Yeah for smaller companies this is the norm. Even within Europe, if you work for a company in another country it will usually be as a contractor on paper, as i

Yeah for smaller companies this is the norm. Even within Europe, if you work for a company in another country it will usually be as a contractor on paper, as it's a lot of work to setup payroll etc for one person (it needs to be done in each country). A lot of the time you can end up paying less taxes that way compared to an employee though, so it might actually be in OPs advantage.