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Comment by arcsin | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder what is the reason that they ask for US-based. One possible reason I've heard is that it makes taxes and certain laws easier for them to follow, in which case it sounds like more a matter of being a US citizen rather than actually living in the US. Another reason I've seen is that they still want you to be available to come into the office every so often, which would be a different story.

Are there any people here who are US citizens but living abroad that have applied to these companies? What was the response?

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There are a couple reasons:

1. Admin overhead - You need to setup presence in all the countries you have employees in. This costs time and money.

2. Timezone overlap - It's somewhat common wisdom that remote teams need to have overlapping timezones (no more than 3-4 hours out) to be effective. US vs EU difference is just too great (+8 hours from west coast of the US).

Source: I work for a US based company as a full time remote employee in the EU. Applied to many places that told me US only, despite very good qualifications. This one I got into because they have a lot of EU teams.

>You need to setup presence in all the countries you have employees in.

For that reason, many non-US remote workers are technically contractors.

Health care is another consideration. Many insurance companies are (in practice) US only or even subset-of-US only. That’s been one of the hurdles for us when we hire remotely (which is generally of the form “excellent current employee wants to move and we want them to keep working for us”)

That shouldn't really be a criteria, since at least in Europe there's no such thing as having your employer provide a healthcare plan for you.

I’m pretty sure we do provide supplemental healthcare coverage for some of our EU employees. (I remember signing the contract for it, but the Benefits group does the negotiation and selection.)

Not the case in Germany, as I understand it.

I would say one of the benefits of hiring somebody remotely is that the employer doesn't need to care about 401K and health insurance. The company pays the worker a salary and the remote worker takes care of their own taxes, pension and health care. The downside is that the remote worker is a contractor and not a real employee.

If you're not providing and handling benefits, you need to pay a higher salary. But maybe still lower than you'd pay a normal contractor? Rule of thumb for contractors is generally 2x equivalent W2 salary, right? I assume that multiple doesn't hold up for remote employees who are classed as contractors legally but don't have all the business development expenses of a normal contractor.

Employer-provided healthcare isn't a thing outside the US (in general). Almost all developed countries have socialised healthcare, and those that don't still don't have the US system that risks losing your healthcare if you change jobs (in that employees don't depend on it as the only healthcare they can get).

Not entirely true. Many developed countries even with excellent public systems still have very active private medical insurance. Like UK and Australia. This can provide benefits like access to private hospitals, choosing your medical professional, shorter waiting time, reduced cost for elective treatment.

I live in Australia, yes we have private health insurance but there are three important factors that make it different to the US system:

* You don't depend on it for all of your healthcare, it's an additional extra so that you can get some level of coverage for non-GP visits (as well as easier access to private hospitals).

* It's not provided by your employer, which is the most major difference. You can quit your job and you still have your healthcare. You also aren't scared that a new employer won't hire you because you happen to be sick and need healthcare.

* Because the government can push down prices of drugs and treatments within Medicare, it's also not prohibitively expensive like it is in the US.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned most of those factors in my original comment. Also, you can choose your doctor under Medicare. You don't need private insurance for that (the primary benefit of private insurance is you get coverage for nonessential healthcare and easier access to private hospitals).

All good points regarding Australia. It's worth pointing out over half the Australian population is covered by private medical insurance https://www.canstar.com.au/health-insurance/who-has-health-i... So it's actually very much a thing. And my experience has been the same, more than half our Australian team use the health and well-being allowance we provide them for private medical insurance.

My company administers hundreds of remote workers in over fifty countries. A significant proportion of our clients and employees (in developed countries outside the US) ask us to provide private medical insurance. It's not as big a deal as the USA and not as likely to be a deal breaker when accepting a job, but it's actually quite common in many countries.

I worked remotely from Canada for a California-based company for a while. On the books, they hired me as an independent contractor, but in every other respect I was treated like an employee, with the exception of health insurance benefits (which I found personally and was compensated for in cash by the company).

I would imagine taxes is the case. If they want to hire non-residents (your point about US citizens abroad aside) they'd have to be willing to hire them as contractors.

Related question I've always been too shy to ask until now: assuming you work whatever US hours expected and perform at a high level and are regularly reachable, in this situation what are the stakes and implications (as a US citizen) of lying and saying you're US based when you're not?

I think the ramifications would be around the more general tenets of being a good employee which are "trustworthy" and "never making your boss look bad". For a hypothetical example, your boss and your company thinks you live in Vermont. One day, your boss' boss is impressed by your work (so efficient, so responsive during work hours) and asks her directly to bring you in for a look at another struggling project on the West Coast. He wants you to come in for an emergency triage/kickoff meeting tomorrow with herself, her boss, your boss, and the management of the current project. Problem is you live in Thailand... There is no good way out of the situation. You have been dishonest. Your make your boss look really bad by not being able to get you to communicate honestly (your location). You went to elaborate lengths to pretend to be in the US. In fact, to disguise your timezone difference, you were using photography lighting to make night look as day in your office in Thailand. You even scheduled your annual medical checkups to coincide with visits to the States. You will likely be fired or worse (sued) and blackballed in the whisper, word of mouth immediate network.

Thanks for that scenario. Those potential ramifications are significant. In that specific case, one could imagine ponying up for a steep same day ticket from Thailand to keep up the ruse. One would expect there would be innumerable psychological tolls to live this way.

What about a subtler case? You begin working as a US based employee, but after enjoying your work and proving your mettle, you take the risky choice to move abroad without informing your company? Or, you have a US based apartment but periodically for a month here and there operate abroad unannounced?

Additional wrinkle: while the expectation is more clear informally, it's not clear to me what US based employment is from a legal standpoint. Is it merely filing your taxes from a US based address?

No, don't do this in any shape or form. If you want to work remote from abroad, tell them. Set expectations as to your performance and availability. Negotiate on their concerns. Don't do it on the sly. Like you mentioned, the mental overhead of lying will impact on your life. Think of it like cheating on your significant other.

In the very slight chance you are already doing this (cannot tell), you need to come clean with your boss immediately, preferably face to face.

You can be fired with cause.

I thought US companies didn't need cause anyway...

That varies state to state. The primary difference in most states is that employers pay I to an unemployment insurance pool that is used to fund unemployment payments to employees that are fired without cause (I.e layoffs). The employers costs for this increase with the number of people they lay off. However if someone is fired with cause, they generally don’t quality for unemployment payments and the company’s rate does not increase.

TLDR yes you can get rid of an employee easily but the costs vary depending on with cause vs without cause.

I've also seen companies that want applicants to be in a location that has large overlap was the US timezones. So South America is fine, Europe/Asia is not. Presumably makes communication a lot easier.

Travel time/cost is another. Many remote positions are still “come to HQ every 2-4 months” and if that takes an extra 2 workdays plus an extra $3K every time, that can easily be a 5 figure loss for the company (or even low 6 inc opportunity cost).

I suspect though it’s mostly familiarity with laws/customs and that by being that remote is sufficient for them to achieve their hiring goals.

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