Hacker News Reader

Comment by abuiles | Hacker News Reader

Have you tried writing to the companies who say "remote" in the "Who's hiring thread"? What do they say?

Many of those that say "remote" also specify that it is US-only.

I am wondering why.

And I don't tried to actually get hired yet (I have a startup, that yes, is running out of money, but no, I won't give up that easily :P)

But I am paying attention, as plan D in case my startup fails in plan A, B and C.

It's much less paperwork and trouble hiring somebody who has a U.S. work permit when you're a U.S. company. No worrying about e.g. Brazil's employment or tax laws. That's basically it. Boring and unfortunate, but true.

Hired as an employee - yes.

Hired as an independent contractor - no. Then the boring bits are to do with the independent contractor who has to just satisfy the hiring company they are compliant with Brazilian laws

I'm hardly an expert in Brazilian law, but in e.g. the Scandinavian countries, the company must register itself if it is paying more than one such contractor, i.e. paperwork. I'm sure there are other compliance issues judging from how adamant virtually every U.S. employer is that their candidates have U.S. work permits.

I work from the UK for a US company. They are not registered here, I had to fill in some forms with the US IRS but apart from that it was plain sailing.

Job advertised on LinkedIn, Interview on Skype, contract by email, never actually met my co-workers. Its the future folks !!

Yeah I've even seen pushback hiring from additional US states as there is more paperwork if the company doesn't already have employees there.

It is a much better set up if the overseas worker can set up their own company, especially in the case of Brazil. Then the US company does not need to worry about any of this, they simply wire (via SWIFT) payments monthly, for example, and there is very little overhead to the US company.

In the case of Brazil, the worker is also better off in this set up in general, as they'll end up paying a corporate tax rate, which will be much lower.

In theory this seems like an excellent idea. But in practice its a bad idea, for the very same reason as doing this for all your US employees is a bad idea. Generally if a person works exclusively for a company on an ongoing basis then they are an employee in the eyes of the law.

What about oDesk? It's as simple as using your credit card.

It's not so much the U.S. employment issues as it is the international/cross-border financial transactions compliance issues. Cross-border payments are generally subject to significantly greater (tax) compliance requirements and the penalties for non-compliance are generally steeper than they are for purely domestic compliance failures.

When you have int'l employees, you have all that plus the additional headache of figuring out which nation's employment laws apply to your employee, and when, and in what proportion. Thus, a US employer might have to pay FICA/Social Security for a foreign employee, or it may have to pay the foreign nation's simlar such employment/payroll taxes. The fees for the legal/tax advice could easily be a multiple of the foreign employee's salary, as could the penalties for non-compliance.

Could you please link to the "Who's hiring" thread, I can't seem to find a recent one and I'd like to take a look, thanks.

Just search "remote" in http://hnhiring.com/

I did not know this existed =| Seems like alot of companies are definitely jumping on the bandwagon now

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

Reply on news.ycombinator.com