It sounds and looks very nice.
I have two questions:
1) Why did't they move to one of the Canary Islands? Part of Spain, Barcelona is a part of it.
Less hassle because you stay in Europe, same language, same culture as in Barcelona.
I rent a flat (70m2, furnished, 500m from the palmtree-beach, €500 /month), in the center of the capital on one of the islands,
the internet connection is reasonable. Sounds comparable to Thailand.
2) How long did they stay in Thailand, was it a 2 month project-move
or a multiple-year company move?
Hey, I'm one of the co-founders who runs Mobile Jazz.
To answer your questions:
1) We actually wanted to experience a new culture and also have some kind of adventure. We're already doing things in Spain, so we just wanted to try out something new and see how it works :-)
2) This was only a 2 month experiment, but our whole company is set up for remote work. So some of us continuously travel and work from different places. Myself I've been living in a camper van for a year now (blog post pending ;-)), but this was the first experiment where we actually rented two houses offshore and moved a bunch of people there.
Since then we also had another experiment. We spent some time in the Austrian Alps for skiing. We'll write about it soon.
And the next thing we want to do is actually in Spain (in the mountains) and then we're planning to go to Mauritius for a month or so.
It can be a great way to run project in a lovely pressure cooker.
Everybody 7days per week involved/committed without the distraction of homely nuisances.
Do you realize how evil that could sound? "I can force everyone to work 7 days per week by moving them to an island, miles away from their friends and family."
If you need people to work 7 days per week, that's a problem. Hire more people, or set longer deadlines. Emergencies happen, but working late for a whole week or more is a systemic, productivity and morale sapping flaw.
In our specific case in Thailand we never worked more than the usual 8 hours a day and on the weekends we organized trips together. So our goal was not to have people put together so that they work more, but rather have a good time and adventure together.
No, you can't force.
But you can put a team close together, they don't have to work more than 8hrs/day. But if they meet on weekends, on trips, bbq's, there wil be shoptalk. That is good for the project. In most cases.
I used to work for an 'offshore pipeline desig company' hard work, drinks on friday evening, family BBQ on Saturday.
Lots of fun, and everybody was ALWAYS talking about kids, dogs and work.
I don't see anything wrong with team events, as long as they are optional. People should be encouraged to have interests outside of work. It promotes a healthy work/life balance, and discourages groupthink. The occasional team building event can be great for morale, but be respectful of people's obligations.
Your original post talked about relocating so team members could spend 7 days a week committed to the project. That goes far beyond a weekend BBQ.
I thought the same (I'm working for 3scale, company with offices in the same building than MobileJazz in Barcelona).
We just recently moved to Tenerife with one of my coworkers for those reasons.
Good times.
Not many developer meetups here in Santa Cruz though :/
Oh man! How is life there? I've only spent half a day in Santa Cruz but the beauty of the city and its surroundings amazed me and I've been aching to go back ever since. Is it possible to rent in one of those hillside villages? They look quite scenic. :)
The DSL service we have had over the last year in Los Gigantes in Tenerife has been atrocious, down from 3Mbps to under 1Mbps, we are better off with a 3G connection and if you go with UKs 3 network you can roam there and use up to 250GB a month on the all you can eat plan.
I've always dreamed of having a company (that was making money) where I could relocate my team once a month every month to a different place on the planet.
London, Tokyo, Singapore, China, San Francisco, Iceland, France, Germany, Russia, Australia, India, Canada...
Yeah but then you'd need a team who'd travel with you. And few people can just pack up and move every month. If you have kids, you'll want to keep them in the same school. Or you might be tied down to care for a family member. I would never leave my area for long because it's where all my friends live.
It's simpler to have a remote company. Then you can take all the trips you want, and your team can work from wherever they want.
The more time I spend here, the more I suspect that HN is populated with single 20 year olds with no friends or family. Thus, they create a "work family" to fill their social needs. The result is insular teams with mandatory beer pong tournaments.
When you did your Thailand experiment, did any employees take their families with them?
Also, I presume from the article that not every employee was in Thailand, and some chose to remain at home, correct? Did the remote team ever feel left out of the conversation as most of the team was speaking in person in Thailand?
For the Thai experiment it was exclusively those who didn't have family. Some with family considered it, but as most of their kids are still very young they didn't do it in the end.
Regarding the remote work, even when we're at home, that means we're in different cities and even different countries, so our whole company is set up as a remote company, although many chose to work from the main office in Barcelona. To answer your question, no one felt left out, because we simply continued to work as usual (chat, video calls, etc.), it just happened that some of us were at the different location.
I am not in my 20s and I do have a family, but that's a feeling I get here too! There also appears to be a strong dislike of older proven languages (don't ever mention the word C++) and a faddish obsession with newer younger languages. Perhaps it goes with the crowd?
Must be my inaccurate conclusions then! I must just be seeing the hatred for C++, typically with 1998 examples attached to illustrate how "dangerous" the language is.
My experience here is that the community is somewhat schizophrenic on work - anything that smell of old school hierarchical structures, fixed hours, clear preference for onsite over remote work etc are evil - but at the same time, if you work a single minute more than 40 hours a week without overtime pay, you're being exploited. If you have a work laptop or cell-phone, it's a trick to make you work more, for free - not blatantly obvious tools to enable remote work which further enables flexibility. If there's free food or showers, it's a trick to make you work more, for free. If there are social events or people otherwise claim to "enjoy work", it's a trick - they've obviously drunk the Kool-aid. Mandatory beer pong!
I think a lot of people here are very keen on experimenting quite radically with what work itself looks like. Like all experiments, they are not for everyone, and nobody expects any single radical experiment to just stumble upon the final answer to work, but they may learn a thing or two that the rest of us can benefit from.
Also, add some budget to allow your remote team members to fly to meet each other. I mostly work remote, but one of my clients had funds to fly me over every few months and meet their team for a week each time. It's a fantastic way for the team to get to know each other, far better than just Skype interactions.
Good luck being productive and forming important/lasting relationships (i.e. networking) while doing this.
I've been working remotely from different countries over the past couple of years, and while it's a great life experience, it's just not practical for work. The wife and I are now looking for a home base.
We actually met a couple of people from HN on Koh Samui ;-)
And yes, I agree it doesn't make sense to be there permanently, but traveling once in a while to the big business hubs in the world and spending a month here and there helps.
What I personally don't want to do though is to permanently live in a city that is crowded with people. So doing those time-limited remote experiments is a nice change of perspective and a very good way to recharge your batteries while still staying productive.
I'm in Puerto Rico, moved here from the states two years ago.
There are a number of tax incentives for people wanting to start tech companies here. Google Puerto Rico Act 20.
Short version:
"Act 20 offers a four (4)% corporate tax rate for Puerto Rican businesses providing services for exportation, 100% tax-exempt dividends from earnings and profits derived from the export services income of eligible businesses, and a 60% exemption on municipal taxes."
Eligible businesses include IT software development.
Besides the tax benefits there are a lot of other things to like here.
Some questions I have, if you don't mind: How do you like Rincón? Do you need a car if in SJ? How much is Spanish used over English? Are living costs cheaper? Thx
My favorite part of the Island is the southwest side. I just moved to Yauco last week after living in Palmas del Mar for 2+ years.
I can't say a lot about Rincon because I don't know but Mayaguez is the most American like city here with the highest rate of english speaking people I have seen.
Living costs on most everything is a little expensive here except for service related items (car repairs, appliance repairs, etc). Expect a 5 - 10% increase in living expenses.
You will need a car to get around unless you live in Palmas del Mar and then you will need a golf cart, there is a car rental on site if you need to go further than the onsite.
Things to like.
1. The weather
2. Simpler Life
3. Tropical Fruits/Nuts everywhere
4. Less regulations on things I care about (homeschooling)
5. Tax system that is not the IRS
6. More community minded people, probably more like the states in the 70/80s.
7. I have a personal swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court and decent sized house for less than the one I left in Atlanta.
