
Europe Remotely – EU-friendly remote dev jobs - dabrorius
http://europeremotely.com/2015/12/10/issue-8.html
======
scalesolved
I think a lot of these job postings would have a lot more success if they
showed salary ranges, in fact that just applies to all job postings.

Why apply for EU remote working (if living in the EU) when you can remote work
for a US based company? The timezone is off but programmers should be able to
work autonomously and independently.

~~~
netcan
Not posting salaries always baffles me. I mean, I understand the negotiating
advantage. Maybe also wanting to keep salary information quite within the
company. But, surely, this is a relevant piece of information for the person
deciding to apply.

I'm surprised jobs sites don't enforce it. Only jobs with salary information
are allowed.

~~~
ido
I've worked my entire career in Germany, Austria & Israel and not once did I
see a job ad advertise salary. This might be location dependent?

~~~
marssaxman
How on earth do you determine which jobs are worth applying to, then?

~~~
ido
I apply to those that sounds interesting (company and/or project) & if both
sides want to go on after the interview we discuss salary.

A couple of times this proved to be the breaking point but not that often.

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ned
When you are full-time employed, remotely, by a european company, and living
in another european country, does anyone know :

— do you set yourself up as a freelance consultant, and pay your healthcare
and retirement fund yourself?

— …or do you let the company pay that for you in the country they are based
in, and somehow benefit from that?

How does it work exactly for these social benefits that are very important in
the european welfare model?

~~~
nraynaud
In France it's risky to be self-employed and have only one customer, that
could be re-qualified as a disguised employment.

I don't know exactly how that works with foreign companies.

edit: my remark on foreign company is that, by having no nexus in the country
of the consultant, going after them seems difficult

~~~
stevoski
Same in Germany. It is risky for the company, not for the "disguised
employee", because the company can find that the freelancer subsequently
demands back-payment of entitlements.

I've never actually heard of this happening, but I've encountered difficulties
as a freelancer because a company was scared this could happen.

True ridiculous story: a German bank I did a consulting gig at for several
months would not allow consultants to have their names on the office doors,
unlike employees. They thought that having our names on the doors could be
enough to turn us into "disguised employees".

~~~
ccozan
No is not ridiculous at all: having your name on a door means that you are
"forced" to work there, thus rendering you in a employee since you cannot
determine for yourself the place and location of work, the cornerstones of
beeing a freelancer.

I do consulting for a big technology company in Munich and they have special
freelancer areas where you can have any place you want, since there is no
concept of "office" for a freelancers like. Some colleagues always have to
chase me, since I can choose to take another place than they are used to :).

Also, you have to bring your own coffee machine, water, you are not allowed to
use the ones from the kitchen, since they are only for employees. But I just
don't care :), and use them anyway.

PS. i had some other crazy contract where I had to show them proof I am
working also for another client, otherwise not able to take the gig. Germany
is quite special :)

~~~
DominikR
I heard this has to do with the fact that once social services prove that you
are not actually self employed the employer would have to pay back a
significant amount to social services AND a fine on top of that.

I understand that these laws should prevent abuse of employees by big
corporations, but it's hilarious that they go after self employed consultants
that make several 100k Euros per year and already pay the maximum amount of
social security that is possible.

And it's not like these companies have 2 or 3 consultants, they will likely
have 10, 100 or even more. We are talking about fines that could be as high as
many millions for these companies.

~~~
k__
In Germany you need to make about 60000€ a year to get private health
insurance (better service, lower price) OR you have to be self-employed, where
it doesn't matter how much you make. (500€ private, 750€ public)

Yes, this doesn't matter for an engineer who makes about 100000€ a year. :)

But!

If you're an employee, you have to pay into a government-controlled retirement
fund, if you're self-employed you don't.

If you make about 100k, you (and your employer) would have to pay more than
10k a year.

So, no, if you're self-employed and make good money, you don't necessarily
have to pay "the maximum amount of social security" :)

~~~
germanier
For the retirement fund only the first 74,400€ (west) or 64,800€ (east) of
your income is used (2016 numbers, different rules if you work in mining). For
anything over you don't pay into the retirement fund.

