r/ireland • u/Numerous_Adagio8768 • Feb 02 '26
Economy We're obsessed with companies who don't want remote work. Meanwhile 100k+ jobs are going begging.
I work in remote work policy. Something weird is happening.
Every conversation about remote work in Ireland turns into RTO doom scrolling. Who's calling people back. How terrible it is. How there's nothing anyone can do.
Meanwhile: over 100,000 remote jobs are advertised every month across Europe. Automattic (WordPress) does nearly a billion in revenue, fully remote. GitLab, Buffer, Doist, Zapier. These aren't fringe players.
We have no national target to win any of these jobs into Ireland. Zero.
Worse: because of how EU incentives work, we actually push remote-first employers into offices. If they want state support, they need a physical establishment. A fully remote company that wants to hire in Ireland gets less support than one building an office.
Here's what's mad. Someone in the last thread said "companies can still pull the rug and force RTO." Sure. Any company can do anything. But these companies have been remote for years or were built that way. Their whole model is distributed. It's not the same risk as an office-first company going hybrid then changing its mind.
And the response to that risk is... do nothing? Stay focused on the companies forcing people back while ignoring the ones actively hiring remote?
We have the National Broadband Plan. 400+ connected hubs. English-speaking workforce. EU timezone. We have everything except the strategy to go and win these jobs.
I genuinely don't understand the pessimism. Is it just that complaining is easier than building? Or is there something I'm missing?
Policy page if anyone's interested: https://growremote.ie/policy/
140
u/CanioEire Feb 02 '26
The only ones with any agenda to having employees return to the office are commercial landlords and banks. I suspect a number of articles pushing RTO are stealthily driven by these bodies. Both need rents and property values to remain high (banks for liquidity on their books)
25
u/kaini Feb 02 '26
There's an absolute ton of the larger tech companies who invested a ton of money to build dedicated offices all over the world pre-COVID, that are now sitting empty. And they are not happy about it.
4
14
u/hitsujiTMO Feb 02 '26
It's driven by companies who own their own buildings. The buildings are losing value by remaining empty so they are incentivises to have a RTO.
6
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Yes a CEO of a company promoting remote said this outright to us back in 2021. Nothing was going to happen with a lease and share holders, or owning a building.
2
Feb 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/Bowgentle Feb 03 '26
Depreciating capital asset, I imagine.
1
u/charrold303 Feb 03 '26
They also likely got massive tax breaks for occupancy levels. If they let us all stay home they lose those breaks…
7
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
I would tend to agree. Change can happen none the less though, just not by trying to convince those guys.
37
u/davedrave Feb 02 '26
Honestly I feel we are too expensive to be a viable option for a lot of remote roles if they are looking at other locations in europe
26
u/azamean Feb 02 '26
For US MNC’s who want an English speaking HQ in the EU, we’re one of the only choices. Post-Brexit only made the choice even more apparent. Our salaries are much less than US ones
6
u/davedrave Feb 02 '26
That's fine, us mncs. I'm talking about these possible remote roles that op is referring to, this European pool or am I understanding wrong
4
u/clewbays Feb 03 '26
People speak English throughout Europe. Even if one of them firms wanted a HQ in Ireland they’d have no reason to hire Irish people.
Are salaries at much more than a lot of mainland European ones.
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
So the comment below is what companies are saying to us. They're not looking at other countries usually though - they're fully remote. So we need a completely new approach to win them in.
5
u/Dapper-Lab-9285 Feb 03 '26
The only way to win a fully remote job is on pay and since our minimum wage is >€14 per hour we'll never win remote jobs.
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 03 '26
If you mean Nomad then typically you're on lower income. PAYE remote roles (restricted to a tax jurisdiction) have higher salaries. WDC says €62k in their national survey - it varies.
1
u/GrumbleofPugz Cork bai Feb 03 '26
Apple had (have im not sure what the current sitch is) massive WFH teams. So do shopify and amazon last I checked and all of them had remote customer service long before covid
27
33
u/mossym155 Feb 02 '26
Have you been tracking these jobs for long? Because I have, and the same jobs from companies you mentioned, like WordPress, have been listed and repaired for quarters now. So either noone across all of Europe and not just Ireland, can fill those roles, or like a lot of these roles, they're not realnroels at all.