It's not too different than Atlanta, there are places to avoid and places that are OK. The west side of the island from Yauco around to the top center are going to be on par with most suburbs in Atlanta, San Juan and east are a more dicey. On the east side Palmas del Mar is very safe.
Can I just clarify - you work remotely for NY finance industry, at presumably near NY rates, paying 4% coproation tax and no tax on dividends from that income?
Public schools are a no go. There are some good private schools and a large number of homeschoolers. Don't know much about the colleges here but probably not good.
Puerto Rico is part of the united states, just not a state, which means no visa required, same currency, and etc.
Full disclosure: I was born, raised, and went to college in Puerto Rico and currently work in NYC.
I agree with most of what you said, except for the college part, which you admit you didn't know very well.
The public Colleges of Puerto Rico are actually great and very competitive with the rest of the colleges in the US, but with lower resources.
I studied computer engineering in UPRM in Mayaguez. While studying there I had internships with multiple fortune 500 companies which allowed me to pay for my own tuition as it was at the time $40 per credit. When I graduated I was hired in a fortune 500, many of which recruit heavily in PR, and was recently able to move to a startup with ease. Many of my alumni were hired in various companies both big (Microsoft, IBM, Lockheed Martin) and smaller startups. I only mention this because many of us were hired alongside many ivy league school students or from other larger universities with more resources, which may serve as a signal of how competitive the school is compared to others.
I would happily recommend anybody to study in any of the UPR campuses.
If you're a US citizen it's not so easy. You are taxed on your worldwide income no matter what. There is a deduction for living abroad on the first $100,800 (2015) of income or you can also take a credit for income taxes paid to another country. You also need to pay into SS and Medicare either in the US or in another country which we have a treaty with. Don't get me wrong, getting the first $101k @ 4% tax sounds pretty good! Just want to make it clear that US citizens will pay taxes to Uncle Sam no matter where you try and hide.
This is not completely accurate. I am not a tax attorney but go through this every year. First, you can take the foreign income exclusion only on income that has been taxed by the foreign country you reside in. Second, you can't exempt taxes on that $100k, but you can for anything above that; alternatively you can just exempt taxes for everything and not take the exclusion (works out if country's taxes > usa taxes, really, the exclusiom just works out for low tax countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland).
Also, the income has to be sourced in the foreign country, if it is sourced in say New York you can't magically tansfer those taxes to another country without incorporating there.
You do not have to pay payroll taxes. When living abroad, some treaties allow you to pay them instead of local ones, but without a treaty you just don't pay. Of course, good luck ever collecting on your chinese social retirement account.
Puerto Rico is not a foreign country so these rules you cited don't apply. If you are a bone-fide PR resident, you don't owe federal tax (FICA still applies). However Act 20 (and Act 22) are recent changes to try to bring more job creator-types to the island.
Most people do not realize that Puerto Rico is not a foreign country for U.S citizens and so while this may be good points for other situations it does not apply to Puerto Rico.
You are correct on the SS and medicare but the assumption is if you are the business owner the majority of your income will be dividends and not subject to SS or Medicare, so just the 4% tax applies.
Puerto Rico is different in that it is a U.S. territory so a lot of concerns in the financial services world where I work are not relevant. My clients would never hire someone from a non U.S. state/territory to work on their critical IT systems.
The Timezone thing is also a really big deal too. PR is the same most of the year and just one hour off Nov-Mar. I do not ever see myself waking up at 5:00am for meetings.
>Besides the tax benefits there are a lot of other things to like here.
How does the tax work? It's part of US territory, so are you paying your income tax to the US as you usually would while earning in the US?
Or are you resident there and your earnings subject to taxes in PR? Aside from that, as a US citizen are you not still obliged to pay the IRS the taxes on a certain amount of earnings made outside the US?
Puerto Rico has a unique relationship with the U.S. when it comes to taxes. A Puerto Rico corporation can do business with a U.S. corp and not pay any U.S. taxes. The employees of the PR corp that are residents in PR only pay PR taxes not IRS taxes.
I posted my email address to another comment here. If you are interested send me an email and I will put you in contact with a tax accountant here and a few others that work on this.
I've always wanted to do this, but the objection raised is "how does this work for people with families?" (partner with a job is one thing, let alone kids).
I predict there is much more to parenthood besides fostering adventure, unfortunately. Educational and social stability come to mind. Relocating your family for two entire months is easier said than done.
The kids get two months off every summer. Take them then. Consider it a vacation.
The most capable, adaptable, and accomplished adults I know moved around a bunch as kids. It forces you to learn how to live in the world and get out of your comfort zone. The most anxious, bitter, and underperforming adults I know grew up in the prototypical suburban bubble environment. End meaningless personal anecdote.
Well, I know of some people whose parent moved from one city to another every year, for professional reasons. And they had hard time building long term relationship with kids of their age, which means having a childhood with mostly adults "friends", and it is not good for everyone apparently.
I still agree, and in fact kids are often more adaptable than adults. Usually they can handle change, and it is good for the mind to experience different worlds.
I haven't lived in one place longer than two years since I was eight or so. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't grown up that way.
It seems that if there's anything to be taken from all of our anecdotes, it's that all families and circumstances are different. People need adversity, challenge, and adventure to grow. You shouldn't let your children control your lives to the point where they don't need to experience change.
I guess there's a happy medium. I've heard horror stories from both ends of the stability spectrum.
I'm sure they would, but it's often a little more complicated than that. Who will pay for the wife and kids to move along w/ the office? Will you take the kids out of school for two months? They're not unsolvable problems but as someone with a 10 and 12yo kid it's definitely a legitimate concern. And saying "just say home, it was your choice to have kids" is a valid response, but that means you're forgoing the team building and being a "good fit" with your colleagues, which isn't awesome either. :-/
So at Mobile Jazz we made it a voluntary thing. After all you cannot force your employees to go anywhere ;-)
To Thailand only a few of us went, mostly for the family reasons.
However, to our most recent trip to the Austrian Alps we had almost everyone in the company head over there.
In general we're actually very pro-family. We do have a main office in Barcelona, but everyone is allowed to work from virtually anywhere. Some of us travel and work from remote locations, but for those with families it's also a great benefit to work from home and have more time with their families.
I worked remotely from Tahiti for a few months. It was an amazing experience that I'll always cherish. Now I just need to convince my new boss to let me do this again somewhere else.
For those of you in the pacific time zone (sf bay). If you're interested in doing this, I recommend Tahiti or Hawaii. It's three hours off from pacific time during the summer months but only 2 hours off during winter. You can easily work a local time of 6-3 which would be 8-5 in PT. This gives you the rest of the day to enjoy paradise.
A tip on how to convince your boss to let you do this: Plan to go on a two week vacation somewhere. When asking for time off, ask your boss if they mind you working remotely for a couple weeks following your vacation. It might just work--and like in my case I found out that my boss didn't care if I stayed longer.
I was recently on vacation in Fiji for 2 weeks. I visited a couple islands - even some that were quite tiny by island standards. What impressed me was that there was fast 4G wireless service everywhere. Would definitely think about working remotely from Fiji with that high internet quality.
I am a developer in SF and work in finance. We are all in the office before 6am PT to be ready for the market-open at 6:30am. No one leaves for lunch as the market is still open. These things change quite a bit industry to industry, shop to shop. It's not necessarily a developer thing, just a business culture thing.
Well I get off work at about 2:45pm which leaves ~5 hours of daylight after work. I go to bed at about 9pm and feel much better than I ever have energy-wise. You can argue that these were not choices I got to make, and maybe I just have stocklholm syndrome, but I sure do not miss browsing the internet until late into the night and waking up groggy every day. Plus on the weekends I wake up with the sunrise, which actually is sleeping in for me, and get much more out of the day. If you have flexible working hours I highly recommend forcing a schedule like this on yourself for a few months. I think most people would find they feel much happier and energetic.
Where do you work, if I may ask? This kind of arrangement would actually make living near and working in SF tolerable. No traffic getting into/out of the city at those times.
