Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere

https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/1519831566486147073

by boolean • 4 years ago

71 42 4 years ago

8bitben• 4 years ago

"You have the flexibility to live and work in 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location"

I wonder how much of a headache this creates for taxes. One of the biggest factors that keeps me from venturing abroad (and my company from allowing it) in my remote role is the complicated tax situation that arises.

Anyone have experience with this?

rhacker• 4 years ago

I'm in "Florida".

toomuchtodo2• 4 years ago

Yeah, this is accepting some digital nomad hacks (Florida as your “home” state [or another no income tax state like TN or SD], skating by on tourist visas when traveling, hence the 90 days stipulation) until digital nomad acceptance increases (~46 countries are issuing visas to nomads who have a remote gig from a quick web search).

(not an endorsement of any specific legal or immigration actions)

simulate-me2• 4 years ago

It depends where you want to go. For instance, you can work remotely from Canada in many circumstances.

digianarchist2• 4 years ago

The UK too. I was actually banned from the /r/IWantOut subreddit recently for suggesting such even though it's Home Office advice [0] (under Remote Work).

[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

electroly• 4 years ago

I assume the 90 day limit is specifically to avoid dealing with actual foreign residents.

futhey2• 4 years ago

Yeah. 90 days and 180 (sometimes 183) days are the magic numbers in most locations, that treat you as a non-resident or tourist. You still technically owe taxes abroad if you work any period of time abroad, but usually, if there is a formal process, it's much, much simpler for remote work on a short-term visa.

90 days is the magic number for almost all countries for the length of a single tourist visa.

The status quo though, is that almost no governments have legal frameworks for a digital nomad to work legally in a country (as a remote employee) on a 90-day tourist visa. Most look the other way for rich, western tourists not "taking jobs from local residents", if it comes up. They mostly use tourist services and the money which could be taxed never enters a local bank account.

I'm curious how AirBnB ends up solving this. Maybe they'll just contract a big consulting firm with broad international exposure to file taxes for each employee paid abroad. It definitely sounds like they're going to try and figure out how to pay taxes on behalf of employees in up to 170 countries, which, will be interesting to watch.

Hopefully some good comes of this.

latch• 4 years ago

almost no governments have legal frameworks for a digital nomad to work legally in a country

That's an ... interesting perspective. Put differently, most governments have a legal framework that prevents people from working on tourist visa.

kikki• 4 years ago

2. You can move anywhere in the country, like from San Francisco to Nashville, and your compensation won't change

This is confusing. If I work in Nashville is my start compensation the same as if I live in San Francisco? Does San Francisco market-rate determine national salary bands - or are they still different based on location? Cost of living is a thing no matter how you cut it.

carlosdp• 4 years ago

I believe he's saying it's location independent now. (Most Airbnb employees were in SF, pre-pandemic)

So presumably your location of living just isn't a factor in the compensation determination (which I think is the right way to do this, compensation should be based on market, not chosen geography).

Flameancer• 4 years ago

I feel there’s a caveat to this. If this happens in MANGA companies what’s to stop smaller cities from raising the cost of living higher than most of the locals due to having a small amount of high wages/large city types moving in. Idk having a wage adjusted for California prices but living in say the middle of Kansas doesn’t really seem fair and I doubt the local market can pay the same.

AlchemistCamp• 4 years ago

If you're remote, cost of living isn't really something Airbnb has to care about. As long as they get good work from you and don't incur office costs in a specific area for you, they can pay you what they believe is a good rate for your services and let you spend it in as cheap (or pricey) of a city as you want.

On a much smaller scale, if I hire someone to edit my book, I probably won't know or care where they live.

akkartik• 4 years ago

As always, it all depends on what you negotiate. They promise not to use the "cost of living" hammer during the negotiation, but as always the most important factor will be your "other offers" hammer.

zuhayeer• 4 years ago

Also noteworthy that they aren't making any compensation adjustments for employees going remote: https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/1519831793687441408

Wonder if this applies only to existing employees and not new hires. These salaries would be game changing in places like Nashville: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Airbnb/salaries/Software-Engi...

menzoic• 4 years ago

This applies to new hires too. Pay tiers are now country level.

Kneecaps07• 4 years ago

I found this really interesting. I remember in a previous job, I moved to a lower cost of living city in the same state. My employer told me about about how they were considering lowering my salary because of this. They weren't billing any less for my time. I wasn't any less productive.

I got out of there soon after and found a better place in the new city.

danamit• 4 years ago

The amount of jobs I didn't get because I refuse to relocate abroad is astonishing, hopefully this will normalize hiring people without relocating them, but I guess it depends on the legal side of it too.

dang• 4 years ago

Related ongoing thread:

Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31200650

immigrantheart• 4 years ago

Hear me out.

Lets say a 3rd world country, an average salary of SWE is $1000/month. An average salary of a family doctor is $3000/month.