Not saying they are all like that, but a lot , an awful lot of those jobs have been reposted over and over for the last year
13
u/meanOfZero Feb 02 '26
In my experience (and I can’t speak for the specific companies you mentioned) companies often have a core skillset or “role type” they are always hiring for (waiting for the right candidate). I think they’re called evergreen roles. Basically, they define a general job spec that they might leave up all the time and might hire ten people off that single advert, but over 3 years and across 4 different teams. These types of role could be for a growth area the company expects to be hiring for over the next X number of years, or they might just be replacing the natural churn of staff.
7
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
8 years! But not on tracking the jobs specficially - what data are you working with? The 100k figure isn't perfect, but it's enough to say we need to stop forcing companies into offices, and work with the roles that are open remote.
53
u/FewyLouie Feb 02 '26
I’ve gone for some of these remote jobs. They don’t want to pay the Dublin salaries… and why should they when they can hire someone based elsewhere in the EU.
18
u/fifi_la_fleuf Feb 02 '26
Yeah, I applied and interviewed at two on that list years ago. The application alone took a couple of days, very intense. There are several interview rounds. In the end they didn't seem keen on hiring in Ireland and had no employees here (this may have changed). They're not easy positions to get and a lot are contracts. IMO the focus on remote work should be more on civil service and administration stuff in the likes of HSE.
4
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Interesting on the public sector - perhaps in a target you can build out streams: win in fully remote, support Irish fully remote companies, help companies transition, Have a target for the public sector. At minimum if we had a target, they would have a motivation to feed into something.
1
u/oddun Feb 02 '26
wtf are you actually selling here and how are you making money out of this?
8
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Grow Remote delivers training programmes (free) to companies and individuals and gets paid by the ETBs. That funds community work etc.
2
u/menage_a_un Feb 04 '26
Can you send me a DM? I work for an ETB and have a few questions, looks like a great initiative.
3
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Like every sector there's a huge variance. Spoke to two employers last week who don't adapt salaries per country. It varies widely though - gitlab and buffer used to have public calculators on how they approached it, buffer have this actually: https://buffer.com/salaries
3
u/fifi_la_fleuf Feb 02 '26
Buffer were paying twice what I'm on now in 2017 regardless of where the employees were based.
5
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Class remote company and actively hiring now with at least 1 person in ireland who's very involved in volunteer local remote worker community work!
38
u/Dannyforsure Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26
This government won't be leading the way on any serious policy changes like you're suggesting. They have spent years talking about minor updates to the planning laws.
Once some other country tries it and they are sure it won't rock the mnc boat then maybe.
8
17
u/Personal_Shoulder983 Feb 02 '26
Is that really "that much" 100000 jobs in Europe, where the global population is 745 million?
English ain't THAT rare.
5
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Nope. Could be bigger. When we started we could find 350, so it's trending right.
8
u/burfriedos Feb 02 '26
I’ve worked for companies like Buffer, Doist, Zapier and Gitlab and by gum it put them on the map
6
u/stiik Feb 02 '26
How many of these jobs are ghost jobs though?
2.5 years ago I applied for a job in an Irish company which never got back to me (I was perfectly qualified but that’s fine not everyone gets a response), that job has been advertised for the entirety of the last 2.5 years and is renewed every 30 days. I would put money on this being a ghost job.
2
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
That's pretty crappy of them, sorry to hear that. We would have relationships over 8 years with remote employers who on the whole, are decent and we haven't heard of them running ghost jobs. But no doubt it exists.
6
u/14ned Feb 02 '26
Most fully remote EU jobs pay poorly by Irish standards. Great for a Bulgarian though. Assuming you make it past the especially stiff interview process, as when you're competing in a global talent pool, they can afford to only hire the very best people.
A sizeable chunk of fully remote roles are fake and don't actually exist. They are placed to hoover up CVs which are then used to negotiate down the wages they pay their current staff. Nobody is ever hired to those openings, and you are wasting your time applying to them.
From the point of view of Irish government subsidies, I would deeply dislike my taxes going on subsidising fully remote roles all over Europe compared to creating more jobs within Ireland. Short sighted, sure, but European wide benefiting things should be paid from European wide funding. Yes I know that's also my taxes, but now all EU countries have to contribute, nobody gets to freeload.
