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Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

It'd be nice if remote working opportunities didn't come with national borders. The border-less nature of the Internet and knowledge-based work doesn't seem to require geographic location and yet due to complex logistical restrictions most of these job postings are US-only.

Kind of a weird place to be.

I wonder if there's some kind of hack that could allow small companies and startups to get around the policy issues without getting various regional governments upset with them.

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It's not even governmental stuff; one of the sticking points we have is our payroll package, which doesn't support foreign places like "Wyoming", "other countries", and "Indiana."

The same issue probably applies to our health insurance plan - it's only useful in the U.S. and would also be expensive to change.

A health insurance plan isn't much of a perk for many countries outside of the US that have universal health care.

In that scenario I wouldn't care if that was only available to in-country employees, the same way that I wouldn't care about missing out on perks like catered lunches.

It's difficult to hack around a state's desire for tax revenue

Remote doesn't generally mean completely de-coupled. For us it's more of a timezone issue than anything else. It's still very handy to have people who can meet and collaborate at least for a decent chunk of the day. Which means for a company in the United States getting farther away than western Europe is a real challenge.

I am currently working in a team with people from three continent. It works if people are willing to adapt.

How does that work day to day out of curiosity? What does collaboration look like for you guys?

Daily scrum meetings in voice calls with about ten team members. Weekly team meeting (voice calls) for organizational stuff. We have to plan for time zone differences for that (up to five different time zones). Voice calls on different topics during the day if needed (like discussions regarding requirements). Email and messenger for things like bug reports (bug tracker also) and clarification requests or other short queries. We have face to face meetings occasionally like every few months, but very rarely with the whole team.

> "I wonder if there's some kind of hack"

There is: international tax lawyers. There are rarely real prohibitions on employing people who live outside of your own borders. The main disincentive for companies to hire outside of their own country is potentially severely increasing their tax complexity.

> The main disincentive for companies to hire outside of their own country is potentially severely increasing their tax complexity.

It's not just taxes but also varying labour laws.

The internet might be international, but you are not.

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