Because of the way financial institutions like ours are regulated, it would actually be a SEC violation to mention the name here (silly I know but it can technically be considered a form of marketing and we are very restricted in the ways we can market). I put my email address on my profile page if you would like to discuss further.
I interviewed for a few finance firms there. They were the last fucking places I'd ever work. They want to pay 1/2 to 2/3 the going rate and enforce the shitty hours and schedule you're referring to.
I have a similar story. My contact was about to run out, and they offered me a better one. I said, I'd love to stay but I've already booked two months in Brazil.
I knew they didn't like having remote workers, but for a contract extension they were willing to do it. So I spent two months working from beautiful Brazil and had a raise waiting for me when I came back.
Moral of the story - there might be a way to work from a distance for a while after all even with employers that don't normally allow it.
This sounds great! Would you mind writing up some of the logistics of working in Tahiti? (For example, visas, accommodation, internet access, meeting people?)
My company works 100% remotely, and some people have lives more compatible with adventures like this than others. Most people will travel freely, working from wherever they are. We don't even tell each other when we travel for the most part... in our day to day operations, it just doesn't matter if I am in my home office, in my parent's kitchen in Florida, or in a hotel in another country.
But we also do all have families with their own lives, so we have a stable home somewhere, and spend the majority of our time at that home. We also get into a working rhythm at our home, which gets disrupted with travel and adjustments to a new working environment, so when we really need top effectiveness for a project, it works better from "home", at least in our experience.
That was one of the problems we actually described in our blog post about the Thailand experience. It took as us while to actually find out rhythm (simple things like finding food, doing laundry, etc.) and that was taking a lot of our energy and time in the beginning.
And then once you're set up and feel 'home' in that new place it's already time to leave again. So the biggest learning experience for us is to stay longer next time.
>That was one of the problems we actually described in our blog post about the Thailand experience. It took as us while to actually find out rhythm (simple things like finding food, doing laundry, etc.) and that was taking a lot of our energy and time in the beginning.
Would it not be wise then to send someone ahead to scope these things out? As in, you're planning to have a team move to X, send someone to X two weeks in advance to sort out logistics, get internet dongles, map out places to eat, do laundry, etc?
Rather than having whole teams trying to sort it out on arrival.
I think what you've offered is great btw. The criticism being leveled on you here is pretty unfair and I'm not sure what is behind it. It's of great benefit to the locals to have westerners on western salaries come in for a month or two, spend maniacally on local resources and then leave.
The argument against it is well you should be incorporating there and providing the locals with jobs and that's nice in theory but unfeasible in reality, and all those tourist bucks create and supply the locals with plenty of jobs in themselves.
Is what they're doing legal? I'm pretty sure a tourist visa means you can't use it for work (activities for which payment is received or capital is gained), even remote work. I'm told that the Thai government is pretty harsh in punishing such things.
But I know what you're talking and while what we're doing is technically a gray zone, what the government is after is mostly freelancers that basically live in Thailand, but are not paying taxes there and are constantly on a visa run to re-enter the country.
Nevertheless, how do you differentiate between holidays and work and where to draw the line? If you're responding to a work emails while being on holidays, does that count towards the taxable income in that country you're visiting?
> Did you file a tax statement and did you pay any taxes on income earned while you were residing in Thailand?
Absolutely. We're not evading taxes. All income is taxed in Spain. And we weren't residing in Thailand. We were only visiting it and happened to also do some things that were related to our business back home in Europe. The work we did had nothing to do with Thailand itself.
I'm not an international tax specialist, but at least from a moral point of view I don't see that we did something wrong.
In European countries for example you only become a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days there.
>In European countries for example you only become a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days there.
Pity Thais cannot easily come to Spain and work illegally. Despite what you've said it's blatant public abuse of the tourist visa system in Thailand.
Honestly when I see blog posts like this my opinion of the author and company goes down considerably. Breaking the rules and publishing the fact that you are makes me question what other grey areas you'd operate in.
Yes, what they did violates immigration law in Thailand. And the comments of a senior immigration official don't change the law; they just indicate that at least in that region the enforcement is likely to be rather lax.
But there's really nothing to get bent about. No locals were out of a job. They lived there as tourists so paid a lot more into the local economy than locals, including a lot more taxes in the form of VAT on all their purchases.
The only real issue is that they were at risk even if they didn't sense it, because what happens now and then is someone gets pissed off (usually another foreigner) and rats someone out. Then the police see an opportunity to collect an extortionate "fine" before they get deported.
> They lived there as tourists so paid a lot more into the local economy than locals
How did you determine that? I've lived as a hippie in India, similar to what Steve Jobs did. I spent 0 money and lived off the temple welfare system. I was exploiting the generosity of people who had a thousandth the resources and welfare that I had. I wasn't alone. There were hundreds, if not thousands of other Westerners doing similar things.
> Could you explain how you formed that conclusion?
It appears that Mobile Jazz is a company that caters to western audiences, most of the work they will be doing will be for western clients who wouldn't hire Thai workers. The workers just happen to be out of office when they do their jobs.
They put more into the Thai economy (renting a house, buying products, paying for services) and didn't take any money out (all earnings were from existing clients abroad).
It might contravene visa issues from a literal read, but I think the intent was fair. Many Australians would call this "the vibe of the thing" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJuXIq7OazQ
By that logic. Rental prices would go up, as foreign demand for property increases, pricing locals out of the market in the process, because they cannot compete with foreign earned salaries. Not just rentals, goods and services go up.
Increased strain on policing and hospitals. Strain on Thailand's subsidised public transport system, subsidised diesel fuel, subsidised water utilities.
No tax revenue from foreign workers as they don't declare in Thailand despite being required to do so by law. The only exception being VAT.
The general point of nomads working in Thailand is the ability to lower outgoings beyond what you could do in North America or Europe. Nomads don't spend cash like tourists and that makes them a drain on the economy.
So what's Thailand got to lose from allowing foreigners to set up shop. Well the huge fees required to be legal for one.
While from a legal perspective it might be all correct what you're saying, I think that most people simply have more important matters to worry about.
For example, it's also illegal to cross a red traffic light as a pedestrian at 3am in the night on a deserted street. That doesn't mean that it is immoral or that it causes harm to anyone.
And I wouldn't even want to know all the "illegal" things you're doing that you are not even aware of. Just saying.
My beef is not that you worked illegally in Thailand. It's the fact that you wrote this up, didn't mention the fact that it's not above aboard, which promotes others to emulate you without warning, and published under your own name which is foolish at best and could end up with you being deported at worse.
There's been around eight of these posts of 'Digital Nomads' working in Thailand and not one of them bothered to mention that they were breaking the law.
> at least from a moral point of view I don't see that we did something wrong.
You did. You lied on your Thai tourist visa application form. It explicitly said:
"I hereby declare that the purpose of my visit to thailand is for pleasure or transit only and that in no case shall I engage myself in any profession or occupation while in the country"
No, it isn't a "Gray zone" at all. You're breaking Thai law and contributing to a negative image about foreign workers in a country that already has stringent immigration laws.
So as someone doing it the legal way and jumping through the hoops created to catch people like you, I'd just like to say FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.
Any form of "work" (defined as exertion of effort from memory) is deemed illegal without a work permit - international volunteers need one just as much as those of us working for a commercial entity.
Re "spying on you": immigration police have conducted "raids" on coworking spaces, not to mention the potential for upset/disgruntled locals/competitors/whoever to report you.
Not sure about Thailand, but this is true for USA.
My colleague's wife is on H4 (dependant) visa and prior to coming to USA, she had a job in India. We talked to a lawyer and then with USCIS and both of them confirmed that it is not a possibility that she can work remote here in USA on H4 even though she gets paid in India.
Anyone doing this should also check what qualifies as business to avoid confusion at the border (there are specific things one is allowed to do and specific things not, IANAL, YMMV).
