HN Explorer

Companies hiring remote software engineers anywhere in the world (remoterocketship.com)

174 points by Lior539 ↗ HN
Hi folks. Remote Rocketship is my side project that searches the internet for remote jobs.

A dev friend of mine in South Africa was recently searching for a remote job and was complaining how most companies will only hire you if you're based in certain countries. So I ended up putting together this list of companies that I found that don't care where you're based.

I hope it's useful!

107 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] thread
niel
> I hope it's useful!

It is, thanks!

Are you taking submissions? Sourcegraph hires anywhere.

All-remote: https://handbook.sourcegraph.com/company-info-and-process/re...

Team bios with locations: https://handbook.sourcegraph.com/team/

Lior539
Good to know! I had a look and actually my job board already has Sourcegraph jobs (I scrape jobs from all over the internet) - https://www.remoterocketship.com/company/sourcegraph

However, they were all classified as hiring in the US only. The reason is that the location is listed as "Remote". I used to classify "Remote" as "Anywhere in the world", however I found that many US companies tend to list the location as "Remote" but are only hiring for people based in the US (Companies in other countries will always include the country in the location field e.g. "Remote - UK"). Hence now I only classify the hiring location as "Worldwide" if the location field includes phrases such as "Worldwide" or "Anywhere in the world" etc.

marcus_holmes
Thank you. This is the way.

US recruiters: please use "Remote - US" if you mean "anywhere in the US", and only use "Remote" if you mean "anywhere in the world"

saasxyz
this should be addressed. It's a serious pain.
heywire
Just a heads up, on my iPhone, when I scroll to the All Remote heading and stop (on your first link), I get a wild flicker as the page tries to scroll back and forth rapidly. Just thought I’d let you know.
Existenceblinks
Yeah the current "remote" really really sucks and sounds like snake-oil. It also give wrong stat when reading online comments. Many people that said it's easy for them often came from people live in the same city and country as those companies. "Remote" by default gives an impression that's it's global.
k__
Why should remote mean global?
officialchicken
"Know your customer" ... these are jobs on the internet, building the internet, for users on the internet. And because the internet is global.
capableweb
> And because the internet is global

Unfortunately, getting less and less true by the day. When I first used internet, it was truly global, anything someone else could access, I could as well.

Nowadays, I'm finding more and more geoblocks everywhere. Sometimes I cannot access a website because apparently "a lot of internet criminals are also from the country you are accessing our website from, so you're collateral damage".

officialchicken
The geoblock is just an indicator that it's becoming more and more global, with more users. Who are the bad actors here? The "copyright lobby", the "scammers", or is it the vendors making and selling these draconian fencing tools?
capableweb
Blocking someone because of their geographical location would mean (to me) that it's becoming "more localized", not "more global". Before I could access websites everywhere, now I cannot.
electroly
"Should" is a loaded word that I won't address, but commonly "work from home" is the term used when you're still located near the office, vs. "remote" which is where you're nowhere near an office.
k__
I'd guess, many people wouldn't commute more than 1h to work every day. So, I'd say, "remote" is everything out of that range.
FeistySkink
I'd say remote is not needing to go to the office at all, outside of seldom teambuilding-like events. Everything else is WFH.
barbazoo
It's not about being close to the office. For many teams it's about being in similar timezones. Companies hiring along the NA west coast for instance is pretty common and makes sense if you want people to collaborate closely.
Existenceblinks
Because that's been the sentiment. From the era it was popularized by Remote book (office not required), and then there's discussion around location adjusted salary (e.g. gitlab). As far as I know Basecamp still pays roughly same rates everywhere (location independent). Employer of Record like Deel.com or Remote.com exists for making global hire easier.

