Getting remote jobs in general is tricky if you're not from certain countries. I'm from Algeria, Automattic was one of the few companies that hired there. Every other country would ask you to be in the US, or US timezone, or in a certain European country. Not all remote is built equal.
This actually makes me really suspicious about Automattic. Companies generally don't refuse to hire outside of certain countries just to be jerks, they do it because complying with international tax obligations while paying employees in dozens of countries is complex and expensive.
Given that, and the behavior we've seen from Matt and Automattic so far, what are the odds that they've actually got a bunch of really great international accountants and are doing everything correctly everywhere, versus they're just ignoring all of the tax laws and winging it, and are therefore at high risk of getting smacked down once the relevant authorities get wind of what's going on there?
we do this in Poland. While they're technically contractors everyone is treated like employees as much as possible. Hiring globally is really expensive, slow and risky for all but the largest companies. It's hard to be an expert in one system, let alone dozens, and that's before state/province/territory/etc differences.
It feels like you are just piling on really by engaging in such speculation. If I am wrong though please share your expertise on the difficulties of hiring remote in Algeria.
You seem to never been in that shoe (from a country no one hires from). Companies avoid that because it’s too much hassle. Automattic cares and goes through the hassle, simple as that.
You’re also talking without concrete knowledge. We work as international contractors, we handle our own local taxes. Automattic pays us the gross salary and it’s up to you.
Agree. Also I think Automattic was one of the few companies who actually paid a really good salary to even people from generally low income countries instead of paying market salaries and underpaying them.
Kudos to Matt man. Dude has actually done a lot of good stuff. Sure he has his problems. But who hasn't.
> You seem to never been in that shoe (from a country no one hires from).
Why do you say that? I do have sympathy for people in such countries and circumstances, but this isn't about that. It's about corporate compliance. For better or worse, corporations cannot just do something because it's a nice thing to do. They have to comply with the law in both the country they are based in and operate in, as well as in any country any prospective remote workers might be in.
I also never claimed to have any concrete knowledge. It's entirely possible they are doing everything correctly. I just find it odd that they are reportedly doing something that many companies do not do due to it being legally complex, and also their CEO is spouting off a bunch of unwise statements on public forums while being actively sued, which any sane corporate lawyer would strongly advise them not to do.
My understanding is that it's a lot more work for a company to have employees across many different countries.
Things like payroll, insurance, health benefits, retirement benefits, equity, unions, etc. all need to be done differently for different countries. This means that there's a lot of "extra stuff" that's specific to each country. For example, US employees expect a 401(k) plan and health insurance. For a US company, that's par for the course, but for a French company (for example), you need local expertise to navigate all the laws and protocols.
There are middlemen like Rippling that help centralize some of those things, and paper over the differences. But it's still a lot of added complexity. Not insurmountable, but smaller companies may decide to not burden themselves with it.
I may be wrong but I understand the comment above as saying that "getting jobs" in those places is now tricky. Not "getting remote jobs", just "getting jobs". In the sense that people who got now have a remote job at Automattic would have a hard time finding another job, even a non-remote one.
Jurisdiction issues are also probably a big factor.
If you have employees in N jurisdictions you potentially have to deal with N different sets of laws and regulations concerning income taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, health insurance, employment contracts, layoffs, maternity/paternity leave, unions, and probably many I've overlooked.
Remote employees in the same city? Trivial.
Different cities in the same county? Possibly slightly more work.
Different counties in the state? Maybe a slight step up in work.
Different states in the same country? Could be a big step up in work.
Different countries? Likely much more work than for employees in your country. With employees in different states in your own country things will work similarly. The bureaucracy you have to deal with for an employee in Florida and for an employee in Washington, for example, will be fairly similar, and much more similar to each other than they are to the bureaucracy you'll be dealing with for your employee in say Germany.
I think most of the companies (most likely including Automattic) are not doing it like that for remote employees from other countries. They are just "hiring" them as contractors, that is formally it's just B2B, the employee would register some kind of individual business entity in their country, send invoices, pay taxes. The contract may include things like vacations, sick days, (home office) equipment compensation, N months notice/severance pay, but it has no connection to the laws for normal employees in that country.
I think doing it differently would not be practical, because the company would have to maintain some kind of companies/offices in each country. Another option can be hiring the employee directly at the main company (not sure about US, but I am pretty sure it's possible at least for some countries in Europe), but it's also more complex and I am not sure if this would even make sense for the employee since e.g. they would not be able to access the benefits like healthcare remotely. And as long as the contract is good and the company is trustworthy, being a contractor/self-employed may have some advantages like lower taxes.