That article just confuses me. It says it is ok and then contradicts it a paragraph later. Eg:
"Digital nomads – people working remotely or running online businesses – in Thailand can legally work there on tourist visas"
But one paragraph down:
"It is unlikely that travellers will be granted a re-entry stamp after two or three visa runs. If your passport is stamped “O-I” (out-in) upon arrival, it is unlikely that you will be able to re-enter the country again should you decide to do a visa run"
It is confusing two separate ideas. One is that it is ok to work while on a tourist visa, the other is that doing multiple visa runs (regardless of whether you work) is not ok. The out-in problem is true of many countries and has nothing to do with working.
Many of us have families and on this particular trip to Thailand those people stayed back home in Europe.
However for the trip we did just recently to the Austrian Alps pretty much everyone joined. But that was also a lot shorter and the focus was more on skiing/snowboarding than on doing work.
TIL: the startup world loves sunny beach locations.
Just posted an article about the blue house doing a similar thing in Morocco (or at least providing a framework for startups to do so in tropical locations): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9347228
About to do the same thing in Chiang Mai where my wife will be teaching English. Really enjoying Bangkok so far, but want to check out some of these remote islands sometime soon.
Taking aside the current legal situation and trying to look at it from a purely financial aspect, wouldn't it be beneficial for countries like Thailand to allow those kind of people in for a limited amount of time and have them spend their money there?
Assuming Thailand will crack down on those temporary remote workers, they will just go some other place.
It's not financially motivated; it has more to do with nationalistic pride. They are very proud of the fact that they're the only SE Asian nation never to have been conquered by a western power.
They are rightly wary of western power being exerted now through corporations rather than through a military, because that's how things work these days, so they limit the ability for western companies to make inroads here. (For example the local Shell, Esso, etc. are all technically wholly owned by Thais.)
Obviously this concern doesn't apply for freelancers and small businesses whose clients are in the US, but those folks aren't numerous enough to affect immigration policy.
I often hear that bit about Thai pride over never being colonized. It's laughable in light of actual Thai history. Like the events of 1893 when the French sailed two gunboats up the Chao Phraya river, aimed their guns at the royal palace, and said we're taking everything east of the Mekhong River. The Thais gave it up without a fight. The French colonzied it and never gave it back. When they left it became what is now known as Laos.
My brother and I have been doing business in SEA for about 15 years now (exporting), and have looked into what is required to set up shop in Thailand or Indonesia.
Limitations such as max 95% foreign ownership (Indo) end up with local lawyers or accountants owning 5% of the companies that are set up and are figureheads there to fulfill government requirements. Or in Thailand where many industries are only open to Thai nationals, which means the only way foreigners may access those industries is through marriage, though when those marriages dissolve so to does the foreign claim on business assets.
I don't blame them for making it difficult for foreign investment dollars to pour in and displace domestic ownership, or for not embracing western capitalism as fast and as hard as they can.
There are definitely coworking spaces. I just spent two weeks working out of Kohub on Koh Lanta. Had a great time and even ran into the creator of the framework I specialize in, he was on the same island. Hung out with some guys working on a Bitcoin startup, some other freelancers. Had a great time.
i guess it's an individual preference, but if i were off working on a lark the last thing i would want is to be surrounded by people who do the same thing as me. i can get plenty of that anywhere on both ends of california.
Work in tech outside of the tech industry for a while. I go to conferences and just breathe in and out for what feels like the first time in months. Just being able to use jargon without stopping to explain it is a wonderful thing.
Hey, I think I met you there, was with my buddy Kevin (looks like an Asian version of Hurley from Lost). Kohub and Lanta was a blast. Hope to see you there next year too.
In general, it is legal to work remotely in Thailand, unless your clientele/employer are Thai. The purpose of the law [1] was to prevent foreign workers from displacing native Thai workers, and "digital nomads" do nothing of the sort.
This becomes clear if you pay attention to the punishments imposed by the law; they concern Thai employers, not the alien workers, alone.
>Full time work however is NOT allowed without a working permit.
If you're being paid through an account back home and are working in a villa you've rented, it would be very hard for them to prove you're actually there working full time, would it not?
This is not about how hard it is for Thai immigration officers to prove you are working without a permit. I was just pointing out that it is illegal.
Making it hard to prove doesn't make it OK.
You really would not want to end up in a debate with Thai immigration on this topic either, no matter if they have proof or not.
Digital nomads are huge benefit to local economy. I can't imagine country would start enforcing some outdated piece of legislation against them. In other words, even if it's illegal, it's not enforceable.
Outdated legislation which is no longer enforced is common everywhere. For example Alabama has a homophobic law which says this must be included in every sex education program:
"homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state."
While I have visited the USA several times I can not comment on US law. I have lived several years in Thailand and can guarantee that illegal action by intent like working without a work permit is enforcable.
You are trying to apply a Western point of view, digital nomads are not considered to be an economic benefit by Thai law officials.
A Digital nomad paying no income tax, quite likely claiming back the VAT on purchases (because they're ostensibly on tourist visas), and often specifically in the country because its very cheap, are not having a huge effect on the economy.
REAL tourists have a HUGE effect on the economy.
REAL businesses that make the effort to operate legally, employ local staff, pay taxes, etc, have an effect on the economy.
Doing work for any employer in Thailand, paid or unpaid is illegal on a tourist visa.
Lets quote the act you link to:
"To be able to legally work in Thailand the foreigner must have a valid non-immigrant visa and a work permit issued in his name allowing him to perform a specific job at a specific location for a specific company in Thailand."
Now a naive look at this paragraph might leave you with the impression you can be self employed or work for a foreign company.
The fact is that it's impossible to work for a foreign company in Thailand. They need to open local offices and incorporate here. It's also impossible to become self employed without opening a Thai company if you are a foreigner.
So the leading paragraph is correct. You need a work permit to work for a Thai company because all work must be conducted through a Thai company.
Actually, there was an episode of the "Travel Like A Boss" podcast, which is about digital nomadism, where the host and others were taken downtown by the Thai police after a raid on a co-working space. After the police found out that they were paying to do work at the co-working space on unrelated businesses and weren't being paid by the co-working space they let them go without charges [1].
For a person trying to make a point about having a legal business in Thailand (sorry for the fortune spent) and hiring local people, you're actually being quite offensive calling them local retards. I'm sure those "retards" are not so much retarded if you actually funded a profitable company there, dou*bag. Or was it just because your charming personality?
Probably so, still you're not a retard simply because you work developing Wordpress or Joomla sites. The condescendent and aggressive tone of the reply makes me read nothing but "boo-hoo" from the typical hater that finds joys in arguing over everything. Instead of focusing in the learning experiences and interesting facts of the blog post, starting with a "yawn" doesn't make very constructive does it?
The tone is admittedly aggressive, but his feet are way more in the ground than those of the authors of the article. What those guys are doing is essentially illegal.
a comment by way of someone (me) who is getting a bit on in age... nice idea, but what about medical care? being in a large north american city, access to high quality and high-end medical care is something that I've taken advantage of several times and it sure makes me sleep better at night
I've been living in Thailand for more than 10 years and have had a few major medical events. Medical care here in Thailand is far better than what I experienced in the U.S. The quality of care at private hospitals (and the country's central public hospital Siriraj) are generally excellent. And the cost is a fraction of the U.S. plus you actually know the cost going in instead of the run-around bait-and-switch hide-the-price until it is submitted to the insurance company game that is the U.S.
a comment by way of someone (me) who is getting a bit on in age... nice idea, but what about medical care? being in a large north american city, access to high quality and high-end medical care is something that I've taken advantage of several times and it sure makes me sleep better at night
a comment by way of someone (me) who is getting a bit on in age... nice idea, but what about medical care? being in a large north american city, access to high quality and high-end medical care is something that I've taken advantage of several times and it sure makes me sleep better at night
500 EUR per room seems like a lot, and not just for Thailand. I'm planning a holiday in France, I have a two bedroom place booked for more or less the same price near the beach in Marseille (monthly rate on AirBnB, not the cheapest option either). I'll also be visiting Prague where I see places for half that. My home in Cape Town is a very well situated two bedroom flat, also half that price.
