
As companies had to adjust to remote working last year, many were open to hiring outside their location. When deciding what to pay a software engineer, most do a quick search for market rates in that area and then offer a salary around that rate.

I have been working remotely from Mexico for years and have also hired freelance software engineers and designers. I have had no shortage of work at multiples of the market rate (a few thousand dollars a month) in my area, Guadalajara, for years. If you make me an offer at market rates, I will never accept. Neither would many other engineers I have met in Guadalajara who also earn significantly more than the market rate.

Companies that are known for adjusting heavily for the cost of living, such as GitLab, tend to offer low salaries even considering market rates. Whenever I encounter this situation, I can guarantee the company is not hiring the best engineers in the area.

I recently received an email for a job that pays in the range of 110k - 170k USD. If I actively search for a job, I know I can find more offers of a similar, or better, salary range. I was 22 when I was no longer "employable" in Mexico because of the salary I demanded.

I have learned that there are two types of companies that hire remotely. The first type looks to hire engineers at a cheaper rate. The second type wants to hire the best engineers. Be the latter.


What Companies Get Wrong about Remote Salaries


I was around 15 when I purchased my first domain. Of course I used GoDaddy. Since then I have tried many other registrars, including (in no particular order):

- Dynadot
- namecheap
- iwantmyname
- Gandi
- DNSimple
- a couple others that I can't remember

In my experience, most people can't tell the difference between all the registrars. What could one registrar possibly offer to make it worth paying an extra $2-5 a year? Turns out, a lot.

First, the one registrar you want to avoid at all costs is GoDaddy. They have been known to buying domains that you have searched for in the past and then try to sell it to you at a higher cost. They also try to upsell you on extra domains or features that you probably don't need. If you are new to buy domains, avoid being scammed by using a better registrar (maybe from the ones I will talk about next).

If you just want to buy a domain without being bothered about any other features I highly recommend [iwantmyname](https://iwantmyname.com/). They are a no-frills domain registrar, so they _only_ sell domains. If you need email, hosting, SSL, or anything else, you need to purchase them somewhere else. They have a clean UI and is, in my opinion, the easiest to navigate since they don't have endless menus to go through. They also automate setting up your DNS records with many services such as Fastmail, GitHub Pages, and Tumblr.

## Domains for Businesses

This is where it gets interesting. If you are a large company, stop fooling around and just go with [MarkMonitor](https://markmonitor.com/). MarkMonitor only works with large companies (or anyone who is willing to pay their fees I imagine) who have business critical domain names. Registrars for businesses should mainly offer the following services:

1. High account security
2. Good Support
3. Ability to share administration of domains
4. Invoice payments

MarkMonitor can pretty much check all of those conditions. It is amazing how few registrars check points 1 and 2 which should just be standard. Points 3 and 4 might not seem obvious at first so let me explain. Point 3 basically means that someone else can create an account at the registrar and be able to handle billing, DNS changes, etc. themselves as well. A lot of registrars don't allow this so you have to share credentials for the one account that can manage those domains, which is not ideal especially if you want to use 2-factor authentication. Point 4 helps prevent the issue where you card details are out of date or for some other reason the registrar is not able to charge you for a renewal. This can cause headaches later on when you find out that the renewal did not go through because your site, email, and services relying on your domains are down. They will renew the domains, then invoice you (and escalate if they don't get paid).

Now, what if you want some of the features MarkMonitor provides but aren't willing to pay the thousands of dollars needed for them to take you on as a client? This is where I believe [Gandi](https://www.gandi.net/en) comes in. They have a service called [Gandi Corporate Services](https://www.gandi.net/en/corporate) which is for companies that want more help managing their domain portfolio. This includes the important invoice payments that few registrars provide. The service costs $65 a month and you can cancel at any time.

Gandi also offers the largest selection of TLDs I have seen anywhere, although some of them require you to subscribe to their Corporate Services to purchase, supposedly because it requires more work on their end to register.

Other features Gandi has include:

1. Ability to manage personal and business domains with separate billing details using just one account
2. Strong 2-factor authentication support including U2F
3. You can become a reseller to manage the domains of clients
4. They are always on the bleeding edge of new TLDs

These are the reasons why I use Gandi for personal and business use.

## Summary

So my registrar recommendation is as follows:

- No-frills: iwantmyname
- Large business: MarkMonitor
- Medium business: Gandi with Corporate Services
- Not sure: Just go with Gandi, they are good with scaling from small project to a large business.


Thoughts on Domain Registrars


QWERTY, the most common keyboard layout out there, was designed to prevent you from typing too fast! If you want the long story (and part of how Dvorak was created) you can read [The Dvorak Zine](http://www.dvzine.org/zine/index.html). If you want the short story, QWERTY was designed to place the most common letters away from each other because, in typewriters, it was common for keys to jam when typing too fast. So why are we still using this layout when we don't have to worry about this anymore? It's time for everyone to switch to a new layout.

About a month ago, I decided to switch to a different layout. I only knew about Dvorak and Colemak at the time and, because Dvorak was more popular, I decided to go with Dvorak. After two days, Dvorak wasn't for me. The 'L' key was in an awkward position where I had to use my pinky a lot even though it is a common letter. I also didn't like how it rearranged the punctuation marks. It was kind of disappointing that my first attempt of switching layouts was a failure, but I kept at it with Colemak.

Colemak is a much newer layout. It improves on some of the flaws that Dvorak has and doesn't change as many keys as Dvorak from the QWERTY layout, only 17 are moved. I almost have a month with Colemak and I don't plan on ever going back to QWERTY (well, it will remain on my phone). I still haven't reached my QWERTY speeds (I was able to type at around 100 wpm) but I am slowly improving (currently at 45 wpm).

Switching layouts is not easy, you have to unlearn QWERTY and will be hitting keys thinking you are still in the QWERTY layout. But if you begin the journey, don't give up! Here is a list of benefits, listed on the [Colemak FAQ](http://colemak.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ) that Colemak has over other layouts to get/keep you motivated:

> - There's an active and growing community of users.
> - Colemak has been designed to be easy to learn and to allow easy transition from QWERTY.
> - Colemak keeps the Ctrl+Z/X/C/V in the same place.
> - Colemak doesn't overwork the pinkies.
> - Colemak's design is considered stable.
> - Colemak is available for many operating systems.
> - Colemak has typing lessons.

I hope you will join me in leaving QWERTY.


QWERTY is slow and inefficient. Try a more modern keyboard layout instead.