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Ask HN: Help, any US-based companies that allow you to work from Europe?
Hi HN - a bit of a personal post here. I'm an American citizen but due to some personal/family reasons I have to relocate to the EU this year.
I will be relocating without a residency visa, but there are a handful of visas out there that would allow me to work for a company outside the EU (eg "Digital Nomad" visas). The only thing I'd need is permission from the company to let me work from the EU and I could handle the rest of the visa/immigration challenges.
I'm hoping somebody out here could provide any insights or leads on companies hiring who are flexible on location. I've been attempting for months to find a fit but so far have come up short; hence why I am reaching out to the network here.
The HN community has been amazing over the years so here's hoping somebody out there will be able to help!
Roles I'm seeking are Customer Engineering positions (really any technical customer facing position) such as: Solutions/Sales Engineer, Support Engineer, Success Engineer, etc
Thanks all - wishing everyone a great week (contact info in my profile as well)
- Unfrozen0688 3y agoHello, please pay taxes in the country you are in also :)
- lukan 3y agoHard not to, with taxes included on allmost everything you buy.
- Unfrozen0688 3y agolmao tell that to authorities
- blakblakarak 3y agoWhich country are you relocating to ? Certain ones such as France don’t allow ‘digital nomads’ - there are workarounds but it inevitably involves paying taxes and social charges. Working cross borders can also be difficult- I’m English but have French residency but cannot work for a non-French (and possibly Ireland) without getting a blue card or getting my EU citizenship back which was stripped from me against my will…
- aj3 3y agoIt's weird to consider paying taxes as a tradeoff. "Digital nomad" isn't a code for tax avoidance, is it?
- deadbabe 3y agoJust get a regular remote job and then set up a vpn from a US based location and just use that all the time. No one will ever know and maybe won’t even care.
- madduci 3y agoBut timezones play a crucial role
- Nextgrid 3y agoJust make sure you VPN back to somewhere residential - given you're originally from the US, see if you can host a server (RPi is enough) at a friend/family on their Comcast/etc connection. Absolutely do not use a commercial VPN, those are havens for malicious activity and will rightfully raise all kinds of red flags.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoHave backups in the event your primary residential VPN endpoint is down.
- Unfrozen0688 3y agoDont cry when you get caught by conditional access :)
- moneywoes 3y agocan you elaborate please? like a authenticator app leaking location?
- Unfrozen0688 3y agoMy mistake, VPNs do bypass conditional access https://danielchronlund.com/2022/01/07/the-attackers-guide-to-azure-ad-conditional-access/ https://danielchronlund.com/2022/01/07/the-attackers-guide-t...
- deadbabe 3y ago
- falcolas 3y agoMost companies with 1k+ employees will have offices or at least contractors in different countries, adopting a "follow the sun" support model typically. I'd start by looking at public companies, or potentially companies (like Percona) who don't really have an office to begin with - pure remote.
- gottorf 3y agoYour best bet is probably to form a business entity and work corp-to-corp as a contractor (client pays your contracting entity, which pays you either as an owner or employee) with a smaller company that is more flexible about things like this. Big companies are capable of dealing with the complexities of having an employee in another country, but are usually not flexible about that sort of hiring. Small companies are flexible, but are not set up to deal with that kind of cross-border employment relationship.
- keiferski 3y agoYes, this is the answer. Basically you just need a company that is willing to pay you as a contractor or as a separate company. In my experience, smaller startups are more flexible with this kind of thing.
- nyargh 3y agoYes, this is the only way to do it but the tax situation is complex. Most (all?) EU countries have tax treaties with the US to avoid double taxation but you will be a tax resident in that EU country and they will want their due. You will also likely fall under local labor laws and have to pay social taxes, but this will depend a lot on the digital nomad laws. If digital nomad laws don't apply, you will need a work permit which is no small feat.
- moneywoes 3y agowould it a be US company?
- nyargh 3y agoDepends on the laws and how you are being paid. If the local country thinks you're an employee (earning wages) then it would probably have to be a local company. If you're just being paid dividends from your US, then it could remain a US company but you may not qualify as a digital nomad. Either way you would have tax liabilities in the local country to sort out and paying corporate tax, then capital gains taxes is usually a worse tax scenario than wages - but YMMV depending on how much you earn. There are lots of companies that handle this case, remote.com being one - where they are the local employer of record and handle all the social taxes and reporting.
- whalesalad 3y agoFWIW: I am based in Detroit. Founders are based in Vancouver, with one in Tel Aviv. Rest of the team (and company HQ) is in London. We are 100% remote with a small office space for gatherings in London. So it is certainly possible. I believe a green flag for a company is that they will hire you regardless of where you are located. Some companies even prefer this, as it means you can have 24-hour coverage for critical systems with team members scattered all over the planet. I don't have any recs or connections I can offer, but just wanted to share my experience to show that it is possible. I have also been a contractor since about 2018 so that helps. As a remote contractor you can inherently work from anywhere.
- ta1243 3y agoHow is your company structured with regards to tax and regulations, it doesn't sound like you're the size of a multi-national Are team members employed as local contractors, so take on all the legal liabilities (e.g. the "no email outside work hours" rule in France)
- paulcole 3y ago> I believe a green flag for a company is that they will hire you regardless of where you are located The counterargument here is that unless you are personally familiar with the legal/compliance/tax issues, you can't really tell if they're doing things on the up and up. Honestly, companies doing it 100% by the book and hiring people from anywhere is a red flag for me because it's such a pain in the butt both in terms of time and cost to do this right. Is this really the best use of the company's resources? It makes much more sense to expand slowly than expand quickly (assuming you do it 100% legally) unless you have a massive surplus of time and/or money to figure it out.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoI'm sure HN's lawyer's will be on my ass for saying this, but you could take a remote role from an east-coast company and then simply proxy any mail to you in a western EU country while working US eastern time hours. I know someone that did this. If you're a night owl anyway it might work out well for you.