There are some self-employed that need to pay into the retirement fund,
including teachers (which is applied broadly, e.g. training supervisors and
moderators), journalists, and artists.

Also don't forget about the unemployment fund into which employees must pay.

> lower price, 500€ private

Heavily depends on your health and age. Additionally family members are
insured for free in public but not private insurance which might tip the
scale. Also important to note is that it's close to impossible for most to
switch back to public insurance once they decided to go private (e.g. if the
premiums rise in the future).

~~~
k__
Only after 50 it is impossible to switch back.

Before that you just have to report, that you're unemployed and the state
forces you to go back into public healthcare

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davidroetzel
Thanks! This is really nice. I find it frustrating to browse remote job ads
only to find out at the end, that they mean "remote, but US only".

(Of course I can understand why US companies make this restriction, I just
wish other job boards would help them make this more clear up front.)

~~~
dvcrn
I agree with this. I applied on a handful of jobs stating "work from
everywhere you want" in the past only to later find out that they meant US
only.

Now I want something for asia timezones and I'm happy.

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tallanvor
The first item on the list is "I Will Teach You To Be Rich". That, to me, is a
sign that I won't find serious opportunities on there.

~~~
dabrorius
I was reluctant to add that posting because of the project name. However if
you read the job posting it seems much more serious than the name implies. It
was an edge case but I decided to add it in the end.

~~~
SyneRyder
If it becomes an issue, you could change the project name to Ramit Sethi (the
guy behind IWTYTBR). He's pretty well known and has personal brand
recognition. I don't really recognise any of the other companies on the list,
maybe Semaphore, but I was really surprised to see "Whoa, Ramit's hiring."

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trymas
> You should be (or have a strong desire to become) a HTML5 geek, JavaScript
> nerd and CSS wizard.

I had to double check if I am reading a job ad or hipster blogger's about
page.

Though, the site itself is great, there are indeed many 'remote' job ads,
though somehow by default many are 'remote in USA', so it's great value.

~~~
weland
> > You should be (or have a strong desire to become) a HTML5 geek, JavaScript
> nerd and CSS wizard.

Indeed, it seems that there is hardly any room left for mere _programmers_ in
this industry :-).

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manuelflara
This is awesome.

One observation: maybe in this case, including the number of subscribers is
actually a deterrent for getting people to subscribe. I'm talking about the
"Join over 1100 subscribers." line.

You may be triggering a "damn, I'm going to have to compete with _that_ many
other developers for the same handful of jobs?" response instead of the usual
"If that many people trust this guy with their email, it must be OK for me to
give it" one that this best practice suggests.

~~~
dabrorius
That's a good point, even though 1100 is really not that much of a competition
when you think about it. Five or more jobs per week, each requiring different
skills, it really adds up in job opportunities. But I get your point - it
makes a negative psychological effect, I'll consider removing it. Thanks!

------
ameen
As an Indian, I doubt I'll qualify for work in these companies. The problem
for non-EU, non-US devs wishing to work remotely [1] is that most companies
can't legally employ you or aren't willing to jump through bureaucratic hoops
just to employ you.

I'd subscribed to a remote-only jobs board and the issue was that either I
didn't qualify for work due to my residency, or the company never really
responded.

I would say if these issues didn't exist most companies wouldn't have to
import a workforce from elsewhere. Most third-world countries have a decent
quality of life that we wouldn't have to transplant ourselves & be harassed by
less-qualified xenophobic residents just to work and pay obscene taxes (by
third-world standards) that in the end does serve them.

I'd love for the EU and the US to become more Anti-immigrant (thankfully it's
rising) and for the populace to wake up once the industries that kept them at
the top move out of there.

[1] - Most of us speak fluent English and are aware of western cultural
sensibilities & work ethics (thanks, Hollywood! & outsourcing firms). Our
skill level isn't to blame either since we adhere to industry standards in
code-quality, best practices, design patterns, etc.

