the hidden cost of remote hiring nobody talks about: international device procurement

everyone loves to talk about how great remote work is for finding talent globally. what they dont talk about is the absolute headache of actually equipping those people with hardware.

we hire across like 15 countries now and every single one has its own mess of import taxes, customs procedures, and shipping costs. a laptop that runs us $1000 in the states can easily become $1800 by the time it reaches someone in india or argentina after all the fees and duties stack up.

the worst part is the unpredictability. you budget based on US pricing and then get hit with surprise customs charges or realize certain countries have insane VAT rates. brazil is particularly brutal with import duties that can more than double the device cost before the employee even receives it.

we tried managing it ourselves for way too long before switching to a service that specializes in this. now we use growrk and its way less painful but i wish someone had warned us earlier about how complex international IT logistics actually is. if youre planning to hire globally make sure you account for these costs upfront because they add up fast.