Ask HN: Fully remote role but not allowed to work outside the country

They’re worried that they would be deemed as being partially located in the country you work from, and would have to deal with that country’s tax authority, employment regulations, etc.

Tax and employment law.

Some countries insist on there being a physical presence of the company if they wish to employ staff.

also not mentioned below is time zone, they may just be going the assumption they want someone present 9-5 and by being same country and time zone you'll be online parallel to the team. Some explicitly mention the timezone and not the physical location as well. This as well as the other comments on government reasons.

Insurance: if you break your leg, or worse, in Thailand, you're going to cost a lot more than if you're in the next town over.

Employing people abroad is a bit of a hassle. Maybe you need a local entity, or use an agency, or have self-employed freelancers etc. One country = much less headache.

As you move from country to country, employment laws and tax laws change as well.

Your employment contract will probably be illegal in some countries, and this could cause legal troubles for both you and your employer.

Depending on how much time you spend in a country (and this threshold may vary from country to country), you may be required to pay taxes there. This could as well affect the employer, who may also be required to pay part of your taxes.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, just really really hard, both you and the employer would need to hire an expert on taxes and labor law for each country you go to.

It seems difficult for the company to ensure that you have a work permit for any country you might be going to.

There are countries where you really don't want to get caught working without a work permit, but even in more lenient places in general it's just dangerous for the company to be caught in this situation.

And to legalise that work (even between EU countries) means they have to get involved with yet another fiscal system which is probably a lot of overhead for just one guy wanting to work in any country he likes.

My firm won't even allow remote work outside of the state. The reasoning is that you might have to be called to the office on short notice.

Because it is most likely illegal for you to work in that country you choose, unless both you and your company satisfy a lot of requirements (for most countries) including work visa and company having physical presence in that country or digital nomad visa. Though it’s true that a lot of nomads get away with it, but a lot of companies don’t want that hassle/risk.

Also not mentioned: Visas and permits. Not allowing it for a "relatively small amount of time" means that you aren't encouraging your employees to go to a country on "vacation" and working through it, all while being on a tourist visa that doesn't actually allow you to work while you are visiting. This is a pretty common rule for a tourist visa.

The things others have said are valid as well.

One unfortunate thing I have learnt through experience: it's not a good idea to do business with anybody unless it's relatively easy and convenient to sue them or have them arrested, if need be.

Without being an expert: I know large companies that have a remote-first, fixed country policy, but allow exceptions under special circumstances (e.g., for family reasons). My assumption is that if one wants to support an employee in a good way, it's worth the paperwork in case of such special circumstances, but it's an unacceptable risk to allow it by default and try to play catch-up as a substantial part of the workforce moves around the globe.

In my experience both same time zone, and meeting up regularly (eg once a month) are important for making remote working as effective as possible. This can lead to a same country policy.

If I was starting a new remote organisation now I’d allow a number of weeks a year to work more remotely in other countries. It would be disruptive and impact meeting scheduling, so I think is most effective when planned like a holiday.

Another odd factor is envy which oddly gets blended mentally with audio quality. If the boundaries of remote get stretched, you end up with staff with tropical islands in the background and often worse or unreliable internet, and often a poor semi-temporary audio setup.

I rationally like the idea of everyone working in amazing locations. But in reality, while people joke about it, emotionally they get envious. Not a fair reason, but I can imagine some business owners blocking it just for that.

Legal reasons most of the time.

If even for small amounts of time, you can ask about how small, and if that also means you're not allowed to answer calls from work when on vacation. It may very well be that you're not even allowed to bring a work phone or work laptop into some countries.

Jobs that require security clearance often have this stipulation too, even when the work is deemed sufficiently insensitive that it can be done remotely.

A lot of companies have contracts stating that all data will be processed in their country. Anyone working outside the country would breach those contracts.

Taxes, visas, employment laws. Enormously difficult to manage.

Are you looking to be a digital nomad, or do you have a specific other country you visit on a regular basis?

If it's the former, you're SOL for all the reasons listed in this thread.

If it's the latter, you may be able to bring this up and figure out if it's OK to work X days per year in country Y specifically. The company may not want to bother with it anyway, but that is a relatively easy problem to solve compared to "working indeterminate periods in any place in the world". It's even possible that the two countries in question have a special relationship and there's no constraints working remotely one to the other, or that the situation is so common the consequences are well known and easy to account for.

I had to close a bank account as I changed country - they did not have a license to operate in the country I was moving to.

I feel a lot of the answers here are true but missing the point. It’s true that the company wants to protect itself legally from the complications of having staff of operations in various countries. But I doubt the company really cares if you are in another country while fully remote - they just don’t want to knowingly have their employee in those various jurisdictions. I would just make sure that you never give the company a reason to think you are outside the country. but that isn’t the same as actually not working outside the country. Of course, this only applies to private or public companies, if a government organization had this as a policy, I would follow it to the letter.

1. No country that I know of allows you to easily have employee status for an entity in another country.

2. Even if you don't require a visa to do tourist stuff in country X, you probably do need a work permit.

Work legislation hasn't been adapted to remote work yet. Probably won't get satisfactory in our life times.

What are those "relatively small amounts of time" though? Because I'm not sure someone would notice a week. You mean the common 90 days allowed without a visa when there's no visa requirement?

Then just don’t tell them. That’s what I do.

Geopolitical data regulations, tax laws, time zone differences. It's a hot mess to navigate all that.

If the role is in the US, the company might have ITAR restrictions.