I don't think I actually answer "why should" .. but that's not what I say anyway.

oleg_antonyan
The same reason why some companies consider "US-only" to be remote
surge
It's not snake oil, there's literally tax issues and legal problems with having employees located overseas. If you hire employees in another country, you have to pay taxes or comply with a slew of different regulations your company is not familiar with or equipped to handle.
jleyank
Do they hire you as employees or as contractors? I would assume the latter as unless they already have a nexus in your country there’s a whole lotta hassle for a single employee. Or is it, say, eu hiring within the eu, etc?
jkukul
Many of them hire you as a contractor, of course. However, I noticed that more and more companies use an "HR as a service" (e.g. deel.com) to act as an intermediary who has an official branch in most countries and takes care of all the formalities for you.
sarchertech
In that case you’re working for deel and deel is contracting you out to the hiring company.

Companies can fire you/lay you off without even any of the mediocre protections you get under US law.

I’m not sure how deel handles this situation with employees in countries with stricter worker protections. Do they require the company to pay severance, do they include that in their fees?

I suspect that they are operating in a gray area because no one is really looking.

Existenceblinks
It's pretty close to working with a local software house receiving works (customers) from the U.S. and operate team as "project base". Except you can't rotate into projects across companies and get paid about +30-40% of local market rates.
CSMastermind
> I’m not sure how deel handles this situation with employees in countries with stricter worker protections. Do they require the company to pay severance, do they include that in their fees?

We hired engineers in Mexico through Deel and were required to provide the mandatory severance up front (I forgot the exact amount but I think it was like 3 months salary?).

That money sat in an escrow account until we let go of the employees at which point we still had to follow all of the local labor laws which I believe also meant that every severance needed to be individually negotiated.

Deel handled all the mechanics but we still had to follow the process (meaning that the time between deciding to lay people off and actually being able to do it was a month if I recall correctly).

For what it's worth the experience convinced me to stick to traditional contracting companies for my remote engineers. Deel is probably a better fit for a company looking to transition to having a full time headquarters and business set up in that country rather than one that wants to just leverage the global pool of engineers.

mytailorisrich
That sounds like lawsuits waiting to happen for Deel and/or their customers. Either people are employees of Deel or they are your employees, Deel can't have their cake and eat it, too.
sarchertech
Definitely seems to be based on a strictly literal reading of the law that might not hold up under scrutiny.

If someone is acting as a de facto employee of a company, I don’t see the “employer of record” fiction holding up.

marcus_holmes
I move between countries. Anyone happen to know how this works for this situation? (i.e. I'm currently in Mexico, but next week I'll be in Guatemala. Does Deel cope with this, and if so how?)
jkukul
Even if you move between countries you still must have a tax residency somewhere. So you're employed from the place where you have your tax residency.
marcus_holmes
Not really. I left Germany last year. As I wasn't a citizen and I'm not now a resident, I'm not a tax resident of Germany. Edit: clarification: I specifically de-registered with the German tax system, as required by German law. And to establish a new residency, I would have to live more than 180 days in that country, which I haven't yet.

I have multiple citizenships, so I'm not automatically a tax resident of a country I'm a citizen of.

I'm an edge case for tax laws.

jleyank
Unless the us is one of those citizenships which mandates filing. And I suspect that if you dodge tax residency by avoiding 180 days anywhere I figure you’re at risk to any border agent with a sore ass having a bad day.
marcus_holmes
I'm not "dodging tax residency" - I'm legitimately travelling.

There's a lot of discussion on this in the digital nomad community. You literally can't register as a tax resident without spending at least 180 days in a country, for most countries. And yes, some tax authorities get a bit strange about people not having a tax residency for an extended period, but we're just following the rules.

The US is different because of the Federal/State tax split, and Federal taxes don't depend on residency. Not many other countries have this split.

Australia (one of my citizenships) is moving towards having to file tax returns even if not resident, but afaik it's not there yet.

Raynos
I’m moving locations a lot myself too. I’ve found deel / remote is not great because it tethers you to the country you started in.

For my situation setting up my own us llc and contracting/consulting through it means I can move around. Also the us llc onboards cleanly for any companies using gusto and for others I send a W9 that they know how to handle.

jkukul
> because it tethers you to the country you started in.

How would is the alternative you describing different? Didn't you just tether yourself to US?

