On the CodeForALiving.io site (from StackOverflow) there's an interview with Mohamed Said, the first official employee for Laravel (and its related ecosystem).

Mohamed Said got his first computer at age 13—they were just becoming commonly accessible in Egypt—and started learning to code almost immediately. Flash was what drew him in, he says, with its animations and color and, well, “flashy” stuff.

[...] Last month, Mohamed Said became the first full-time hire at Laravel, an open source PHP framework built by Taylor Otwell. Otwell built the framework as a side project, and when it took off, quit his job to work on it full time. Just a few months ago, he decided he needed help maintaining the project and posted his first full-time job opening, and Said was an obvious choice.

The interview gets into some of Mohamed's background as a developer and his own personal experiences with the Laravel framework. The article then moves on to some of his work in open source software and how he grew into the Laravel community overall. He talks some about roadblocks he came up against along the way but encourages people to contribute, mentioning both the growth it can provide and how to get started with your own contributions.

As finding good, qualified local PHP developers becomes harder and harder for some companies, they're slowly realizing that they might need to look outside their area for good talent. If you're a developer and are wanting to promote yourself as someone who can work as a remote employee, you might want to read this post (the first of a series) from Chris Hartjes on telecommuting.

My current position as a "software engineer" for XML Team Solutions is a 100% telecommuting job. [...] Now, when you have a company where none of your fellow employees works in the same city, let alone the same country, you quickly find out what the key issue really is: trust

He goes on to talk about how to build up that trust, not just with the other developers on your team but with the manager you're working with to show them you're the qualified employee they think you are. He also points out one of the big hindrances some companies take issue with on not having all their people in one place - easy meetings/collaboration.

This post was inspired by these thoughts from Cal Evans.