Screw them over how? If they don't like my work, they can fire me on the spot and just stop paying my invoices. If I do something very shady, they can sue me in the jurisdiction of the contract (I'm happy if it happens to be their country).
> Plus, the tax burden may be that you do more than "your own taxes" but to have an accountant, and probably a company, registered in the relevant country anyway.
How does that work? IIRC as a company, you can pay any company or contractor you want (excluding tax havens), and generally it is the contractor's responsibility to pay taxes, unless some physical goods are shipped. (Emphasis on generally, I haven't researched every country's tax laws, but it should work for US and EU.)
> If I do something very shady, they can sue me in the jurisdiction of the contract (I'm happy if it happens to be their country).
If you only look at this from the perspective of a good actor who does the right thing and flies to foreign countries to get sued, it's never going to make sense. The thing about bad actors is that they don't play by the rules if they can get away with it. If you're forced to sue someone or press criminal charges, they've likely done something very bad and will just avoid traveling to that country.
That is the problem. There is no practical recourse, even if it's theoretically possible to start proceedings against the person.
share confidential information, double-sell their software that you wrote, break some other contractual agreement exceeding the value of your last invoice.
> they can sue me in the jurisdiction of the contract
which requires your local jurisdiction to play ball or else you can just ignore it.
Some are indeed producing some innovative code, and might warrant limiting their pool of candidates to their jurisdiction only, but I don't think this is an issue for 95% of engineering jobs out there.
> which requires your local jurisdiction to play ball
Yeah, this can be a problem if my local jurisdiction is, say, Russia or Iran. Normally this shouldn't be an issue though?
> Plus, the tax burden may be that you do more than "your own taxes" but to have an accountant, and probably a company, registered in the relevant country anyway.
How does that work? IIRC as a company, you can pay any company or contractor you want (excluding tax havens), and generally it is the contractor's responsibility to pay taxes, unless some physical goods are shipped. (Emphasis on generally, I haven't researched every country's tax laws, but it should work for US and EU.)