[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Anyone working remotely for a US company int...
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Ask HN: Anyone working remotely for a US company internationally?
I've been working for small(ish) startups based in the US
internationally and have had no issues. (I work as a contractor
essentially) I was wondering if anyone's got an arrangement like
this going with a larger organization? I'm looking to switch jobs
and try working somewhere a tad bigger.
Author : anonymous2324
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-10-22 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
| mettamage wrote:
| Are there non-Americans doing this?
| crummy wrote:
| Yes, if you're a contractor your lack of a US passport doesn't
| seem to matter (in my limited experience).
| anonymous2324 wrote:
| I'm a non-American :)
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I am. Full time US citizen software developer living in Asia for
| the past 3 years. Get paid to a US bank account. Country I'm in
| isn't good at collecting taxes.
| anonymous2324 wrote:
| This doesn't really apply to me as I'm not a US Citizen or a
| Green Card holder, but out of curiosity. Are you on a payroll
| in your home state and pay state + federal taxes or are you
| paid as a contractor similar to what I do?
| digianarchist wrote:
| Most people do pay taxes in their home country.
|
| You can't be a tax resident of nowhere. In Canada to become a
| nonresident for tax purposes you need to establish tax
| residency elsewhere.
| anonymous2324 wrote:
| Yeah that's what digital nomads do. I live long term in the
| country I am located in so there's little doubt on where I
| need to pay my taxes.
|
| Actually for Americans the rules are bit different in that
| Uncle Sam wants his cut even if they live overseas (over a
| certain amount IIRC) but for the rest of us it's purely
| residence based.
| vaibhavsagar wrote:
| Yup, I'm doing this. I was living in the US when I interviewed in
| Feb 2020 but as an Australian citizen on an E-3 visa I had to
| leave the country to get a new one and then the pandemic
| happened. So far my employer has been happy to have me work
| remotely but the timezone offset has been pretty brutal and I'm
| only doing this because I hope to move back at some point early
| next year.
| tombert wrote:
| I don't know if this counts, but I had to spend two weeks in
| Juarez Mexico last month for my wife's green card interview, and
| I spent a majority of that working for a US megacorporation.
| We're all remote-first anyway, so most of my coworkers didn't
| know/care about where I was located geographically. Only thing
| that was a bit irritating for me was having to work in a
| different time-zone.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Companies usually only care about your fiscal residence. When
| you were away traveling, that didn't change so it's rarely a
| problem for getting paid.
| remotrq wrote:
| I'm wondering, how is this kind of contract structured? Do they
| say "work X hours a week, we'll pay you X" like a normal
| employee? Or do you bill for variable hours (up to a maximum)
| where you fill up a log? Or something else? I've only ever
| experienced full time/part time so I'm curious.
| taylorhou wrote:
| my company has almost 50 full time in the US and 120+ full time
| internationally. x2-3 in the next 12-18 months. hiring for pretty
| much every possible role and willing to be creative/flexible. dm
| me to chat!
|
| apmhelp.com is our core service (think bookkeeping/maintenance
| coordination for rental properties)
|
| fyxed.com is a fintech product we're launching soon (think pipe
| but for rental properties)
| crummy wrote:
| I do this, in NZ, for a 15ish person company. I 'contract' but my
| contract says I get a monthly rate not hourly, and I get
| holidays, a couple other benefits. I pay taxes myself. My work
| sends me my 'salary' with transferwise every month.
|
| That said I read about Pilot which lets you be an actual
| employee. They provide the tax presence that so many companies
| want to avoid. https://pilot.co/
| RileyJames wrote:
| I'm based in NZ too, how do you go with time zones?
|
| I've noticed many US companies hiring remote still specify
| employees to live within a range of time zones. And I haven't
| seen those include NZ (+13, yes the edge of tomorrow)
|
| In practice, I've found collaborating with US colleagues fine.
| There's a 3-4 hour overlap (our morning, their end of day).
| mettamage wrote:
| Curious question: does that also mean you get US salaries between
| $100K - $120K?
| anonymous2324 wrote:
| Currently I'm making under $100K but I realized I'm getting
| severely underpaid. I'm currently interviewing at a bunch of
| places offering salaries ranging between $120K on the low end
| up to over $170K on the high end. They are all startups hence
| this question as I was wondering if bigger organizations would
| be worth looking into as well.
| digaozao wrote:
| How did you found these opportunities? Some network of
| friends? Or regular stackoverflow jobs or another portal?
| msbarnett wrote:
| Yeah, I'm making above that USD, as a Canadian remotely for a
| company in the US.
| itake wrote:
| In 2017, I had $132k USD/yr salary working in Vietnam full
| time. I am sure you can negotiate a lower salary if you don't
| want to earn more than $120k.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| This might be a bit personal but, honestly, what is the QoL
| like with that level of income?
|
| I've been to a few Asian nations previously and was extremely
| impressed how well one could eat on such a small amount of
| money. I had never seriously considered staying long-term,
| due to complications you may be familiar with, but I would
| imagine you can live pretty well with that kind of pay.