I'm Westernized, loved America & the U.K. when I visited them and the people
were awesome, but thanks to nationalities and nationalists the U.S. has
imposed these arbitrary impediments designed to keep away those willing to
move from their native countries to further their careers.

~~~
saiya-jin
a rather selfish approach to keep things polite.

\- you want us to be more xenophobic, but in the same time steal local jobs
for yourself, with our pay, but your local expenses. just WOW

\- there are specific laws to prevent what you want to do, at least in some
cases. it's called protection of local market, and a very good think to do,
helps economy long term.

\- again, xenophobic WHAT? I sit in 1 row here with Swiss, British (err...
Scotch), Belgian, Kiwi, Chinese, French, Dutch, Ukrainian, Indian, Philippino
etc. No issues whatsoever.

\- you have a naive view of how good remote Indian resources are. technical
skills happen to be OK in many cases, but all remaining, and at least EQUALLY
necessary are not. 0 initiative, 0 willingness to take any risk/personal
responsibility for decisions. "please hand me over perfect spec and I'll get
it done" is nice, but doesn't work in world without perfect spec, or any spec
at all. Plus Bangalore is not cheap anymore, Pune is so-so. Eastern Europe
wins so far in price/value ratio.

and I could go on and on... one strongly suspect troll there :)

~~~
dvdcxn
>err... Scotch

Wouldn't recommend calling us Scots "Scotch". We're not whisky ;)

~~~
ameen
Isn't British inoffensive to Scots? Odd he decided to bundle an entire nation
with whiskey :P

~~~
arethuza
I think people in the UK who refer to themselves as "British" are actually in
the minority - most people I know would say they are English, Scottish etc.

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mberth
How are you filtering these jobs? Six jobs in a week (the interval between
emails) seems a bit on the low end to me. Maybe you apply very strict criteria
for including a job on the list?

I couldn't resist and applied a similar filter to the jobs / gigs I found for
my own service, SendGigs. I require one of the the tags full-time or salary,
and exclude everything that is tagged US-only. Then I'm left with 20 jobs, see
[https://www.sendgigs.com/2015-12-10](https://www.sendgigs.com/2015-12-10)

So at least to me it looks like there is a lot of remote opportunities for
non-US developers. And it is getting better with more and more companies
figuring out remote work.

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jtheory
Note that to submit jobs, here's the link:
[http://europeremotely.com/submit_job.html](http://europeremotely.com/submit_job.html)

(I started writing this as a question but found the answer myself in the
footer links...)

We're based roughly around London time -- though we now have developers from
Costa Rica to Bangalore. Bangalore was easy, though, and US timezones were
harder. The gap in timezones there is big enough that it took us a while to
jump that successfully (and people working in US timezones still need to be
fairly independent), so I imagine it works similarly in the other direction
(US-based companies hiring EU-based remote workers)... once the gap is more
than 3-4 hours you either need an established core of senior full-stack people
in that timezone range, or just proceed quite carefully and offer extra
support.

~~~
sz4kerto
I think Bangalore is easier to work with because they adapt, not you - i.e. it
is generally easier to stay up late than getting up early.

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lifeisstillgood
I very nearly managed an application from my iPhone

The Elixr position had a "apply with LinkedIn" which worked surprisingly well
(must look into how, that seems a sellable app), and I almost had an online CV
to upload. Almost.

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ruirr
How about remote admin jobs? I have quite a few free time, and would easily
take a 2nd job remotely.

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owenwil
This is great! Would love something like this for broader roles in the tech
field, though

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zlw
This is great. Thanks for sharing. Is there a Japanese version?

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crypt1d
A section for devops would be nice as well.

~~~
leorossi
Most of the links of that newsletter are from weworkremotely.com that has a
DevOps section

[https://weworkremotely.com/categories/6-devops-
sysadmin/jobs...](https://weworkremotely.com/categories/6-devops-
sysadmin/jobs#intro)