That IS a lot of money in Thailand. But the truth is that nice stuff in Thailand costs a lot more than what most foreigners think. Sure, you can rent a one-room condo in a cheap part of Bangkok for less than 100 EUR a month, and eat cheap street food for 1 EUR a meal. But that gets old fast. Resort destinations that are popular with foreigners are pricey. The photos in the article show a nice looking house in a popular destination so I'm not surprised at the cost. Cheap food is cheap but when you want a nice steak be prepared to pay 3X what you would in the US (local beef is horrid so imported is the only reasonable choice). Nice bottle of wine 5X what you pay in France. At least seafood is about the same as western prices, which is to say a little pricey. And if you decide to stop being a tourist working on your holiday (which is all that digital nomads really are) and stay longer you will want to buy larger ticket items. You will find that electronics are higher priced and vehicles are 2X to 3X the price compared to the west.
I'm a software engineer in Thailand who is working on a startup while doing some part-time consulting.
I started consulting in the last few months, and my biggest client has recently had to delay payment because they don't have enough money. I've also been applying to a few gigs on gun.io, and one proposal was accepted, but they've just pulled out. They need some more time to scope out the idea before starting development.
Living overseas is awesome if you have a stable job or a lot of savings, but it can be pretty terrifying otherwise. So I'm in a bit of a jam at the moment, and would like to ask for your help with finding a one-off or part-time gig to stay afloat. I've already tried most of the remote job sites [1].
I'm a Rails developer with over 5 years of experience and I'm competent with front-end development, most JavaScript frameworks, and DevOps. I also have 6 months of full-time experience with iOS development, in Swift and Objective-C. One other thing is that I really enjoy debugging, and am pretty good at tracking down difficult bugs. If you or one of your developers are stuck on anything, I'd be happy to take a look. No payment until it's fixed.
My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable. I can usually commit to 20 hours per week, but I will be available for full-time work (up to 60 hours per week) over the next few weeks.
Please leave a comment if you have any advice. If you would like to get in touch and view my GitHub profile, then please send me an email at needaremotegig@gmail.com
>> So I'm in a bit of a jam at the moment, and would like to ask for your help with finding a one-off or part-time gig to stay afloat. I've already tried most of the remote job sites [1].
>> My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable. I can usually commit to 20 hours per week, but I will be available for full-time work (60 hours per week) over the next few weeks.
So you're stuck in Thailand, turn to help on Hacker news, and then mention how "My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable."
Not sure how many people you'll attract with this strategy.
I'm hoping to attract serious clients who value high-quality work.
I do have a little bit of a buffer. My client's site is also profitable, so they'll be able to pay me in the next few weeks. But I'll have to ease back the hours with them, so am looking for some more projects.
A company in most states across the US and throughout the entirety of Europe could pay a full time staff member with the same skills and experience you have the same amount you want per week ($3k) to work full time for them with significantly less hassle involved.
I think it's obvious why you're finding demand to be so low when you've set your price so high.
The amount you want for 60 hours a week ($9k) could get two extremely experienced engineers and provide them with a massive bonus incentive on top of their salary almost anywhere in the world.
I've been working with my current client for the last 3 months. He brought me on at $150 per hour after he had to fire his previous contractors, and I've been cleaning up their mess ever since. I've heard of quite a few situations like this, but I'm sure that there are cheaper developers out there who are doing great work.
Demand for part-time + remote jobs seems to be pretty low in general, but I don't think my rate is the issue.
I am able to charge this much because of my experience with startups, and my open source contributions. I was an early engineer at a startup which is now worth over $500 million, and I'm currently the CTO at my own startup.
Obviously networking is one of my major weaknesses, and I need to work on that.
As someone hiring some people* remote, your rate is at the way way top end of the scale. Even for people with core experience in Node (where I'm hiring).
I get what you're saying, but as an employer, the "non negotiable" and inflexible attitude is a point-blank no for me. Your OS contributions (caveat: spent 2 minutes looking) are hardly much (lists on github are not 'valuable programming', to me it's just content marketing that may as well be on a blog) compared to people asking for 1/2 to 2/3 of your proposed salary, who have core contribs, manage production-deployed packages/code that are in frequent use etc.
Your mileage may vary, so best of luck. But that's my perspective, as an employer, looking for remote devs. The competition is actually pretty high, and you can get awesome candidates that might earn $120-160k a year when working in the valley for $80-120k due to the lower costs they can incur ('valley tax') and the flexibility you offer as a remote employer.
Don't get me wrong, I know the value of a high-priced consultant (am/was one) to fix an emergency. But you're not asking people to deliver you an emergency, you're asking for a job. And to deliver in an emergency, you need a hell of a lot more credibility and slickness, which your post suggest you don't have.
* might be one, might be more. Depends on who applies and what it looks like.
The serious clients who have the money you are looking for, are not going to hire a random guy in Thailand based on a forum comment.
At your suggested rate, these clients will be able to get an on-location contractor with significantly more experience (think 10-15 years). I.e. No hassle with international payments, timezones and what not.
Compare that to what you are suggesting: A very high cost (150 USD an hour) at a very high risk (completely unknown resource). This makes it a highly unappealing business proposal.
For you to get that rate while being remote, you need to have already established yourself with such clients, i.e. You need to have worked for them before and built a lot of trust.
I work remote, and worked even more remotely for a year. Yeah, this was just a 2mo bit of fun. Great. But longer stays in Thailand quickly run into immigration law.
If you're having power outages or brownouts, you want voltage regulators and UPS'. Bad power will wreck your electronics. It's good to have a backup internet connection as well. I've had outages lasting up to 3 weeks, and what are you really going to do about it to motivate a telephone company to work faster?
The 37signals people created a short book about working remotely. At about the same time as I was having problems with someone not overlapping their hours with the rest of the team, their book pointed out the same issue. If you don't overlap, people will become isolated in a very bad way. If you hire someone you just have to clarify the expected hours upfront.
I can't stop thinking that this seemingly nice story is in fact the story of a failure. How many employees did learn Thai? How many did decide there was no better place for them and stayed there? How many did find their so in this island? Why didn't the whole team stay there indefinitely?
I say that as a French who decided ten years ago that China was my place, learnt the language, married a Chinese woman and have kids and job in Beijing with no special return plan.
They like living in Spain / wherever else they live. They also like travelling to other countries. They're taking a vacation and working from a new place, for a short time. They don't want to live there.
It also may not be possible to live there permanently and work because of visa and residency restrictions. I wanted to move to the Philippines a few years back (my wife is from Manila), but in researching I found it would be difficult to live and work there as a US citizen. There are classes of visa that allow you to live there and start companies (e.g. SIRV [1]), but they usually require a large deposit (~$75,000 USD) and a lot of strict requirements. There is also a retirees visa (SRRV [2]) which is a little cheaper ($20,000 locked in for duration or $50,000 convertible to domestic investment), but you have to be 35 or older (which I am as of 2 months ago).
My startup is really similar. We also value people over profits (and we're profitable!), we all work remotely, and we all meetup in random places for a few weeks so we can get a vacation plus some face-to-face working time in.
So far, it's been awesome. We've only done 1 meetup so far, at a ski chalet in the Alps, and it was great. The significant others & kids came for 1 week, and then we had 2 weeks of just the employees.
The biggest challenge is definitely the internet. When you have 6 people in a house all trying to pull/push from git, sync dropbox, do skype calls, etc; it can put quite a burden on whatever crappy DSL the vacation house has installed.
We would love to do a SE Asia work trip but so far we have ignored the region due to the internet connectivity. I'm actually really surprised that the mobile internet there was good enough for you guys to work with.
Cheers, and keep it up! It's nice to see there are more startups like this out there.