| itake wrote:
| I have always lived my life frugally (at the cost of QoL)
| in all of my adventures both domestically and
| internationally, with that said, in VN to have a more
| "western" level of comfort, the costs equal or surpass the
| costs in a western country.
|
| Quality of goods, services, and properties are measurably
| lower and you need to spend more to keep the life style you
| want. There are things that we get in the USA insanely
| cheaply, but over there its really expensive. Items like
| Motrin, cars, electronics, and good mattresses are
| difficult to find or measurably more expensive.
|
| Just to throw a few examples, there are no Apple stores in
| Vietnam and the Apple products sold in official apple
| stores in Thailand or Singapore are measurably more
| expensive due to import taxes and higher prices.
|
| The home construction was low quality and always had pests
| and mold. Even the new apartments were rushed together and
| often never completed.
|
| I loved my time there and look forward to returning, but
| you have to compromise in both career development and life
| style.
| mettamage wrote:
| I need to find myself a remote US job then :D
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Any company that tries to play games with CoL is a red flag, to
| be honest.
|
| It basically mean they can't attract the best everywhere (since
| you know top performers are already working for SF level comp
| for remote companies) so good luck competing.
| klyrs wrote:
| I know somebody working in Canada, getting paid the same as
| other seniors at an SF-based startup. It's quite a bit more
| than that range. The lease on the startup's SF office came up
| as the pandemic hit, so they vacated the premises and used the
| considerable savings to hire more developers.
| gtirloni wrote:
| It depends. Some companies pay local salaries, others just keep
| paying whatever they pay at HQ.
| jbn wrote:
| can't really do this for very long. the local country will
| usually want to collect its own business/employment taxes on
| employed work.
| gtirloni wrote:
| It varies by country and your fiscal status, but as long as
| you pay taxes on your earnings, you're usually fine.
|
| If HQ salary > local salary, the government just gets more
| taxes.
| ssijak wrote:
| I'm working for a US startup remotely from Eastern Europe. From
| my experience it is easier to find startup remote jobs and I
| don't mind to be honest.
| ases wrote:
| I'm working for a smaller US company (hitting 100 people across
| the whole organisation soon), as a remote employee in the UK.
|
| The arangement is a third party hires me as an employee in the
| UK, where I receive all the British employment rights (holidays,
| etc), and I just work for the US company. This is a fairly new
| thing for them, previously they had only taken on non-US persons
| through contracting companies.
|
| I would guess that if larger companies were going to hire abroad,
| they would either have a local setup to manage payroll or do
| something similar to where I am now. No idea how many are really
| offering something like that.
| lordnacho wrote:
| What is the benefit to this? Why don't you just make your own
| UK corp? Then you can write off a load of stuff against the
| company, get VAT back, and decide what dividend you want to
| get.
| billbobob wrote:
| Where do you find your contract US startup jobs? All I see is
| full time jobs on angel list. Maybe I'm not looking in the right
| place?
| anonymous2324 wrote:
| All jobs on AngelList are potentially contract if you're
| outside the US. Unless they want to set up a subsidiary for you
| (they won't) or use a global PEO (some do want to do this but
| most are happy with a direct contract in my experience).
| itake wrote:
| I get lucky on slack sometimes.
| xunn0026 wrote:
| The higher the org the lower the chances they would accept such
| an arrangement. Some allow remote work but expect you to be an
| employee which becomes impossible if you are from a country where
| they have no base so they can't legally hire you.
| gtirloni wrote:
| The pandemic created a lot more remote jobs but they often come
| with strings attached (e.g. US only), exactly because of what
| you said.
|
| Famous example: GitHub.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| I'm surprised people are now discovering Deel, Pilot, etc. The
| so-called "professional employer organizations" have existed for
| a long, long time.
| mac01021 wrote:
| You can work for Disney's DMED, which is a very large IT/software
| organization. You would have to become a contractor through one
| of the agencies they work with - "Happiest Minds" or "Globant"
| were the two I saw used when I was there.
|
| My current employer, Rigetti Computing, has I think 100-200
| employees and has a few that are working from the UK, Australia,
| or Canada. But I think they would have to be especially
| interested in you to let you work from abroad as a new hire.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Their website doesnt have a list of jobs. Do you know where
| Disney's DMED posts them? Thank you
| mac01021 wrote:
| https://jobs.disneycareers.com/search-jobs/dmed/391/1/1
| paulschreiber wrote:
| Globant was mostly low-paid low-quality folks. Probably not a
| good fit.
| halfdan wrote:
| I have done this from 2015-2020 for two different US based
| startups. The most recent one got acquired by an entity that has
| a German HQ and I'm now attached to that.
|
| Both startups were Bay area based, around 50-100 people in size.
| Comp was about five to ten percent below bay area standards but I
| was making north of $180k/yr in the end.
|
| Setup was similar to yours. I was treated as a contractor. There
| were a few things I had to do to make this legal on the German
| side but not overly complicated.
|
| Got to travel a lot (including a round the world trip in 2017
| while working remotely) and frequent visits to the US were the
| norm.