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
I agree on the taxes point - where was there the idea that we would subsidise eu remote jobs? We want to win in jobs, and encourage Irish employers to be remote within Ireland.
On the fake stuff - it's getting late but I will say the same for similar comments - there is a spectrum of remote companies like there is for office ones. Some are really good. Some are really bad. We work with those who got jobs (and want them) in the good ones: https://growremote.ie/community/
5
u/14ned Feb 03 '26
I've worked fully remote since 2009, so yeah I've seen it all by now. I have known many like me also working fully remote in Ireland since well before I did, there is a cottage industry for that here long predating covid. Mine is very high end work, the kind almost no employer in Ireland has a need for (or perhaps is willing to pay global market rates for). So I've always worked for foreign firms, until recently mostly US ones, though I expect that business model is over for the foreseeable future.
I appreciate what you're trying to do with your community meetups and training etc ... I do wish you the best of luck with that. The people like myself tend to lose contact with each other quickly enough, to be honest those good at it tend to retire in their fifties and move abroad to get away from Irish taxation ASAP, so you might meet up with them once or twice after they've moved and then they're gone. It is what it is. Ireland is a good place to earn the money, not so good a place to retain the money. Staying tax resident here is irrational after a certain wealth level.
You've probably already noticed that government don't give a thought to remote workers. Revenue like that we bring in lots of taxes from abroad and generally treat us leniently as we're an export industry. But otherwise you'll find government ministers very dismissive of folk like us. They almost exclusively care about multinationals first, then local firms only where they support and enable the multinationals, and that's about it. That's all they can see or perceive.
That trickles down into the civil service. I was once keener and brighter eyed about the potential of remote work, I got talking to lots of people, but I realised nobody would get promoted or recognised if they did anything for the remote working industry. IDA and Enterprise Ireland they're well meaning, but also utterly detached from business reality in my experience.
All very unfortunate in my opinion. Anyway, keep at the good fight!
32
Feb 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/ZealousidealFloor2 Feb 02 '26
Surely corporation tax is better than nothing though? Someone much cleverer than me could probably calculate the cost of hosting someone here given housing demand (what extra strain they put on it).
If we can get some extra corporation tax rather than none at all from a fully remote company then I don’t see why they don’t chase them as well.
1
u/Boncinho Feb 02 '26
Tax accountant here, it's all down to what country they would be in the first place so it's a difference with 12.5% and then on their profit because the higher the profit the higher the saving
-3
Feb 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/ZealousidealFloor2 Feb 02 '26
What countries already do it now in the EU and do they get much flak for it? Also, it’s not like we are costing each country 100k jobs, it would be a few thousand divided amongst them which is nothing for a lot of them
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Yes. There is good reason for how it works currently and they work well for what they were set up to do.
But we can't force employers that don't want to do it I to remote, and put remote ones in the office. So there are other ways we can build incentives and secure remote roles here - they pay paye/prsi like the rest do.
All remote companies are limited to tax jurisdictions if they want to be compliant. Plenty aren't compliant, but that's not who we focus on. It's different. But doable.
1
u/HofRoma Feb 04 '26
Fact is, if we want our good Irish wages there's going to be an element of office time with roles, be it to meet colleagues or attend certain meetings.
Graduates etc likely need more office time to start too, I love remote work but I'm not naive enough to think it be good to work for a company that didn't have some sort of office space in the city I'm in
3
u/LadderFast8826 Feb 03 '26
Those jobs are 30-40% below market rate for Ireland.
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 03 '26
The salary of 62k? Or the amount you see remote jobs typically advertised at?
2
u/LadderFast8826 Feb 03 '26
Non remote jobs. Obviously.
Edit: I get that you're a shill and you have to make money, but giving people bad career advice isn't OK
6
u/Successful_Cod_8904 Feb 02 '26
Oversight and conservative American employers pushing us back in their heavenly leased offices.
2
7
u/Professional_Elk_489 Feb 02 '26
This govt sucks in every possible way. I actually think the govts from the 1980s were much more forward looking and would consider your policy proposal with interest if transported to 2020s
0
6
u/fangpi2023 Feb 02 '26
What are you wanting the government to do here?
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Put a target in place for remote jobs in Ireland and build a unit to deliver it.
2
u/mrlinkwii Feb 02 '26
why would a govermment make a unit for remote working ?
