5 ms·

- Culture and language. Even if you compare US vs UK, the UK is much more European in it's approach to work. If you want to exploit people and have them dedicat

by fy20 3y ago

- Culture and language. Even if you compare US vs UK, the UK is much more European in it's approach to work. If you want to exploit people and have them dedicate their life to your company, better stick to US workers. - Working hours. If you are on the West Coast, good luck finding someone in Europe who will be available at 3pm your time. - Superiority complex. I get the impression a lot of Americans treat everywhere else like it is a third world country. I work for a US company that has a branch in a post-Soviet EU country, and when the C-levels were discussing expanding our team, they were talking as if there would be a queue of people waiting at the door to interview. Taxes and employment laws are really not an issue, there are plenty of ways around it, especially if you are a small startup. As others have pointed out, the simplest way is to treat someone as a 1099 independent contractor. You pay them gross, and let them deal with all their own tax responsibilities. If you want proper employees there are agencies everywhere who will deal with this for you, and in a lot of cases government agencies will help you and / or give you tax breaks as they want you to invest in their country. (Source: As a European, I've worked half my career remotely for US companies)

cm2012 3y ago
I promise you, laws, regulations, liability and beaureucracy are huge issues in hiring internationally. Example: if you run a marketing agency in the US, most liability insurance absolutely forbids non US workers from working in your ad accounts.
hinata08 3y ago
indeed I've already been asked by some silicon valley guy on Discord if France did tech and had universities. Like come on, Europe is not stuck at La Belle Époque and Victorian Era. And even then, it had tech. And despite not having a job there atm, they want to stay in California. I told him there are plenty of well paid IT jobs in Europe, but apparently the USA is a special place, and you have to be pay uni debt, and stuff like that.
leereeves 3y ago
> the simplest way is to treat someone as a 1099 independent contractor This is not so simple. Genuinely treating someone as an IC means giving up a lot of control. As the IRS says: You are not an independent contractor if you perform services that can be controlled by an employer (what will be done and how it will be done). And merely calling someone an IC while actually controlling their work hours, projects, etc risks legal consequences.
- igetspam 3y ago
  When everyone is a contractor, you actually have to treat them they way too. That means there are benefits and supportive actions you cannot take or they become an employee by the implication. Then you may have to setup a local business, convert them to full time and deal with the local gov. It sounds much simpler than it is. For instance, maternity/paternity leave. If you give someone full leave, one could argue that it's a benefit only afforded to FTEs and that could be enough to convince the local business office that the person is, in fact, an FTE. Now you're in violation and have to pay fines as well as setup a local office of one, who will never visit said office. So you do the proxy office thing, which incurs cost right away. Come tax season, you have to figure out what you owe based on the person and your new legal status as a for profit business in the area. Your cost to operate has just become significantly higher. Now you have to rethink the position and location and a non zero number of these will result in closing the local role and having to let someone go. Lose lose for everyone. The alternative path says "no baby leave because you're a contractor." That sucks too because you like the people you hire and want to do right by them but that also means keeping them employed. You can find alternatives and that's not a literal situation but it is the combination of a few situations into one example, so the contents are real but not as a single tale. (I don't want to tell anyone's specific story.) Global remote hiring is hard.
- gregjor 3y ago
  This, and the (I would think obvious) detail that IRS rules and US labor standards may not mean anything in other countries. Just because the “employer” classifies someone as a 1099 contractor doesn’t mean that classification and the associated tax rules apply to a foreign national working in another country.
logicalmonster 3y ago
> Taxes and employment laws are really not an issue, there are plenty of ways around it, especially if you are a small startup. Of course there's legal ways for a company to employ somebody not in the US. But many employees at companies don't want to deal with that headache and create any extra work for themselves. As proof of that, look at how many jobs ask for remote US workers in a list of XYZ random states. They can legally employ anybody they want to in the US, but they don't want to deal with taking the time out figuring out how to deal with hiring somebody from say Alabama or South Dakota if they've never done that before.
- twunde 3y ago
  To clarify, the reason that remote jobs list random states is because those are the states that the company has already done the payroll/HR paperwork for. They can add others, but its a fair amount of work by legal, finance and HR. If you're only hiring 1 person from that state, its a lot of hassle for relatively minimal benefit. This is part of the reason why PEO companies like Justworks are extremely beneficial for remote companies since they're already pre-registered in every US state. Also if you're founding a company where you want remote workers you should skip directly to a PEO since otherwise its a time-suck of issues.
  - SkyPuncher 3y ago
    There are also some potential legal issues. In some states, having an employee in that state effectively establishes you as having an office in the state. That may mean your subject to certain rules and requirements of that state.
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
> Superiority complex Ironic, I’ve met the exact same mindset from the vast majority of Euros, including this post. Even between other Euro countries. Perhaps, instead of being a so-called “American mindset”, it’s simply a “human mindset” and we all view others outside of our borders as beneath us. It would certainly explain the last few millennia now wouldn’t it?
- cm2012 3y ago
  Europeans love to compare their upper class of college educated people to poor uneducated people in the USA. They lord over their superiority to people of Walmart.
- mejutoco 3y ago
  > it’s simply a “human mindset” and we all view others outside of our borders as beneath us I am sad to read this stated as common knowledge, especially in a forum that promotes curiosity. It is not true in my opinion, and should not be normalized. I am not taking sides in "Euros" or people from US or anything like that, because there are competent people everywhere, but this is not a "human mindset". It has a more fitting name: ignorance. I am not saying you are ignorant (you are just expressing a supposedly common view), but people who think they are above foreigners (no matter which specific country we take as reference) are. In the last few millennia humans have progressed a lot thanks to cross-pollination of many origins: Greek thought, Italian, Arab, British, American, just to name a few. Suffice to say, I do not share this jaded view of the world.
- hinata08 3y ago
  >and we all view others outside of our borders as beneath us I thought the idom was "the grass is (always) greener (on the other side)" Brain drain and mass emigration are a thing in so many places ! In Hungary, this was a factor in Orban being elected to make the country better again for the youth. In Romania, this caused domestic wages to increase, as so many workers were outposted. In France, the political and social climate is so toxic that Québec is seen as the getaway to finally enjoy a simple life. Ukraine is literally at war and being wiped out. I don't think they're having a nice time being smug. UK is having a hungover from 2016 and Brexit. Euros don't like the USA for some reason. But it's pretty much the only country that is seen as beneath us. (With UK maybe) The USA is still an ally, btw. But some trust deserves to be earned back. Especially on social (are we still welcome after Trump? are women and transgenders still humans who have rights ? Is it a crime to kill people who walk suspiciously through the town and don't look like they have a MAGA cap ? Or good policing ?) and economic issues (is the USA still investing in Europe, or is it just FCPA-ing corporations to buy them for cheap and shut them down ?) As a reminder, a former worker from the Ford factory in Blanquefort ran at the previous presidential election, in here. And the law allowing abortion was just turned into a constitutional right, in a rare transpartisan move to avoid the US situation in the future.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
You're very dismissive of taxes and employment law, but when you step wrong, things going bad very quickly. Import/export laws and data compliance laws are another huge factor. In the EU, it means having significantly higher burden. I other areas, lack of laws make enforcement of certain things extremely difficult.

