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Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

I wish he'd write a book about how to run fully remote companies, especially _international_ ones, like GitLab. Having recently founded a company myself, I have no plans of ever renting a permanent office if I can avoid it. So far though, I only had to deal with regulatory stuff in two states (DE and WA), and I get a throbbing headache from just contemplating doing this in every state and internationally as well. Would be pretty cool to know where the rakes are buried under the leaves so to speak, and how best to structure/manage such an organization, even besides the usual communication related challenges.

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You probably already know the book, but Basecamp's founders collected their thoughts on the matter a while ago: https://basecamp.com/books/remote

Unfortunately, this book does not address any of the complicated legal logistics aboute remote work (setting up multiple companies abroad like GitLab has done, hiring contractors, giving stock and stock options to people around the world, benefits, exclusivity, etc.).

I haven't read a lot about this online but I know it's one of the problems with remote work.

I'd guess that the whole arena is just so complicated and idiosyncratic that it's basically impossible to generalise the way you'd need to for a book.

Details/legalities are going to vary depending on where your company is registered, where your nominal "offices" are (some/most legal jurisdictions still insist on the fiction of a registered office, even though the whole point is to work completely decentralised) and where you're hiring people. So a book/website/wiki/whatever covering all the legal, tax, compensation, worker rights, healthcare, etc., etc. for all the combinatoric possibilities seems unlikely. A high bar and of limited value, since the rules are in any case shifting all the time. So it ends up roughly where we are, with each company hacking through the specific cases that cross their paths with their respective lawyers and accountants.

In this regard, the one thing I have seen is that most Remote First/Only companies I've tripped across seem to throw the questions of healthcare, home office allowances and even income taxes over to the employees... it's already too complicated for them to deal with unless they severely limit the number of countries they'll hire from.

I mean, healthcare is OK to throw to employees, IMO, provided the employer is willing to pay more to compensate the employee. It's not a difficult thing to procure. I've had my own insurance for over a year, and yes, it's pretty expensive, but if I were someone else's employee and my employer covered a half or 2/3rds of the cost, I'd be pretty happy. The cognitive overhead is about the same: you just review your cost increases at the end of the year and sigh.

Thanks - good idea. My plan is to make that kind of content available on Remote.com and not just in a book.

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