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Some WFH employees now live in another country
- jeffwask 4y agoEvery modern identity platform tells you where your users are logging in from. Hiding it won't work for long if your company isn't in the stone ages.
- gruez 4y agoThat can be bypassed by using a residential/LTE VPN. They're not as easy to get a hold of as regular VPNs, but if tens of thousands of dollars on the line I think tech workers can manage.
- Temporary_31337 4y agoOr you know just having a small room with a server rented that you ssh or vpn through. I think by the time an employer gets into such arms war with the employees, it’s time to have a hard look in the mirror and see where the CEO is working from. I found that a little surprising and upsetting about CloudFlare for example. The CTO is working from a beach town in Portugal but regular employees are bound to a physical office. And this is 100% ‘cloud’ company where all your work is logging in remotely anyway.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoWhat's upsetting about an employer and employee agreeing on a working arrangement? If you want to work from a beach town in Portugal, negotiate it.
- pessimizer 4y agoFor some people that seems like negotiating an agreement with your employer about changing your hairstyle, or buying a new tv.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoThen find an employer who thinks the same way. If you agree to work for a company that says "your place of employment is X" then you'd better be OK with that. Anything is just rationalization.
- pzh 4y agoIf you ask your employer to work from Lisbon as opposed to SF, you'll likely get a 3x-5x reduction in total compensation. I doubt Cloudflare (or any other) CEO's compensation will get the same readjustment for cost of living if he moves from the SF office to the Lisbon office.
- jgrahamc 4y agoI found that a little surprising and upsetting about CloudFlare for example. The CTO is working from a beach town in Portugal but regular employees are bound to a physical office. Well, that's a pile of shit and completely false. Everything about that is false. I'm in Lisbon not some "beach town" (unless you're counting the capital of Portugal as a beach town). Employees have a huge amount of flexibility on using the Lisbon office or not. And this is 100% ‘cloud’ company where all your work is logging in remotely anyway. Not so sure about that. First meeting I have tomorrow morning is in person with member of the team in Portugal in the office. It's true that I have a lot of video calls, but not really a surprise given that Cloudflare has offices all over the world. We have more than 200 employees in Portugal and I'd guess around 40 in the office at any one time.
- mdrzn 4y agoDo you have an HN Alert about "Cloudflare" appearing in comments?
- jgrahamc 4y agoYes. I have my own mechanism for various things on HN and I get emailed about comments.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoTo be fair, Lisbon is both the capital of Portugal and also sortof a beach town.
- thwawaywfh3958 4y agoI’ve seen people go so far as to rent a SF apartment and setup a vpn to claim location based pay.
- jeffwask 4y agoIt all feels so very fragile. You are one forgetful moment from me seeing an alert for impossible travel.
- jobs_throwaway 4y agoAnd then what? If you care more about compliance than the employee, you fire them and they do the same thing somewhere else a month later.
- jeffwask 4y agoAnd... you don't think there are companies and leadership teams that think this way.
- jobs_throwaway 4y agothere surely are, I just don't think its a big deal for any competent employee
- gruez 4y agoYes, of course. You'd want to claim that you're in the same state/country but live 200 miles away from company offices.
- Nextgrid 4y agoIf you set up your entire home network to tunnel back via the VPN, it's basically bulletproof. The failure mode would be "no connection", not a leak via the local, non-VPN'd connection. You can even maintain an actual air gap between the 2 networks with one device that handles the tunneling and exposes an ethernet port that's only ever bridged to the VPN interface, and the normal router's WAN port connected to that. I have such a setup - the local connections at the end-user sites are inexpensive consumer-grade connections (because they are cheaper and quicker to set up than a proper leased-line which has months of lead time, and you're not going to convince small restaurants/coffee shops that they need to spend 500 bucks/month for a leased line to serve public Wi-Fi) with various bullshit such as filtering, dynamic IP, etc - but the network hardware tunnels back to my infrastructure and abstracts away all the intermediary connections, giving them a "clean" Ethernet port. As a bonus, it can tolerate intermediary connections failing without dropping in-flight TCP connections, since those run over the tunnel rather than the raw interfaces which have gone down.