by fy20 3y ago

cm2012 3y ago

I promise you, laws, regulations, liability and beaureucracy are huge issues in hiring internationally. Example: if you run a marketing agency in the US, most liability insurance absolutely forbids non US workers from working in your ad accounts.

hinata08 3y ago

indeed I've already been asked by some silicon valley guy on Discord if France did tech and had universities. Like come on, Europe is not stuck at La Belle Époque and Victorian Era. And even then, it had tech. And despite not having a job there atm, they want to stay in California. I told him there are plenty of well paid IT jobs in Europe, but apparently the USA is a special place, and you have to be pay uni debt, and stuff like that.

leereeves 3y ago

> the simplest way is to treat someone as a 1099 independent contractor This is not so simple. Genuinely treating someone as an IC means giving up a lot of control. As the IRS says: You are not an independent contractor if you perform services that can be controlled by an employer (what will be done and how it will be done). And merely calling someone an IC while actually controlling their work hours, projects, etc risks legal consequences.

igetspam 3y ago
When everyone is a contractor, you actually have to treat them they way too. That means there are benefits and supportive actions you cannot take or they become an employee by the implication. Then you may have to setup a local business, convert them to full time and deal with the local gov. It sounds much simpler than it is. For instance, maternity/paternity leave. If you give someone full leave, one could argue that it's a benefit only afforded to FTEs and that could be enough to convince the local business office that the person is, in fact, an FTE. Now you're in violation and have to pay fines as well as setup a local office of one, who will never visit said office. So you do the proxy office thing, which incurs cost right away. Come tax season, you have to figure out what you owe based on the person and your new legal status as a for profit business in the area. Your cost to operate has just become significantly higher. Now you have to rethink the position and location and a non zero number of these will result in closing the local role and having to let someone go. Lose lose for everyone. The alternative path says "no baby leave because you're a contractor." That sucks too because you like the people you hire and want to do right by them but that also means keeping them employed. You can find alternatives and that's not a literal situation but it is the combination of a few situations into one example, so the contents are real but not as a single tale. (I don't want to tell anyone's specific story.) Global remote hiring is hard.
gregjor 3y ago
This, and the (I would think obvious) detail that IRS rules and US labor standards may not mean anything in other countries. Just because the “employer” classifies someone as a 1099 contractor doesn’t mean that classification and the associated tax rules apply to a foreign national working in another country.

