Having experienced layoffs in both US and EU companies, the difference is massive. In my experience there is very little respect for "the human" being laid off in US companies

People literally would just disappear day to day. I've had several instances where I only found out a colleague had been fired because I tried to write them on Slack only to find that their account had been deactivated

Personally I felt constantly worried working in such an environment and I don't want to work for another US company again if I can help it

There are of course bad cases in the EU, but in my experience it's way less common than in the US

> In my experience there is very little respect for "the human" being laid off in US companies

its much easier to find another job in US because of this though.

Is it, really? Aren't US tech interview notoriously difficult? Many rounds of interviews, background checks, etc.?

Most purely European companies don't do that. Actually, unfortunately, some of them do, because of American influence. But for sure they didn't use to.

IME, this was true four years ago. Few rounds, assessments were mostly take homes or in-person "implement a feature" style, interview questions didn't seem to be built to trip you up.

Now, every job I apply for has 4-5 rounds, leetcode is more common, they do behavioural and system design rounds that you have to prepare for, etc. One job I applied to even asked me two behavioural questions via email before I even talked to someone. Something's truly off.

Wait till you get a self recorded behavioral interview. I truly wonder if there is that much value to be extracted out of 10 minutes of people awkwardly responding to questions while trying their best to fill in the silence.

I think I'm not yet desperate to the point that I would agree to that.

I had to do one of those for some local government lobbyists association in DC. They ended up hiring some undergrad instead.

And just got asked to do another one for an internship

Sorry to hear that. I feel that tech hiring has become full of weird gatekeepers that probably wouldn't even be able to pass their own weird challenges.

There are 2.8 million developers in the US. Most of them don’t work for “tech” companies. Most of them work for boring enterprise companies without multiple rounds of enterprise companies and many let you just do behavioral questions and techno trivia on the stack they care about.

I personally have interviewed for 7 enterprise dev jobs and I have had 2 coding interviews and those were simple.

What he meant is that the whole capitalist culture, less regulations, creates a more thriving economy which creates more jobs and hence more options to go to.

I've heard this type of comment a lot but in my experience there isn't any shortage of tech companies in the EU.

What EU regulations hamper isn't job creation, it's employee and customer exploitation. The distinction between "job creation" and "employee exploitation" is important.

What the former means in practice is that there is a massive contractor market in the UK and EU. So if companies need temporary staff, they'll hire a contractor. If they need permanent staff then they'll hire an employee. And contractors in the UK & EU are paid significantly more than their employee peers. In fact their pay is much more equivalent to US employees. So companies will make constant tradeoffs between more expensive labor for short-lived projects vs cheaper staff and knowledge retention but stricter employment laws. It's a fair trade most of the time.

So a more accurate way of comparing US vs EU businesses in terms of employees would be US employees vs EU contractors. Things then begin to look a lot more equivalent.

I doubt the tech workers making three to four times EU wages in the US feel “exploited”.

My job is purely transactional. I’ve worked for 10 companies in almost 30 years. I gave them labor and they gave me money. Whenever one side decided the arrangement wasn’t working, I moved on to another job.

Tech is always boom/bust. We’re lucky to have had a long boom.

I’m personally well acquainted with many people in tech, especially big tech. Many of them are doing little or nothing, certainly not justifying $300k+ salaries.

What you do has risk but is fundamentally more honest - your skills are around technology and output, not navigating corporate bureaucracy.

Your post somehow suggests that when a bust comes European companies won't start laying off people. And in the same boom period the US dev will make much more money (and have a biggger safety pillow) than the European one.

Until the US dev has a medical expense, that is.

A cursory amount of research shows that the average premium for an insurance policy on the open market through the ACA is between $400-$2000 a month depending on options - family status, deductibles etc.

There is also COBRA that lets you stay on your employer’s plan. You have to pay the entire premium. I pay $600 a month now and my employer pays $1200 a month. That’s me + family.

I think a lot of you guys from the US don't really get how high the taxes are here that pay for this stuff, especially for people that make more than the average.

If you would work non-contract here in Poland for an equivalent of ~$120k you would pay around $1k USD. If your wife is working she will also pay, of course this also covers all you kids.

So lets say both of you make around $120k here - so you would pay $2k monthly for "free" healthcare and its quality is atrocious. Even for serious stuff you many times need to wait 1-2 years for something, all hospitals are understaffed, the care quality is abysmal.

