You're definitely looking in the wrong places. A large number of companies are basically entirely remote at this point, for instance I know chess.com is, and they have vacancies at this very moment. You can also go indie or freelance. If you can think of something you would want to buy, somebody else probably would too. You might not make much off of it, but even a little is a lot in places outside the EU/US.

There's also lots of possibilities outside of software. High end rates for online English lessons are around $40/hour though that's if you go independent, self promotion, etc - which is kind of tedious. But if you can tap into that huge booming middle class in e.g. China, you'll have basically endless students around those rates. Working for a company you can hit around $20/hour, which is quite lucrative in most of the world, and you'll generally have less prep and other meta-issues to deal with.

Similarly you can also sell skills. For instance there's a huge market for chess coaching. And while I haven't tried this myself, I'm fairly certain there's some market out there for teaching/tutoring people in coding. Also if you excelled in mathematics or whatever, there's another possibility. And doing this stuff at a school, or even university, is also completely viable - in most places a bachelors is acceptable for teaching at a university.

This is really what I mean with the world being your oyster. There's so much out there but most people just don't realize these possibilities even exist.

>There's also lots of possibilities outside of software. High end rates for online English lessons are around $40/hour though that's if you go independent, self promotion, etc - which is kind of tedious. But if you can tap into that huge booming middle class in e.g. China, you'll have basically endless students around those rates. Working for a company you can hit around $20/hour

Hypothetically if someone was burnt out and willing to operate in the gray a bit, how much can you make (approximately) doing English lessons under the table?

Eg: I go to Thailand. I enter as a tourist. Ocassionally, I meet someone in a café and have a conversation with them. They value that enough to pay me.

One of my big pre-covid regrets is I didn't travel more... I had intended to, having been laid off just before it started but everything got locked down and I had a bit of a mental health episode, feeling trapped in interactions I didn't consent to as I spent money on rent I could have spent on hotels etc.

Right as COVID fell, I'd been researching doing the Moscow to Beijing train then exploring SE Asia... it's funny how much of the planned route is possibly bust... for example, I was going to skip mainland China and only visit HK since less visa issues, not sure if that's still possible...

you can think of something you would want to buy, somebody else probably would too.

Selling something you need yourself seems twice as hard as selling something you don't need and have extra that others want and have few

I was speaking more of software, but in general the thing I find is that when people try to figure out what other people want - when they themselves don't necessarily want it, they have trouble remaining objective. Some friends are serial entrepreneurs and they keep coming up with these horrible ideas that they convince themselves others people would want. Maybe one day they'll be right, but in the mean time it looks pretty silly.

OTOH I think Amazon would have sounded like a horrible idea. A book store minus the ability to peruse the books, pick up a coffee, or browse in the same sort of way? I wonder if it really was a great idea, or it's just some weird butterfly effect that drove it up, up, and away.

I remember the Amazon rollout. The pitch was order a book from anywhere and get a biggest selection of books and price. Small book stores were getting eaten up by Chapters letting you read the entire book. Amazon's secret sauce was accessable affiliate marketing. They had and probably still have the biggest affiliate program and at first the only game on town.

Food/coffee came later when the in person business was declining.

I think GP makes it sound far easier than it really is, but there’s also clearly not “exactly zero” such roles. (I have team members based in EU working remotely. Retention is high and we get a lot of applicants when we open new roles. Those are good for the employer side but negative for individual applicants.)

In my experience, it's much easier as a freelancer. Usually what is meant to be a couple weeks gig turns out to be a couple months or year-long business relationship.

I've worked in 3 places that were fully 100% remote. I'm from Barcelona, ES. They are not the modt common but they do exist if you look for them and there are quite a lot.

Check out Who's Hiring? threads on HN. How I got into Citus & my life was much improved