If one day the US/Canada/EU and other 1st world countries manage to finally crack the tax code by outsourcing their work. I can see some things happening:

- SWEs in 1st world countries no longer price-competitive, and they have to either move to 3rd world countries or change career

- People in 3rd world countries no longer want to pursue career as a doctor (and other similarly needed professions like law) (expensive, time consuming, etc) and just pursue SWE jobs

Would this result in people in 3rd world countries have less and less doctors, and people in 3rd world countries would have to go to the 1st world in order to be treated.

This is just a dumb shower thought that I came up with when reading about this. But I wonder what would the implication be for 3rd world countries if we as 1st world manage to crack the outsourcing/tax code.

FWIW, I am a citizen of 3rd world country, now currently reside in the most expensive cities in the US. I also have a familial tie with another 1st world country in Asia that is cheaper than the US. I work as an SWE. I think people like me have the ability to earn US salary and live in 3rd world country, but I'm not sure how other non dual/triple residence would benefit in this type of arrangement.

Maakuth2• 4 years ago

Outsourcing SWE work to India and Eastern Europe is already very, very common. I don't know if that has had an impact on the availability of doctors, but in Poland, Ukraine or Belarus you'll find most of the IT workers work in outsourcing. The solution for the tax issue is to either have a subsidiary in the low-cost country or buy the outsourcing as a service from a company that's specialized in this arrangement.

I'm in Europe so this is my point of view for the outsourcing recipient countries. I suppose US companies might outsource to Latin America for better time zone overlap.

bakuninsbart• 4 years ago

It is just anecdotal, but friends and colleagues who did successfully outsource part of their development (and it often also fails), didn't reduce their team sizes in western Europe. On the contrary, it usually meant they were more competitive due to lower costs and could grow both offices in size.

Demand for IT around here still seems very far from topping out, and for every team you have outsourced you also need some support, management and engineering at home.

_fat_santa• 4 years ago

This has been a talking point for at least 10 years. Not necessarily the lack of doctors but 3rd world developers out competing domestic ones.

I don’t think it will ever truly happen. Not due to the skill of the workers overseas, but all the other intangible stuff around running a business.

Many places I’ve worked at have outsourced work to overseas, but it’s always in a supplementary fashion. I’ve heard of places that went all in but unless you have superb engineering management onshore, it usually ends very badly.

jstummbillig• 4 years ago

Assuming that something that sounds entirely plausible and has gigantic upsides for one of two engaging parties with increasingly less downsides for the other party will "never truly happen" has historically been really bad policy when predicting the future.

"Outsourcing" is obviously happening, but the word itself is already a big red flag for last generation think. When it comes to produce, already, no one is truly talking about "outsourcing" to China anymore. That's just where chunk of global production, from highest to lowest quality, happens now.

It would be terribly arrogant to assume that, eventually, this is not going to be the case in the highly sophisticated SWE machinery when quite clearly the gap in innovation and execution is shrinking, and rapidly so.

sokoloff• 4 years ago

I think off-shoring (different geo, same company) is easier and more likely to succeed than out-sourcing (to a different company) for software or product development.

Having employees of your company (or a wholly-owned subsidiary) working alongside other local employees is much easier than outsourcing the work to another company in another location. In the latter case, your interests are less aligned than if you were all working for the same company.

It still takes excellent management in both/all geographies and it’s a different style of work, with communications across geos being slower, harder, and more lossy than an in-person whiteboard chat that you might have come to rely on.

donkeyd• 4 years ago

SWEs in 1st world countries no longer price-competitive, and they have to either move to 3rd world countries or change career

In the Netherlands we have a lot of outsourcing to India and a lot of Indian IT workers moving here. We still have many IT job openings and some companies have been moving development back from India, because cultural differences and language barriers some times cost more than the added salary of a local employee.

People in 3rd world countries no longer want to pursue career as a doctor (and other similarly needed professions like law) (expensive, time consuming, etc) and just pursue SWE jobs

This assumes that people pursue career paths only for the money. Of the doctors I know, most people did not pick that job for the money, they did it because they wanted to be a doctor.

Then there's the fact that people have different interests and natural skill sets. A family member of mine, for example, is a doctor and asked me: "do you really like computers". She would not become an SWE even if it paid double.

vlovich123• 4 years ago

That's the rationalization given. But expressed preferences definitely does show that salary drives large numbers of people into professions. With the aging boom, lots of people went into nursing with the expectation of easier money. Tech salaries have sucked oxygen out of the room for people going into maths, physics, and other engineering professions just like FinTech salaries have also sucked talent out of those professions. This has knock-on effects.

Worst case there's fewer doctors, their salaries increase (steady demand + shrinking supply), and the quality of care increases as does wait times and access to care for the broader population worsens. Realistic case, I don't know if it'll impact doctors numbers as the field isn't particularly related - the overlap of people who are equally considering between SW and medicine is small. Maybe in the longer term it has an impact on students making career choices in high school? Hard to say.

Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere

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