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

Either self-employed (myself included) or create subsidiary.

Hiring people directly over borders is legal nightmare. Though technically sometimes possible, tax complications are hard to follow.

> 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.

This is ridiculous. There are a ton of amazing engineers/designers/etc in Europe, who are just as able as their US counterparts and deliver work at the same quality level.

Plenty of them work remotely, either for EU or US companies.

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.

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).

I think remote is quite realistic if you have decent chops. It's the part-time that will be problematic. Nobody wants to hire part timers. Most places aren't even happy with 40 hours a week. I work remotely (9 time zones apart!), but I find that I spend at least 2 hours of my day on communication. Since I'm fairly productive the rest of the time (6 hours), I can more than make up for it. If you were only working 3-4 hours a day, I can imagine that in many circumstances it would be a struggle to be productive.

Having said that, there are some teams who are super organized and can just ship off short stories if you are an amazing coder. They are few and far between, though, so you will really need to network to find them.

Good luck!