
Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe? - soroso
I read a lot about remote work - either sourcing from Hacker News and other media. However, what I see in practice, at least in Benelux Area, is that companies are far more interest in on-site positions than remote positions.<p>Why is it so? If the advantages of remote working are so clear - why companies still hire only on-site positions?
======
magiconair
I am one of these managers in Amsterdam with an international team of 10
people from 8 different countries who still writes code. My desire is to have
a team that gets the job done. The most effective way for them to do this IMO
is to have them sit together so that they can discuss issues they have
immediately.

We are seeing effects of less effective communication of teams sitting just a
few desks apart.

Remote work has great benefits for the remote worker - and having been one I
know them as well. The downside is that when you're building something complex
the communication overhead is too big.

Another thing is that remote workers in vastly different timezones provide a
time window for architectural discussions which can be too short. So they are
never there when you need them and can only work alone.

I prefer to give my team members flexibility to run their personal errands and
family issues but to have them on-site to have the shortest group
communication paths possible.

~~~
gizi
I have been doing remote work for 10 years now. Github and Gitlab (if you want
to host privately) are the answers for me. Concerning communication and
sitting together, my question remains: What exactly is it that you are able to
say but incapable of writing? Over the years, I have become suspicious of
someone who cannot write something but insists that he wants to say it,
because when he is finally sitting there, guess what, he can still not say it.
The more complex the project, the less you want to collaborate with that
person, if only because his claims that he can say the things that he is
incapable of writing, are not true.

~~~
soneca
But then you can help him put in words what is worrying him, even if he is
incapable of saying. That's communication, dialogue. It is interaction in
different levels, not just exchange of sequential, defined messages.

When you limit the dimensions of a face-to-face communication to the dimenions
of a written communication, it is tautological to say the are the same. But
the advantage of face-to-face is exactly having more communication dimensions.

~~~
yetanotheracc
I doubt there are many things in the area of software development that a
competent professional can legitimately be incapable of putting in words.

It is obvious that face-to-face communication can be richer. But it does not
follow that internet or just written communication is significantly deficient
in an overwhelming majority of situations in our field.

------
Htsthbjig
I am entrepreneur (also studied engineering) in Europe. I have only worked
remotely most of my life.

Main problem is bureaucracy. The US is a big place and it is United from West
to East Coast.

In Europe, once you start making lots of money, every country you touch wants
your money. So if you hire a French guy the French gobertment will love to tax
YOUR ENTIRE business based on their socialistic views of the world, even when
you are located in other country. Rinse and repeat with any country you touch.

Instead of focusing on the tech side of things you have to make an incredible
effort with bureaucracy alone.

The advantages of remote working are very clear, but so are the disadvantages:
People can goof all day or do the laundry, take care of the kids at the
employer expense. The employer could also abuse taking extra hours of the
employee for free.

For neither the employer or the employee to abuse each other or just being
productive when nobody is watching you(directly, of course I know what my
people are doing even when I am not in front of them)a series of techniques
has been developed . It takes practice, effort and time for people to get used
to it.

But yes, once you try it you will never want to go back. You can never
eliminate the need to meet your coworkers from time to time(once a week or
month) though.

Most business in Europe are old and big, they do what has been proved to
work(in a pre Internet world) for decades. They move slowly, but they move.

Big companies operate over the principle of "nobody ever got fired for doing
what used to work". When they see success examples of other big companies
doing remote working, they will follow. But today only a few jobs, like
programming or personal assistants could be completely done remotely.

My advice is to create your own company and to take advantage of this problem,
you know in the business world we call them "opportunities". As remote
communications improve this is going to explode.

~~~
jotm
Always-on audiovisual communication tools can fix the problem of employees not
being on the job during work hours.