logicalmonster 3y ago

> Taxes and employment laws are really not an issue, there are plenty of ways around it, especially if you are a small startup. Of course there's legal ways for a company to employ somebody not in the US. But many employees at companies don't want to deal with that headache and create any extra work for themselves. As proof of that, look at how many jobs ask for remote US workers in a list of XYZ random states. They can legally employ anybody they want to in the US, but they don't want to deal with taking the time out figuring out how to deal with hiring somebody from say Alabama or South Dakota if they've never done that before.

twunde 3y ago
To clarify, the reason that remote jobs list random states is because those are the states that the company has already done the payroll/HR paperwork for. They can add others, but its a fair amount of work by legal, finance and HR. If you're only hiring 1 person from that state, its a lot of hassle for relatively minimal benefit. This is part of the reason why PEO companies like Justworks are extremely beneficial for remote companies since they're already pre-registered in every US state. Also if you're founding a company where you want remote workers you should skip directly to a PEO since otherwise its a time-suck of issues.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  There are also some potential legal issues. In some states, having an employee in that state effectively establishes you as having an office in the state. That may mean your subject to certain rules and requirements of that state.

tourmalinetaco 3y ago

> Superiority complex Ironic, I’ve met the exact same mindset from the vast majority of Euros, including this post. Even between other Euro countries. Perhaps, instead of being a so-called “American mindset”, it’s simply a “human mindset” and we all view others outside of our borders as beneath us. It would certainly explain the last few millennia now wouldn’t it?

cm2012 3y ago
Europeans love to compare their upper class of college educated people to poor uneducated people in the USA. They lord over their superiority to people of Walmart.
mejutoco 3y ago
> it’s simply a “human mindset” and we all view others outside of our borders as beneath us I am sad to read this stated as common knowledge, especially in a forum that promotes curiosity. It is not true in my opinion, and should not be normalized. I am not taking sides in "Euros" or people from US or anything like that, because there are competent people everywhere, but this is not a "human mindset". It has a more fitting name: ignorance. I am not saying you are ignorant (you are just expressing a supposedly common view), but people who think they are above foreigners (no matter which specific country we take as reference) are. In the last few millennia humans have progressed a lot thanks to cross-pollination of many origins: Greek thought, Italian, Arab, British, American, just to name a few. Suffice to say, I do not share this jaded view of the world.
hinata08 3y ago
>and we all view others outside of our borders as beneath us I thought the idom was "the grass is (always) greener (on the other side)" Brain drain and mass emigration are a thing in so many places ! In Hungary, this was a factor in Orban being elected to make the country better again for the youth. In Romania, this caused domestic wages to increase, as so many workers were outposted. In France, the political and social climate is so toxic that Québec is seen as the getaway to finally enjoy a simple life. Ukraine is literally at war and being wiped out. I don't think they're having a nice time being smug. UK is having a hungover from 2016 and Brexit. Euros don't like the USA for some reason. But it's pretty much the only country that is seen as beneath us. (With UK maybe) The USA is still an ally, btw. But some trust deserves to be earned back. Especially on social (are we still welcome after Trump? are women and transgenders still humans who have rights ? Is it a crime to kill people who walk suspiciously through the town and don't look like they have a MAGA cap ? Or good policing ?) and economic issues (is the USA still investing in Europe, or is it just FCPA-ing corporations to buy them for cheap and shut them down ?) As a reminder, a former worker from the Ford factory in Blanquefort ran at the previous presidential election, in here. And the law allowing abortion was just turned into a constitutional right, in a rare transpartisan move to avoid the US situation in the future.

SkyPuncher 3y ago

You're very dismissive of taxes and employment law, but when you step wrong, things going bad very quickly. Import/export laws and data compliance laws are another huge factor. In the EU, it means having significantly higher burden. I other areas, lack of laws make enforcement of certain things extremely difficult.