planetburgess

Well done. Its important to have places which showcase people who aren't well served by the mainstream job sites.

Bear in mind that the US (IRS) requirements for independent contractors are not really relevant here. The Canadian legislation is what counts. Citizens are classified based on the legislation of the country in which they are working.

(1) Beware of misclassification if hiring someone full time as a contractor in Canada. In this case the fact that the employee is planning to pick up a side gig is a good indicator they are a genuine contractor instead of a disguised employee. Similarly it helps if the worker provides their own equipment and has responsibility for their own working hours.

(2) Do not offer health and other benefits directly or via an allowance as this is the act of an employer. (3) Instead build them into the total salary e.g. increase salary by 5k.

Lastly if engaging as a contractor make sure it is for a fixed term (e.g. 6-12 months). Towards the end of the contract initial duration both parties can assess whether the setup still works or whether an employed solution might be more appropriate.

This article might be helpful: https://www.hrreporter.com/workplace-law/39422-independent-c...

Employers and teams can choose to work synchronously which means timezones are important. Remote doesn't necessarily mean anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

Pro rata is considered fair. On the same way that overtime pay is considered fair if you have to work extra hours.

If you have a disability, then the right to work remotely is covered as an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Otherwise it really depends on the employer and manager.

Those companies may feel they have access to enough talent in the USA. They may have restrictions with data protection or security. They may be worried about timezones or communication. Or they may be worried about complying with foreign employment and tax regulations.

You can be employed through a third party deployment company (ArbeitnehmerÜberlassungsGesetz) for up to eighteen months. Such companies (known in other countries as Employer of Record / GEO / PEO / Umbrella companies) have an AÜG license. We offer this to our clients in Germany. After eighteen months your company could setup (in order of complexity) a representative office, branch or subsidiary. Or you could pursue one of the self employed models.

In the USA the Department of OHSA specifically says that it (and the employer) don't bear responsibility for a home based work site. They won't do site inspections and the best they can do is give tips to the worker and have the worker complete a self-assessment. Overseas this is viewed very differently. e.g. in Australia and UK the employer is responsible for worker safety even if they are working from home.

https://www.osha.gov/enforcement/directives/cpl-02-00-125

"OSHA will not conduct inspections of employees' home offices.

OSHA will not hold employers liable for employees' home offices, and does not expect employers to inspect the home offices of their employees.

If OSHA receives a complaint about a home office, the complainant will be advised of OSHA's policy. If an employee makes a specific request, OSHA may informally let employers know of complaints about home office conditions, but will not follow-up with the employer or employee."

This sheet by Rudolphe Dutel at Remotive.io lists 900+ startups who are hiring remotely https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20083795

Sense of pride and loyalty is generally not a problem. For many (most?) people working remotely allows them to better balance work and life. It often makes it easier for them to do things that are important to them.

One of the ways people "pay that back" is with loyalty and engagement. Also if working remotely gives them opportunities which they can't get elsewhere they might have a higher attachment to keeping the job.

Taking responsibility for work and work hours also comes with the territory. If you can't do this, you can't work remotely. The more common issue that remote employers have is prevent overwork and burnout.

Feeling connected to each other is a bit more complex. Remote companies need to be deliberate about this, especially as they scale. It depends a lot on the way they are constructed. A company that is remote but all within one region can have a synchronous culture. This influences how workers interact. If the company is spread across many timezones they are more likely to have an asynchronous culture and need different ways to interact and build bonds between people. It is possible, just requires effort. I talk about how we do this on the Collaboration Superpowers podcast https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/232-getting-to-know...

I think the most public remote companies are also companies who are quite thoughtful about why they exist and what they want to be. Which are good places to start when creating vision and objectives!

That suggests a lack of trust or a reliance on synchronous communication. Both of which don't work great in a remote environment, in my experience. It does seem to work for some people who want to replicate a co-located office experience.

I wonder if there are additional restrictions based on being in financial services. It may require different licenses, registrations, insurance and employer regulations (e.g. different collective bargaining agreement) compared to traditional industries.

Establishing a registered entity to employ in a foreign country is not a few hours advice. It is difficult, expensive and time consuming.

Same. You can standardise equipment allowances but you can't standardise co-working costs, especially if you have international workers. Wework cost us roughly USD 700 per head in Sydney, USD 500 in London and USD 300 in Madrid.

