Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#71

Post by gizi » Mon, May 25, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

atmosx wrote: post #16

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 consid…

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! ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#72

Post by Joeri » Mon, May 25, 2015, 2:48 PM UTC

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).

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#73

Post by nnd » Mon, May 25, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

gii2 wrote: post #8

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 becaus…

probably because of historical reasons and as a result of the last 30 years of immigration policy (especially the french-speaking countries)

Could you elaborate on this one? I worked for an international company in France, and even though engineering was pretty diverse, most of the management was French.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#74

Post by ilaksh » Mon, May 25, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#75

Post by lgieron » Mon, May 25, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

duckmysick wrote: post #14

stared wrote: post #4

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.

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?

When I did that (working remotely from Poland for US companies), I was self-employed and worked as a contractor.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#76

Post by throwaway12309 » Mon, May 25, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

gizi wrote: post #66

ar0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 migh…

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 l…

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)

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#77

Post by rashed_28 » Mon, May 25, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

Hello! Thank you for your article about online Skype tutoring in German.. I'd like to try your service to compare it to my previous experience. I did 10 lessons by Skype with a native speaker from http://preply.com/enenglish-by-skype . And I was pretty satisfied with the quality, but I want to try another option.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#78

Post by rashed_28 » Mon, May 25, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

Hello! Thank you for your article about online Skype tutoring in German.. I'd like to try your service to compare it to my previous experience. I did 10 lessons by Skype with a native speaker from http://preply.com/enenglish-by-skype . And I was pretty satisfied with the quality, but I want to try another option.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#79

Post by sytse » Mon, May 25, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

gizi wrote: post #56

magiconair wrote: post #19

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…

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, gu…

Good to hear that GitLab is helping you work remotely. All our engineers (10+) are distributed and they love it! https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/08/the-remote-manifesto/

Re: Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe?

#80

Post by yetanotheracc » Mon, May 25, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #2

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.

Are these the only possibilities you can think of?