Why would you assume SE Asia has worse internet connectivity options than other countries? the vast majority of people here use just a smartphone or maybe a tablet to access the internet. 3G is fairly ubiquitous, 4G is in major locations, and data is relatively cheap. (I don't bother with a local Sim when I go back to Australia - it's literally cheaper to roam and use data via my Thai SIM than to pay for Telstra prepaid)
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] thread1) Why did't they move to one of the Canary Islands? Part of Spain, Barcelona is a part of it. Less hassle because you stay in Europe, same language, same culture as in Barcelona. I rent a flat (70m2, furnished, 500m from the palmtree-beach, €500 /month), in the center of the capital on one of the islands, the internet connection is reasonable. Sounds comparable to Thailand.
2) How long did they stay in Thailand, was it a 2 month project-move or a multiple-year company move?
To answer your questions:
1) We actually wanted to experience a new culture and also have some kind of adventure. We're already doing things in Spain, so we just wanted to try out something new and see how it works :-)
2) This was only a 2 month experiment, but our whole company is set up for remote work. So some of us continuously travel and work from different places. Myself I've been living in a camper van for a year now (blog post pending ;-)), but this was the first experiment where we actually rented two houses offshore and moved a bunch of people there.
Since then we also had another experiment. We spent some time in the Austrian Alps for skiing. We'll write about it soon.
And the next thing we want to do is actually in Spain (in the mountains) and then we're planning to go to Mauritius for a month or so.
It can be a great way to run project in a lovely pressure cooker. Everybody 7days per week involved/committed without the distraction of homely nuisances.
I'm very interested in your camper-van-blogpost
And Mauritius is great!
If you need people to work 7 days per week, that's a problem. Hire more people, or set longer deadlines. Emergencies happen, but working late for a whole week or more is a systemic, productivity and morale sapping flaw.
But you're right. Mauritius is great!
Your original post talked about relocating so team members could spend 7 days a week committed to the project. That goes far beyond a weekend BBQ.
Good times.
Not many developer meetups here in Santa Cruz though :/
Or start a functional-reactive-concatenative-meetup group here
London, Tokyo, Singapore, China, San Francisco, Iceland, France, Germany, Russia, Australia, India, Canada...
We could be a travelling startup.
That would be so cool!
It's simpler to have a remote company. Then you can take all the trips you want, and your team can work from wherever they want.
It's not always perfectly possible, but at least we try :-)
Also, I presume from the article that not every employee was in Thailand, and some chose to remain at home, correct? Did the remote team ever feel left out of the conversation as most of the team was speaking in person in Thailand?
Thank you, and nice article.
Regarding the remote work, even when we're at home, that means we're in different cities and even different countries, so our whole company is set up as a remote company, although many chose to work from the main office in Barcelona. To answer your question, no one felt left out, because we simply continued to work as usual (chat, video calls, etc.), it just happened that some of us were at the different location.
Or are my conclusions inaccurate?
I think a lot of people here are very keen on experimenting quite radically with what work itself looks like. Like all experiments, they are not for everyone, and nobody expects any single radical experiment to just stumble upon the final answer to work, but they may learn a thing or two that the rest of us can benefit from.
I've been working remotely from different countries over the past couple of years, and while it's a great life experience, it's just not practical for work. The wife and I are now looking for a home base.
And yes, I agree it doesn't make sense to be there permanently, but traveling once in a while to the big business hubs in the world and spending a month here and there helps.
What I personally don't want to do though is to permanently live in a city that is crowded with people. So doing those time-limited remote experiments is a nice change of perspective and a very good way to recharge your batteries while still staying productive.
There are a number of tax incentives for people wanting to start tech companies here. Google Puerto Rico Act 20.
Short version: "Act 20 offers a four (4)% corporate tax rate for Puerto Rican businesses providing services for exportation, 100% tax-exempt dividends from earnings and profits derived from the export services income of eligible businesses, and a 60% exemption on municipal taxes."
Eligible businesses include IT software development.
Besides the tax benefits there are a lot of other things to like here.
Can you list a few?
Some questions I have, if you don't mind: How do you like Rincón? Do you need a car if in SJ? How much is Spanish used over English? Are living costs cheaper? Thx
I can't say a lot about Rincon because I don't know but Mayaguez is the most American like city here with the highest rate of english speaking people I have seen.
Living costs on most everything is a little expensive here except for service related items (car repairs, appliance repairs, etc). Expect a 5 - 10% increase in living expenses.
You will need a car to get around unless you live in Palmas del Mar and then you will need a golf cart, there is a car rental on site if you need to go further than the onsite.
Things to like. 1. The weather 2. Simpler Life 3. Tropical Fruits/Nuts everywhere 4. Less regulations on things I care about (homeschooling) 5. Tax system that is not the IRS 6. More community minded people, probably more like the states in the 70/80s. 7. I have a personal swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court and decent sized house for less than the one I left in Atlanta.
I've never had a problem here or felt in danger.
I'm in Atlanta now, but have definitely been mulling PR over.
Heard the same thing about east vs west sides of the island.
For the most part of the year it is the same time as ET zone so it works out nicely for east coast jobs.
With tropical weather.
What's the schooling like?
Public schools are a no go. There are some good private schools and a large number of homeschoolers. Don't know much about the colleges here but probably not good.
Puerto Rico is part of the united states, just not a state, which means no visa required, same currency, and etc.
Additional info on tax benefits: http://puertoricotaxincentives.com/act-20-export-services-ac...
I agree with most of what you said, except for the college part, which you admit you didn't know very well.
The public Colleges of Puerto Rico are actually great and very competitive with the rest of the colleges in the US, but with lower resources.
I studied computer engineering in UPRM in Mayaguez. While studying there I had internships with multiple fortune 500 companies which allowed me to pay for my own tuition as it was at the time $40 per credit. When I graduated I was hired in a fortune 500, many of which recruit heavily in PR, and was recently able to move to a startup with ease. Many of my alumni were hired in various companies both big (Microsoft, IBM, Lockheed Martin) and smaller startups. I only mention this because many of us were hired alongside many ivy league school students or from other larger universities with more resources, which may serve as a signal of how competitive the school is compared to others.
I would happily recommend anybody to study in any of the UPR campuses.
Also, the income has to be sourced in the foreign country, if it is sourced in say New York you can't magically tansfer those taxes to another country without incorporating there.
You do not have to pay payroll taxes. When living abroad, some treaties allow you to pay them instead of local ones, but without a treaty you just don't pay. Of course, good luck ever collecting on your chinese social retirement account.
You are correct on the SS and medicare but the assumption is if you are the business owner the majority of your income will be dividends and not subject to SS or Medicare, so just the 4% tax applies.
The Timezone thing is also a really big deal too. PR is the same most of the year and just one hour off Nov-Mar. I do not ever see myself waking up at 5:00am for meetings.
How does the tax work? It's part of US territory, so are you paying your income tax to the US as you usually would while earning in the US?
Or are you resident there and your earnings subject to taxes in PR? Aside from that, as a US citizen are you not still obliged to pay the IRS the taxes on a certain amount of earnings made outside the US?
I posted my email address to another comment here. If you are interested send me an email and I will put you in contact with a tax accountant here and a few others that work on this.
Add the @ and . in the above.
Domain for one of my future micro services frameworks projects.
The most capable, adaptable, and accomplished adults I know moved around a bunch as kids. It forces you to learn how to live in the world and get out of your comfort zone. The most anxious, bitter, and underperforming adults I know grew up in the prototypical suburban bubble environment. End meaningless personal anecdote.
I still agree, and in fact kids are often more adaptable than adults. Usually they can handle change, and it is good for the mind to experience different worlds.
Depends on the country / school system. Not all kids have 3 months of "summer break."
I haven't lived in one place longer than two years since I was eight or so. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't grown up that way.
I guess there's a happy medium. I've heard horror stories from both ends of the stability spectrum.
To Thailand only a few of us went, mostly for the family reasons.
However, to our most recent trip to the Austrian Alps we had almost everyone in the company head over there.
