Ask HN: How do you hire remote workers abroad, like developers or writers?

6 points by vfc1 4 years ago | 11 comments

Hello everyone, how do you hire remote workers abroad? Meaning that they work from their countries permanently and never come to your country.

So this is not a work visa or anything, I'm talking about full time remote work.

For example, imagine you have a small self-bootstrapped company company in Belgium (my case), and you want to have a few full-time workers in India (developers and content creators for example).

How does that work? Can they just issue you invoices as freelancers in euros and that's it?

Or do they need to have their own company?

What happens if they don't have a company?

Would using an intermediate platform like Upwork help in any way?

I understand no one here is probably a lawyer, and I will take the advice with a grain of salt and confirm with a professional.

But I would love to know about the feedback and personal experience of other entrepreneurs in a similar situation.

jimkri 4 years ago |

Check out https://www.letsdeel.com/ To hire someone outside of the US or to hire in general either bring them on as a Contractor or Employee. You should understand the difference between both, because you cannot treat a contractor as an employee.

Contractors will be hired for a set time and for a specific contract and you cannot treat them as you would an employee, if you bring them onto zooms and other calls they can be classified as an employee which is considered misclassification. Contracts are a simple way to bring people on, Deel or if you talk to a lawyer can get a basic contractor agreement for you.

Deel (linked above) is a way to hire them as an employee or contractor and they will become the Employer of Record if you choice to pay the hires as employees.

Not a lawyer, but built teams in Mexico and Philippines.

vfc1 4 years ago | |

Hello, thank you, I think I'm going to try deel, several people have mentioned it.

And what is your experience with deel, did you like it? Any downsides?

Do you go with contractors or employees with deel, and why do you prefer one vs the other?

I'm thinking of trying contractors first.

And can we hire a person for years as a contractor, or will we eventually have to upgrade them to an employee due to legal reasons, how does that work? Thank you for any insight on this.

mikro2nd 4 years ago |

You just do it. They invoice you in whatever currency suits you both, you pay them. PayPal is, unfortunately, likely to be the easiest way, unless you're willing to hack direct bank transfers or cryptocurrencies. The contractor's taxes are their problem (and thus their decision whether to operate as a company) not yours.

IMHO an intermediate platform is just going to eat into the money without adding value, unless you're using it to find the worker(s) you need. It all boils down to trust: do you trust them to do the work and report progress/time accurately? do they trust you to pay timeously? That's the one point where an intermediary might play a role, but, frankly, if trust is lacking, you don't want to be working together anyway.

DM me if you're looking for very part-time writing/dev work. I'm in ZA, so close-enough timezone to BE.

vfc1 4 years ago | |

Thank you for commenting, that would be great news. But is it really that simple?

What about work contracts, and should I ask them to issue a company invoice explicitly?

A company invoice can always be included as expenses, right?

inphovore 4 years ago | | |

It is trial and error, by luck and persistence.

Are you a contractor? Do you bill?

You start with what you think works for you and opinionated contractors will offer alternatives if necessary.

Unreliability, lack of communication, and expectations are all on you.

Have clear goals, never delegate an abstract idea, always delegate a discrete task (refine over time.)

As a contractor I always budget 25% of costs as administrivia. That’s correspondence, invoicing, or other non product related time.

s1artibartfast 4 years ago | | |

Yes, it is that simple.

Contracts are optional, but may be useful to be clear.

Invoices are easy, you can make them in word or excel, or notepad, or on a napkin.

Regarding expenses, more info is required (eg where you are, do you have a company, ect)

brudgers 4 years ago |

To me, practical uncertainties, managerial overhead, and logistical complexity seem likely to swamp the only obvious upside of potentially reducing personnel costs.

Even more concerning is personnel cost reduction tends toward squeezing blood from stones. Business is premised on getting what you pay for. As costs are reduced toward zero, goods and services trend toward a corresponding quality.

Except in recession, time spent reducing costs can often be better spent raising revenue.

s1artibartfast 4 years ago | |

Strong disagree. Costs open a lot of possibilities, especially when bootstrapping.

A bay area full stack developer is easily $1-200/hour. You can find one on internationally for $10-20/hr.

If you have funding, maybe that doesn't matter. If you are paying out of pocket, that is the difference between executing or not.

brudgers 4 years ago | | |

When the root cause is under-capitalization, that’s a better problem to spend energy on.

Because it has compounding returns.

Cost reduction has diminishing returns.

Starting out under-capitalized means the business is default-dead. Odds are no amount of hard work will change that (that’s the nature of diminishing returns).

Of course all this is in the abstract. Actual businesses need different amounts of capitalization.