If you are ambitious and make good money the US is better. Europe in general is better for people that don't aim too high and want the state to enforce some minimum of QoL for them at the expense of the rest.

I am always skeptical of claims that some workers are just lazy bums skimming money.

I don't think most folks graduate college and think, "You know what sounds amazing? Sitting at a desk doing nothing five days a week!"

I expect most of the time they have good reason to be "unproductive," and would respond positively to those reasons getting addressed, or you're not capturing their contributions accurately with whatever metrics you're using to find "slackers."

It’s not the people, it’s the process. In a big organization you need to be actively managing your career to be in the right places.

And people are doing things, I’m not saying they’re sitting making paper airplanes — just things with no value or that drain their value. I had a high school friend who was brilliant, but his career got nerfed when he stuck with a bad tech/business unit.

If you’re the world’s premier expert in some peculiar process that only exists in one place, that’s no mas. Companies have been rolling in dough for a long time and some have way more people than they used to. One big company I deal with went from an account team of 6 to almost 50.

I haven't seen it on any team I've been on. But also I don't think the implication is people doing literally nothing. Just people doing things that are not worthwhile at all, wasting other people's time, and kinda just puttering around.

Some of it boils down to ineffective management and lack of mentoring, for sure, and could be addressed in a better way. Some of it is people getting in way over their heads.

During the first “bust” in 2000 I had four years of experience and living and working in Atlanta - far away from a tech hub. Boring old enterprise dev jobs at banks, insurance companies, etc weren’t affected and I was easily able to get offers.

I worked at a company where utility companies sent us data files and we created, printed and mailed bills.

In 2008 during the financial crisis the next time I looked for a job (my third), I had two offers relatively quickly - one programming point of sales systems and the other that I accepted programming ruggedized Windows CE devices for field service workers.

Fast forward to 2020 at the height of COVID, I got my one and only BigTech job working at AWS (my 8th job).

Unlike the author of the submitted article, when I got Amazoned 3.5 years later, I shrugged, my $40K severance was deposited in my account and I reached out to my network and targeted outreach to some recruiters in my niche and had four interviews and 3 offers within 3 weeks. Why would I waste time getting emotional about a company knowing that the CEO is 6-7 positions up on the career ladder and I’m just a random number to most of the organization?

A year later in 2024 around 9:00 PM I had a “1-1” with my manager invite for the next morning. I already had my suspicions and told my wife that I am probably going to be laid off in the morning. She said let her know how it goes and we went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning, was notified about my layoff asked when I would get my severance and responded to a recruiter that reached out to me about a week prior.

I started the interview process and three weeks later I had a job making the same as I was making at AWS.

I don’t need to “justify” what I’m making. I have a skillset and experience that are in demand and companies are willing to pay me for it because by employing me they get a positive ROI.

What skillset and expereince do you have which is in demand? Just curious to know.

I’ve found my biggest differentiator over the last decade was soft skills - writing, dealing with stakeholders, knowing how to talk to normies, being comfortable in the room with decision makers, being able to do effective presentations and project management skills.

And knowing how to “deal with ambiguity” and focus on how to add business value. If you look at the leveling guidelines of any tech company, anything above mid level is focused on “scope”, “impact” and “dealing with ambiguity”.

Knowing AWS really well is just a tool and it doesn’t hurt that I have a stint at AWS ProServe on my resume

Notice “codez real gud” is not a differentiator.

There is no hard skill you can learn that thousands of of others don’t know that will set you apart.

Well except for some vertical market stuff that will leave you pigeonholed.

Sources:

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html

https://dropbox.tech/culture/sharing-our-engineering-career-...

You're focusing on one word and missing the meat of my comment. The EU equivalent to US employment in terms of employee rights and pay is contracting.

People in IT who take the employment route rather than contracting, do so because they want job security. eg they might have families. And much as you might be happy with your arrangement, there are plenty in the UK and Europe who do prefer longer-term job security over a few extra £££ in their pocket.

I also have a family. I’ve managed to support my family across those 10 jobs. I need a job to support my family. But my duty is stay *employable”.

You misunderstand me. My comment wasn't suggesting that people who contract don't have families. Plenty of them do. It's that people who choose employment over contracting do so because they want the additional stability, for example if they have families.

