Ask HN: Anyone working remotely for a US company internationally?

[anonymous2324]

I've been working for small(ish) startups based in the US internationally and have had no issues. (I work as a contractor essentially)

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.

[egman_ekki]

Maybe try Automattic if you don't mind working with WordPress, PHP and JS. 1500+ people, lots of autonomy, hiring for a lot of roles.

https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/19/automattic-tc1/

[crummy]

I do this, in NZ, for a 15ish person company. I 'contract' but my contract says I get a monthly rate not hourly, and I get holidays, a couple other benefits. I pay taxes myself. My work sends me my 'salary' with transferwise every month.

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/

[RileyJames]

I’m based in NZ too, how do you go with time zones?

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).

[EdwardDiego]

Kiwi here, I work for a large US company, full time remote, nearly all of my team is in Europe - UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Czechia, but I often collaborate with staff in Australia and their NZ sales teams also.

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.

[mahalol]

Hey man, I'm a Kiwi as well and have been considering an arrangement like this as I'd like my next job to be full remote and unfortunately this hasn't yet been a thing in NZ (Don't see many full remote jobs on Seek)

Any chance you'd be keen to share some details?

hn at maha dot nz

[handsondev]

a bit of a tangent here - I have been looking for such opportunities but most of those are restricted to US remote - would you be able to share any pointer where to find such opportunities? I am a backend dev with Java/Python/Clojure experience. Thanks!

[nullaf]

I would love to learn more about details.

You can contact me at [redacted]

[soneca]

I am, but also on a small startup. I think any larger organization will be more worried about the risks mentioned in the comments of this Ask HN that I posted recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898198

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)

[anonymous2324]

Looking into Stripe haha. But you're right smaller companies are much more flexible. I don't think I'll have much trouble getting a job at one of the smaller ones. Just wondering if I should try bigger ones too.

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)

[mattnewport]

We have a few people working as contractors internationally but it's a bit painful for both the US company and the international contractors. We're just starting to try a new approach using Deel https://www.letsdeel.com/

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.

[necovek]

From what I can see, their guide for contractors to set up in Serbia (https://www.letsdeel.com/blog/how-to-set-up-as-an-entreprene...) is outdated (2019 law changes are not taken into account) and even incorrect (VAT taxation limit of 8M RSD is not the same as fixed-taxation-if-total-revenue-of-less-than-6M-RSD), even though it says it was written on Oct 18th 2021.

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

[MrRiddle]

I’m from Serbia, I’ve been working with US clients for a decade. I’m wondering why you’re not just sending Wire each month and call it a day?

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.

[halfdan]

I have done this from 2015-2020 for two different US based startups. The most recent one got acquired by an entity that has a German HQ and I'm now attached to that.

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.

[ilyanoskov]

Could you please point to how to make such an arrangement legal in Germany? I thought it’s only allowed for 18 months to work as a contractor only for one company?

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.

[mac01021]

You can work for Disney's DMED, which is a very large IT/software organization. You would have to become a contractor through one of the agencies they work with - "Happiest Minds" or "Globant" were the two I saw used when I was there.

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.

[gtirloni]

Their website doesnt have a list of jobs. Do you know where Disney's DMED posts them? Thank you

[paulschreiber]

Globant was mostly low-paid low-quality folks. Probably not a good fit.

[sintezcs]

I’m based in Russia, and looks like it’s a big problem for finding a remote job, even for an experienced developers (I have 12+ years experience). I’ve already spent a number of months, looking for remote jobs in EU and US companies. And I got zero interview invites from US companies. As for EU-based, most of them require you to relocate to EU, or, sometimes they work with non-EU citizens, but the salary range will be about €50-70K for Senior level positions (which is less than I have now…) I had only ONE interview with a EU startup, that was hiring outside of EU and offered 100k+ for senior/lead positions, but unfortunately I was not a good match for this position because of the specific technologies. So I’m still continuing my search.

[vaibhavsagar]

Yup, I'm doing this. I was living in the US when I interviewed in Feb 2020 but as an Australian citizen on an E-3 visa I had to leave the country to get a new one and then the pandemic happened. So far my employer has been happy to have me work remotely but the timezone offset has been pretty brutal and I'm only doing this because I hope to move back at some point early next year.

