The alternative to that is starting a sole-trader company in the country you're in, and contracting directly with the US company through it (or a remote-employees-as-a-service company that basically does this on the company's behalf for a fat fee).

Approach their founder(s) directly and sell yourself.

You can’t identify them from the outside, but your network can. If you want to try, try companies with heavy worldwide presence.

Typically I would either find a warm intro from a past colleague, or I would specifically find someone involved in the hiring pipeline at the company on Linkedin and say "Hey im so and so, and blah blah blah, im thinking of applying but would love if you could tell me more about the role and the culture before I commit"

From here, so long as you baseline can stand out as a solid engineer and communicator those US only barriers fall down.

This is why to someone elses point > if they’d hire you, why wouldn’t they hire someone much cheaper.

They'd hire someone cheaper certainly, provided they could find a person with identical quality, similar culture, and near PST timezones. Which is a fairly tall order in reality.

Its also why its not too uncommon to find Canadians pulling in near SF salaries while not having to relocate

Also stalk LinkedIn for employees based in random countries – if they're there, HR probably won't freak out about your Bali Airbnb.

AngelList filters for "worldwide OK" and We Work Remotely's "global" tag are clutch.

I built Dog Olympics https://dog-olympics.org while nomading – it's like Mario Party for pups, perfect for when you're working from some sketchy cafe wifi.

In them, build in public and share what you're shipping each week