Oyster

Oyster was founded in 2020 — at exactly the moment remote work went mainstream globally — with a direct focus on the problem that companies were discovering they had: hiring employees in other countries was legally complex, administratively burdensome, and expensive through traditional international expansion. Oyster operates as an Employer of Record (EOR) service, allowing companies to hire full-time employees anywhere Oyster has legal entities without the hiring company needing to establish its own legal presence in that country. Oyster handles employment contracts compliant with local labor law, payroll in local currency, benefits that meet local market norms, and tax withholding and social contributions to local authorities.

Oyster's platform manages the full global employment lifecycle: job offer creation and contract generation compliant with local law, employee onboarding, monthly payroll processing across dozens of countries and currencies, benefits administration, expense management, and offboarding. The payroll processing complexity is substantial — each country has different payroll calendars, tax rates, social contribution structures, and mandatory benefit requirements. Oyster's system must correctly apply all of these local rules while presenting a unified interface to the hiring company's HR team, who may have limited familiarity with employment regulations in the employee's country.

Oyster platform outages affect internationally distributed teams whose employment infrastructure runs through a single platform. Payroll processing failures are the most consequential — employees in countries where Oyster is the employer of record may not receive their salary on the expected date if a processing failure occurs close to the monthly payroll run window. Expense reimbursement submission fails during portal downtime, delaying repayment to employees who have spent their own money on company purchases. New employee onboarding stalls when the contract generation and signing workflow is unavailable. The HR team's dashboard loses access to employee records, compensation data, and country-specific compliance documentation.

Outage.gg tracks Oyster platform status using real-time community reports from HR teams managing global workforces. If Oyster is down, payroll processing is failing, or employee onboarding is stalled, the live status page shows current impact.