[mettamage]

Curious question: does that also mean you get US salaries between $100K - $120K?

[908B64B197]

Yes.

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.

[anonymous2324]

Currently I'm making under $100K but I realized I'm getting severely underpaid. I'm currently interviewing at a bunch of places offering salaries ranging between $120K on the low end up to over $170K on the high end. They are all startups hence this question as I was wondering if bigger organizations would be worth looking into as well.

[itake]

In 2017, I had $132k USD/yr salary working in Vietnam full time. I am sure you can negotiate a lower salary if you don't want to earn more than $120k.

[klyrs]

I know somebody working in Canada, getting paid the same as other seniors at an SF-based startup. It's quite a bit more than that range. The lease on the startup's SF office came up as the pandemic hit, so they vacated the premises and used the considerable savings to hire more developers.

[fy20]

I'm in Eastern Europe working for a US company earning just over $100k/yr. Been working for this company for 4 years now. Before that I was working as a contractor in the UK earning more, but wanted something remote and more relaxed :-)

[gtirloni]

It depends. Some companies pay local salaries, others just keep paying whatever they pay at HQ.

[msbarnett]

Yeah, I'm making above that USD, as a Canadian remotely for a company in the US.

[qnkhuat]

I recently just got an offer from an SF-based startup, I'm so excited about it because I love the product and the fact that it is open-source. My comp is a bit adjusted by my location (Vietnam) but it's still six figures.

[qnkhuat]

Sure, It’s Metabase(https://github.com/metabase). Our stack is Clojure and javascript.

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.

[longnguyen]

Do you mind if I ask which startup is that? How did you find these remote opportunities?

[theonething]

six figures in Vietnam is amazing. Congrats!

[ases]

I'm working for a smaller US company (hitting 100 people across the whole organisation soon), as a remote employee in the UK.

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.

[lordnacho]

What is the benefit to this? Why don't you just make your own UK corp? Then you can write off a load of stuff against the company, get VAT back, and decide what dividend you want to get.

[zxspectrum1982]

I'm surprised people are now discovering Deel, Pilot, etc. The so-called "professional employer organizations" have existed for a long, long time.

[idontwantthis]

I am. Full time US citizen software developer living in Asia for the past 3 years. Get paid to a US bank account. Country I’m in isn’t good at collecting taxes.

[anonymous2324]

This doesn't really apply to me as I'm not a US Citizen or a Green Card holder, but out of curiosity. Are you on a payroll in your home state and pay state + federal taxes or are you paid as a contractor similar to what I do?

[nsonha]

the IRS does though, and your income is in an US bank?

[tombert]

I don't know if this counts, but I had to spend two weeks in Juarez Mexico last month for my wife's green card interview, and I spent a majority of that working for a US megacorporation. We're all remote-first anyway, so most of my coworkers didn't know/care about where I was located geographically. Only thing that was a bit irritating for me was having to work in a different time-zone.

[gtirloni]

Companies usually only care about your fiscal residence. When you were away traveling, that didn't change so it's rarely a problem for getting paid.

[billbobob]

Where do you find your contract US startup jobs? All I see is full time jobs on angel list. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place?

[anonymous2324]

All jobs on AngelList are potentially contract if you're outside the US. Unless they want to set up a subsidiary for you (they won't) or use a global PEO (some do want to do this but most are happy with a direct contract in my experience).

[remotrq]

I'm wondering, how is this kind of contract structured? Do they say "work X hours a week, we'll pay you X" like a normal employee? Or do you bill for variable hours (up to a maximum) where you fill up a log? Or something else? I've only ever experienced full time/part time so I'm curious.

[MrRiddle]

It’s up for negotiations, it can literally be anything.

At one company the payment structure and PTO was exactly as if I was an employee, other one it’s per hour.

[mettamage]

Are there non-Americans doing this?

[crummy]

Yes, if you're a contractor your lack of a US passport doesn't seem to matter (in my limited experience).

[anonymous2324]

I'm a non-American :)

[xunn0026]

The higher the org the lower the chances they would accept such an arrangement. Some allow remote work but expect you to be an employee which becomes impossible if you are from a country where they have no base so they can't legally hire you.

[gtirloni]

The pandemic created a lot more remote jobs but they often come with strings attached (e.g. US only), exactly because of what you said.

Famous example: GitHub.