"Some startups are already moving elsewhere to hire cheaper engineers and reduce other costs. They don't have to go very far from the Bay Area, perhaps to southern California or other states."
One big hurdle to hiring remote (we're 100% remote) are the significant expenses each time someone from a new state joins our team. All sorts of new taxes/fees/fines/paperwork, suddenly we have nexus in StateN and they want to tax our revenue or income, and providing health insurance has proven to be really difficult on a per-state basis. And that's without going down the path of hiring someone remotely out of the country. Fully remote is awesome, but there's definitely a lot of incentive to do so using only contractors.
If someone wants to start a company focused on streamlining the hiring & benefits process across state or country lines, I think that would go a very long way to increasing the remote-only attitude among startups.
A PEO like TriNet can typically manage it all for you (for $$$ though).
I personally prefer to pick each service provider separately. For example, a payroll processor like Gusto will handle all the onboarding forms (W-4, I-9, W-2, state new hire reports), state insurance compliance, fed and state payroll taxes in all 50 states. TaxJar figures out and reports sales taxes in all states. Guideline for 401Ks etc. Healthcare is definitely still the most problematic one.
Yes, it could be easier and more streamlined. However there's already some great services that can make hiring in multiple states easier.
If you are your own company, thus working as a contractor, that's different than hiring an employee to work in an existing company. There are lot of obligations that companies have for each employee in terms of taxes, health insurance, and the like, and in the US they can differ from state to state. If you hire an independent contractor, however, all of those obligations fall to the contractor themself, and the contractor is likely only dealing with one state's laws, so they don't have that complexity.
Consultant isn't a legal definition there is a difference between if they are paying you for services rendered (b2b) or employing you.
Basically unless there is a requirement for reverse VAT charges which isn't applicable to the US there is nothing a company needs to do when hiring a contractor other than pay the invoice, on the other hand there are tons of regulatory and legal requirements that they need to meet when they offer you employment.
I am out of the country (US). Worked remotely with US couple of times. NDA, contract governed under California law with mandatory arbitrage, send invoice, give IBAN, collect swifts.
Or he can start one man ltd corp in his country and make company-company contract. It is mostly a matter of will.
Oh wow! I have only hired remote employees within my own state and contractors out of state. That does sound like an entirely different level of challenges. How many employees do you have within your own state vs out of state?
How is it a perk? You provide your own equipment, give up some of your personal space, do your own support, the company saves on rent, cleaning, utility bills, equipment, furniture, security... and they convince you its such a perk you should be paid less too! Remote workers should be more highly paid! The boss is laughing all the way to the bank!
Good remote companies will provide you with equipment, pay you a competitive salary and provide you with support. Ones that don't are probably best to stay away from. Similar to non-remote companies who pay below going rate but try to entice you with ping pong tables and other perks ;)
Save 4 hours of London commute daily ... I know that diversity is in vogue - but the diversity in "days since last shower" on the Underground can get tad too much for my nose in rush hours.
If someone agrees to providing those things themselves, hopefully they increased their rate to match. If not, take it as a lesson in negotiation for the next time.
As always, your rate is only ever as high as you set it.
Who the hell works for a company (remotely or not) and uses their own equipment? I'm not a lawyer, of course, but a developer exposing their personal system to company data could be a significant liability risk to the company.
In particular, my last employer gave everyone the option to use an app[1] for easy access to email on their personal phones. I refused to install it, since it gave my (then) employer the ability to remotely wipe my phone at the press of a button.
Depending on relationship if you are a contractor usually you have to provide your own equipment and software. I prefer it that way - if company provides equipment it is usually minimum to get job done which doesn't make it pleasant most of the time.
That's a fair point. I wasn't thinking of contractors when I wrote my reply above. Hmmm, in that case, are there protections other than an NDA that are employed to minimize the risk of exposure of company data to a contractor's personal systems?
"Good" is a horrible app, but the wiping functionality is restricted to the data within the app. That's why the app is popular with companies for private devices, because it is very hard to export data from it.
Wiping a personal device to delete business data within one app would be illegal in a lot of countries.
"Good" is a horrible app, but the wiping functionality is restricted to the data within the app.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't - the point is that you need to give your employer the permission to wipe your entire device. And even if you trust them - whose to say there will never be a bug that triggers that code path?
^This. Or hire remote, which is a perk in itself.