And the multiple taxation is not an issue anymore - your company and you are
taxed by location within the EU (assuming you're a citizen of the EU). Hell,
you can even take advantage of it by establishing a residence in a cheap
country but actually living elsewhere. Your company is taxed where it's
founded, but there are some issues with _legally_ operating in other EU
countries.

~~~
throwaway12309
Not really true. Most countries have a residency rule (for personal income)
that if you live more than 165 days (or something to that effect) you will be
taxed as a resident of that country. Even if you register a company in another
country within the EU, you may still be liable to pay corporate tax on your
residence country as some countries also have conditions on that (if you own
more than X (usually around 70%) of a company, and the company country is
considered a low tax jurisdiction (this can depend for some countries where
some have lists, others have a corporate threshold and others have countries
corporate tax < owner resident country corporate tax - 10% is also a tax
haven) they will want to tax that company as a resident.

As others mentioned, while more common, intra-community workers are a
bureaucracy nightmare if you don't register a subsidiary in the employee's
country, which if you do, then you have tax/social security+other stuff you
need to take care in the employee's country.

Best way to do it is for employee to setup it's own company in country of
residence and play by the rules, and then just be paid for services rendered
and be responsible for all taxes/other.

~~~
ar0
But be aware that many European countries know laws against quasi-self-
employment ("Scheinselbständigkeit" in German) to avoid people becoming self-
employed to avoid social security taxes. So, even if you set-up your own
company but this company only serves one client (your de-facto "employer"),
you and/or your employer might be liable for social security payments neither
of you did expect. So even such a set-up might be too risky for some companies
to consider.

~~~
gizi
In Germany itself, that would indeed be a major issue. Imagine, however, a
company from Canada employing a German in France? Which country would manage
to get in a position that they could collect social security payments? Germany
would not see any part of that situation under its eyes. Canada just sees
invoices coming in from abroad. France has no clue as to what that German does
or with whom. This situation could last for decades and no government would be
able to even ask relevant questions. You see, that German is not a resident of
Germany. I cannot imagine the German administration sending questionnaires
overseas. The French may want to collect local taxes, but they would have no
serious basis, or even information, for collecting income tax or social
security contributions. Where exactly would they be verifying anything? In
other words, if you confuse the situation sufficiently, not one of those slow
and bureaucratic government administrations could ever deal with it. Not in
our lifetime.

~~~
throwaway12309
Portugal has the same issue, if 70%+ of your company income is from a single
entity, the company is taxed as a self employed person and not a company. So
technically, the paying company doesn't have to pay nothing, but the receiving
company will be responsible for those contributions. But there are ways around
it and limitations, for example, in PT doesn't apply if you have employees or
if the volume of business if over a certain amount or if ownership is divided
by two (or more) people (if you are married, you can name your partner as a
shareholder when you create the company and get around it easily)

------
ar0
I have asked myself the same question some time ago. I believe it comes down
to (as some commenters below have already mentioned) the following, ordered by
decreasing importance:

1\. Legal issues: Hiring people across borders is a nightmare for both the
employer and the employee when it comes to social deductions, taxes, health
insurance, applicable labor laws, etc. And if you hire people _within_
borders, many European countries are small enough that they could just as well
commute to your office (maybe that's also the reason why more remote work is
available in Germany and the UK, being larger countries, as has been stated
below).

2\. No Silicon Valley: Let's face it - most American companies will expect you
to show up at the office every day just as they do in Europe. The exception
are primarily the tech startups, and in the United States there simply are a
lot more of them than in Europe.

3\. Worker protection: I think hiring remote workers is inherently more risky
than hiring on-site staff. You will have less control over your employees, you
might even have less control over the hiring process (no on-site meeting),
etc. In the United States, you can just try it - hire someone to work
remotely, see if he or she can deliver and if not, just terminate the
employment and go back to hiring on-site staff. In many European countries,
getting rid of employees once you have hired them can be quite challenging and
requires solid proof that they are not delivering what they should - and to
make matters worse, getting that proof will also be much more difficult if
they are working remote with less oversight.

