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Comment by cornholio | Hacker News Reader

I always wondered why US companies are almost universally interested only in Remote/US candidates when there are millions of qualified world-wide applicants ready to work remotely on US hours. There exists companies that act employers of record allowing you to hire remote workers all over the world, and other than the internet connection lag, there should be no impact for a remote employee.

There must be some untapped business opportunity / startup potential here, US companies are limiting themselves to a small pool of applicants for no apparent reason. Is it because of the cultural differences they perceive? Are the existing EOR services lacking in some regard?

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Most probably the hassle/liability of messing up taxes.

If you are hiring someone abroad the simplest way still is to hire it out as contract work.

That's the service that an employer of record provides: they hire the worker locally and deal with all resulting payroll & tax complications, liability under local labor laws etc. while the US company pays a flat hourly fee to an overseas service provider.

Anecdotally, this is the setup I was offered for a remote job in an EU country different from the one in which I live. They didn't necesarily want a big company, either. They seemed fine with a company-of-one (there's no "freelance" status as far as my country's administration is concerned).

remote.com makes it easy

Whenever I was offered to work through Remote.com or Deel it was forcing me to be employed in their local branch as an employee. Which made the whole thing more complicated (higher taxation than on the direct B2B contract, etc.) and not so lucrative anymore.

That’s the point. You’re employed locally and do work for the remote company.

If you don’t want to work as an employee, then you can enter into a contracting relationship, but employers tend to avoid this because there’s always the risk that the local government determines the contractor is actually an employee and taxes are owed.

True but you still need a willing employer on the receiving end.

Timezone, culture, taxes, regulation.

Also, I see no problems with companies trying to hire domestically. Keeps the money in the country and people are able to buy products, including the ones provided by the company.

Finally, is this only a US thing? Do companies in Europe or Canada hire abroad more willingly?

What makes you believe that this is a US-only phenomenon? I almost never see remote jobs in countries like Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, or Finland that are open to foreign workers in different timezones.

as someone from outside of US, I have the same question as you. Part of the reason for this is time zone issues, legal issues, and some additional management overhead.

But luckily, there are many companies that actually prefer to hire employees from anywhere and are fully globally remote. The problem is discovery because most big remote job boards actually prefer Remote/US jobs as there is lot of money in it.

I built a simple app to curate fully globally remote jobs for global talent to find jobs: https://realworkfromanywhere.com/

Hope it is useful.

Mostly law, taxes, and various regulation. US to US is pretty straightforward, the rest of the world is not.

There are many US companies hiring abroad. But if they make the effort to do this, are they going to hire someone from Europe for $100k/y or just go to the cheapest country and get them for $50k/y or less? They'll go to the cheapest countries, in the same time zone. So.. Latin America. You won't see their job ad.

Lots of compliance issues come up. If you’re dealing with another company’s data, especially a large company, they may not be comfortable with their risk exposure in a “random” country.

US Companies often won't even let US employees work in US States where that company does not already have an office, or is not already set up with some sort of accounting (tax) services.

Also, some US Companies don't allow US Citizens to work remotely abroad due to data restrictions or other concern about sensitive data regulations.

Because Americans like working with other Americans why does there need to be a reason. Its simple and easy, shared culture, same laws for the most part, shared expectations, ease of communication both time and language. Why do we need to justify it!

Because it does not make economic sense. Also because that is comically inward looking and has a whiff of racism about it on the "shared culture" side..

I'm not sure where you took your sociology class but you ought to know that culture != race. Next time, you might try to respond directly to the person's statements instead of attempting to discredit them through unwarranted accusations of racism.

the distinction I think you're trying to make isn't necessarily racism, but a bias toward ignorance-promoting tendencies to remain ignorant which can have the same result: insulation of thoughts, ideas, decisionmaking from outside views

i don't think it's wrong to say that you could probably find some improvement from an outside perspective and that you may be missing something if you aren't, but I don't think it's a simple enough problem that you can reduce aversion towards change to any single motivation without trying to understand their reasoning

The US economy is not struggling and is not here to serve your interests.

It absolutely make "economic sense" to pay domestic salaries and keep the wealth in the country.

noooo you need to sell out your countryman to the unwashed masses over zoom calls until even you, the middle management, gets replaced

Is this a troll account?

No its not! Its a God Fearing Rooting Tooting All American Boy account

C'mon this is a bit too on the nose isn't it?

Is it also wrong to prefer buying products made in your country?

>a whiff of racism about it

Be sure to tell the interviewer this during your next interview with a US company. Surely doing so will cause them to hire you immediately.

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