[HN Gopher] Remote-first companies that actively hire
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Remote-first companies that actively hire
Author : durmonski
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-05-09 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.remotecompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.remotecompany.com)
| timClicks wrote:
| Canonical is another company that has been remote-first since it
| was formed in 2004.
| boogerlad wrote:
| I wonder if any of these companies would be interested in paying
| Monero and just avoiding taxes entirely. Taxes are such a huge
| headache for both parties. Of course it's illegal, but hard to
| trace if done right. I think it would be worth being exposed to a
| wider variety of talent.
| Throwaway_xmr wrote:
| How would you convert monero back to fiat without alerting your
| bank?(converting to fiat is also necessary cause you can't pay
| your veggie bills in monero). Any deposit to your bank would
| easily raise suspicion. Monero to cash is possible but its more
| difficult to arrange and chances of honeypot are more.
| odiroot wrote:
| Businesses, even private cannot just leak money/assets without
| explanation.
| Sebguer wrote:
| Odd not to see DigitalOcean on this list, given at least when I
| left (before covid), remote was ~55% of the company and very much
| a first-class citizen. They certainly are actively hiring at much
| higher rates than most of the companies on this list.
| LeonenTheDK wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit on how they facilitated remote workers
| being first class citizens? I'll be in a similar position soon
| but would like to see some things I and the company could do to
| not alienate me and the other remote members.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| Heap1 is virtual-first and actively hiring (not to mention,
| scaling like crazy). I have colleagues in North America, Europe,
| Asia, and Australia. We have an excellent engineering culture and
| need more hands on deck. :)
|
| Hit me up (email in profile) if any of the roles listed here2
| look interesting to you.
|
| 1 https://heap.io/
|
| 2 https://grnh.se/d7ce9bfc1us
| soneca wrote:
| You mention Asia and Australia, but all the remote engineering
| roles are _"anywhere in the US"_
| zoover2020 wrote:
| +1, I was all sols on the company but then remote roles are
| US specific :(.
|
| Any plans for EU remote roles?
| periheli0n wrote:
| I wonder how this works tax- and social security-wise. Normally,
| the employer must pay social security in the country where the
| employee is physically located. Also the employer must adhere to
| any employment laws for that country.
|
| At least that's what HR tells me in my current job, as a reason
| why they won't let me go full remote.
|
| Are they right? How are full-remote companies handling this?
|
| Edit: Context is EU/UK.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| My company is remote-first and employs people all over the
| world. For countries where they don't have an incorporated
| entity (the vast majority) employees work as "contractors". The
| onus is on them to figure out how to set up to be able to
| invoice an overseas company and get paid via wire transfer to
| their bank account. But this usually just means "hire an
| accountant to figure things out". It is doable.
| jakobdabo wrote:
| I had this bookmarked, not sure if it's valid or up to date:
| "How to Hire Foreign IT Talent Legally for your US Startup" -
| https://6nomads.medium.com/how-to-hire-foreign-it-talent-leg...
| bberenberg wrote:
| We have this issue, and the answer is "it's complicated". We
| have some people as FTEs, this is done via a PEO who handles a
| lot of the overhead for us. This works within the USA. We also
| have some contractors within the US that we work with directly.
| We also have staff in other countries, we either pay a US
| entity they own, or we pay a company as a vendor in that
| country, and that company takes care of paying the individuals.
| We also have a few direct international contractors for whom we
| ensure we're compliant on the US side of things, but they're
| responsible for everything on their side of the equation.
|
| One thing to understand about fully remote is that it can mean
| a lot of things to HR. For example, if they approve 100%
| remote, does that mean you're outside of an office? Outside of
| a city? Outside of a state? Country? Are you nomadic?
|
| I can tell you that when I was previously employed by a company
| where one of my conditions was I want to be 100% remote in
| another state, the agreement was I was hired in State A, and
| then my boss didn't enforce butts in seats, and they ignored
| that I was in State B from their side of the fence, and I paid
| taxes in State B. It was illegal, and I wouldn't recommend
| doing this.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Yep, I figured that it's not the best idea to pretend to be
| working in country A while actually living in country B.
| Health insurance, social security are the Prime issues.
| Besides, the company could get rid of me anytime simply by
| stating that I'm in violation of my contract since I'm not in
| country A.
| ghaff wrote:
| And a number of states are getting much more concerned with
| collecting any taxes they're owed. Someone was even telling
| me that their business travel will be audited on an ongoing
| basis to ensure someone isn't working sufficient days in a
| different state to require a separate tax filing.
