I don't get it (the employers). If I do my job, live roughly in the same timezone, take care of my own taxes, and don't have to go to office anyway since the job is remote... why don't you just hire me as a contractor? What difference does it make if I live in your particular country?
> What difference does it make if I live in your particular country
Because the laws governing contracts for employment, either as a contractor or a “regular" employee (including the conditions under which either form is allowed) very from country to country, as do laws on taxation, including who is legally responsible for taxation, what contracts are permitted at all, etc.
And some of those laws are, for some jurisdictions, criminal laws with extraterritorial application. The individual hiring you may not wish to risk being arrested when travelling for, say, violating a sanctions regime in your country by hiring you, and may not wish to incur the expense of local counsel to advise on and rule out such risks just so they can hire one worker.
Additionally, if the person hiring wants to be sure they have recourse if the person they hire does something bad, being in a jurisdiction they are familiar with and already have access to the legal system is important.
I worked at such a place, and the core issue was that lots of enterprise customers want guarantees that their data never leaves the US, ever, for any reason. As a company, we didn't care where you lived. If you were outside the US, though, it drastically limited what kind of work you could do with us, to the point it just wasn't worth supporting it.
So what if you screw them over, which jurisdiction can they turn to? Plus, the tax burden may be that you do more than "your own taxes" but to have an accountant, and probably a company, registered in the relevant country anyway.
Screw them over how? If they don't like my work, they can fire me on the spot and just stop paying my invoices. If I do something very shady, they can sue me in the jurisdiction of the contract (I'm happy if it happens to be their country).
> Plus, the tax burden may be that you do more than "your own taxes" but to have an accountant, and probably a company, registered in the relevant country anyway.
How does that work? IIRC as a company, you can pay any company or contractor you want (excluding tax havens), and generally it is the contractor's responsibility to pay taxes, unless some physical goods are shipped. (Emphasis on generally, I haven't researched every country's tax laws, but it should work for US and EU.)
> If I do something very shady, they can sue me in the jurisdiction of the contract (I'm happy if it happens to be their country).
If you only look at this from the perspective of a good actor who does the right thing and flies to foreign countries to get sued, it's never going to make sense. The thing about bad actors is that they don't play by the rules if they can get away with it. If you're forced to sue someone or press criminal charges, they've likely done something very bad and will just avoid traveling to that country.
That is the problem. There is no practical recourse, even if it's theoretically possible to start proceedings against the person.
share confidential information, double-sell their software that you wrote, break some other contractual agreement exceeding the value of your last invoice.
> they can sue me in the jurisdiction of the contract
which requires your local jurisdiction to play ball or else you can just ignore it.
Some are indeed producing some innovative code, and might warrant limiting their pool of candidates to their jurisdiction only, but I don't think this is an issue for 95% of engineering jobs out there.
> which requires your local jurisdiction to play ball
Yeah, this can be a problem if my local jurisdiction is, say, Russia or Iran. Normally this shouldn't be an issue though?
In my case, my employer fired me because they ran out of funds. The wrong part was that they didn't honour the notice period mentioned in the contract.
Kind of the same happened to me. When the company began to go south, they started to delay payments. And when they finally ran out of money, we've been let go but the last, quite substantial payments were not honored and they simply ignored our messages. Luckily things worked out eventually, but I was already getting prepared for not getting paid.
If you’re in the US, always involve your state’s department of labor. That activates a pack of pitbulls who are more than happy to get your money for you.
I worked at a startup that did that. It was a good deal; Canadians got US rates as well, which is something that never happens. But, we got acquired and I imagine we will lose all of our non-US contractors because they are min/max-ing the cost of living or whatever. (A software engineer that lives in Wisconsin is less valuable than one that lives in New York, dontchasee?)
I stayed in New York during the pandemic, so I don't really care. Living 10 minutes from Manhattan will likely never be career-limiting.
Some labor laws are pretty strict, where if you treat them like an employee, they are an employee. This is common in the US and companies have to be really careful, otherwise a contractor can come after them and impose a pretty big financial burden.