- pessimizer 4y agoOr you can set up a personal VPN at your apartment. Just tell your AirBnB not to touch the computer in the closet.
- izacus 4y agoWhich then turns this kind of adventure into deliberate (tax and other) fraud with all the consequences that might entail.
- asdff 4y agoPeople in tech have already been doing stuff like working three jobs at once for decades. Sometimes these people will comment on here how they do all this juggling in their careers and keep each employer blind to the other. It's old hat that the tech worker will develop a way to squeeze more money out of their employers. Should be expected at this point.
- justmestanding 4y agoYou would have to be in the stone ages not to heard of VPNs or believe that the origin IP is correct. But maybe I like that you exist. I've helped a few remote workers with this setup. Always a stable VPN - be careful some of the low cost ones - any lifetime bullshit deals - anything listed on stacksocial - anything less $5/m - they change their IP registrations so even if you are connected to SF one day it shows correctly the next the day it shows Pakistan - use something like Mullvad or better yet Tailscale exit node from a stable VPN provider in your specified location of working - heck just setup tailscale on raspberry PI at your parents/friends. Modify route tables so you never hit the web unless connected via VPN, easy on some Asus routers. Adjust the time and TZ on your PC to place of registered work time,that web based homebrew HR system could be doing something crafty . Deep latency hacks - use RDP from place of registered work
- throwaway09223 4y agoIt's not a matter of hiding. Companies do not want to know. I guarantee that in many (likely the vast majority) of these cases someone in management is aware and is pursuing a don't ask don't tell policy because they don't want to deal with the fallout. It's extremely common to work while on a visitor's visa in another country, for example. I bet there is not a single manager reading this comment who has not had one of their employees send work emails while traveling internationally on a visitor's visa. I have several friends who are doing the digital nomad thing, working all over the world while ostensibly traveling on visas that prohibit work. If they officially asked HR, HR would be forced to officially tell them to not work. But they're never going to ask, and their direct managers are never going to report the situation. I know of several situations as well where the employee moved. The company response is pretty much universally "you can't do it so please don't tell us about it because if it's ever put in writing we have to act on it"
- justmestanding 4y ago
- kube-system 4y agoSending an email on vacation is one thing. Setting up residency is something else entirely.
- sfvegandude 4y agoNot to the country you’re visiting. I had to attest to the German government that I would not send any emails or write any reports on my recent work trip there. Else, I needed a work permit.
- kube-system 4y agoI was careful not to say it was allowable to send emails on vacation from anywhere. Because, as you illustrate, it isn’t. I am saying that magnitude of the problem will be significantly more if you lie about residency.
- 4y ago
- an1sotropy 4y agoThe article details the levels of active deception that one of these covertly-overseas employees has gone through, involving virtual environments and VPNs. The rare employees that are this determined are probably more determined than a compliance officer.
- ciabattabread 4y agoI don’t understand why “Matt” would talk to the press if he truly wanted to keep his deception secret. Because once he gets caught and narc’d on by his employer for obtaining a visa under fraudulent pretenses, with this article as evidence, his travel options are gonna get limited.
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago> 66 percent of the 1,500 full-time employees surveyed in the U.S. and U.S. said they did not tell human resources about all the dates they worked outside of their state or country, and 94 percent said they believe they should be able to work wherever they want if their work gets done. This is what it boils down to. If you want a remote workforce, you're not going to be able to keep them confined to some box that you decide is acceptable.
- gadders 4y agoI don't think businesses care, other than issues with taxation if people start working from another country. It's the fault of tax services and governments.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoThey care from a security perspective; good employees can become insider threats if they're in countries where the rule of law is weak.
- jobs_throwaway 4y agoUnless you're working for a defense contractor, in which case they aren't letting you WFH in the first place, foreign governments do not give a shit about your 'insider knowledge'
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoOK, let me rephrase: as a senior manager within the broadly-defined technology security function of a large US company (that is not a defense contractor), I care, as does our board of directors.
