Some startups from Hungary with funding:
- LogMeIn: remote-login-as-a-service, had Nasdaq IPO
- Ustream: live streaming, raised $100M
- Prezi: nifty presentations, raised $10M
- Indextools: webmaster tools, acquired by Yahoo
- Pocketguide: nifty iPhone tourist guides, raised couple $Ms
- Gravity: recommendation engine, raised couple $Ms
I remember those guys!
Hungary is a backwater, and absolutely NOT representative of the EU, probably not even of the old eastern bloc.
I also cheer for the lofty let's-share-the-social-burden ideals that people present in this thread. But I fear these folks are just blissfully oblivious of how their money is redistributed and where it really ends.
9 months is the "baseline" maternity leave in Finland. My sister had a baby and ended up being away from work for almost two years. She just started working again this week, and the same company was legally obligated to take her back.
One of the favorite words around here is "pivot" and ponder how a company can pivot successfully with some of these considerations. Sometimes a pivot will completely change a product, business model, industry, etc and the company has to hire or layoff people accordingly.
It sucks by all measures (I've been on the wrong end of that), but ponder how much more difficult that gets when some of your staff is untouchable.
Even if it's not a problem, it changes your mindset and gives you yet another thing to worry about.
Actually its not, employers always have the whip hand - what they are complaining abotu is that its harder to act in grossly bad ways in the UK.
As for maternity leave, the same issue exists in the USA, to the extent that any firing of an employee has to be non-discriminatory. As for health-care : That's a very expensive nightmare in the USA, and it would be far more efficient IMHO for it to be wrapped into a % tax levy, rather than flat monthly rates (but that's a rather political statement in the US).
Three-years maternity leave? That's unheard of in western Europe, most countries allow for less than a year (my wife got 6 months in the UK); men only recently started to enjoy some rights in that sense (in the UK it's two weeks).
He talks about a post-50 "protected age" where you can't fire people. That doesn't exist in the UK, where we have the opposite problem (firms firing people near pension age, and then hiring youngsters at 1/3rd of salary). I know in other countries laws are tighter (in Italy it's fairly hard to fire people, for example), but as people say over there, "Facta lex inventa fraus" (as soon as a law is written, a way around it will be found"): in countries with rigid laws, firms now hire almost exclusively on a temporary basis, i.e. they hire people as contractors for years or even decades, abusing the relationship.
The high taxes and pension contributions are also a factor in Italy and in France, but not elsewhere.
What this post is representative of, is the general douchebaggery of European "entrepreneurs"; they usually come from "old money" (banks are very conservative with their lending, favouring entrenched players) and bring a terrible mindset to the workplace, i.e. "screw the employees, they're just idiots anyway". This obviously doesn't motivate workers, keeping productivity low.