When setting up Deel you could have just stated that you were in US and move around like you're doing now.

wojcikstefan
The YC company I work at (and have been happy working at for the last 11 years) is hiring remotely, anywhere in the time zones of Americas, Europe, and Africa: https://jobs.close.com
dielll
Hey, do you have an employee referral program? If so, can you refer me? Would love to apply, however I know employee referrals gets one a foot in the interview door quickly.
phaer
Whenever a company has got a "Python" tag, there's a "Pyth" tag right before that, I assume that's a typo?
a3w
The language exists, but yes, I was astounded as well to see it this frequent.
a3w
How does "payment in USD" work, if I am not from the US? If the exchange value drops, I cannot pay rent? Everyone should probably get the employer to offer a currency-hedged payment, the fee is not that high.
missedthecue
I don't live in the US, I'm paid in dollars. My landlord gave me a discount because I was able to pay in dollars. Having a dollar is better than having my country's funny money.

Maybe this is only an issue if you live in the EU or UK where dollars aren't as highly sought.

layer8
Might be too much hassle for the employer, many employees will happily take USD.
mytailorisrich
That's the risk of getting paid in a foreign currency. It's for you to decide if it is worth it, and usually you do it because the pay is significantly higher than your local market.
thatwasunusual
I've done a lot of remote work, mostly "in" EU/USA, and it's totally up to what you are agree upon. Normally, at least for longer contracts, it's normal to get paid in the employer's currency, upon pay day that value is transferred to your bank account, and some place on the way it's converted to your currency based on the current exchange rate.

But you can also invoice the company you are working for, and then do the same in reverse, except it's usually you who do the conversion on the day you invoice them.

For long contracts, more than 6 months, I would definitely take into account the exchange rate. For shorter contracts, I wouldn't care. I'm from Norway, and none of the currencies I have worked "with" changes dramatically.

Existenceblinks
It's up to employee. I had a FCD bank account (store dollar) and convert into local currency when I got a good rate. Though later on I just don't care much, Wise's rates is acceptable and I convert it into local bank account ASAP.
yccs27
Additionally to the silbling comments - if the employer only offers USD payment, virtually all banks will offer some financial product to hedge against currency risk. This comes at a price, of course, but presumably the employer pays well enough that it's still worth it.
badcppdev
Can you tell me about this product? Does it cover 1 year of employment?
yccs27
I was thinking about foreign exchange options [0], which buy you the right to exchange some amount of money (your salary) at a given some later date (payday) with a fixed exchange rate. You‘d buy one for every paycheck within the period you want to insure against the risk.

(I realize now that I‘m not actually sure how easy it is to get them as a consumer at a bank - alternatively you might be able to get them via Robinhood or similar.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_option

badcppdev
Can you tell me about how a hedging solution works when a nobody knows if the person will be working for the company for 2 months or 5 years? Is the salary to be renegotiated if the rate moves too much?

The FX risk cannot be magicked away.

TheCoelacanth
The risk can't be magicked away, but there is usually someone who will take on the risk for a cost.
oleg_antonyan
If you live in a country with that volatile currency, then chances are even miserable by 1st world standards remote salary in USD is rudiculuosly higher than local market, and you are rich anyways. And it usually goes the opposite direction, i.e. local currency get cheaper over time, thus you are becoming "richier". Trust me, payments in stable convertible currency is a huge deal for many-many people outside of US
nisegami
I feel like most people would see payment in USD is as a positive, not a negative.
orangepurple
You open up a US dollar denominated bank account in Switzerland and keep dollars as dollars.
l1am0
JustWatch (company I work at) also hires basically from everywhere: https://talent.justwatch.com

My team is split over Germany, Sweden, Croatia, India. We are all fully remote.

jedberg
Out of curiosity, how do you get paid, if you don't mind sharing? As the owner of a company, I can barely figure out how to legally pay people just in the USA, and every new state is a new headache. I can't even imagine trying to pay people across the world. And I'm already using 3rd party (Gusto) to manage it. But they don't do all the details like setting up your corporate entity in each place.