|
| In practice, I could almost certainly work from laptop in an
| adjacent state (on my own dime) for a bit and no one would
| care but actively misleading about your address of record is
| not advised.
| bberenberg wrote:
| This is a good point I forgot to mention. We have to be
| careful to never let staff from outside of NY enter the
| state and do any kind of business here or they can hit
| fairly serious tax issues.
| ghaff wrote:
| That seems extreme? I know NY is especially stringent but
| people do attend conferences and the like. I haven't seen
| a few days here and there being an issue AFAIK. I think
| at one point the metric was 14 days but don't even see
| that currently. I'm pretty sure if someone headed to the
| Javits for a day had to file a NY tax return that would
| be pretty much the end of Javits conferences.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| ...and the wiseguys that run things there, er, 'dere,
| would not be happy...
|
| But kidding aside, I feel that the restriction may be an
| overreaction. Lawyers and accountants can sometimes
| overcompensate when it comes to stuff they don't fully
| understand.
|
| I had a friend that wrote a 99-cent iOS app (I don't
| think he made enough to cover hosting and licensing
| fees), and his accountant was a bit "over the top." He
| insisted that my friend could get into serious tax
| jeopardy over the App Store stuff, and insisted that he
| pay about a 50% tax.
|
| Hearing about it was painful. Sounded like the guy needed
| "help," but I'm told that otherwise, he was an
| outstanding accountant.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Kind of. There are companies that provide this service (the
| ability to pay people in different countries). You can Google
| "Employee of Record" (EoR) or "Professional Employer
| Organization". A few more modern providers that cater to tech
| startups specifically are Deel and Pilot. Basically they let
| you pay anyone in any country, and easily draft locally
| compliant contracts. Often they'll ask you to set yourself up
| as a local entity in the company you want to be paid, so you
| might lose some benefits (you'd be more of a contractor than an
| employee).
|
| That said, it's never fully plug-and-play. If you're small
| enough you can skirt some of the complications, but every
| country has very different laws around mandated time off,
| taxes, social security, the ability to classify a worker as a
| contractor vs employee, benefits, protections like whether/how
| you can lay someone off, etc.
|
| So it's doable, but it's not seamless.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check those out!
| lvice wrote:
| I've recently started a remote job with a UK-registered
| company, and I am working from Italy. If the company does not
| have a local office in the country (which mine doesn't), the
| easiest way is just to become a contractor/freelance and send
| invoices for b2b services. I had to hire an accountant to
| manage taxes, but it's doable.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your experience! Unfortunately this
| wouldn't work for me since I need to have a permanent
| employment contract in order to be eligible for the sources
| of income I usually leverage (research grants).
| heipei wrote:
| I am a German living in Germany and worked remotely for a US
| company for a few years before they set up a German subsidiary.
| I was employed by the US corporation (so no employer of
| record), had a bi-lingual work contract which included all the
| necessary clauses for Germany (minimum vacation time, minimum
| termination period, "Probezeit"). My employer paid all social
| security contributions but did not automatically withhold
| income tax as a German company would have done, so I had to pay
| those taxes myself after filing my tax return.
|
| The employer worked with a big-ish professional services
| company who did all the necessary payroll and paperwork for
| them.
|
| Overall it was super smooth and except the taxes nothing was
| different than working for a Germany company. But I know that
| the ease of hiring really depends on each country, and I know
| that the company was only considering opening up remote
| positions in countries where there was an ample talent pool,
| basically where they could except to hire enough people to be
| worth it.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Hey thanks this is exactly what I would need. So it can be
| done - it's just a matter of convincing HR to go the extra
| mile. "Just" ;)
| redisman wrote:
| I worked for a small EU company from the US and what they did
| was that we all set up a "consulting" company (sole proprietor
| is fine for minimal paperwork) and sent invoices to them. Then
| just calculate the rate to cover the normal taxes that you end
| up paying fully. It's not that great since the burden to file
| business taxes is definitely a ton more work than W-2.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| It's a half-truth. Yes, for you to be an _employee_ , they must
| do all of that.
|
| However, in practice, a remote worker can move anywhere, create
| a company (in the country where they live), send invoices and
| get paid. The catch is you need to take care of more taxes and
| admin work and there are none of the employee protections.
| You're essentially providing B2B services.
|
| So, there are no legal issues for your old employer, as long as
| you're comfortable with that. It's mostly that employers would
| rather own you, as that gives them certain rights and benefits
| vs. just purchasing services from a contracting firm.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Thanks! In my case it would indeed be difficult to work as a
| service-provider, since some of the income streams I generate
| require that I have a permanent employment contract with my
| employer.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > However, in practice, a remote worker can move anywhere,
| create a company (in the country where they live), send
| invoices and get paid.
