You list major barriers around legal presence (the cost of deel) and compliance, what more do you want?
Are you setting yourself up as a local company and just selling yourself as a consulting firm (or using an umbrella firm), or are you an actual employee?
Are there any tariffs in engaging your firm? OK if you're remote in Germany and working for a Canadian that's probably OK, but if you are based in Cuba or Iran would that be a problem.
Lets say you incorporate in Delaware (or work for one based there), does the firm fully outsource the risk to that consultanting firm, or is this like if I employ a contractor who then pays a bribe I'm still liable.
Is that firm large enough and trusted enough (Cognizant, Accenture, Infosys etc) to take that risk?
What if you live in North Korea? Or China? Does an employer want that risk that the government will be able to interfere?
OK you might think that's OK, but how about Kablankistan? Are you confident they are free from pressures from locals (perhaps who are working for China/Russia/Your Competitor) in the same way someone working in the UK or Canada is?
How about Australia, where the government can compel your employee to insert a backdoor into your product.
On the other hand you claim that compensation scale is important, but surely if the work is being done the local compensation doesn't matter. People get paid massive variations for nominally doing the same job even in the same office.
The value proposition that US tech workers (in office and remote) have is they are literally 100 times better than a worker in a code factory in India. That's either right - in which case it doesn't matter if the worker is working remotely from Oregon or from India (setting aside the timezone issue you already discounted and the legal and risk issues mentioned above), as long as the value you're getting is enough.
If I have two identical candidates who will do the job just as well, it surely doesn't matter if they live in NYC or Buffalo (or other factors aside in NYC or Naples), I'd pay the necessary compensation to get one of them to work for me and keep them happy so they don't leave.
Comments
You list major barriers around legal presence (the cost of deel) and compliance, what more do you want?
Are you setting yourself up as a local company and just selling yourself as a consulting firm (or using an umbrella firm), or are you an actual employee?
Are there any tariffs in engaging your firm? OK if you're remote in Germany and working for a Canadian that's probably OK, but if you are based in Cuba or Iran would that be a problem.
Lets say you incorporate in Delaware (or work for one based there), does the firm fully outsource the risk to that consultanting firm, or is this like if I employ a contractor who then pays a bribe I'm still liable.
Is that firm large enough and trusted enough (Cognizant, Accenture, Infosys etc) to take that risk?
What if you live in North Korea? Or China? Does an employer want that risk that the government will be able to interfere?
OK you might think that's OK, but how about Kablankistan? Are you confident they are free from pressures from locals (perhaps who are working for China/Russia/Your Competitor) in the same way someone working in the UK or Canada is?
How about Australia, where the government can compel your employee to insert a backdoor into your product.
On the other hand you claim that compensation scale is important, but surely if the work is being done the local compensation doesn't matter. People get paid massive variations for nominally doing the same job even in the same office.
The value proposition that US tech workers (in office and remote) have is they are literally 100 times better than a worker in a code factory in India. That's either right - in which case it doesn't matter if the worker is working remotely from Oregon or from India (setting aside the timezone issue you already discounted and the legal and risk issues mentioned above), as long as the value you're getting is enough.
If I have two identical candidates who will do the job just as well, it surely doesn't matter if they live in NYC or Buffalo (or other factors aside in NYC or Naples), I'd pay the necessary compensation to get one of them to work for me and keep them happy so they don't leave.
Exactly what you posted :-)
I have rough thoughts. I'm curious about other people's thoughts, experiences, and opinions. Hence "Ask HN"
Thanks a lot, you've given me some nuggets to think about.