I don't see much of this within hybrid companies and don't see why it would occur. The whole point in a hybrid setup is you get to choose what suits you. If you want to work in an office with people, choose that. If you prefer to be remote, work remote.

People don't get paid more in San Francisco because they deliver more value than a worker in New York City or London. San Francisco rates are high because of geographic scarcity of talent in that location. Over the long term remote is going to reduce SFBA rates, not propagate them.

Some countries are just cheaper to employ in. That dooes not mean that people there are any less talented.

Is working for Gitlab remotely in Vietnam on a localised salary as good or better than most local job opportunities?

If so, isn't it still good for the employees?

They might also prefer to work in a better medical system.

Zapier does indexed compensation by region. E.g. They pay employees in Asia less than employees in America. This is actually the worst of both worlds. They are paying over the market rate in some countries and under the market in others. Some of their employees are raking it in, others not so much. What's fair or desirable about that?

We have 30 people across 9 countries and several teams who have very limited real time cross over. We don't send internal emails. We use: Slack for asynchronous discussion. If someone posts something in Slack they should expect a response within 1-2 days. Salesforce chatter for operational discussion. Comments on here should get answered within 1 work day. Skype chat for real time chat. This should get answered asap (let's say 15 minutes). Zoom for all meetings.

To properly support remote work you need it to be fair for everyone, which means you need to offer it to everyone and optimise for it. Huge organisations face larger barriers to this because of the amount of change it would require to how they communicate and interact. But all those organisations will have pockets of remote workers even if not officially endorsed.

We have just over twenty remote workers internally and we use a mix. Full disclosure we are a service provider in this space, so I am just taking about what we do internally and freely admit I am biased because of the nature of our business. 1) For short term we engage some folks as independent contractors. They sign a freelance contract, they invoice us each month for their gross earnings and we pay them via international wire transfer. Tax and social security is their responsibility under the contract. We have some contractors who have been on this arrangement more than twelve months and we will try to move them onto employee status this year because of the risk of misclassification. For many tax and labor authorities the contract doesn't matter if they view it as an employment relationship. 2) If we have our own entity incorporated in the country where the worker is (UK, Australia) they sign an employment contract and we pay them through the payroll with full tax and social security contributions & deductions. 3) Where we haven't got our own entity or don't want to run our own payroll yet (USA, Spain, etc) we use a GEO/Employer of record service. The employee signs an employment contract with the GEO, the GEO invoices us each month for salary + employer costs + their fees, we pay them and they pay the employee. If you are small or just starting, begin with the first option. It's by far the easiest to administer. Eventually as you get bigger and more stable then you will come to a point contracting alone doesn't work anymore. Then the blended approach has worked very well for us.

The foreign bank generally had to do a fairly manual process to get a U.S. cheque cleared. This can take weeks. 7 weeks is a bit excessive, probably they are giving worst case scenario.

Hiring non U.S.employees on your U.S. payroll is a bad idea. The employee will have a dual tax nightmare having to reconcile the tax and social security against their home country regime.

Just imagine how much better those companies could be if they had more diversity.

Not for that length of time. Unless you can qualify for Tier 1, which seems unlikely based on what you've said https://workpermit.com/immigration/united-kingdom/tier-1-vis... You can't get a Tier 2 work permit because it must be sponsored by a UK employer. Which means you would have to work for a UK company, again that doesn't fit your circumstances. You shouldn't work on a tourist visa although it does let you in the country for six months https://workpermit.com/immigration/united-kingdom/uk-standar... Also without a legal immigration status in the UK you can't rent a property, you might be able to persuade your landlord that a tourist visa was sufficient... https://www.foxtons.co.uk/let/right-to-rent.html

All good points regarding Australia. It's worth pointing out over half the Australian population is covered by private medical insurance https://www.canstar.com.au/health-insurance/who-has-health-i... So it's actually very much a thing. And my experience has been the same, more than half our Australian team use the health and well-being allowance we provide them for private medical insurance.

My company administers hundreds of remote workers in over fifty countries. A significant proportion of our clients and employees (in developed countries outside the US) ask us to provide private medical insurance. It's not as big a deal as the USA and not as likely to be a deal breaker when accepting a job, but it's actually quite common in many countries.