Does your paycheck come from a 3rd party service?

elkos
Greek here, we (a non-profit with 20+ employees and several contractors) are able to pay local people. Sometimes we hire contractors (people or companies) fron other European Union countries (mostly Germany and Spain). We would love to figure ways to pay people but it seems very complicated to do it ourselves.
FeistySkink
Aren't there multiple companies (I don't want to promote any) doing just that: being intermediaries with corporate entities everywhere to enable other companies to hire locally?
agnivade
Not OP, but I also work in a remote company. Our company uses deel.com. You only need to set up a corporate entity when the number of employees exceed a certain limit IIRC. When that happens, yes it's a bit of a hassle.
ravishi
Thank you for sharing. Just applied from Brazil.
saasxyz
I just took a look and all jobs says hybrid. How it supposed to be globally remote?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
quadcore
A candle in the darkness thank you. A suggestion: I would randomize the list in order to not bloat the top n inbox.
john-radio
Yeah, currently the top companies are 10Up, Academia.edu, and Aragorn; so it is alphabetically sorted, in other words, arbitrarily.
signaru
Another suggestion is to use the "tech"/skills or programming languages as a filter. Really helpful, and also understandable that majority of jobs would require the popular programming languages/tools.
itake
It would be great if they could publish their salary bands. If you are advertising jobs to Washington State residents, by law, need to publish salary bands. This seems to be not compliant with our law.
andrewmutz
In theory the website is advertising jobs to people in every labor market on earth. Since there is a huge variety of labor laws out there, I'm guessing the website violates many many laws.
ransom1538
Exactly. This site shouldn't follow Cameroonian or Peruvian labor laws either.
0xfaded
wheres the line between a job board and an aggregator?

As far as I can tell this just links through to the actual job postings, which may or may not be compliant.

It will be an interesting transition period. I remember job ads telling Colorado residents they need not apply, but if you emailed them I bet it would have been fine.

boring_twenties
> I remember job ads telling Colorado residents they need not apply, but if you emailed them I bet it would have been fine.

Dunno about that. I am currently employed in a remote role at a huge company. I can move anywhere I want in the USA, except Colorado.

itake
What specifically about Colorado is the issue? If you're already employed, I'm not sure why the law would apply to you?
grimjack00
If nobody in the company is working in Colorado, they can probably more easily justify excluding Colorado residents, and thus not have to conform to the salary posting requirements.
boring_twenties
IANAL, but I guess they believe they need to have zero Colorado employees in order to escape being liable under that state law.
itake
> (3) If no wage scale or salary range exists, the employer must provide the minimum wage or salary expectation set by the employer prior to posting the position, making a position transfer, or making the promotion.

https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.58.110

Since aggregators aren't "job postings", I am guessing at least for WA, the website is compliant, but if you click through to the job postings, then the salary range is not published there either [0]. Should an aggregator be allowed to publish illegal job postings?

[0] - https://www.remoterocketship.com/company/10up/jobs/senior-we...

0xfaded
To play devil's advocate,

Should residents of states where the linked job posting is non-conformant assume that the job posting is not targeted at them, otherwise the job poster would have complied?

After all, the job listing said nothing about Washington state.

indymike
This is going to start showing up in job ads: "This job is not available for people in the State of California, Washington or New York"
comprev
It's becoming more common to see footnotes in adverts like that in general.

As an example, Discogs.com [0] explictly states the states where you can remote from. "This is a remote position. Open to candidates located in OR, WA, CA, CO, ID, AZ, TX, IL"

[0] https://discogsinc.bamboohr.com/careers/118

mbrameld
That probably has more to do with nexus for tax reasons than salary band advertising requirements.
comprev
Yes, that's probably the reason but also demonstrates how "limitations" on the supposed freedom of remote work have always been there.
indymike
In this case, the employer incurs cost in every state they create a nexus, and so yes, there is a limitation. My company uses a PEO that is able to employ people in every state, so we don't have this limitation, but the cost to carry an employee varies a lot from state to state... and that is before considering difference in local pay rates.
paxys
And companies that do that will soon realize that cutting off the three states with the highest concentration of qualified tech workers isn't a winning strategy.
jkukul
Keep in mind that the companies listed on that website are hiring globally.

