🤯 The hidden cost of hiring across Southeast Asia

Hey,

A founder friend told me that recently.

Instead, his team hires across Southeast Asia now.

Indonesia. Vietnam. Philippines.

And honestly… the math makes sense.

For many roles, you can hire 2–3 great people for the cost of one hire in Singapore.

For startups trying to stretch runway, that’s a huge advantage.

But after talking to more founders doing this, I noticed something.

Almost everyone made the same mistakes in the beginning.

Not because they lacked talent.

But because cross-border hiring is much more complicated than it looks.

Here are the 3 mistakes I keep seeing.

Mistake #1: Thinking hiring is the hard part

Most founders think the biggest challenge is finding talent.

But sourcing candidates is usually the easy part.

The real challenge starts after you hire them.

Now you're dealing with:

• employment contracts

• payroll setup

• tax rules

• statutory benefits

• labour laws in another country

Suddenly what looked like a hiring problem becomes an HR infrastructure problem.

And if you get it wrong, you’ll end up wasting hours every month fixing payroll, compliance, and HR issues across countries you barely even understand.

In fact, I’ve even seen companies get burned badly.

One founder I spoke to spent 3 weeks just figuring out the correct CPF / SSS / BPJS equivalents before onboarding their first Indonesian hire.

3 weeks of founder time.

Probably the most expensive resource in any startup.

Mistake #2: Treating overseas hires like freelancers

Many founders try to keep things simple.

Hire contractors.
Send monthly payments.
Figure things out later.

But eventually the questions start appearing.

Are we supposed to pay taxes there?

Is this contract legally valid?

What happens if we terminate someone?

And there’s another hidden cost.

Freelancers often don’t stay long.

Once they churn, you’re back to recruiting and retraining again.

And in some markets, misclassification can become a real legal risk.

For example:

• In the Philippines, misclassifying employees as contractors can trigger back-payment of statutory benefits plus penalties.

• In Vietnam, labour disputes often default heavily in favour of employees.

What looked like a shortcut to save money can quickly become a legal liability.

Mistake #3: Becoming your own HR department

The third mistake is trying to DIY everything.

Founders end up managing:

• recruiting

• contracts

• payroll

• compliance

• HR admin

That might work when you hire one person.

But once the team grows across multiple countries, it becomes a mess.

I’ve even seen this play out at scale.

Insurtech startup CXA shut down its Vietnam tech hub and laid off 70 employees after operational complexity across markets became too difficult to sustain.

And suddenly you become the bottleneck of your own hiring system.

Instead of building your company…

You’re fixing your HR operations.

The real insight

After hearing enough of these stories, I realised something.

Cross-border hiring isn’t actually a hiring problem.

It’s an infrastructure problem.

The moment you hire someone in another country, you’re dealing with employment laws, payroll systems, tax compliance, and HR operations in a completely different jurisdiction.

Every new country adds another layer of complexity.

That’s why founders usually start with the DIY approach…

…but after a few hires, they realise they’re basically trying to build their own HR infrastructure across multiple countries.

And that’s when many start looking for a better way.

Not just somewhere to find candidates.

But a way to hire, employ, and manage talent across Southeast Asia without setting up entities or dealing with compliance themselves.

That’s exactly what Glints TalentHub is built for.

It helps you hire and manage talent across Southeast Asia without setting up local entities or dealing with payroll, compliance, or HR operations yourself.

In other words, you get the benefits of cross-border hiring — access to 6M+ skilled professionals across Southeast Asia and up to 70% cost savings — without building your own HR infrastructure.

How founders are using Glints TalentHub

Instead of stitching together recruiters, payroll tools, and legal advice across multiple countries, Glints TalentHub handles the operational layer for you. The hard part.

🌏 But what makes them different is their Southeast Asia focus.

Unlike Western EOR platforms, Glints has 10+ years of hiring expertise across Southeast Asia, with deep local knowledge in markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

That means:

• Onboard employees within 3 days

• Achieve up to 70% cost savings

• See 3× higher retention

And because they specialise in the region, they understand the local regulations, payroll systems, and hiring norms that often trip founders up.

So if you’re building a regional team across Southeast Asia, Glints TalentHub handles the hard part — employment, payroll, compliance, and HR operations.

You focus on building your company, not managing labour laws across multiple countries.

See how founders hire across Southeast Asia without the HR headaches →

— Admond

P.S. If hiring across Southeast Asia is on your roadmap, Glints TalentHub gives you access to 6M+ skilled professionals, backed by 10+ years of regional hiring expertise, with up to 70% cost savings — without dealing with payroll or compliance yourself.