Lots of people, when evaluating the risks of contracting vs employment, find the reward far outweighs the risk. It sounds like you'd be one of them if you were presented with the same choice. And that's a fine decision for you to come to. But that's not going to be the same conclusion for everyone.

What I’m saying is simple math. I would much rather make more than twice the equivalent worker in the EU and take the chance of a layoff. I can afford to have my own emergency fund to survive the gap in employment.

Every employee in the US is “at will”.

In the UK you have worst of both worlds now - insecurity of contracting and employee level wages, thanks to amended IR35 lobbied by big consultancies.

I think the bust of the job market played a bigger part here. When IR35 originally came in, some companies would bump pay inside IR35 to compensate elsewhere risk getting poorer pol of talent. Since the job market crashed there have been fewer jobs all round, which has pushed the contractor market down too.

But you’re right that IR35 really hasn’t helped situations either.

Some of my friends have commented that the last few years has been the worst time in their 20+ years as a contractor.

That take is a bit reductive - it downplays the structural collapse of independent contracting in the UK post-IR35 reform. This wasn't just a "bit of market downturn" or a few companies cutting rates. People lost the ability to operate as businesses, to manage their tax affairs fairly, to invest in their own skills, and to retain profit. What they got in return was, at best, a modest day-rate bump—hardly compensation for losing all autonomy, business deductions (like training, equipment, downtime), and legal protections.

It forced highly specialised professionals into employment in all but name, just without the rights, security, or support. A square peg jammed into a round PAYE hole. And the long-term effect? Exactly what you'd expect: the best talent either left the UK, shifted to servicing overseas clients (where Chapter 10 doesn't apply), or left the field altogether. The real talent pool shrank, not because of market conditions, but because there was no longer a viable way to operate independently.

To make matters worse, the government compounded this by lowering the barriers to import cheaper labour from abroad ("Boriswave"), creating a race to the bottom on wages, with zero incentives for local upskilling or long-term investment in the domestic workforce.

So yes, the job market took a hit - but IR35 didn't just "not help" - it actively accelerated the decline by removing the last flexible, self-directed model for highly skilled work. The damage wasn't cyclical. It was engineered.

You may think I’m being reductive but I think you’re massively overstating things too.

For example:

> People lost the ability to operate as businesses, to manage their tax affairs fairly, to invest in their own skills, and to retain profit.

I don’t know a single IT contractor that lost that ability. Maybe in other business sectors, but we are talking about IT here.

> What they got in return was, at best, a modest day-rate bump—hardly compensation for losing all autonomy, business deductions (like training, equipment, downtime), and legal protections.

This is also an exaggeration.

And you’re overlooking the point that IR35 only affects contractors working on BAU or who have worked with the same company for more than 2 years.

Firstly 2 years is a long time in contractor terms. And secondly, most occasions for hiring contractors was to work on new developments. So most of the IT contractors were still outside of IR35.

That’s not to mention that many companies would describe the work in ways that are favourable to working inside IR35 (not to the extent of tax fraud, but to the extent where any BAU responsibilities that were required weren’t the primary responsibility in the job specification.

Ironically places hardest hit by IR35 were government departments rather than businesses. Some of who ended up just adding ~40% to the contracted salary so the government still ended up covering the tax rather than the contractors.

And the very few contractors who were inside IR35 and didn’t get a bump in the contract fee would tell me they were still better off contracting rather than being employed (even taking loss of perks into account).

Now I’m not going to say that IR35 made things easier for contractors. Clearly it didn’t. But it wouldn’t have been catastrophic for the contract market had the employment bubble not also pop shortly afterwards.

You also seem to suggest that IR35 prevented contractors from claiming expenses back in tax, and that simply isn’t true either.

Edit: I will concede that it’s been 3 years since I was last given a budget and told “go hire, you decide who” so if there’s been any legal changes to IR35 since then I might have missed it.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think you're still underestimating how fundamentally IR35 reforms changed the environment for small business operators in IT, especially since 2021.

> I don’t know a single IT contractor that lost that ability.

I do. In fact, I knew dozens of people who ran small, legitimate limited companies - offering high-quality services across IT disciplines - who were forced to shut down or stop trading as businesses once clients tightened their risk assessments. In the early days, yes, some niche contractors were spared because they were too hard to replace. But even that dried up as corporate legal teams standardised engagement models and de-risked by banning sourcing services from small business entirely.

> You also seem to suggest that IR35 prevented contractors from claiming expenses back in tax, and that simply isn’t true either.