4\. Language issues: Yes, many people in Europe speak English (more or less
fluently). Nevertheless, following conference calls in a language that is not
your native language will be more challenging than following a face-to-face
meeting, so language barriers become more pronounced when interacting remotely
(at least in my experience).

------
jmnicolas
My opinion based on my experience in France is that the workplace is more
about appearing to be working than to actually do something useful.

So if nobody can see you working because you're not in the building you're not
contributing to this illusion of work being done.

Where I 'work' I have a manager that has to invent some crazy projects just to
keep me occupied. If he didn't do that I could work half a day every week and
be done with it.

In my Visual Studio projects folder I have a bit less than 100 projects. Maybe
3 or 4 are actually needed by the company, 20 are test or toy projects and the
rest nobody has ever used these programs past their presentation (not because
they're not good but just because they're not needed).

I find it hard to stay motivated (and this is quite an understatement !)

~~~
tormeh
Well, sounds like you either have to switch jobs or you have to work 14 times
slower.

~~~
RyanZAG
Neither option is really optimal for either party though.

The correct solution would be for him to work half days and continue with job
rewards to be identical: he gets more free time and a better life, while the
company gets a more loyal employee who is more relaxed and would be more
willing to go that extra mile on projects which actually are important.

It's really just one of those cases where human nature and the desire for him
not to get 'paid for doing nothing' is actually hurting everyone involved.
Humorous and very sad.

------
bresc
First of all not everyone is suited for remote work. Remote work often means
working from home (co-working space maybe) which makes it rather difficult to
engage in social activities. While co-working spaces might make it easier it's
still more difficult. Also not everyone has the self-discipline and while you
might argue that people also go to the office and browse HN all day others
feel more motivated working in an office. Additionally the communication is
way different. Emotions get lost in Chats and Skype calls. Last also due to
bad audio quality.

Yes remote work can be good and advantageous for some, but it can also be bad.

------
netcan
I think any answer to this question will be speculative and opinionated.
People have their experience and they have their preferences. The
interpretation of one is based on the other. It's like the open plan vs
offices debate that springs up on HN every so often. Mostly what we have is
personal preferences justified with "facts." In reality I don't think we have
that kind of understanding of what makes people work well. Reality is
complicated with short term and long term effects, feedback effects and
adaption.

Those qualifications aside, I think (A) coding is uniquely well suited to
remote work and (B) transitioning to remote work as a major way of working is
a long cultural transition that companies will need to grow around. They'll
only do that if it's advantageous enough and the process could take a
generation.

Coding is well suited to remote work because it can be parceled effectively
with clear responsibilities and deliverables. It's like journalism in that
sense. If you need to produce 2 articles a week and the articles are the
output of your work, then it's easy for everyone to understand that you did in
fact contribute two articles and form an opinion of their quality.

The parts that are hard about remote working is structuring a culture that is
able to cooperate without physical presence. Physical presence is a key
feature of how we interact. Online discussions are different to face-t-face
discussions. People travel international at great expense and inconvenience in
order to do business face to face. It's subtle buts adds up to a lot.

Maybe we are getting better at remote communication and collaboration. Maybe
the ways we work can adapt to the environment of remote working. But, it's a
cultural shift.

Remote work is strange in the same way that remote parenting, remote dating or
remote friendship is. At the end of the day, the relationship that will come
out of a remote marriage will not be the same as a regular marriage. That may
be OK for remote working. I am sure that some companies are making it their
advantage, but it's not a simple matter.