| ilyanoskov wrote:
| Could you please point to how to make such an arrangement legal
| in Germany? I thought it's only allowed for 18 months to work
| as a contractor only for one company?
|
| Or please send me a brief email, I have been looking for quite
| a while for a solution to this.
|
| Thank you very much in advance.
| noway_norway wrote:
| Following this. I just started working remotely for a US
| based company while living in Germany. Thought this was
| perfectly fine as long as I register as a "freelancer" in
| Germany?
| icosahedron wrote:
| We have some employees in Canada, so they're still in North
| America, but they work internationally.
|
| Actually, for us they are contractors. We only have W-2 employees
| here in the US.
| tmaly wrote:
| I have two people in India working on my team. They are both
| remote right now.
| CubityFirst wrote:
| Doing stuff @ Reddit via this sort of thing.
| Gengar wrote:
| I might have been an international Reddit employee also had the
| recruiter not ghosted me when I gave times available for
| interview!
| egman_ekki wrote:
| Maybe try Automattic if you don't mind working with WordPress,
| PHP and JS. 1500+ people, lots of autonomy, hiring for a lot of
| roles.
|
| https://automattic.com/work-with-us/
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/19/automattic-tc1/
| unoti wrote:
| I work for Microsoft in Redmond USA, and have had team members I
| work with daily who are outside the US.
| soneca wrote:
| I am, but also on a small startup. I think any larger
| organization will be more worried about the risks mentioned in
| the comments of this Ask HN that I posted recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898198
|
| My experience is that the sweet spot is a small organization that
| embraces global remote and don't care much about hiring
| contractors full time, but not actively look for outside of US
| candidates.
|
| Medium to large companies neither want to establish presence in
| other countries nor hire contractors full time.
|
| Very large companies do not hire contractors full time but might
| establish presence in a few selected countries (paying local
| rates mostly). Stripe seems an exception that created that
| "remote hub" that would hire anywhere.
|
| Small startups that actively look for full time contractors
| outside the US usually pay just slightly above the local market
| rate (they are hoping to get the margin of the salary arbitrage
| for themselves).
|
| So,small startups that explicitly hire remote, but mostly
| advertise they jobs to American audience, but are open to hire
| remote globally. "Who is hiring" thread seems a good place to
| find those (by filtering out all the _"Remote(US)"_ ones)
| anonymous2324 wrote:
| Looking into Stripe haha. But you're right smaller companies
| are much more flexible. I don't think I'll have much trouble
| getting a job at one of the smaller ones. Just wondering if I
| should try bigger ones too.
|
| Like you say the ones that cater to American audiences are
| good. Even if it says Remote(US) if it's a smaller company then
| you can still get a job there if you can sell yourself well.
| You may need to be flexible with your working hours if you're
| in a different timezone though. (I don't mind working US hours
| but for some people this may be a dealbreaker)
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I work for a small(ish) US company here in Iceland as a full time
| employee. And sometime prior to that I worked for Autodesk also
| as a full time employee for a small satellite office here after a
| startup was aquired.
| mattnewport wrote:
| We have a few people working as contractors internationally but
| it's a bit painful for both the US company and the international
| contractors. We're just starting to try a new approach using Deel
| https://www.letsdeel.com/
|
| It's too early to give a full endorsement of them as we're just
| going through the process for the first couple of employees but
| it seems promising so far and simplifies things for both the US
| company (a 100+ employee 5 year old startup) and the employees
| who have a simpler tax situation typically under this
| arrangement.
| necovek wrote:
| From what I can see, their guide for contractors to set up in
| Serbia (https://www.letsdeel.com/blog/how-to-set-up-as-an-
| entreprene...) is outdated (2019 law changes are not taken into
| account) and even incorrect (VAT taxation limit of 8M RSD is
| not the same as fixed-taxation-if-total-revenue-of-less-
| than-6M-RSD), even though it says it was written on Oct 18th
| 2021.
|
| It also does not seem to help anyone in Serbia at all:
| basically, the article, other than being incorrect, suggests
| the things I had to do on my own (i.e. set up a company, and it
| has to be at least a Ltd/doo company since the start of 2020).
| I was hoping they'd incorporate in each of their "supported
| countries" and simply offer "regular employment".
|
| Basically, what I am saying is that they might be ripping you
| off :D
| MrRiddle wrote:
| I'm from Serbia, I've been working with US clients for a
| decade. I'm wondering why you're not just sending Wire each
| month and call it a day?
|
| It's up to the employee to choose their tax status, they can
| become entrepreneurs, open LLC or simply report wire transfers
| quarterly as an individual.
| necovek wrote:
| I was mostly highlighting how LetsDeel service is not really
| "selling much" for hires in Serbia -- I am not sure what's
| the value add in other countries.
|
| There are many ways to set up in Serbia, but for something
| resembling actual _employment_ (which the topic is about),
| you are basically prohibited from using an entreprenuership
| since 2020, so you can either set up a LLC or take on a huge
| tax burden by self-reporting taxes.
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(page generated 2021-10-22 23:02 UTC)