- lardo 4y agoI must be idealistic in expecting a senior manager to do better than "Do what you're told because we told you".
- aliqot 4y agoA lot of these negative WFH articles read as if "maybe this next article will make them come back".
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoThe media manipulation is obvious at this point. The quiet quitting meme is perpetuated as part of anti-WFH sentiment as well. It is clear that there's a power struggle playing out, where the Powers That Be desperately wish to pretend like Covid never happened, and the world never changed.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoIs it not in their best interest to act quickly now and accumulate the best brains they can? Maybe I am wrong, but WFH seems to solve a whole lot of issues for businesses, and it's just middle and upper management not coping with it.
- asciimov 4y agoCapital looses so much from people working from home. Easiest to notice is property values. They own or rent huge buildings that will loose value as the need for them decreases. That is capitalism 101. The bigger loss for Capital is leverage and control. If the employee is no longer bound by the shackles of working at a location, they loose the ability to pay them less, to lord over their time, to dictate their needs and will onto their employees. Suddenly Capital is forced to compete non-locally in a way they never had to before.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stemlord 4y agoRight? Covid allowed my employer to offset so many costs onto me
- 4y ago
- collegeburner 4y agotax and compliance concerns are very real. employees need to be transparent so they can personally shoulder the overhead of additional compliance along with all taxes incurred.
- BurningFrog 4y agoSometimes "don't ask, don't tell" is the best policy.
- reaperducer 4y agoI don't disagree, but I was in a situation recently where I needed to WFH from another state for family reasons. I was very honest with my employer about what was happening and why, and gave it plenty of notice. The company wouldn't allow it, for very understandable tax reasons. But my family is more important to me than any company. That's the way human beings are supposed to live their lives. I ended up resigning. The week before I moved, my boss left me a voice mail asking if I could hold off on my job search because the previous-inflexible directors of the company were going to try to work something out. Eventually they did, and now allow anyone in certain positions to work remotely. It turned out that the company had lost several other employees in the previous weeks over remote work, and based on the long list of open positions on the company's web site, it's having trouble replacing people. This is the only time in my life when a good number of employees have had more sway over their jobs than their bosses. It's good to see people everywhere taking advantage of this (in a good way), and leveling the playing field with their companies. Employment is a two-way street. It's not servitude. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to alter society in a way that favors people over profit.
- jen20 4y agoIt doesn’t though: profits for lots of companies during the pandemic were at all time highs, as was productivity. Remote work favors people who deliver, and not those who play politics or like to use the office to keep up social appearances! So both profit and people are addressed by more remote work!
- gamblor956 4y ago
- endisneigh 4y agoFrom the employers perspective the easiest way to get around this is hybrid. Though I sympathize, between this and the whole "I'm going to work multiple jobs concurrently" - it seems the relationship with employers will become even more adversarial than it already is.
- rtev 4y agoIt does seem like a small percentage of bad actors will ruin remote work for everyone.
- dcole2929 4y agoI have no real problems being people wanting to work remotely now and forever but I do think this is going to require a new legal framework to support it. For better or worse there are very real tax issues associated with employees working in states and countries different than what their employer and government believes. A lot of these folks are knowingly or unknowingly dodging taxes in a way that is going to have severe consequences for them and company. Establishing a tax base in a new city or state can put a company on the hook for thousand if not millions of dollars worth of additional taxes. And for the worker if you’re company isn’t withholding the right amount of state federal and local taxes you can find yourself with a huge tax bill at the end of the year.
- creaghpatr 4y agoOn the bright side, we'll have 87,000 new IRS agents to catch these unwitting tax cheats.
- MisterTea 4y agoIts 2022. An AI will automate it.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoYes. Badly, with arbitrary punishments for those it finds out of compliance, and no appeals.