TLDR: If a company that exists in a building today decided to transition over
two years to a company where people work from home, the company would probably
fail. The transition is hard.

~~~
VLM
"Remote work is strange in the same way that"

Don't forget non-strange remote business relationships like remote retail (buy
from amazon), remote entertainment (Hollywood movie not a stage show or play,
or recorded music not a live band), or remote manufacturing (imported from
China not the now abandoned factory down the road), or remote software
(believe it or not, companies used to write their own OS 50 years ago instead
of buying a microsoft/apple product) or remote senior management (for a long
time, its pretty unusual for most megacorporation employees to work at the
same office as their CEO, even if they work at the same office as their boss).
With increased specialization on a very long term all business has trended
toward ever more remote "business interaction"... the only part that's new, is
the very long term trend is starting to finally impact the lowest
organizational levels of white collar general office labor.

Another hidden assumption is that physical presence or um, excessive face to
face communication is necessarily a productive useful activity, combined with
a heavy dose of "its popular and/or traditional therefore that means its
inherently better" and/or "cultural shift is bad or unnecessary". I'm
unconvinced that "mind work" is best done with enormous amounts of
interpersonal coordination. That means the architecture is a poor match. By
analogy its possible for a very bad general contractor to try to make the
painter, plumber, electrican, and carpenter all work at the same time in the
same corner of a little closet, and maybe, by heroic levels of effort and
incredible professionalism and cooperation it can somehow be accomplished, but
its a kind of dumb non-profitable goal. Also if you design for scalability
you've just lost the game when you tightly coupled, what do you intend to do
next year when "it" goes viral and the database is a department of 50 people
on the other side of the country, not one dude at a conference table with the
other one dude departments?

~~~
netcan
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that remote work is
impossible, or undesrable. I'm saying that it is a big change. Big changes
take time. Time for the culture to change and time for the structure of
organizations to change. If the advantages are big enough, that change can
happen forcefully and quickly.

Online commerce is not a bad analogy. Barnes & Noble didn't become Amazon,
Amazon did. IE, the advantages of online commerce where big enough to invent a
new kind of company to do it. Remote working might be a bigger challenge than
that on the kind of scale proponents seem to hope for.

Maybe we _will_ see large companies go all, part or mostly remote. I don't
really know. It's clear that remote collaboration can work (plenty of
examples), but whether or not it works with existing structures is hard to
know.

Face to face interaction between people is different from remote interaction
in ways that are fairly fundamental to how we worked. Communication &
collaboration is really our speciality as a species, and we have a lot of
inbuilt faculties to help. Some need physical presence. I think the internet
is full of examples of remote communication failing in ways it wouldn't have
in person. We may even be demonstrating this now.

------
wlk
Isn't the point of having a remote job to not care where the company is
registered? Assuming you are in Benelux Area, what's the point of looking for
remote company from Benelux Area?

~~~
neverminder
My guess would be time zone and language.

~~~
wila
There's quite a few more countries that are in the exact same time zone.
Language should not be a problem for most in the Benelux either as pretty much
everyone under 50 has intermediate to good English language skills.

------
lordbusiness
You're most likely looking in the wrong place. The usual customary recruiting
channels are setup to be usual and customary.

You need to find the remote job boards. Oh, and networking, networking,
networking.

~~~
armones
[https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

[http://jobs.remotive.io/](http://jobs.remotive.io/)

Please add others.

~~~
avinassh
This repo maintains curated list of all resources -
[https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-
job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

------
Tomte
That would be a great opportunity to question your premises.