- bookofjoe 3y agoI doubt HN has lawyers who will care at all what you say, assuming they ever see it.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoI meant the users
- bookofjoe 3y agothe users don't care either
- alephnan 3y agoSo tax evasion and potential wire fraud
- teaearlgraycold 3y agolol obviously not tax evasion. Keep paying those state and federal taxes and everyone is happy. Also pay any applicable EU taxes. The OP is prioritizing living in the EU. If that’s #1 then you have to accept you’re going to pay extra taxes.
- Nextgrid 3y agoOnly when the little guy does it. If you are high net worth and use a web of shell companies & various schemes to achieve the same outcome then it's no longer criminal.
- sneak 3y ago
- droobles 3y agoI am not an accountant nor a lawyer but my hunch is that to engage with US companies from abroad you would either need to be transferred or apply for a job at an entity in the EU representing that employer or you would need to operate as a 1099 contractor (self employment). 1099 in EU may not be so bad, you would most likely still need to pay for access to national healthcare but it would be cheaper than US insurance. You will need to report your taxes with both the US and your country of residence, but there is a foreign income exclusion available that would make it so you didn't actually pay any taxes to the US besides what your employer owes. Again, not an expert, you might look into this further with your own research or consult a CPA that has experience working with Digital Nomads or citizen contractors working abroad.
- kyawzazaw 3y agolook for EU offices?
- CalRobert 3y agoIt seems a lot of people go in to consultancy and start their own business under the Dutch American Friendship Treaty. If you're quick about it you can start a BV in the Netherlands, recruit yourself as director while you're still abroad, and get 30% of your income exempted from tax (until it's killed off). Let me know if you want an accountant referral. The Netherlands is great. Your US taxes will be a pain, form 5471 etc. There's also groups like oysterhr.com, boundlesshq, deel, etc. that act as employer of record. Edit: To explain, the DAFT treaty has a very small investment needed. It has not been raised with inflation. https://ind.nl/en/residence-permits/work/residence-permit-self-employed-person https://ind.nl/en/residence-permits/work/residence-permit-se... """ You invest a lot of money (substantial capital) in your business. The level of this sum depends on the form of your business. For most forms, the IND requires a minimum investment of €4,500. See the rules on substantial capital investment. """
- jayvoordemensen 3y agoHow about you have the decency to pay the taxes our hight trust, safe, clean, universal health care providing government needs? Instead of living off of others, raising housing costs and saying 'like' all day long in our once friendly neighborhood bars?
- nyargh 3y agoLike, its still a net positive for the dutch taxpayers my dutchbro. Like, your taxpayers didn't have to pay to raise and like educate this person for 12+ years and you get them in their peak economically productive years. And like, even with the tax breaks they're earning high wages in IT and paying plenty in taxes. Like, if your government wasn't Hebben Een Serieus Probleem in the middle of their wildly racist meltdown right now, you could, like, petition them to solve real problems for your countrymen. But like, way eaier to whine on the internet.
- sokoloff 3y agoIf the Dutch government offers such an arrangement, shouldn’t someone presume they are offering it for a reason that Dutch politicians believe is in the country’s interests? (It reads to me as an arrangement wherein the Netherlands is able to tax 70% of someone’s income who might otherwise become a resident of a different country.)
- OrvalWintermute 3y agoIf you're open to something slightly different there are many US government jobs in Europe for US citizens, and that can include engineering jobs, and technical jobs interfacing with customers - normally located around embassies & US/NATO bases. https://www.usajobs.gov/ https://www.usajobs.gov/
- someotherperson 3y agoThe answer is yes, you can find roles like that. It would help if you link to your resume somewhere -- I'm not really interested in emailing you for it.
- bookofjoe 3y agoYes. I suggest LinkedIn, where I frequently see resumes posted.
- renewiltord 3y agoYeah, lots of startups will do this.
- moneywoes 3y agostartups?
- cbare 3y agoI tried to do a similar thing, but in New Zealand, for engineering or ML engineering roles, without success. The folks I know of that pulled it off either knew people from previously working together in-person or were special in some way - PhD in valuable niche, wrote a book.
- gnopgnip 3y agoMany smaller companies that use a PEO professional employer organization will be equipped to handle this. Covering the night shift because of the time zones can be a competitive advantage for the types of rolls you listed. This is what my employer does, a handful of employees are in Portugal or other countries.
- mindcrash 3y agoThere are quite a few tech companies headquartered in the United States, but with employees globally. 37signals, MongoDB, GitHub, GitLab, Uber, and the AWS subsidiary of Amazon for example are some which I definitely know have (or had) remote employees in the Netherlands. Protip: You will probably get quite some good leads when you search for remote jobs at the location you are relocating to at LinkedIn. Good luck!
- micola4151 3y ago[dead]
- fuzztester 3y ago>Ask HN: Help, any US-based companies that allow you to work from Europe? "companies that allow" The wording itself shows that the person saying it may have the mentality of, and meekly accepts, a master-slave relationship between employer and employee. Which in turn tends to perpetuate that idea, at least for those who are weak enough to follow the herd. People need to get out of such weak-minded, weak-hearted and slavish ways of thinking, more so on a site like this, which is ostensibly about startups, entrepreneurship, etc.