs REALLY Work Remote in Different Countries?

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Hey folks, we're going to the comments. This one is from uh Brix, I believe is how you pronounce it. Uh it reads, "Question. Hello, I'm a 16-year-old aspiring front-end developer who is currently mastering JavaScript and React." Um I believe the intention here is that they're on their way to uh trying to learn these things. Um I'm aware that I may not be proficient, so I'll go ahead and like they say master stuff like uh Nex.js, TypeScript, and more. So, you know, these are the the learning paths that they're trying to go down. But I've just been wondering if it's possible to get hired in a country um to get hired in a country that I live in and they say this is in Tanzania in Africa as a as remote work okay from US companies. So after I get 3 to 5 years uh plus uh experience in local opportunities.

So the idea being like is it possible that if I'm working remotely in a country uh like Tanzania, can I get remote opportunities? uh say from the US or or other countries I assume. Um so um we'll get into that. If you want your questions answered, leave them below in the comments. Send them to Dev Leader on social media. It's my main YouTube channel. It's also uh where I have uh C YouTube videos. I have a podcast. There are resume reviews for free. You can submit your resume. Uh if you watch on that channel, you'll see how. And then live streams every Monday at 700 p.m. Pacific. So what do I think about this? Um I think the answer is that yes, it's totally possible. So um I'm not saying it's simple. I'm not saying it's trivial. Um the the reason I say that is uh less about the geography part, the geopolitical part, less about that.

More around aspiring front-end developer. Um right now it's you and everyone else in the world too trying to do this. So the competition is extreme right now. It's absolutely extreme. Um, there are tons of people that are either junior developers, they're aspiring, there are people that are even uh, you know, mid-level and they're front-end developers and they're getting completely shafted with uh, work opportunities. I am not saying this to um, make people nervous or like to make you fearful that you'll never get a job. Not the case. I just wanted to say that if it's not, you know, this person said they're aspiring, so I don't know how like um sort of in tune to the the job market and stuff they are right now, but uh it's it's really difficult for a lot of people right now. I I am not the person thinking that like this is my personal belief.

I don't think that uh all of this is because of AI tools and stuff like that. I've talked about this in other videos, but yes, a big part of that is like companies being like, "We don't need developers because we have AI." And like some of them are like, "Oops, we made a the wrong move." But I think that there's um again said this in other videos, but I think there's a sort of the repercussions of the last five or so years. There were some big events in the world where there was a lot of overhiring in a lot of companies because there was a lot of remote work that was kicking off. Right. Uh remember when the whole world was shut down for a little bit and everyone was working from home? Yeah. A lot of companies uh significantly overhired. If you look at the growth curve during that time, it's nuts.

Absolutely not sustainable when this kind of thing happens. Um it's like your to how do I frame this? Your revenue is going up during this time, right? Revenue is flying, flying, flying. So you're like, "Okay, higher, higher, higher. Let's get this flywheel going." And then what happens is when the revenue starts to to round out on a curve, your costs have still gone up astronomically because you've been hiring, right? Headcount is like one of the most expensive things in software companies. So what happens? Well, you you see things like layoffs, right? You see that uh there's hiring freezes and this I mean this is over the past few years too, right? So I don't just mean like just this year or something like that. there's a lot that it's like we have to pump the brakes. But if you've already hired on all these people and your revenue is flattening, your your rate of acceleration when it looks like um like the growth of the company, pardon me, that's flattened out.

So there's there's a negative consequence that happens with that. Then you layer on things like AI and whatever else in the world, right? We get into a bad spot. So, I personally think that we're in a rut. Um, do I think that it will all go away because of AI? Personally, I don't. Um, I think that it's it's obviously impacting how we work as software developers, but I think there will be opportunities. So, with that said, um, what I'm unable to answer for this person is like how to go get those opportunities. Um, I know that just as an example, I know that there are lots of companies that that do this concept of like um like offshoring consultancy where there might be a company, I'm just going to use Tanzania because that's where this person said they are. There might be a company in Tanzania they can work for that does consulting for companies in different parts of the world, right?