- MisterTea 4y agoI should have included the /s tag as the humor appears to be lost on most.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoTo be perfectly fair, I don't think "It's $DATE, that should be automated by AI by now" is really a joking matter on this site, considering the audience. :)
- an1sotropy 4y agoCan someone ELI5* the major reasons a large employer would want to enforce return-to-office? Some other comments touch on tax laws for domestic/foreign work, but why by in the office at all? (* sorry if wrong forum for this acronym)
- sfvegandude 4y agoIT is easier when everyone is in the same place - for example, fixing a person’s work laptop or updating software. Workers compensation is easier to manage, for example if someone is injured on the job. Finally, as much as the knowledge class hates butts-in-seats as a metric for performance, it is easier to tell “how” your employees are doing when you see them every day. Especially when you want to check if someone is burning out. In my view, both sides of the RTO divide have failed to adequately acknowledge the pitfalls of their own position, which has led to this topic being unnecessarily polarized.
- asdff 4y agoIf managers are making time to interact enough with their employees day to day to actually assess burnout, then they can make the time to have zoom meetings with their team. Its no different. Funny you cite IT when that line of work especially is basically 50% remote work if not more of just controlling a users device remotely to fix software issues. Hardware issues you could just mail out/in gear to one site. Probably a whole lot cheaper than having a dedicated IT department in each and every office you have around the globe.
- jen20 4y agoWithout suggesting that these are the only reasons or that they apply to every company, here are some: - companies may have committed to have certain numbers of jobs in certain locations to get tax breaks in the past, - companies may have built out office space and want to get use from it, - incompetent middle managers prefer their subjects to be right in front of them so they can use time-in-seat as a proxy for productivity, - some work is collaborative in nature and may be easier in person, and managers would rather not pay for travel for the times it is necessary.
- dangero 4y agoI have been wanting to build a POC of a vpn product where you buy a kit with two little boxes that are plug n play: One you plug into the network in the location you are supposed to be, and the other you bring with you on your travels and plug your computer into over ethernet port. The one you bring with you can connect to any wifi or be hard wired. It has one job: tunnels all your data through vpn to the other box you left behind. Does this exist? Seems like there could be a market for it now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mdrzn 4y agoSeems like a VPN with extra steps? It allows me to travel but I also have to have an apartment in the place "I'm supposed to be" to leave a little box plugged in?
- chrisseaton 4y agoEveryone knows the address range commercial VPNs use. Plugging into an internet connection in a house or something bypasses that.
- mdrzn 4y agoThere's plently of VPNs that offer unique IPs, or mobile/LTE IPs to connect to, you don't necessarily need to connect to a datacenter or an "abused" residential address. But there's a potential for a business here: rent small spaces and offer to set up the small boxes for a fee.
- galangalalgol 4y agoThese exist. They will scan your physical mail and email it for you too. People who RV all the time use it.
- 4y ago
- RappingBoomer 4y ago
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoWe did an audit and found out one of our employees was logging in from a war zone. He was hired in the US but at some point after being hired, moved to a country that is considered by the US government to be an enemy. For security reasons, we couldn't allow this to continue, especially since he was part of our security organization. We do have contract workers in South America and some "regular" workers in Canada and Western Europe but now we have a policy that those are the only countries where it is acceptable to work from unless special permission is given ahead of time.
- abigail95 4y agoI've run into this before and it's a massive PITA. Think you're doing business with someone in Turkey and they might be in Iran/Syria? Because of "facilitation" I can't even tell them who to deal with to get what they want done, unless I'm a lawyer providing legal advice (I think).
- kyleee 4y agothat employee should have setup a VPN, shame
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mrtksn 4y agoAbroad often means exploiting cost of living arbitrage. Working in a US company with a US salary and living let's say in Portugal or Turkey or Thailand, means that suddenly your compensation for the work you do becomes multiple times more potent. If you remove the money as intermediary, it essentially means that for the JavaScript button you created maybe you could have a meal but now you secure your weekly food. This is great but most people can't simply move because countries for some reason decided that only capital moves, people stay put and work and if they really really want to move they need to go though months long of bureaucracy and it's not even available for most people. This imparity between people breaks the natural tendency of equalisation and the arbitrage remains and creates political tensions because suddenly some services see unnatural demand, especially housing is particularly badly hit. Effectively some people get particularly good compensation thanks to the arbitrage when other people who might be working just as hard and could be jast as important for the function of the society get screwed if they can't work from home and miss out on the arbitrage and can't move to the higher paying places because they are only(!) human capital. So my argument is, I guess, this should be prevented from happening or the WFH from abroad people should be treated as local workers and pay taxes to to the host country. Ideally, anyone should be free to work and live wherever they like but since we are in a deglobalisation trend I have no hopes for it. So yes, WFH from abroad should be actually international workers and taxed accordingly.