If nobody does what you have identified as the clearly superior way, either
everyone is an idiot. Or you may be wrong.

~~~
jnbiche
Or he works in a technologically conservative area that is slow to adopt new
trends, even useful ones.

Take a look at the HN Who is Hiring threads over the past 2 years, and count
up the total remote jobs. It's increasing at an impressive rate. Companies are
discovering that they can still hire talented developers for average salaries
(particularly those devs living in economically depressed areas).

There are thousands of devs who don't have the option to up and move to N.
California or NYC. Some of them are very talented. It's not hard to figure
out, and I'm sure the same dynamics are at work in Europe.

------
crdb
I'll give some reasons from personal experience (and I think it's a global
thing, not just European).

I pitched a partially remote team to a previous employer in Singapore and they
were reluctant to try it initially.

First, they didn't know what remote meant (except for that time they
outsourced something to a cheap country and it was a costly disaster). So, had
to spend some time explaining that. Not rocking the boat is quite valuable
when you're busy and worried - just keep doing what you know.

Second, a contractor is not an employee - contractors are services you buy
piece by piece, whilst you "own" an employee (not pretty terminology but
unfortunately often true) and you can milk that employee with a potentially
infinite return on your finite investment. Is this a stupid thing to think,
yes, but nevertheless I encountered it.

Third, it's about control. It's possible, but harder to micro-manage remotely
(and in practice no sane contractor will accept it without extreme
compensation).

Fourth, it's also a hell of a lot easier for a "consultant" to "end the
contract" when he's fed up with bad management, than for an employee to move
his entire life yet again (metaphorically if not physically). A consultant
benefits from having had many "clients", an employee is hurt by too many
moves. These "traps" make an employee more pliable and invested emotionally
(at least in managers' eyes) so the managers prefer employees.

Fifth, IP. Employee contracts usually sign over everything. Remote contracts,
being for services, have more opaque IP agreements. This also applies to a
lesser extent to security - that remote dude is working on a foreign network,
foreign machine, etc.

I'm not saying these are desirable things, but these were my conclusions from
experience. YMMV, different businesses have different cultures, etc. If you
want to change your internal culture, I think these are the issues/fears to
address.

We ended up getting remote jobs because the test we put up for the job ended
up not getting a single application locally, but dozens from all over the
world. About half the folks who passed relocated, the rest stayed on remotely.

I'm now running my company completely remotely. We have a mailing address in
London and Hong Kong and work from home. I see almost no reason to get an
office. Unfortunately we're also not hiring because we have a long waitlist of
nice candidates that we will hire (remotely) as soon as we clear enough
revenue. Maybe that's the case for the other remote businesses.

------
gii2
I couldn't agree more with jmnicolas - the situation is pretty similar in
France, Switzerland, Belgium and Austria. There is some "hope" in UK and
Germany, where they really expect to have something done.

There was a guy (can't remember his name) who said that US is the only place
where you can put US guys, Mexican, Chinese and ... (whoever) and make them
work together. In Europe this is not the case, probably because of historical
reasons and as a result of the last 30 years of immigration policy (especially
the french-speaking countries).

My other theory is that Europe is left behind US in the technical area. If
something is top-notch in USA, it will "come" in mainland Europe in 10 or more
years. For e.g. now the MBA is hot trend.

Disclaimer: I've been working remotely for the last 4 years.

~~~
andy_boot
>There was a guy (can't remember his name) who said that US is the only place
where you can put US guys, Mexican, Chinese and ... (whoever) and make them
work together.

As someone working in a company in London with about 25 engineers from 15
different countries I have to disagree with this statement.

~~~
mobiplayer
Same here; second company in the UK (not exactly London though) and did work
with people from several different countries in my team.

------
century19
Based on working in the Benelux this is what I see:

\- Requirements are often given on a very high level, you will need to be
aligning with business owners and other teams on a daily basis, communication
is easier with all these people in the same building. (i.e. you won't be given
a clear package to go off and work on on your own).

\- If there is an existing team that you will be joining then the other team
members will start asking why they are not allowed to work from home. (The
reason for that is that in any large org they are needed for communications
with other teams on a daily basis)

\- If you are a contractor what is to say you are not working for another
client? Much easier to keep an eye on you in-house.

------
Joeri
I've had the discussion several times in the past with different managers, and
it keeps coming back to "person in chair" as a metric for whether work is
being done or not. It's always a matter of trust, or lack of it, that an out
of sight employee is getting work done. I don't think that argument has any
validity. If you don't trust your staff to actually do their job you have
bigger issues, and if you can't measure them any better way than whether
they're sitting in a chair in an office, you can't measure them at all
(person-in-chair time does not correlate with productivity in my experience).

------
atmosx
True. Although I have a mediocre GitHub profile, I receive about ~ 1 job offer
(well some are interview offers) from recruiters every 1.5 - 2 months. Every
single one of them was about relocation (UK or DE).

I'm not interested in relocation. If I could find a team that work with
technologies that I like, I would accept a 'lower salary' just to work part-
time (~15 - 20 hrs/week) remotely, then I would seriously consider joining,
but that's not the case in Europe, apparently.