This is misleading. If you’re inside IR35 or forced into an umbrella, you can only claim expenses on the same terms as an employee of the client. That means you can't offset training, equipment, home office, insurance, downtime, software etc. - because your business isn't recognised as a business anymore. And if you can't make profit, you have nothing to deduct from anyway.

> you’re overlooking the point that IR35 only affects contractors working on BAU or who have worked with the same company for more than 2 years.

This is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. There is no “2-year” IR35 rule. That might relate to travel expenses. IR35 assessments depend on control, substitution, and mutuality of obligation. Even short, project-based work can be deemed inside. And under Chapter 10, only clients carry the liability - so they default to "inside" for anything remotely borderline, including repeat work.

And that’s exactly the issue: having loyal clients and repeat business — something any serious business would strive for — is now penalised. The system structurally disincentivises hiring genuine small consultancies, because clients now carry legal and tax risk for treating you as "outside." So naturally, they avoid it.

And that quote about companies “describing work in ways favourable to IR35” to avoid falling foul of the rules - you realise you’ve just described a legal minefield that only small businesses are forced to navigate? If an individual or a small consultancy tries to deliver a long-term service or repeat work, they're suddenly in danger of being labelled "too BAU" and dragged into inside IR35 or worse, accused of misrepresentation.

Meanwhile, large consultancies are completely exempt. They can supply entire teams of workers to perform exactly the same repeat, embedded, long-term services - even effectively occupying roles inside the client’s organisation - and no one blinks, because the worker isn't the owner of the delivery company. IR35 doesn't apply.

So what you're pointing out as a "grey area" for independents is actually a core business model for Accenture, Capita, Deloitte, etc. - and it's legally protected. They can pump in as many BAU bodies as they like, make profit to their heart's content, and face none of the scrutiny aimed at smaller suppliers. It's a structural bias against worker-owned businesses and it's about making sure the same work flows through corporate channels, where the big business win - and independent economic actors are locked out.

> But it wouldn’t have been catastrophic for the contract market had the employment bubble not also pop shortly afterwards.

That reverses cause and effect. IR35 was the trigger. It removed the incentive to engage skilled local contractors as businesses. Clients - especially in the public sector - stopped hiring small operators entirely to avoid compliance risk. The result wasn’t just tighter budgets - it was the structural removal of independent contracting as a viable model.

And just as IR35 pushed domestic professionals out of the market, post-Brexit immigration reforms ("Boriswave") made it easier for companies to import overseas workers on lower salaries - with sponsorship pathways explicitly designed to undercut local rates. So the market didn't just shrink—it shifted, away from experienced, independent professionals toward cheaper, controllable labour with fewer rights and no negotiation leverage.

The combination was catastrophic. It collapsed the domestic contractor market from both ends—removing the supply of viable independent businesses, and removing the demand for them by creating cheaper alternatives. That wasn't an unfortunate consequence — it was a predictable outcome of policies designed to centralise control and reduce labour costs at all levels whilst maximising corporate profits.

> Contracting is still better than being employed.

That may be true for a small segment of high-end day-rate earners, but it ignores how many people used contracting as a sustainable, long-term way to build independent businesses. For them, IR35 removed the very basis of that independence-profit, autonomy, and client trust.

A lot of detail there. Sounds like I was underestimating the effect IR35 had.

Thanks for taking the time to share that.

this doesn't make sense. so why do usa companies hire contractors then? I worked as a contractor for decades and made 150% what perm employees made.

That I don't know. But the contractor market in the US is very different to the contractor market in the UK and EU. And from hiring in both US and UK, my experiences have been that US employees are more comparable to UK contractors in terms of rights and pay.

> US employees are more comparable to UK contractors in terms of rights and pay

did you account for rsu value too or just basepay/hours . now that i am a perm employee a big share of my comp comes from rsu.

I think they suggested that in the US employees are paid better than contractors, but have low job security.

I feel that the opposite is the case.

There are more regulations around employees than contractors here also, which often makes it not worthwhile for short term workers. Those regulations just mostly aren't around when you may terminate employment.

E.g. the entire I-9 thing and other IRS paperwork, who (if anyone) is responsible for various insurances (unemployment insurance, workers comp, liability insurance, etc), minimum wage and overtime for hourly employees, etc. Many things depend on this distinction.

I can't speak to differences from Europe as I am not familiar with that side of the Atlantic.