- jacknews 4y agoIs this the same as when companies pay remote workers in poorer countries much less? Or even set up whole factories in poorer countries to save costs, but still charge the same price in the rich 'home' country?
- mrtksn 4y agoIt's not. You can't simply employ foreigners, you won't be able to do the administrative work and you can easily get into trouble for employing illegals. So when companies pay remote workers, they often have a representation in that country. This usually means(depending on the country) that the American company that "employs" these remote workers actually pay money to a company in the poor country and that company pays the local taxes and the workers. There are companies specialising in this, so they setup companies in many countries and when you hire a remote worker from legal point of view the worker actually works for this intermediary and pays local taxes. Another popular option is, to setup your own company and do the same thing but skip the middleman. When you setup factories in poor countries, that's considered an investment. Again, you setup a local company that is fully or partly owned by the you(depending on the country, there are restrictions) and that local company pays local taxes and operates in accordance to the local laws. When you bring the produce home to sell at American prices, you import that as if you are importing it from any other foreign company.
- dncornholio 4y agoIf you're able to fool your complete working space, I think there's something wrong with you. I couldn't do this without losing so much sleep, it wouldn't even be healthy. Just be open about it? Also, this article smells of corporate manipulation.
- status200 4y agoIt feels like all that extra work/stress to hide the deception would cancel out any benefit from being in any remote location, even considering the monetary/payroll arbitrage.
- veqq 4y ago0 stress or effort needed. But your purchasing power goes up 15x. When you rent a 3 bedroom beach house in Turkey for $450/month and the rest of your expenses don't exceed $1k but you're still getting 6 figures...
- fbrncci 4y agoAt the first chance I could I moved to South East Asia while working a remote job in Europe. Employer was not too stoked. But then found a new employer, which was absolutely okay with me living there. There is A LOT to the story which I'm not mentioning, but it's been the best decision or my life. I'm also meeting more and more other people here which are making the same move. Many of them who haven't yet told their employer that they now live 5+ different timezones away.
- jfk13 4y ago> Many of them who haven't yet told their employer that they now live 5+ different timezones away. In other words, there's probably a lot of tax evasion and fraud going on.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoAre you employed by your employer, or are you contracting with tax residency in SE Asia?
- fbrncci 4y agoI'm now working for a local software agency which contracts my clients for me. Through them I've been able to get my work visa/permit. Took me some time to arrive at this point.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoWhat's the agency business model? And is it transparent to you what there cut is (percentage wise)?
- fbrncci 4y agoIt's a one-off mutually beneficial agreement. They provide me with the structure, and some chance for networking, along with an office I can work from. I do some consulting for them every now and then, and they take a small fee from every invoice (<10%). For the work visa and permit, its more than worth it. I came by the chance through networking locally.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mistrial9 4y agoUS/Western capital has maxed out every kind of cross-border international tax "savings" you could imagine - it is so well known that Saturday night television comedians can joke about it and people laugh because they know what it means. Now that some thousands of tech workers get tax-cheating benefits, it is the subject of solemn hand-wringing here? I call BS
- Jcampuzano2 4y agoI don't necessarily "live" in other countries, but I and a decent chunk of my friends go on extended stays (45-60 days is usually how long my stays end up being before returning to the US) in other countries and I have wondered if this would incur the same tax implications. Technically I'm really just on an extended vacation in my mind but work during normal working hours. So far I also have just worked off of the "don't as don't tell" policy and haven't run into any snags. My employers security team has even caught on once or twice but I just say yeah I'm vacationing since my stays have usually been along the lines of 45-60 days or so at a time in a given country. I still have and maintain my home address in the US, pay the rent and everything there, and I do return usually for a month or two at a time. Most of my friends do this as well or have a situation setup where they use their parents address and stay with their parents when back in the US for chunks of time.