~~~
gizi
Being located in Cambodia, I get even fewer job offers. However, that is
probably because they can see beforehand that I would not relocate to UK or
DE. For 10 years, I made less than what I used to make in Europe, but with the
much lower cost of living here, it probably boiled down to somewhat the same.
Since this year, however, I make substantially more. So, as you can see, it is
possible to have your cake and eat it too! ;-)

------
louwrentius
I disagree with many of the assessments.

From what I see around me, there is a problem where internal communication
channels and communication culture is not mature enough to support remote
work.

------
dubeye
Depends on the job of course. If instant communication is useful for the job,
remote working is often inferior, as there is friction. For example training
up a new employee is a great deal harder to do remotely, it's much easier to
shadow someone in person than via a screen share.

Also if the role requires some kind of client facing element, that rules out
remote work.

------
Michielvv
I currently work partly remote: I go to the office for one day a week (8hr)
and work the other 12 hours from home.

I like this arrangement as the day in the office also gives me insight into
what else is going on, besides my immediate tasks. For example I may pick up
on something that my coworker is spending a lot of time on that could easily
be automated or a client request that may influence my schedule.

On the other hand the time remote gives me a chance to focus on harder issues.

What I like about the part-time aspect is that I can choose to just work when
I'm focussed. If things are not moving as I like, I just stop working. This is
also the disadvantage, because that way work spreads out over more days than
it would if I would sit in the office.

In general I think the jobs are there, but you will probably have to know
someone at the company that is already aware of your skills. Maybe first
starting out as a contractor on a smaller project. (Assuming you would prefer
a long-term job over contracting)

------
mcv
I used to love the idea of working remotely, but not anymore. I like working
in a team, having the ability to bounce ideas off each other, make use of
other people's knowledge, ideas and skills. When you're working remotely,
you're working much more on your own. It's easier to get stuck, there's a
bigger hurdle to getting someone to look over your shoulder, and a bigger
likelihood to just figure it out on your own, which may be educational, but
can also take weeks when someone else might be able to help you out in
minutes.

I was actually hired once to help out the lone Java programmer at the company
who had been stuck for weeks. I sat next to him, asked the right questions,
and within 2 hours, the problem had been solved. Just having someone there and
ask questions or discuss options with; having someone to spar with, can save a
lot of time.

------
wila
You might want to start with filling out your Hacker News profile if you
actually are searching for remote work.

Part of finding that kind of work is to do with marketing ;)

------
rwallace
The theory that remote working is advantageous has the unstated premise that
the thing being optimized for is wealth. In that theory, it makes sense to use
methods that let people get their jobs done with minimum cost and distraction.

In reality, money is a weaker motive than power. When workers are on site,
particularly in an open plan office, the boss's brain receives reminders every
hour of every day that he is wielding power over underlings. That's not what
everyone cares about most - but it's the people who do care about that, who
become bosses in the first place.

(In the West, it's customary to maintain the fiction that it's about money.
Apparently in places like Japan and South Korea, they don't bother with that
fiction; you can spend your time in the office browsing Hacker News if you
like, but if your boss is in the office seventy hours a week, you've got to be
there eighty hours a week.)

As for what to do about it, as I see it the main strategies, in increasing
order of difficulty and potential value, are:

1\. Remember that remote work is not sensitive to location, and search the
whole world for remote working jobs.

2\. Become a contractor and look for clients who want goods and services
rather than bosses who want underlings.

