Full-remote side gigs (IT)

Life Hacking
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As I am not working and failed to find employment over a year, I started to work remotely on side gigs, like AI model training. I am wondering are there any better options? Pay is $50-120/hour, but it comes to paypal (no way to avoid the 3-4% fee), so the earning multiplier with the current exchange rate is 0.75.

I was wondering whether inside Switzerland there are better options for remote gigs (I have ~20 years experience in IT with a Masters’ degree and also research and education background). I mean sometimes my online remote AI work needs me to write primary school geometry examples for the AI, so then I can explain that the sum of the angles in the triangle is 180, because this LLM already forgets it in step 4 and my logic says that there must be positions needing more of my expertise and background paying higher money (like teach the AI difficult stuff or better, work for companies).

I do not have a legal setup yet, the cantonal office is refusing because “I do not have enough clients” - which is ridiculous, through an agency I have many clients, just there is an NDA everywhere (and payments come from one company) and I work as a contractor and they did not seem to be very convinced when I shows I got paid 25 KUSD for remote work in my underwear over two months.

I do not really feel like investing too much effort into worldwide freelancer online platforms so then I can compete for $10/hour with India and South America.

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Have you tried jobs advertised on such platform ?
https://remoteok.com/remote-dev-jobs

With your profile and your experiences, I find it very weird you were not able to land a job so far !
Do you have specific requirements ?
Any feedback from the headhunters ?
In wich town are you looking ?

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No idea but at this point I am fed up. I am already very special and have to always beg to the tax office. I am around for a long time, but I never had a proper permit, now I got B, but I have exemption from the health insurance. AVH/AVS never contacted me (I was unemployed on benefits paid directly by my previous employer, I did the RAV thing, but I had to send a document about it to the previous employer and they paid me) - so I never drained a cent of social security payments. AVH/AVS I am happy that I don’t need to pay, tax office said they don’t care as long as I declare taxes (that was when I was unemployed), I am young and I will anyway never seeacent from the 1st pillar payments, the system will collapse way before then.

At this point the money comes on PayPal, I tried several times to get it done, I will go one more time to the office (which is a big pain, I am a fulltime childcare and working remotely in hobby time). I think since I was laid off it is clear - I am unemployable in this country, I found myself companies that are willing to employ me, I am ok with their conditions (no benefits etc, I actually prefer dodging 2nd pillar altogether since their ~3% performance is a joke), I am willing to set this properly up but feels like the country does not want my contribution.

Regarding the taxes, of course I will declare as income, will write it somewhere. I think in GE we can write a field for “gig income”, just I mean it will be very funny that I have a “not working” permit, I don’t have a job, but I have a gig :smiley:

I used to be a freelancer in my home country. This 2/3 client rule is ridiculous. My first client there kept me full of work for 3 years after the first test assignment, during occasional downtimes like summer breaks I had other clients.

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Thanks for the link, I will check it out! Did not know about this platform.

I tried GE area, Lausanne too, and also BE/ZH. I am unemployable it looks like, since I have experience with mission critical systems, high dependability and such (was a tech lead, my last big job was a multiyear huge project), not vibe coding. Jokes aside, I have K8s, OKD, GCP, but as I worked enterprise-style, I lack “proven” cloud experience with AWS/Azure/GCP, no Postgres (we had Oracle). Does not help that Java is the biggest chunk on the CV, although I have 10 years in Python as well and at this point ~5 yrs React/TS/Node (but of course in this country hobby/volunteer projects don’t count, even if it is used by 500 members of an association on a daily basis…). My brother actually recommended to tune down my experience because with scientific research on top of everything I am clearly overclarified - but never tried. But overall when I search my requirement was simple: a job - but constant ghosting, no reply for 6 weeks then rejeciton, 50% never responds, weird, few years ago you do a linkedin post and your phone is ringing for days.

What I noticed that HR/headhunters are really bad now - few years back I actually managed to talk with decent ones. There was this place I do not wish to name, the HR person directly said that my salary will depend on my nationality… WTF! (I wish I recorded it…) Also everyone still expect AI will solve their problems (it does 50% boost in coding, but my role involved <15% coding).

Recently I got an offer from a trading firm, that was actually very professional procedure, lot of money, but not much free time for family (and wife also wants to keep working). It does not really make sense financially to take it as I would need to grind that job for many years to be able to afford a decent home (~2.5+ MCHF in my area in the current market, too much risk that the moment I have enough to get mortgage prices move up).