Indeed, but that is just ideology, not based on any facts.

low eu salaries implies finding job is hard. fact.

There's a higher monthly salary in the US, sure. However, you're expected to work very long hours (60-80 hours per week) and get basically no time off

In my current position I'm hired for an expected 37 hours per week. This can be more if I'm asked to work overtime, but my weekly hours cannot exceed 45 hours per week on average in a 3 month window without additional compensation

Additionally I have six weeks of paid time off every year plus public holidays

If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies

That's not to mention the security of having a legally mandated termination period of minimum 3 months (in which you're, in most cases, not expected to work)

never worked more than 40hr/week (including hellhole amazon). i get 28 days pto now and unlimited sick days.

> If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies

prbly not.

I have never in 28 years across 10 jobs including one in BigTech been “expected” to work more than 40 hours a week.

It’s a bunch of copium thinking that American tech workers are working 60-80 hour weeks.

And I know it’s not the norm, but right now I have “unlimited PTO” and most people take at least 5 weeks a year.

If the average American tech worker is making 2x - 4x the average EU worker, they should be able to save more than enough to have a three month cushion.

And we are talking about Google. They have a very generous severance package. Even Amazon where I use to work gave me three months severance.

This is not what we usually hear about employment in the US. The reason many Europeans think American tech workers are working 60-80 hours per week is not copium, but simply because that's what many Americans tell us.

My experience is limited - I work in the UK for a US company and haven't spoken to US developers from a wide variety of companies. However I've not heard any US developers talking about working such long hours. Closest thing I've heard is for devs to sometimes work over the core hours to build up time-in-lieu for extra vacation, over and above the paltry standard 2 week holiday allowance.

Why would they be complaining about working 40h a week? You will obviously hear more about bad experiences than the norm.

We hear enough about it that it gives the impression of being very common, even if it might not be the norm.

its not common but i know nothing can convince you of that

How can you know that? Please don't assume stuff about others just to make a rhetorical point. If you say it's not that common as it's often made out to be, why wouldn't I believe you?

Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US and not from other countries.

How much content you consume comes from the US vs other countries? The US has a full cultural supremacy in the west. That's why you speak english and read YC.

The world is larger than just the US, though. Even at HN. Just look around you.

> Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US

because internet is dominated by 'stories mostly from US'

I see plenty of stories from Europe, and they too complain about work, but never about having to work 60-80 hours. Even if it's rare in the US, it still seems more common than in Europe. Similarly, I hear stories about working 3 jobs in the US which I don't hear from Europe. I do hear people complain about managers, pay, or office politics in Europe.

yes pbly more common that europe . even i worked two jobs at one point to double my income to like 700k/yr but it was very hard to sustain that beyond 1 yr. i know many ppl who've done it for years.

I will just add another +1 to say it's not common to work 60-80 hours per week in the US tech industry. It's not unheard of, and some companies (Amazon) are notorious for expecting that of their employees. But most of the time what you will see is that most people work 40ish hours (some weeks a bit more, some a bit less), and only a handful of colleagues with an unhealthy relationship to the job will work 50+ hours per week. Management doesn't generally expect people to do that, though of course bad managers do exist and can make your life miserable.

The only time I've ever been expected to put in those kinds of long hours was in case of an emergency. Stuff like, a natural disaster hit the company's primary data center so they needed to be all hands on deck to get services restored. But it's definitely not common day to day, and even in case of emergencies the company generally gives you a little something (extra time off, a bonus, whatever) to compensate you for the long hard hours you had to work.

U.S. tech worker here. The only time I’ve ever worked 60-80 hour weeks was at a much smaller company, where for a month or two leading up to a trade show a whole bunch of work that had been put off was attempted to get crammed into the product. At my subsequent BigTech jobs I’ve never been asked/required to work more than 40 hours a week. I mean, nobody was tracking exact hours, but nobody was also pinging me at 8PM or on the weekend and expecting me to be working.

fascinating. I thought the meme was that FAANG tech workers were all day and lazy and didn't have to work that hard and were grossly overpaid, but that's as much a stereotype as the next one.

"Unlimited PTO" is discretionary in practice, and there are studies showing that it translates to less PTO on average, which is exactly why companies do it.

And I mentioned on average people take 20-25 days a year and managers are dinged if their reports don’t take at least 15 days a year.

I don’t care what the “average” is. I plan on taking 30 days this year.

