I'd recommend to watch the sales videos of AWS (http://aws.amazon.com/) they give you a non technical view about what a cloud is.
After that you have a good clue about what the cloud can be and then you can dig deeper into the topics that you what to learn.
Unfortunately I don't know a site that teaches a practical way to cloud computing. They are always tending to a product. But if you understand the basics it should be easy to compare different providers by your needs.
I'd recommend to talk to your tax consultant. In Europe it's normal to have a tax consultant, because the law is very complicated. I don't know if this is usual in the US too...
I am working in a Germany startup and we have considered to hire some remote employees. But because of the size of our company and our internal strategy we decided us against remote workers. We are a quiet tiny company with less then 20 employees. We think that a transparent and frequent discussion is very important. We believe, that this can't be done with employees working remote in an efficient way.
If your choice would be C or Haskell, you might have a look at Go (at least for the backend). It's usage is growing a lot in the last time.
Your choice may also differ from the location. In the USA Ruby on Rails experts have a good chance to find a job. In Europe (for example Germany) there are only a few well paid jobs.
After that you have a good clue about what the cloud can be and then you can dig deeper into the topics that you what to learn.
Unfortunately I don't know a site that teaches a practical way to cloud computing. They are always tending to a product. But if you understand the basics it should be easy to compare different providers by your needs.