- The company is smaller and/or already geo-distributed and doesn't have the ability (or awareness) to monitor employee locations or deal with the tax/compliance obligations and so turns a blind eye, intentionally or not. The employees are generally operating in a grey area - either on tourist visas or for a company that isn't registered to employee people in their locale.
- The company actively creates a remote-first environment, working with their employees to employ them (compliantly) in their locale, usually through a third-party employer of record. These are very few and far between, but they exist.
- Companies, like Airbnb, that allow for a certain amount of time outside of a "home locale" per year (IIRC, it's 90 days). This isn't truly "global remote" but employees can move around more freely than in-office or locale-only employers.
My plan A was as always using my network and targeted outreach to a companies where I had specialized experience and expertise (no full stack development is not specialized). I had multiple offers quickly in 2023.
All that to say, if your strategy is to just randomly apply for jobs and hope to stand out among literally thousands of applicants worldwide, you have already lost.