Your last sentence reads a bit like "I don't care about statistics, I prefer my anecdote".

Okay.

First link -16 days for unlimited PTO vs 14 days without

https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/ive-been-an-hr-professiona...

I'm genuinely curious if you've actually read the article you linked to, given that the line literally above the numbers you quoted says, in large font and bold caps: "Employees don’t get more time off (and may actually get fewer days away from work)". Did it not make you wonder why?

Now if you look at where those numbers come from, this article quotes another article from WSJ (https://archive.is/MVRur) which is also titled "Why You Should Be Wary of the Unlimited Vacation Perk". Hmm...

And the WSJ article, in turn, takes its number from this report: https://www.empower.com/the-currency/work/pursuit-of-pto-res...

Now when you look at the survey, the problem with comparing those numbers is that they are averages for all workers. That is, 14 days without PTO is the average across all companies, not just those that had adopted UPTO. And the 16 days with UPTO is, of course, only for those companies. So the numbers don't actually tell you anything about the effect of "unlimited" PTO adoption in a given company. Those companies where 14 days is the norm are generally not the ones that decide to switch to UPTO because, well, there's no actual benefit in it for them. Companies that do adopt it, like many Big Tech firms in the past few years, are also the ones that had much more generous paid PTO to begin with - at Microsoft, for example, as a senior engineer, I had four weeks of PTO before the switch.

So, you need to look at comparisons before and after UPTO adoption for the same company to see the trend. Conveniently, that very article you linked to has some sources for that, e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-...

There are other negative aspects to it, too. For example, when you have guaranteed vacation PTO, it is wholly separate from other things like paid medical leave. But with UPTO, it's that much harder to argue for it to your manager if you have already taken medical leave that year.

None of the BigTech firms have unlimited PTO unless you consider NetFlix “BigTech” and by market cap, they aren’t.

I’m not going to look up the PTO for other BigTech companies. But the one I worked for (Amazon) had 15 days PTO and 5 personal days.

And most people who have defined PTO, also don’t take all of their allocated days off.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/more-than...

That’s not evidence of defined vs unlimited PTO as a limiting factor of UPTO.

And because of laws in different states, companies with unlimited PTO also often have a separate bucket for sick time.

Do you consider Microsoft "big tech"? It switched to UPTO back in 2023, just in time for layoffs. And I can tell you that it was a very unpopular move among rank and file.

I worked 80 hours a week in medical school, depending on the rotation. From that experience I can tell you, the majority of people that say they work 80 hours a week, don't even know what that looks like.

This 60-80 hrs/week maybe a startup myth. Since Europe in general has far fewer startups than US people hear these wild numbers in Europe far less. For normal big tech worker, or enterprise workers 40 hrs is really the norm. Now many people specially in contracting, consulting can stretch hours for billing purpose or impressing upon clients thats a different matter.

> low eu salaries implies finding job is hard. fact.

Does it? Sounds more like an opinion than a fact to me.

If there was demand the salaries would rise. It's capitalism.

Umm... output. Outside of hyperscalers and probably the tier below them, most EU tech companies aren't making the kind of money per headcount to justify huge salaries.

There is demand for tech workers, but the output of EU tech companies can't afford huge salaries. Lower margins.

What a waste of a comment. Low salaries typically imply finding a job is easier, because more potential employers can afford to pay you. Can you add any kind of evidence, argument, anything? Saying "fact" after an armchair guess does not make it one.

> Low salaries typically imply finding a job is easier, because more potential employers can afford to pay you. Can you add any kind of evidence, argument, anything?

sorry i forgot to add "typically" which apparently is a license to spout any BS .

You started the argument!

Yeah I’d argue this is so clearly the case and it’s one reason among many why the US has an enormous amount of successful tech companies and Europe has some amount that basically rounds to zero in comparison.

The ability to hire and fire easily is critical if you want to build successful companies.

There’s a reason ambitious founders move from Europe to the US and why most billion dollar tech companies are American. Europe has made really bad policy decisions around this for decades and their economy reflects it. Europe is poor and to an extent I don’t think Europeans really understand.

> There’s a reason ambitious founders move from Europe to the US and why most billion dollar tech companies are American.

Yes, and it's because of larger, more liquid capital markets make it much easier to obtain VC funding.

> Europe is poor and to an extent I don’t think Europeans really understand.

