Re:This is why I don't give you a job
by yummyfajitas on Saturday January 07, 2012 @01:57AM
(#3436434)
Apparently it works badly in Hungary; but works well in Sweden.
Or perhaps Sweden has a strong enough economy to compensate for the harms caused by this policy, but Hungary does not.
Re:This is why I don't give you a job
by sliverstorm on Saturday January 07, 2012 @02:06AM
(#3436456)
Or possibly an established enough economy. How many startups are there?
Billion-dollar companies don't have to worry about it nearly as much as tiny ten-man ventures.
Sweden has a reasonable number of startups relative to its population: MySQL, Spotify, Wrapp, Mojang, Massive, Absolicon, etc. But I agree that the economies are quite different, which is why I prefer careful analysis (preferably based on data) to anecdotes.
Re:This is why I don't give you a job
by droithomme on Saturday January 07, 2012 @01:09AM
(#3436353)
If it's really true that someone who just started work can immediately take three years maternal leave off, fully paid, and then be due 2.5 months accrued paid vacation time when they return, then I can't imagine how that could work. I don't know if it really works that way in Hungary though, or in Sweden for that matter.
In Sweden you wouldn't get 2.5 months of accrued paid vacation, it's more like 10 days, as the first 120 days (of 480) (pa/)maternal leave is counted towards vacation.
Then again you have the legal right to take 25 days of vacation per year, but not all of these have to be paid.
Re:This is why I don't give you a job
by justincormack on Saturday January 07, 2012 @11:34AM
(#3437311)
It doesnt work like that. The company doesnt pay you, the state does, and you get less. You do not get vacation time.
How can the government mandating the kind of paid-leave in Sweden be good for a startup? Tell me how this sort of policy can increase a new startups short-term cash flow? You can't exactly advertize superior working conditions (Google w/ free food/massages/nerf guns/paid child-related leave) since you do not have any track-record of being the hot new startup. Even if you did have the best working conditions available having to pay out for an employee who is not producing anything would probably kill the startup.
Culture/location/talent/vc $ is what makes a company though and to some extent trumps unfavorable tax/labor laws, this is IMO why SV & California have most of the startups as compared to Arizona/Texas or why Scandinavia>Eastern Europe.
I'd say it's good for talent since you don't have to pick a startup depending on what benefits you get (vacation time, health insurance, parental leave) due to the government providing well enough to begin with. Of course employers here can differentiate by offering more vacation, privatized health insurance, pension deals, but the swedish government seems to provide a better package than most US employers do.
(I'd personally guess that culture and corruption have more to do with the large economic differences between Sweden and Hungary than taxation or parental-leave policies do, so I think he's barking up the wrong tree.)