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.
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/
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).
I'm employed by their NZ subsidiary so tax and employment law is all straightforward.
My initial salary offering was above local market, but definitely not SV levels.
In terms of timezone alignment, most communication is async, but there are some evening video calls, but 1 - 2 a week at most.
If you've got a way I can contact you - a reddit account would be fine, can see if my company might be up your alley.
Any chance you'd be keen to share some details?
hn at maha dot nz
You can contact me at [redacted]
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)
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)
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.
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
I get all the legal benefits from being employed in my country and the advantages of working for a US company.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A true freelancer generally completes individual work packages for multiple clients, and is free to complete the work any way they like, for instance by subcontracting it to another suitably qualified person.
If it were legal, all employers would declare all their employees "freelancers" and therby evade all employment regulations regarding notice periods, dismissal, vacation, sick pay, parental leave etc.
Your "employer" needs to employ you according to German labor laws either via their own German subsidiary, or an employer of record.
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.
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.
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.
If HQ salary > local salary, the government just gets more taxes.
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.
Whereas if I am working for $100k then that compensates if I'm in a different timezone and perhaps not up to the skill level of a SF local.
I don't think time zone has anything to do. Hell, even local devs have a reputation of having biological clocks all over the place. Skills definitively matters however.
I actually found this startup on GitHub bc I was looking for projects that use Clojure.
But I also got some offers from Angelist as well.
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.
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.
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.
At one company the payment structure and PTO was exactly as if I was an employee, other one it’s per hour.
Famous example: GitHub.
Actually, for us they are contractors. We only have W-2 employees here in the US.
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)
Would you mind sending me an email at stefan@stefanyas.me?