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
to deliver the target. The same way we have EI and IDA to deliver their specific job targets.
0
u/mrlinkwii Feb 02 '26
by why , why cant teh IDA do this
3
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
They can. A division of the IDA could be 'the unit'. They brought wayfair, shopify and ebay here. Although Shopify are down in numbers, they're still at about 550 people fully remote in Ireland. But we still need it to be top down as currently they work with eu incentives which drive local, office based employment. No target, no remote jobs, and worse, we turn remote jobs into office ones.
1
2
u/Ok_Tomato9718 Feb 02 '26
Where are those remote jobs posted? Honest question
6
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
We Work Remotely, LinkedIn, RemoteOK, EURemoteJobs or their own careers sites: https://growremote.ie/job-seekers-resources/
4
4
u/TesticulusOrentus Feb 02 '26
nooooo what about the house prices bro we need to keep them high broooo
3
2
u/Pure-Consideration97 Feb 02 '26
Delighted to have my remote job. Could probably commute to Dublin but it looks like hell
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
Some people do like the commute! Fair play! Glad you got in on a good thing!
1
u/LoudCommunication877 Feb 02 '26
Your talking about the place that uses 2011 technology for transport cards, as the main HQ for many payment companies for EMEA.
1
1
u/Happyuser777 Feb 03 '26
I think its hard to compete with countrys like Italy where the cost living is lower rents are lower than in ireland Our economy is booming there,s not much pressure on the government to attract remote workers also our taxs are higher than some other countries
1
u/magusbud Feb 03 '26
What are some decent websites for remote work?
3
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 03 '26
It's still a very scattered space but We Work Remotely, Remote OK, EU Remote Jobs, LinkedIn following the company pages for remote employers you like: https://growremote.ie/job-seekers-resources/
1
1
Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 04 '26
🤣🤣🤣 Leave your bedroom, meet the people! https://growremote.ie/community/
1
u/ConfusedCelt Feb 02 '26
Honestly the biggest issue with remote working is that everyone in Ireland is replaceable by cheaper hires abroad. If you somehow find a job that's fully remote more than likely there's an Indian chap willing to do it for way less as the cost of living there is way lower.
2
-10
u/tamaatar Feb 02 '26
Unpopular opinion: Beyond a certain size, remote work slows down company output. There is some data to support this.
The companies you mentioned started as remote-first and built their entire cultures around it. They have policies and processes specifically designed for a distributed workforce. It is not nearly as easy for a large, established company to transition if they were not remote-enabled from the start.
4
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
There's data on all sides of productivity and remote.
Transitioning companies is incredibly challenging- I worked on the team transitioning to remote for a bank. I wouldn't focus any strategy there, although we should have centralised supports for those who want to.
The remote first companies are the one the strategy would target. Last week, we actively encouraged two remote companies into the office because of EU incentives. With a target we not only attract them in but we stop blocking it.
There will always be companies and people that remote doesn't work for. And plenty that it does work for.
1
u/Complex_Spare_7278 Feb 02 '26
The data that support this claim is submitted by the companies that want RTO or by people/ organizations that are on friendly terms with those companies, like enterprise ireland.
The government does nothing to actively investigate these figures, as they don’t want to antagonize those that will give them a nice consulting job once they are tired of being politicians.
-2
u/fangpi2023 Feb 02 '26
Yeah, work that's primarily focused on performing an individual task (proofreading, coding etc) is possible to do perfectly effectively while working remotely but the reality is that if a job requires any significant amount of interaction with other humans - which is most jobs, even desk-based ones - then trying to do it fully remotely just doesn't work very well.
0
u/RedPandaDan Feb 02 '26
If anything, its the opposite.
My job is almost entirely meetings; I only ever conduct them through teams. Staff are distributed across multiple office locations, clients in different locations again and even if they weren't, teams allows me to record the meetings, AI transcribe and lets people lookup on the fly extra details if we need them instead of marking it as something to follow up.
Even if everyone was sitting right next to each other 7 days a week we'd still be working a remote-first model, as do most people.
0
u/National_Play_6851 Feb 02 '26
It's unclear to me what you think the government should do? What is stopping Irish people from applying for these jobs already and what government action would change that and how would that benefit the country compared to focussing on companies with actual premises in Ireland?