Sorry for venting. It is going well, because after the failures we figured 1 salary is more than enough, wife wants to work, I prioritize 1) childcare, 2) investments/finances but I have downtime when I can do hobby work (~30-40 hrs/week, but spread out). But yeah, now the baseline is that I can make money in my underwear if there is work available, pause a timer when the kid wakes up and continue. But the work is so simple I was thinking I ask here that maybe there are better ways to do it. (But it is now very good for my mental health that at least I do something.)

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This sounds like potential trouble…

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Have you applied again since then? Many companies don’t hire without a permit.

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Nah, permit was never an issue, and I got the permit in 6 months, so after I technically applied with the permit. I also made sure I have a certificate the travail from the previous employer.

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There are few companies around Geneva that will require Java as main language. It is funny because my area of expertise is .net and oracle pl/sql and always thought Java was in higher demand. Everything is Python nowadays.
Most of the big companies in the area won’t like side gig or association occupation. They just like permanent role in a competitor on your CV.
Most of them will require to speak French even if not written in the job desc.

50% rejection and no reply is not a surprise at the moment as there is high demand from many countries.
Being local with family around should give you an advantages.
However big corp will require 40-42 hours of hard work with 1 day working remote.

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Looks like letemps had an article about those AI data gigs Le recrutement des tâcherons de l’IA passe aussi par les universités suisses - Le Temps

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I can’t access it (paywalled). Related to this topic, the point of the start of the article would seem to be that these jobs are not declared by the employer yet not recognized as an independent activity by OASI (with good arguments for it, I would say: an independent typically can choose the means of payments by which they can be paid, for example. It does look to me like disguised employment).

@nabalzbhf would you consider my statement as a fair representation of the article’s view on that point and are there other points in the article worth mentioning?

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If you have access to pressreader:

(Most library have press reader access and there’s quite a few free public libraries, e.g. Lausanne or Zürich but might need to go there in person to activate)

I think key quote is:

La nature du lien unissant Outlier à ses indépendants relève-telle du contrat de travail? Pour Rémy Wyler, avocat et professeur de droit du travail à l’Université de Lausanne, la réponse ne nécessite pas de nouvelles définitions: les critères classiques du droit suisse suffisent. Un contrat de travail est reconnu en droit suisse lorsque quatre conditions sont réunies: la fourniture d’une prestation, une certaine durée dans l’exécution du travail, une rémunération, ainsi qu’un lien de subordination entre les parties. «Dans ce cas, si l’entreprise formule des instructions contraignantes quant à la manière d’exécuter la prestation, il existe vraisemblablement un rapport de subordination, de sorte que l’existence d’un contrat de travail au sens du droit suisse serait reconnue», cadre le spécialiste. Et lorsqu’un contrat de travail est établi, «certaines obligations de protection sociale en découlent», rappelle l’avocat.

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Thanks.

As a loosely translated summary for the non-French speakers:

From Rémy Wyler, lawyer and law professor at the University of Lausanne:

There is a work contract (note from myself, that means, among others, that it is not independent work) if:

  1. there are services provided;
  2. there is a certain duration in the execution of the work;
  3. there is a remuneration;
  4. there is a suboordinate relationship.

In this case, if the company issues binding instructions as to how the work must be done, there likely is a suboordinate relationship, so that there is a work contract according to Swiss law.

If there’s a work contract, there are social protection obligations that must be abided to.

Edit from myself: all the more reasons to search for another activity. Having no links with the IT world, I can’t help with that.

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I mean we are pretty locked as wife has an office job here and she wants to do that. Also life here is decent. Moving to a different country would also mess a lot with the investments.

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Yes, there is a work contract, of course, you need to sign it when you register. Also the NDA. The companies want to be able to sue you if you leak all the secrets! Also payment statements on PayPal (which on tax form here counts as a bank account). I just don’t get why they make it so complicated. I am bit sceptical that random journalists or professors can tell what is going on these platforms, first of all you need to be there for at least a few months very actively to “break out” from the low-level work. Is Reddit their source of information?

Thank you all for the tips finding a “proper” job, but after covid and this remote experience I think I am too old to go back to the office. We are not in need of salary income, but in early 30s we think it is early to retire and now we don’t travel far a lot with the small kid (really this country is amazing that you work 10 years then you can retire).

I will give another chance to the cantonal office, but if they cannot I will just stop doing it. But my brain cannot understand when I can make a bucket of money in a few days because a company sends me a link “check this out and provide us feedback”, the tax man does not want the 10-30%. The company will not set up special stuff with me, they have a lot of freelancers. Someone else will do it from a different country.