In general we're actually very pro-family. We do have a main office in Barcelona, but everyone is allowed to work from virtually anywhere. Some of us travel and work from remote locations, but for those with families it's also a great benefit to work from home and have more time with their families.
For those of you in the pacific time zone (sf bay). If you're interested in doing this, I recommend Tahiti or Hawaii. It's three hours off from pacific time during the summer months but only 2 hours off during winter. You can easily work a local time of 6-3 which would be 8-5 in PT. This gives you the rest of the day to enjoy paradise.
A tip on how to convince your boss to let you do this: Plan to go on a two week vacation somewhere. When asking for time off, ask your boss if they mind you working remotely for a couple weeks following your vacation. It might just work--and like in my case I found out that my boss didn't care if I stayed longer.
I called it CA time. Roll in at 10am, 1.5-2 hour lunch, surprisingly most everyone gone at 5pm because kids or something else.
My coworkers would ask me how many hours I was working, to which I'd reply 40. How many are you working?
I care because when you're working as a team and people are gone, it kills productivity across the team.
Not everyone works in silos.
I knew they didn't like having remote workers, but for a contract extension they were willing to do it. So I spent two months working from beautiful Brazil and had a raise waiting for me when I came back.
Moral of the story - there might be a way to work from a distance for a while after all even with employers that don't normally allow it.
But we also do all have families with their own lives, so we have a stable home somewhere, and spend the majority of our time at that home. We also get into a working rhythm at our home, which gets disrupted with travel and adjustments to a new working environment, so when we really need top effectiveness for a project, it works better from "home", at least in our experience.
And then once you're set up and feel 'home' in that new place it's already time to leave again. So the biggest learning experience for us is to stay longer next time.
Would it not be wise then to send someone ahead to scope these things out? As in, you're planning to have a team move to X, send someone to X two weeks in advance to sort out logistics, get internet dongles, map out places to eat, do laundry, etc?
Rather than having whole teams trying to sort it out on arrival.
I think what you've offered is great btw. The criticism being leveled on you here is pretty unfair and I'm not sure what is behind it. It's of great benefit to the locals to have westerners on western salaries come in for a month or two, spend maniacally on local resources and then leave.
The argument against it is well you should be incorporating there and providing the locals with jobs and that's nice in theory but unfeasible in reality, and all those tourist bucks create and supply the locals with plenty of jobs in themselves.
But I know what you're talking and while what we're doing is technically a gray zone, what the government is after is mostly freelancers that basically live in Thailand, but are not paying taxes there and are constantly on a visa run to re-enter the country.
No, you stated you were working. From your article's title: "Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand"
> what we're doing is technically a gray zone
Did you file a tax statement and did you pay any taxes on income earned while you were residing in Thailand?
Noticed the smiley?
Nevertheless, how do you differentiate between holidays and work and where to draw the line? If you're responding to a work emails while being on holidays, does that count towards the taxable income in that country you're visiting?
> Did you file a tax statement and did you pay any taxes on income earned while you were residing in Thailand?
Absolutely. We're not evading taxes. All income is taxed in Spain. And we weren't residing in Thailand. We were only visiting it and happened to also do some things that were related to our business back home in Europe. The work we did had nothing to do with Thailand itself.
I'm not an international tax specialist, but at least from a moral point of view I don't see that we did something wrong.
In European countries for example you only become a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days there.
EDIT: formatting
Pity Thais cannot easily come to Spain and work illegally. Despite what you've said it's blatant public abuse of the tourist visa system in Thailand.
Honestly when I see blog posts like this my opinion of the author and company goes down considerably. Breaking the rules and publishing the fact that you are makes me question what other grey areas you'd operate in.
But there's really nothing to get bent about. No locals were out of a job. They lived there as tourists so paid a lot more into the local economy than locals, including a lot more taxes in the form of VAT on all their purchases.
The only real issue is that they were at risk even if they didn't sense it, because what happens now and then is someone gets pissed off (usually another foreigner) and rats someone out. Then the police see an opportunity to collect an extortionate "fine" before they get deported.
Could you explain how you formed that conclusion?
> They lived there as tourists so paid a lot more into the local economy than locals
How did you determine that? I've lived as a hippie in India, similar to what Steve Jobs did. I spent 0 money and lived off the temple welfare system. I was exploiting the generosity of people who had a thousandth the resources and welfare that I had. I wasn't alone. There were hundreds, if not thousands of other Westerners doing similar things.
It appears that Mobile Jazz is a company that caters to western audiences, most of the work they will be doing will be for western clients who wouldn't hire Thai workers. The workers just happen to be out of office when they do their jobs.
It might contravene visa issues from a literal read, but I think the intent was fair. Many Australians would call this "the vibe of the thing" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJuXIq7OazQ
Increased strain on policing and hospitals. Strain on Thailand's subsidised public transport system, subsidised diesel fuel, subsidised water utilities.
No tax revenue from foreign workers as they don't declare in Thailand despite being required to do so by law. The only exception being VAT.
The general point of nomads working in Thailand is the ability to lower outgoings beyond what you could do in North America or Europe. Nomads don't spend cash like tourists and that makes them a drain on the economy.
So what's Thailand got to lose from allowing foreigners to set up shop. Well the huge fees required to be legal for one.
While from a legal perspective it might be all correct what you're saying, I think that most people simply have more important matters to worry about.
For example, it's also illegal to cross a red traffic light as a pedestrian at 3am in the night on a deserted street. That doesn't mean that it is immoral or that it causes harm to anyone.
And I wouldn't even want to know all the "illegal" things you're doing that you are not even aware of. Just saying.
Not really. Thai people do not easily get a tourist visa for visiting Europe. There's a whole bunch of constraints to keep them out.
There's been around eight of these posts of 'Digital Nomads' working in Thailand and not one of them bothered to mention that they were breaking the law.
You did. You lied on your Thai tourist visa application form. It explicitly said: "I hereby declare that the purpose of my visit to thailand is for pleasure or transit only and that in no case shall I engage myself in any profession or occupation while in the country"
So as someone doing it the legal way and jumping through the hoops created to catch people like you, I'd just like to say FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.
Don't wanna state the obvious,but even If you're coding(could claim to be open-souce work), it's not like the police is gonna spy on you.
Re "spying on you": immigration police have conducted "raids" on coworking spaces, not to mention the potential for upset/disgruntled locals/competitors/whoever to report you.
Sounds reasonable , but it doesn't work that way. Work for free or charity work still counts as work and is no less illegal.
See also: http://www.thaivisa.com/462-0.html (the article is from 2006, but that law hasn't changed)
My colleague's wife is on H4 (dependant) visa and prior to coming to USA, she had a job in India. We talked to a lawyer and then with USCIS and both of them confirmed that it is not a possibility that she can work remote here in USA on H4 even though she gets paid in India.
"Digital nomads – people working remotely or running online businesses – in Thailand can legally work there on tourist visas"
But one paragraph down:
"It is unlikely that travellers will be granted a re-entry stamp after two or three visa runs. If your passport is stamped “O-I” (out-in) upon arrival, it is unlikely that you will be able to re-enter the country again should you decide to do a visa run"
http://ashleyconnor.co.uk/blog/2014/09/07/working-in-thailan...
However for the trip we did just recently to the Austrian Alps pretty much everyone joined. But that was also a lot shorter and the focus was more on skiing/snowboarding than on doing work.
There are reports in the archives http://blog.expensify.com/category/company-life/ including Portugal, Croatia, Thailand, Vietnam ...
Just posted an article about the blue house doing a similar thing in Morocco (or at least providing a framework for startups to do so in tropical locations): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9347228
Assuming Thailand will crack down on those temporary remote workers, they will just go some other place.
EDIT: fixed typo.
They are rightly wary of western power being exerted now through corporations rather than through a military, because that's how things work these days, so they limit the ability for western companies to make inroads here. (For example the local Shell, Esso, etc. are all technically wholly owned by Thais.)
Obviously this concern doesn't apply for freelancers and small businesses whose clients are in the US, but those folks aren't numerous enough to affect immigration policy.