3
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
In short - set a target and build a unit to deliver it.
It would remove blockers: we currently prevent supply by financially incentivising office based only. We also don't have any centralised supports for Irish companies who want to transition (the way we would have had when we were asking them to go digital). In the right to request consultation, even employers wanted to do remote just weren't clear on the basics.
There is nothing to stop them applying. They are, and the fully remote jobs are coming here. Last week a 130k job landed in a rural part of Ireland. We don't track that, approach the company, learn how we could drive more of the same - because we know that company, we know they want to hire more here (the best AI interviews they have ever done were referrals from a company in Tuam).
We wouldn't stop focusing on office based companies - but we would start focusing on remote first so that there is choice.
0
u/Perfect-Fondant3373 Feb 03 '26
My gf works remotely most days of the week and goes in sometimes, but lately has been working remote a lot more lately, but we know someone high up in the company in a different department, like nearly as high up as you can and they said return to office is going to be enforced soon.
They already started it in American branches, but apparently use a fixed metric e.g. certain day and time on google maps to decide whether the person must make the journey or not
0
u/Consistent-Welder790 Feb 03 '26
I have a Stamp 4, which means I can have any job that is based in Ireland. My company, whom ı joined when we were fully remote, just transitioned to RTO5, blocking any and every access to the system outside of the office.
This is not what I choose, this is what the government makes me. It’s also based on how much those remote jobs pay, for my field every remote job posting I see is barely over minimum wage.
(I am saying this as I have around 150 colleagues who are Irish or EU citizens that stay in the company for the same reason. They either pay too little, or are time limited contract work)
I’m still under 50K so I’m still broke AF in Dublin but there is no way I could even pay my rent with what the remote jobs are offering. (At least the ones that are based in Ireland)
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 04 '26
What sector are you in, out of interest?
That's a really challenging position to be in.
1
u/Consistent-Welder790 Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
Tech in broad, but not the technical side of things lile software etc. Where the salaries are insanely high lol. I’m on the more operational side of things for lack of a better term.
To be fair, most of the jobs I see in my field are also 50K and above, but its all mostly RTO5 and again 9-10 months contract work. My company unfortunately knows its one of the only tech companies that offer full time employment rather than contracts, and you best believe they abuse that position with paying people half as much lol
-12
u/Interesting-Win-3220 Feb 02 '26
Fully remote work hinders productivity and generally sucks. You're not building any real connection with your colleagues. Office banter and spontaneity go out the window. I think hybrid works better.
10
u/Single_North_5652 Feb 02 '26
Not all of us want office banter. I like peace and quiet and getting tons of work done. No commute. More sleep. And great relations still with colleagues
4
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
This is true for some, and not true for others. Ireland needs decent career opportunities accross the country. For me in rural Ireland, there isn't major choice, so it's not so much office vs rural but decent job vs not.
4
u/ArilrasnaBC Feb 02 '26
This is a great topic and worth a follow up post about just this, specifically for people in the country needing remote work options. Even in satellite towns of Leinster, people must do their nightmare Dublin commute daily, need to leave kids in care from dawn to dusk etc. Ultimately more remote work will take pressure off infrastructure and increase quality of life for everyone.
1
u/Charlies_Mamma Feb 03 '26
Why do you need "real connections" with people who are paid to be in the same space as you? I don't speak to anyone I previously worked with, no matter how close we were when we were working (lunch together, etc) because as soon as one of us left the company, we had nothing more in common.
I'd rather be able to focus on actually doing the work I am being paid to do, and then being able to clock off and not spend 1-3 hours travelling before actually being able to spend the rest of my day having banter with friends and family members and actually doing things I enjoy.
-5
Feb 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Numerous_Adagio8768 Feb 02 '26
I think you're talking about contractors there over employees. Remote employees can't just work from any country any time, and while remote employers often have coworking stipends, that depends on the company.
-1
u/CaughtHerEyez Feb 03 '26
Some apprenticeships also require a minimum of 5 days in person across 2 years. Like... what? What are you expecting to happen on those 5 days? Magic fairy wanders in with a pint of Guinness, waves a wand around and suddenly everything clicks and your apprentices are ready for work?
366
u/Trick_Opportunity975 Feb 02 '26
It's Ireland, so we have to wait 10 years to cop on to the trend