The Monday Byte

Welcome to the Monday Byte where I send you 5 things each week so you can improve your English and land a remote dev job.

📖 Word/Phrase - single-income family

In the olden days, you would use the term breadwinner to describe the person who earns the money in the family (i.e. man works, woman stays home with kids).

My friend used this term the other day to describe the same thing — single-income family. Which is easier to understand compared to breadwinner anyway.

💬 Pronunciation - Critique of Venezuelan Programmer

I’m back with the pronunciation critiques after a long break! I was too deep in the job hunt to do these. But now that I found a job, I’m picking them back up.

This one has a lot of great tips if you’re at an intermediate stage with your English. Enjoy!

Want me to critique your English? Reply to this and let me know!

🗣️ Real World Conversation - Using a Negotiation Coach

This is the first job hunt where I used a negotiation coach. Normally this costs around $2k but I filled out a survey and got a special deal — only $250. I decided to give it a try because I know I’d get at least $1k value of out it.

And it turns out, it was super helpful! I learned some really good tricks and had unlimited email support which means I had someone to talk to when I didn’t know what to do next.

We ended up getting an extra $34k in equity for the job I took, which was awesome! If it’s something you can afford, I definitely recommend trying one.

🔗 Content - Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer

On the other side, there are a ton of great articles about negotiating that I still reference this day. The one linked here is from Haseeb Qureshi who negotiated offers from companies like Airbnb back in the day.

Again, this is one of those links that you don’t need to read now, but should have ready as soon as you’ve received an offer.

For someone like you getting a job as a non-native English dev, I think the biggest thing you can leverage is your English skills (especially if you’re competing against other candidates that are non-native).

💪🏼 Exercise - Write someone a LinkedIn Recommendation

You know, we hardly get these added to our profiles. Why? Most of the time, you don’t need them — until you do. Like during a job hunt and your new employer is asking for references.

I want you to think of someone you worked with or know and write them a recommendation. Why? You’re paying it forward.

I’m planning to write a couple this week for the recruiters whom I worked with because it’ll help them for the future. Again, paying it forward for others.

Bonus: After you write one, reply and tell me! I want to see how many people we can get to do this exercise. The more the better 🙂 

Enjoy the week, we’ll talk again soon.

- Joe