Limitations such as max 95% foreign ownership (Indo) end up with local lawyers or accountants owning 5% of the companies that are set up and are figureheads there to fulfill government requirements. Or in Thailand where many industries are only open to Thai nationals, which means the only way foreigners may access those industries is through marriage, though when those marriages dissolve so to does the foreign claim on business assets.
I don't blame them for making it difficult for foreign investment dollars to pour in and displace domestic ownership, or for not embracing western capitalism as fast and as hard as they can.
49% foreign ownership max, unless you are American.
This becomes clear if you pay attention to the punishments imposed by the law; they concern Thai employers, not the alien workers, alone.
[1]: http://www.thailandlawonline.com/translations/foreign-employ...
Eg. you can check your email and do a bit of work to keep things going at home, it's not legal, but it is understood to happen and you'll be fine.
Full time work however is NOT allowed without a working permit.
Your link at [1] even confirms that at pretty much the first line. There is no specific exclusion for "remote work".
If you're being paid through an account back home and are working in a villa you've rented, it would be very hard for them to prove you're actually there working full time, would it not?
You really would not want to end up in a debate with Thai immigration on this topic either, no matter if they have proof or not.
Outdated legislation which is no longer enforced is common everywhere. For example Alabama has a homophobic law which says this must be included in every sex education program:
"homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state."
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/alcode/16/40A/16-40A-2
Illegal != Enforceable
REAL tourists have a HUGE effect on the economy.
REAL businesses that make the effort to operate legally, employ local staff, pay taxes, etc, have an effect on the economy.
Doing work for any employer in Thailand, paid or unpaid is illegal on a tourist visa.
Lets quote the act you link to:
"To be able to legally work in Thailand the foreigner must have a valid non-immigrant visa and a work permit issued in his name allowing him to perform a specific job at a specific location for a specific company in Thailand."
Now a naive look at this paragraph might leave you with the impression you can be self employed or work for a foreign company.
The fact is that it's impossible to work for a foreign company in Thailand. They need to open local offices and incorporate here. It's also impossible to become self employed without opening a Thai company if you are a foreigner.
So the leading paragraph is correct. You need a work permit to work for a Thai company because all work must be conducted through a Thai company.
1. http://www.travellikeabosspodcast.com/episodes--show-notes/e...
As with all things in Thailand, what is ok today could be prohibited tomorrow.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/125980/thai-immigration-offici...
Just kidding. And I agree with you.
Keeping your head down in SEA is really good advice.
It's about a startup residence in Morocco, startups came and work there for one month
I started consulting in the last few months, and my biggest client has recently had to delay payment because they don't have enough money. I've also been applying to a few gigs on gun.io, and one proposal was accepted, but they've just pulled out. They need some more time to scope out the idea before starting development.
Living overseas is awesome if you have a stable job or a lot of savings, but it can be pretty terrifying otherwise. So I'm in a bit of a jam at the moment, and would like to ask for your help with finding a one-off or part-time gig to stay afloat. I've already tried most of the remote job sites [1].
I'm a Rails developer with over 5 years of experience and I'm competent with front-end development, most JavaScript frameworks, and DevOps. I also have 6 months of full-time experience with iOS development, in Swift and Objective-C. One other thing is that I really enjoy debugging, and am pretty good at tracking down difficult bugs. If you or one of your developers are stuck on anything, I'd be happy to take a look. No payment until it's fixed.
My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable. I can usually commit to 20 hours per week, but I will be available for full-time work (up to 60 hours per week) over the next few weeks.
Please leave a comment if you have any advice. If you would like to get in touch and view my GitHub profile, then please send me an email at needaremotegig@gmail.com
[1]: https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job
>> My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable. I can usually commit to 20 hours per week, but I will be available for full-time work (60 hours per week) over the next few weeks.
So you're stuck in Thailand, turn to help on Hacker news, and then mention how "My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable."
Not sure how many people you'll attract with this strategy.
I do have a little bit of a buffer. My client's site is also profitable, so they'll be able to pay me in the next few weeks. But I'll have to ease back the hours with them, so am looking for some more projects.
I think it's obvious why you're finding demand to be so low when you've set your price so high.
The amount you want for 60 hours a week ($9k) could get two extremely experienced engineers and provide them with a massive bonus incentive on top of their salary almost anywhere in the world.
It comes across as a bit delusional.
I've been working with my current client for the last 3 months. He brought me on at $150 per hour after he had to fire his previous contractors, and I've been cleaning up their mess ever since. I've heard of quite a few situations like this, but I'm sure that there are cheaper developers out there who are doing great work.
Demand for part-time + remote jobs seems to be pretty low in general, but I don't think my rate is the issue.
I am able to charge this much because of my experience with startups, and my open source contributions. I was an early engineer at a startup which is now worth over $500 million, and I'm currently the CTO at my own startup.
Obviously networking is one of my major weaknesses, and I need to work on that.
I get what you're saying, but as an employer, the "non negotiable" and inflexible attitude is a point-blank no for me. Your OS contributions (caveat: spent 2 minutes looking) are hardly much (lists on github are not 'valuable programming', to me it's just content marketing that may as well be on a blog) compared to people asking for 1/2 to 2/3 of your proposed salary, who have core contribs, manage production-deployed packages/code that are in frequent use etc.
Your mileage may vary, so best of luck. But that's my perspective, as an employer, looking for remote devs. The competition is actually pretty high, and you can get awesome candidates that might earn $120-160k a year when working in the valley for $80-120k due to the lower costs they can incur ('valley tax') and the flexibility you offer as a remote employer.
Don't get me wrong, I know the value of a high-priced consultant (am/was one) to fix an emergency. But you're not asking people to deliver you an emergency, you're asking for a job. And to deliver in an emergency, you need a hell of a lot more credibility and slickness, which your post suggest you don't have.
* might be one, might be more. Depends on who applies and what it looks like.
At your suggested rate, these clients will be able to get an on-location contractor with significantly more experience (think 10-15 years). I.e. No hassle with international payments, timezones and what not.
Compare that to what you are suggesting: A very high cost (150 USD an hour) at a very high risk (completely unknown resource). This makes it a highly unappealing business proposal.
For you to get that rate while being remote, you need to have already established yourself with such clients, i.e. You need to have worked for them before and built a lot of trust.
If you're having power outages or brownouts, you want voltage regulators and UPS'. Bad power will wreck your electronics. It's good to have a backup internet connection as well. I've had outages lasting up to 3 weeks, and what are you really going to do about it to motivate a telephone company to work faster?
The 37signals people created a short book about working remotely. At about the same time as I was having problems with someone not overlapping their hours with the rest of the team, their book pointed out the same issue. If you don't overlap, people will become isolated in a very bad way. If you hire someone you just have to clarify the expected hours upfront.
I say that as a French who decided ten years ago that China was my place, learnt the language, married a Chinese woman and have kids and job in Beijing with no special return plan.
They like living in Spain / wherever else they live. They also like travelling to other countries. They're taking a vacation and working from a new place, for a short time. They don't want to live there.
1. http://philippinevisalawyer.com/?q=special-investor-resident...
2. http://www.pra.gov.ph/main/srrv_program?page=1
My startup is really similar. We also value people over profits (and we're profitable!), we all work remotely, and we all meetup in random places for a few weeks so we can get a vacation plus some face-to-face working time in.
So far, it's been awesome. We've only done 1 meetup so far, at a ski chalet in the Alps, and it was great. The significant others & kids came for 1 week, and then we had 2 weeks of just the employees.
The biggest challenge is definitely the internet. When you have 6 people in a house all trying to pull/push from git, sync dropbox, do skype calls, etc; it can put quite a burden on whatever crappy DSL the vacation house has installed.
We would love to do a SE Asia work trip but so far we have ignored the region due to the internet connectivity. I'm actually really surprised that the mobile internet there was good enough for you guys to work with.
Cheers, and keep it up! It's nice to see there are more startups like this out there.