By not disclosing a salary range these companies would only cut off three states of ONE country.

Also, I'm pretty sure that if most of these companies disclosed the salary range it wouldn't be interesting for people living in the states in question.

What seems like an entry level salary for people in California, Washington, New York or Colorado is actually a great salary in pretty much 90% of the world. It shouldn't be a surprise that there are companies which decide to draw from the talent pool of this other 90% of the world.

Of course, it would still be nice if all companies started disclosing the salary range. I'd just be a bit more careful with strong statements like "this isn't a winning strategy" when talking about 4 states of one country in the context of the entire world.

RestlessMind
> talent pool of this other 90% of the world

I have hired a lot of people and for key hires above a certain level, existing tech hubs (SV, Seattle, NYC, Denver) account for a vast majority of the available candidate pool. There are a few other hubs beyond these (London, Singapore, Bangalore) but you are constraining yourself massively.

New grads / junior ICs is another story.

Beaver117
Who do you mean by key hires? Senior SWE? Staff? Managers, Directors? I would think there are plenty of experienced people all over the world.
RestlessMind
I would say for roles in senior management (Directors, VPs) and senior engineering (Tech lead, Chief Architect).

> I would think there are plenty of experienced people all over the world.

Unfortunately, no. Until 2020, remote work was rare so to grow into a senior role, ambitious and talented people had to move to various hubs. That created a feedback loop with all the senior talent flocking to major tech hubs. Now you will find only a tiny proportion of senior talent in non-hub locations.

So if you cut off major US tech hubs (SV, NYC, Seattle, Denver) from your hiring pipeline, you are cutting off a majority of your prospective senior hires.

indymike
Actually, it's fine. There's plenty of qualified tech workers everywhere else, and each of the three states listed creates huge burdens, either financially or bureaucratically for out of state employers.
macinjosh
Commerce on The Internet is being slowly ruined by minor fiefdoms who have strong opinions about how everyone else should behave. Like NY trying to tax out of state remote workers. What a nightmare.

I live in another state with a similar law and it has negatively impacted my job and earning prospects in remote work.

Beaver117
I've seen a footnote on some job sites that said something like "For Colorado residents the salary band is 50,000 to 999,999"
SlickStef11
Are you taking suggestions? WunderGraph is hiring remote engineers from anywhere in the world.

https://wundergraph.com/jobs#open-positions

saasxyz
one listing says EMEA. What's that mean?
dotluis
Europe, Middle East, and Africa
philsnow
Probably "we hire from anywhere in the world, but for this position because of coverage reasons we would prefer somebody from these time zones". The other regions that are usually used alongside EMEA are LATAM ("the Americas") and APAC (roughly Asia and the Pacific islands).
joshribakoff
One of the reasons is sanctions.

Might want to be careful entering into an employment contract if the other party is located in a country your government doesnt legally allow doing business with.

Tepix
It seems straightforward to have a list of legally forbidden countries...?
blowski
It's much more complicated than that. First you have to check your countries list of sanctions, and this is bizarrely difficult.

1. You might be able to work for most companies in a country, but that specific company (or type of activity) is sanctioned.

2. You might be ok for a while, but a sanctioned individual buys a stake and suddenly becomes not ok.

3. The employment itself might not be sanctioned, but your bank flags it as suspicious so payments are rejected and you run into other problems.

For what it's worth, you can run a free check on ComplyAdvantage (full disclosure - that's my employer). https://complyadvantage.com/complytry/

All that being said, there are plenty of remote jobs available where this isn't a problem at all.

httgp
Seeing a lot of gateway timeouts. Are you folks aware of this?
Lior539
sorry about that! Site was getting a lot of traffic. Issue is fixed now!
iLoveOncall
I feel like I see one of those remote job boards every week on HN.

There must be more job boards than jobs at this point.

yakkomajuri
Couldn't find a quick form to submit a new suggestion but PostHog (posthog.com) is fully remote and hires anywhere.
fomine3
Timezone must be the last barrier to hire remotely from worldwide. Is there any startup try to solve it?