- ska 4y agoThis could definitely blow up in your face, as "don't ask don't tell" isn't really a thing. I don't know what the probability is, but I know people who explicitly maintain the 183 day records to avoid it. On your companies side, it could also create all sorts of problems that nobody is really clear how to handle. I suspect this will get a lot more regulated if it becomes more common.
- bvoq 4y agostill worth risking for a better life
- ska 4y agoWhy does it have to be a risk? Are you assuming there is no above-board way of doing this?
- londons_explore 4y agoIf you do everything by the book, it's really hard - practically impossible to do fully legally. Most countries won't issue you a work permit without a lot of paperwork, cost, and time. Think 'send your passport off to the embassy for 3 months' type hassle... And most employers don't want to employ someone abroad. Employment law varies widely by country, and unless they already have an office in that country they don't want to do all the tax and reporting stuff for only you. Long term abroad in one country might be doable, but 30 days in each country is pretty much impossible.
- lowkeylazers 4y agoc
- clvx 4y agoFor most of these actors this is going to work just fine until their org ship a laptop with a gps device.
- ouid 4y agoI suppose we're going to need hardware GPS spoofers then.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- keepquestioning 4y agoOr just don't pay tax.
- onychomys 4y agoHistory suggests that's not a recipe for long-term success.
- lowkeylazers 4y agoThis is just another ploy to get employees back to offices. One thing I don’t understand is the tax implication and where you’re allowed to work from. I’m based out of a company in the US that was proactively working towards remote environment before the pandemic. One thing that struck me as odd was that even within the states I would be technically illegally evading taxes if I worked from Nevada for instance - for a month let’s say due to need in change of scenery. Even with a country I cannot technically and legally be remote. The laws need to change here are the antiquated tax laws. I don’t understand how if I want to work from Florida for part of the year to avoid the winter is a tax / insurance liability for me or the company. The last point really hit home for me. What if you have family abroad - either healthy or otherwise - and you want to spend more time with them. would these companies want be to take one month off or rather work? I understand that people using this to move permanently is a an issue. But the people that have a permanent base but would like to occasionally work from elsewhere need a better framework and set of laws. The physical borders don’t make much sense in a digital world.
- okaram 4y agoYou know? It's called a vacation... We used to have those, even in the USA ;) Notice taxew are not a big deal for small companies... If Thailand wants to send my small restaurant a tax bill, I'd just drop it in the round file. If I'm a big company and do business in Thailand, then I have to abide by their laws.
- knorker 4y ago> One thing I don’t understand is the tax implication and where you’re allowed to work from. You do understand that's basically the entirety of the thing, right? And the tax and legal liability is NOT just on you, but on your employer too. It's not that they legally have to know where you are as such, nor that they care, but that in order for them to follow laws they have to know which laws apply. > The physical borders don’t make much sense in a digital world. Yet that would be hard to argue when you get caught with weed in Saudi Arabia, or when the french police knock on your digital nomad door in south of France. At some point this becomes like the "sovereign citizen" crowd, and their "your laws don't apply to me" don't tend to work out very well.
- paxys 4y agoThoughts as a tech manager: - People's attempts to hide their remote lifestyle are mostly laughable. You don't need sophisticated tooling to know that someone isn't where they say. I see you every day. I can recognize patterns. I can see the changes in work hours, response times and just general behavior. I can tell when you have just rolled out of bed with a coffee or come back from the club. - Most managers I know don't give a shit. In fact we'd rather not know at all. It's really HR you have to worry about (and I'm not going to tell them unless you give me a reason to). - HR itself only cares because of the tax implications. Inter-state taxes are bad enough, figuring out international ones are basically impossible. The company can get into major trouble if they are not following local employment laws, and "I didn't know my employee lived there" isn't a good enough defense. - For those saying "IRS will come after you", these remote employees are paying full federal, state (mostly CA), payroll and various local taxes while using none of the benefits. The government is probably ecstatic that such people exist. - The government on the other side is the one you really have to worry about. Locals in Mexico City, all over South America, Bali, Thailand, Vietnam and really all over the world are pissed with these "digital nomads" (read: illegal immigrants) who work on tourist visas and upend the local economy while paying no taxes. It's only a matter of time before they all start cracking down.