3\. Start your own company and try to fix the problem for other people as well
as yourself.

~~~
learnstats2
My very first employer didn't have a consistent quantity of work for me to do
and often made me sit in the office with just a chair and not even a desk.

I proposed to the manager that I would rather be on call (even unpaid) in the
library next-door than sit in the office paid with nothing to do.

The manager agreed that there was nothing for me to do and agreed that there
was nothing wrong with what I was proposing in principle, but it was necessary
for me to sit in the office during working hours. There were exactly zero
occasions when I was urgently required to be there.

This comment, about power being a stronger motivation for money, reminded me
of that situation and put it into perspective: thanks.

~~~
keithpeter
My Dad worked for Marconi in Liverpool fixing radar and radios for ships late
fifties and early 60s before they became a large multi-national. Certain kinds
of staff were not always needed in the workshop e.g. radio officers signing
off on repairs.

They hung out in a Dock Road pub. The techies wired up a loudspeaker to the
pub (not radio, I suspect they hacked the Reddifusion cable radio) and called
the staff when needed. I was quite impressed as a small boy (and, no, we as a
country were not big on efficiency in those days).

~~~
junto
There a few classics like this from the 70's when the unions had immense power
in the UK and there was lots of over employment in what was then public
companies. Examples I remember were a false wall in the back of a British
Steel factory which was setup with rows of bunk beds on the quiet so that only
1 in 3 had to do any work. The rest were paid to sleep. Also had employees on
the books with the rather blatant names of D. Duck and M. Mouse.

~~~
keithpeter
The chaps in the pub could be sailing with a ship as relief radio officer at a
moment's notice so not quite the bunk bed thing.

Iain Sinclair has written about Trueman's Brewery round that time as well.

You won't agree with this but: is paying people to sleep in bunks any worse
than subsidising low paid jobs using the benefit system as we do now? Typical
commercial rents £600 to £750 a month and minimum wage £6.50 per hour.

------
wsc981
I think remote working works best when doing maintenance work on software. I
can understand why companies don't like remote workers when building new
products from scratch.

I would like to emigrate in the next few years and work remotely for European
companies and this is my intended strategy. Perhaps this is something you
should try and maybe tell HN how that would work out for you.

------
ilaksh
Stop looking in a local area. Remote work is on remote work websites like
wfh.io and remoteok. And upwork.

Also, this is a slow cultural transition as people learn about remote tools
for collaboration and start to accept it. So within a few more years it will
be different.

~~~
vruizext
Companies in the US still prefer hire remote workers in the states over
europeans, I guess mostly due to the timezone, and because of the legal
issues, it's always easier for them. You need to be an exceptional developer
to overcome this disadvantage and make them they to consider to hire you.

Besides that, most of the positions posted in job boards are for Full-Stack or
Front-End developers, not many Back-End or Data Science, which is what I am
looking for.

If companies in Europe were more open to telecommuting, we would have much
more chances to get a remote job and companies would have more chances to hire
better developers. I guess this will change in the next years.

------
stared
I know quite a few friend in Poland doing remote work... for US. Especially
given higher IT salaries in the US than in Western Europe, it't not that bad.

I do as well, but mostly freelancing contracts. The only thing that sucks is
the timezone difference.

~~~
duckmysick
May I ask what is the relationship between remote workers and the employer's
company? Are the remote workers hired directly by the US company, are they
hired by a Polish subsidiary of the US company, or are they self-employed
working as a contractors?

~~~
lordbusiness
This varies.

Big companies that are incorporated in many countries will just employ you in
the most relevant country (including your own).

Smaller companies can't do this (overhead, financial burden, regulation, blah
blah blah), so they just hire you as an independent contractor. You get paid
by whatever arrangement, and file your taxes accordingly. They pay an invoice
file their taxes accordingly.

------
peteretep
Anyone looking for a remote modern Perl job in Europe, email me at
pete@perl.careers