They might do that because they're able to say, "Hey, look, we have a labor force here that you can get at a better price." And I'm saying that not because I think that like, oh, you get cheap crappy developers and stuff like that. I'm just saying like they might be able to have an advantage economically to be able to say, "We can do awesome work for you at a different price." Um, that might be an option. There's definitely companies that hire remotely, too. like uh like I work at Microsoft. I know that we hire in various places all over the world. I just don't know what all like the different cost centers and stuff like that are. Um I know we hire in places that don't have uh like a like a central office kind of thing like where you go in to go work. Um, but yeah, like I I couldn't say, "Oh, Microsoft definitely has like, you know, they hire people directly from Tanzania kind of thing." I have no idea.

Um, huge company. I don't know the answer to that. But do the opportunities exist? I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do. I don't know enough about specifically Tanzania labor laws, things like that. No idea. I would be the wrong person to even try an answer. But, you know, in a nutshell, is it possible? Absolutely. Is it going to be really competitive? Yeah. And again, I don't I don't mean to say that because of the geopolitical kind of thing. Um like is there a factor there? There probably is, but I don't know enough about that to even comment. I think the the the biggest part here is like aspiring developer in front end. Okay, there's a lot of people doing that. How do you plan to stand out? So, um, you know, they've gone on to like what they've kind of laid out in the comment is pretty standard, pretty straightforward, which is also one of the reasons that like is going to be very competitive, right?

They say, I'm going to master stuff like Nex.js, TypeScript. But yeah, like the the challenge here is like you and many many other people are doing that. So, I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm just saying the competition is going to be fierce. So if you plan to do that, I would say what are some interesting ways that you can try and differentiate yourself. Um, and I don't I don't know the right answer to that. I don't do front-end web development, so it'd be hard for me to try and answer that. But, um, you know, to wrap up this video, the the answer is yes, it's definitely possible. Um, I think that their timeline is is an interesting one because I I actually feel like this is the first time I've seen someone who's aspiring and they're even mentioning something 3 to 5 years out. I feel like when I talk with people that are aspiring or junior, they're like, "Why don't I have a job?

It's been like four months." I'm like, "Man, like I don't know. It takes it takes a while." Like um I know like I've talked about this in other videos and people thumbs down it, but I have to say it right. Like I know that it's difficult right now. 100% I get it. I get it cuz I see it in social media all the time. I talk to people about this all the time. I understand. But for me even going back like like 13 years or whatever, it wasn't easy for me to get a job. Like I had to I went through university and then did internships. I was very fortunate to be at a school with an internship program. That's why I chose to go there so that you could get a better opportunity to get internships. It was part of the program. Wasn't guaranteed. If you interviewed and you were doing crappy, then you would end up failing out of the program.

But the school set you up to interview with companies that were interested in hiring students. So like they had a good pipeline. So like by the time I graduated from school, I had six internships. I had two full years of work experience. But what like what's not mentioned in that is that so that would have been I started in university in 2007. Uh how old would I been? Like I probably would have been programming for like four or five years already. So like four or five years plus another five years of school. So it's like 9 to 10 years of programming and then in that two years of internships before I got a full-time job as a programmer. So like I'm just saying that my path was not like easy to get a job.

So, I'm I'm sort of impressed that this person was saying 3 to 5 years in terms of being able to do, you know, getting some work with local companies in that period of time and then being able to do something um remote, right? I think it's entirely possible. So, uh that's why I said interesting timeline. I don't know what the right answer is on that, but it feels better than like, you know, couple months kind of thing. So, um, yeah, I don't know if this is super helpful for this person aside from saying like I believe it's fully possible. Um, so I wish them all the best. I hope that they hang out on code commute and come back with more questions as they're learning. And uh, yeah, I'll see you all in the next one. Take care.