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Just to clarify, tax office doesn’t care, you have to declare the income anyway. The question is social security contributions, it’s likely due (and tax office may or may not be speaking to ahv office).

That’s not really something ahv office will care about tho… (Should this be anobag?)

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They’re actual journalists, they talked to people (apparently mostly university students working for outlier).

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The following is my layman understanding (also a digression from the question which is “what full-remote side gigs are there in IT?” but I think it’s usefuly anyway):

  1. The taxman certainly does want their money and you have to properly declare it on your tax declaration irrespective of how OASI treats it.
    .
    You also have to pay OASI in some form no matter what or you will get penalized for having missing years at retirement. The correct way to do it is to have the company you’ve got a contract with to register you as an employee and to pay social contributions (and withhold your part) on your salary. I’m doubtful you have much of a say in the matter but expressing it to the company might help show them that it is an important matter.
    .
    I guess you can’t pay based on your wealth and income as a non-working person since you are, from the OASI perspective, employed but I’d explore the venue anyway if no other solution can be found.
    .
    Working with a non-working permit may be an issue too. Others have way more knowledge and experience about being employed by a (non-Swiss?) company but working from Switzerland than I do. I can’t help with that. (Though, if the company is Swiss, I’d report them to OASI so that they can go after them instead of after you. NDAs probably wouldn’t hold for tax/social security fraud - though you’d still have to deal with the potential legal hassle).
  1. They want to protect employees against being exploited and society against companies who don’t pay their share of social contributions.

You are in a category where the salary received is sufficient to cover you even if your social contributions are lessened. If it gets generalized, though, that means the companies who don’t pay social contributions have an advantage against those who do. That would incentivize companies to find ‘creative’ ways to dodge social contributions and would affect people with lower wages disproportionatively (there’s also disability insurance that comes with OASI and second pillar contributions, those people would be wrecked if they were to not be able to work anymore while having no coverage due to their company not treating them as employees but rather as independents who bear their risks on their side).

The main distinction between an independent and an employee, in my understanding, is that the independent is meant to be on an equal footing with their clients. That is hard to achieve when they rely too heavily on one of them, which would justify the 3 clients min guidance.

To be clear, the problem doesn’t stem from you. It stems from your de-facto employer dodging social contributions for a work that is de-facto considered employment in Switzerland. I doubt contacting the cantonal office one more time would change it, though it might give more clarity as to what you are expected to do in this situation.

In your situation, I would:

  1. contact the tax office to ask how I should declare that income.

  2. re-contact the cantonal OASI office with the guidance from the tax office in order to get guidance and clarity from them as to what I am actually expected to do (not be registered as an independent, I’m pretty sure they won’t take that into consideration for this contract).

  3. a) search for consulting positions that can be done remotely or part-time remote (ANobAG might be an option for a structure that would take away the legal hassle).
    Or
    b) enjoy being FI if you don’t actually need the money.

Then again, I’m afraid I can’t help much but wish you well in your endeavours.

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Thank you!

Yes it is clear why they have this system in place, and make sense, so e.g., construction workers cannot be minimum wage “freelancers”, but they have to get their benefits. I am definitely not an employee though, I am freelancing for several places and I work when I wish, and don’t when I don’t want to - there is no penalty for not working, compared to regular jobs when they can fire you if you don’t show up for a week without a reason.

I will try again with OASI - I have no idea why I cannot be a freelancer like a photographer or a hairdresser.

In general, thank you, got much better advice here than anywhere else so far, I usually get spawned a lot of accountants who want to set me up an LCC, I am delighted that I did not get the advice here (LLC would make sense if I could put a lot of expenses under it, but I checked with an accountant and although in some countries that would be legal, the tax office really does not like this cheat code here)

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Yes, univeristy students, who do few hour per week, maybe more in summer break. I mean I know it well that these platforms are full of students, I need to reject so much of their work :smiley: The work I do is MSc/PhD level data annotation and senior software engineering grade. But the platforms have a lot of different work, many people actually just need to talk on a mic with an AI and if the AI messes up they need to explain where did it go wrong → for $15/hour. Good projects need qualifications. The people I meet in Zoom are also often like me, leaving big carreer in past and doing a chill life, but experts in their fields - just often they are from countries where the tax office does not even care about PayPal, but clearly I do not want to play that game.

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May I ask where to look for such remote side gigs? I am also holding a Master degree in computer science and 20 years of experience (mostly C++ but also quite good Python skills) and having such a full-remote side gig sounds like a good idea to try out.