That's not really true. There's lots of companies that offer remote front end dev positions in the UK - but only if you're somewhere else in the UK. Otherwise tax and timezones are painful.

I know because I've been looking recently..

I run a small consultancy in the UK (not web dev) and hiring people outside the country is a pain.

You have to really want that person because it is a trade off in terms of admin overhead and cost.

Today, we have one full time team member in Germany and in the past we had someone in the Netherlands too.

In both cases, we used specialised payroll companies who charge a fee to be that person’s legal employer. They take care of taxes, health insurance, and other legal requirements. The cost of such a service has varied between €350 and €450 a month.

The real cost though is in covering the different payroll taxes in other countries. Add that to the payroll company’s fee and it costs us at least £10,000 more each year to employ someone in Germany than if they were in the UK.

I’ve seen confusion here and on twitter as to why more companies won’t hire remote outside their own country. The reason might be that it’s relatively expensive and outside the company’s competence.

I don't get that. Just do what I did: open a single person company and charge them monthly for your (pre-tax) salary. This has drawbacks like not being protected by the employment laws of the country you live in (are any of us really concerned about losing a job?) but advantages such as having a lot more flexibility tax-wise along with usually very significantly lower tax rates due to you paying yourself via dividends instead of salary, also you can have multiple clients simultaneously if you can handle the workload.

Details on tax optimization vary depending on your country of residence and the country where you opened your company.

For the "employer" company this is also very simple as they're just paying the invoices you send them.

Not everyone wants the overhead of running a company.

Some countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, specifically prevent this in either law or regulation.

Why not just ask them to set up their own company and bill you? It seems easier that way and would allow them to optimize their own taxes better...

That makes some things like ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials really hard. Each company involved with user data (which includes things like server logs) has to be assessed separately.

Exactly, it really is silly that the whole "outsource everything to India" mindset was replaced with "everyone has to be in the same building", no remote work, no work from home on some days of the week etc, as it would somehow increase productivity. It doesn't it simply strips companies that mandate such policies to loose the best of their staff which can go away and find work elsewhere in one weeks time.

I’ve worked remotely for the past 13 years and now run a small company that is remote, despite having an office available.

Offering remote positions is not just a case of throwing a switch. It requires significant cultural and process changes.

Speaking from experience, I’d prefer to work for companies that are committed to remote rather than one that accommodates one or two remote people.

We offer partial WFH ( 1-2 days ) in my current role - but I've just for a full remote UK based position :)