- YetAnotherNick 4y agoCan't you then say the same thing about tourists? I don't get why digital nomads are worse than tourists for the country in any way.
- jejeyyy77 4y agoAs a tech employee turned contractor: I write software for pay. That's it. I don't see my employer as a boss - they are a customer. If they aren't happy with the product, they can find someone else and I can respond to the other 50 LinkedIn requests...
- knorker 4y agoAs a contractor you are free to incorporate wherever you want. I wouldn't work from e.g. Iran, or you could get sued to death when your customer is indicted for violating US sanctions, but yeah why would your employer care? Oh, because maybe they have various insurance and partner contracts that speak about your physical location. If your contract doesn't say where you are, then work from anywhere, and follow whatever laws. If your contract does say where you are, then violate the contract an your own risk.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WalterBright 4y agoThe D language community is spread all over the world. Somehow, we manage to collaborate successfully!
- ChicagoBoy11 4y agoI can't wait for the frictions to loosen and this effect to work IN THE OPPOSITE direction. Workers in mostly wealthy country are taking advantage of a cost of living arbitrage, but soon employers will figure out they can take advantage of cost-of-worker arbitrage, meaning there is some local in the foreign country your current employee is in who could also probably do the job but for a fraction of the amount of money.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago> meaning there is some local in the foreign country your current employee is in who could also probably do the job but for a fraction of the amount of money. This sounds like the same tale we heard in the 90's, that software would be offshored to Asia and there would be a handful of people writing specs and overseeing work and not much more. As the saying goes 'you get what you pay for'. If you have talented people anywhere in the world, they have either already emmigrated to higher paying markets or are contracting locally at absolutely fair prices in an international market. The sort of scenario you describe would have been true with information assymetry. However in the connected world of today if you think that someone is talented enough to be an effective asset but naive enough to not know their rate in an international market you are in for a surprise.
- thro388 4y agoSkilled people will always be hard to find. But why not hire some "manager of diversity" or "HR cook" in Jamaica?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- panzagl 4y agoSo what I'm getting out of this is that the next time I'm on vacation out of the country and my employer calls to ask an 'urgent' question I should definitely ignore it so he doesn't get in trouble with the IRS.
- nomadthrow000 4y agoTime to tell my story! I work for a very large FAANG-type tech company. I am also a dual citizen, having US citizenship and a South American citizenship. A few months after the pandemic began, I relocated from my high CoL work city to a small South American city where my relatives live. I told my manager I was moving to another US state, which is my official address and where I also have relatives. It has been almost 2 years of this arrangement. In that time I believe exactly 0 people suspect I’m in a different country. I’m only somewhat careful with my arrangements. In video chats, I use a background blur and try my best to have neutral lighting. My audio setup focuses only on my voice and eliminates background noise. I don’t take special networking precautions yet. If they check their logs they’d easily see my true location. However, I subscribe to StarVPN and I have a glinet router ready to go should I need to start spoofing my digital location. I have full confidence this will be enough. I pay ALL US taxes that I owe. Due to tax laws in the SA country I’m in, I have no reason to suspect I’m avoiding any taxes here either, but I’d have to consult with an accountant or expert to be sure. I’m not at all worried about my situation. I have yet to hear of a single case of someone in a similar position as me having it go south in a bad way. If my employer insists I go back to the US, I can spoof my location with the method I described above. How would they prove where I am otherwise? I’ve also been playing around with the idea of quitting and traveling a while anyway. I consider myself a very effective and productive engineer, and I subscribe to the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in this situation. I’m surprised to see so much fear mongering and thinly veiled contempt for this here in HN. The total number of people doing this is likely extremely small anyway.