|
| Many countries will forbid that. Employment is characterized
| by more than the wording of a contract.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Plus you have a number of disadvantages - cost of complying
| with commercial laws, likely reduced credit score, no legal
| right to time off, your entire wealth might be on the line
| etc
| doopy1 wrote:
| They just hire them as "contractors" but provide sufficient
| benefits to make up for it.
| matthewowen wrote:
| A lot of remote first companies constrain themselves to certain
| countries. I don't consider that a contradiction: they're still
| remote first, they're still distributed, they just have _some_
| constraint within that.
|
| Beyond that, it's not uncommon for remote first companies to
| "hire" people as independent contractors as workaround to these
| problems.
| ghaff wrote:
| Mitchell Hashimoto has written about this. Think there's at
| least a comment on HN somewhere but don't immediately find.
| Basically _especially_ spanning countries there are a lot of
| considerations and you almost certainly can 't just work
| wherever you want--especially as a full-time employee.
| jobvandervoort wrote:
| If you hire someone in another country, you (employer) must
| fully comply with local labor laws, tax requirements, run
| payroll and pay any local dues in local currency.
|
| This is only solved by either setting up a local office and
| hire local experts yourself, or working with an employer of
| record.
|
| Source: I'm the CEO of Remote.com and we do this for other
| companies across the world, and run all our own entities and
| compliance.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Thanks for the answer and stating your background ;)
|
| I see how this is true in general, but aren't there special
| cases e.g. within the EU, between the EU and the UK, or when
| an employee moves country while still being employed, where
| simpler solutions may exist?
| jobvandervoort wrote:
| Generally: no.
|
| There are cases and/or ways where you can e.g. hire someone
| under a local contract without owning a local entity, but
| that doesn't scale much beyond that, and you'd still need
| to run local payroll somehow, and be locally compliant.
|
| The one big thing the EU solves is mobility: any EU citizen
| can work freely from anywhere else in the EU. That's a
| massive hurdle to cross otherwise.
|
| Beyond that, even between EU countries there are absolutely
| massive differences in labor laws, standards, etc.
| periheli0n wrote:
| Ok. But when working through a EoR, will the employee be
| employed by the EoR or the company for which the work is
| done?
|
| And how is the situation when the employees come in from
| time to time (commuting across borders) but work the
| majority of their time in another country?
| jobvandervoort wrote:
| The employee would be employed by the EoR on paper. Hence
| employer _of record_. But otherwise acts as a normal
| employee of the actual employer.
|
| > And how is the situation when the employees come in
| from time to time (commuting across borders) but work the
| majority of their time in another country?
|
| This is a gross simplification, but: You must comply with
| where you spend the majority of your time. Spending a few
| days/weeks outside of your homebase is normal (see: all
| business travel) and doesn't make you immediately liable.
|
| That said, this gets really complex and murky when you
| think about e.g. nomads or people that really split their
| time between countries.
| ghaff wrote:
| For that matter, I'm not sure how well nomadism AFAICT is
| really handled within the US. Systems are not really
| setup for people to not have permanent addresses with
| respect to things that require them (drivers licenses,
| passports, W-2s, state taxes, etc.). Pre-pandemic I spent
| literally months away from home but I had a clear
| permanent address.
| periheli0n wrote:
| OK, thanks! That's really interesting and helpful. By the
| way, I'm sure you are aware, there's a ton of
| universities in the UK who right now have exactly this
| problem: Lecturers/professors/researchers living
| somewhere in the EU and commuting in for a few days per
| week during the semester. Their HR departments are
| freaking out because of it. They could use some help and
| maybe a special deal :wink: :wink:
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| > Basecamp ... a company that offers 100% remote jobs, their
| employees are scattered across 32 cities in different time zones.
|
| I'm guessing this is no longer accurate.
| fifiriej wrote:
| They are likely hiring though
| alephnan wrote:
| Context ?
| Sebguer wrote:
| A third of the company recently quit:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-
| hand...
| Etheryte wrote:
| While factually correct, I think it helps to highlight that
| Basecamp was a company of about 60 people at that point.
| Without commenting on the clash that lead to this, it is a
| big difference whether 30% of people left at a company of a
| few dozen or a company of thousands.
| WJW wrote:
| Only 30% left and they were about 60 people before that, so it
| _might_ still be true. It 's likely that it's only about 22
| cities now though.
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