- hnov 4y agoDo know that if and when they do, they'll question your StarVPN IP. Time to pay someone you know to keep a second glinet router in their home in the state you're supposed to be in.
- johnwalkr 4y agoThis is way more complicated than most of the comments imply. It's not only about your taxes, but about the company's payroll taxes, and also other regulations and services. First of all, it's a unique thing about software engineering that you can get away with working while living in another country and pretend that "well the work is for a US company and I pay taxes in US so it's ok" or "I don't have a work visa in Japan[1] but I'm working for an American company from Tokyo so it's ok". If your work is swinging a hammer, it's more obvious, but in reality tax generally treaties specify that work done in the country you reside in, whether by hammer or laptop, is taxed in that country. Because you enjoy the services from that country. One example is raising kids in country A while you are employed by country B. OK, you pay sales tax and maybe property tax in country A but country A is expecting payroll tax to help pay for education, and healthcare fees based on your income to help pay for healthcare. Another example is insurance. If you work for google you can probably sue them when your WFH desk bought with inadequate WFH allowance collapses and breaks your ankle. But does google's insurance cover the case of working in your summer home in Iran, or is able to make a payment to an Iranian hospital? Not likely. At least it's a moot point compared to the embargo violation and export control violation that now comes to light. Another example is just legal stuff in general. "Work" in US and live in Spain? What's the legality of the NDA you signed? What's the process to fire you? Who knows, but a company sure doesn't want these uncertainties times the number of countries its remote workers are located. Mature companies know all of this and put rules in place and either open a proper office when it's justified or hire a middleman company who then hires the remote worker as a contractor. [1] I use US and Japan specifically because I just finished a 10 year stint in Japan and well, it's common online to see Americans living in Japan on a marriage visa or something, trying to get remote/American salaries and totally missing the basic requirement: work done in Japan is taxed in Japan and also subject to other Japanese regulation. So not only can you be in trouble for not paying taxes in Japan, your company can be in trouble when it realizes that by paying an employee in Japan, it is also bound by Japanese labour law. My understanding is that this works similarly for most country pairs.
- ayende 4y agoThere are also additional issues with this arrangements. For example, social security payments. Pension plans, etc. A simple example, Israel has mandatory pension plan requirement for all employees. If you are working remotely in Israel "as if in the US", you are now opened to a whole bunch of interesting questions. Employer isn't aware of that, in this scenario, so isn't paying the pension. That creates: * criminal liability for the company * criminal liability for the management team personally * the company is assumed to be "self-insured" and basically has to act as the pension provider for the employee. You fall down and become invalid at the age of 27? The pension insurance will pay for that. Which is basically the company. Then you have to pay 60+ years of pension payments to that employee. And that is _one_ aspect of this issue. Others are related to laws. What is the minimum wage? How do you compute the allowable number of hours and overtime pay? For fun, let's say that you are working for a few years in this mode. The employee then sues the company for overtime pay (200%) because that is the law where they are working. Firing someone, also, is a totally different process across jurisdictions. In Israel, you have to pay a month's salary for every year that the employee worked for you (based on the last 3 - 6 months). You have to fire a senior guy that worked for you for 6 years? Prepare to pay immediately a big chunk of money. Also, have fun with _another_ criminal liability (for the company & leadership) because you didn't pay insurance for this scenario. The company in this question is going to be absolutely against this sort of exposure. For that matter, it isn't even legal only that is going to object. If you are a public company, you need to put things like "liabilities in case we have to fire people" in the balance sheet. The CPA is going to have a field day with all those undisclosed issues.
- SergeAx 4y ago> Daniel didn’t move to Thailand to work from the beach. But you still would put a stock photo of a man with notebook in a beach chair into your article, wouldn't you?
- PenguiinBear 4y agoAs a WFH employee for a small company which has no office, I've booked 3 months total of lodging in Spain, almost done with month 1 and have done 1+ months in Peru. I'm more productive on some days, less productive on others, and overall, I'm pulling ahead in terms of productivity life satisfaction, and travel experience. Down on money, but to me personally, it's worth it.
- alfnor 4y agoITT: People defending taxation.