Europe is definitely not poor in terms of either wealth or income (particularly Western Europe, which is the appropriate comparator for the US).

> Aren't US tech interview notoriously difficult? Many rounds of interviews, background checks, etc.?

Not really, people get hired all the time that can't do a fizzbuzz.

As a counterpoint, I don't think I've worked at a company in 10 years that didn't at least require fizzbuzz.

Of course. Companies who fire more also hire more.

European companies have very little staff turnover, so new jobs are fewer. Another aspect is that salaries are very even across much of the industry, as it is often negotiated by unions and unless you are also switching roles (e.g. into management) salaries at different companies will be very similar. That is why working for the same company for a long time is much more common in Europe.

> Another aspect is that salaries are very even across much of the industry, as it is often negotiated by unions

Can you specify what country you're drawing these facts from? Europe does not have standard employment law, and I definitely haven't experienced salaries being set by unions or being common across the industry.

Germany in this case. The high tax rates at progressive rates mean that salary increases mean that income after taxes is quite flat.

There are also union negotiated rates for pay across much of the industry. Even if you switch employer your pay might remain exactly the same, unless you also get promoted and into a higher level or a different industry. "Flächentarifvertrag" it is called.

Obviously this drastically disincentivizes hoping employers.

> Germany in this case. The high tax rates at progressive rates mean that salary increases mean that income after taxes is quite flat.

OK, good to know. I definitely haven't experienced flat income after taxes post salary bump, even though I pay 52% marginal on my income (in Ireland).

> Obviously this drastically disincentivizes hoping employers.

I can totally see that. Is it really that common in tech jobs though? I'd have expected this to be much more common in larger, older companies (like the automotive industry).

>I can totally see that. Is it really that common in tech jobs

What is a "tech job"? Wouldn't a job where you are designing the electrical/mechanical/software parts of a car be a "tech job"?

Of course this is much more common in older, well established industries. But that is where most of the "tech jobs" are. Germany, especially labor laws, are hostile to start-ups so it is natural that people get employed at these older companies with union negotiated salaries.

In Japan firing an employee is difficult and layoffs are unheard of. I would have few concerns finding something new were that to change overnight here.

> I don't want to work for another US company again if I can help it

You can work for a US company in the UE. They have to follow the local rules like anybody else.

Having worked in a (now defunct) US co in West-EU I can say it’s a subtle blend of the two. The layoff was announced, shortly after a few people received a call by HR, were escorted to their desk by security and had to turn in all company belongings on the spot. They were not allowed to touch a computer or telephone and were then escorted out of the premises. Afterwards, we learned that they had received a severance package that met local rules.

Most of my colleagues were shocked by the treatment. Moral took a dive after that.

Well US companies now take the cowards way out generally - tell everyone to WFH that day (despite prior RTO mandates) and then just disable peoples access so the first way the laid off find out is when they can't login for the day.

I work for a US company but in western Europe. The layoffs have been much more humane here than in the US. There was a negociation process which lasted several months, and the severance was better and on a voluntary basis. I don't think a company making profit can easily get rid of employees over here, but probably depends on the country. Regarding performance-based layoffs, they did manage to fire people too, but again it was technically a common agreement.

That being said, if they want to get rid of employees, they always find a way. And the European market isn't as dynamic as the US one, so there are pros and cons. Personally, all things considered (risks of layoffs, PTO, cost of living) I'm happier in Europe but it really depends on individual situation.

I wonder about the dynamic tradeoffs. Maybe a better example are labor markets that are even more dynamic than the USA (like China, despite having formal labor contracts). Maybe if jobs are so easy to get losing one won’t feel as painful.

There are rules, but one can decide to not follow them.

One thing that I saw (but never experienced myself) happen with North American companies wanted to leave EU is just doing their usual things (thus not following local rules), and then people have to sue and wait many years to be compensated.

From my experience that often just prolongs the process, but doesn't change the management culture.

An employee decided to be laid off is equally written off immediately, it's just delegated to the regional/local HR to "manage the rest".

If you're not escorted off-premise, you get to enjoy some additional days/weeks of colleagues and managers telling you how surprised they were...

This can still happen:

> where I only found out a colleague had been fired because I tried to write them on Slack only to find that their account had been deactivated

The colleague will just be one that's based in the US, but that doesn't make it much easier.

Well, sure, but unless the US company is willing to set up an EU subsidiary and employ you via that then you'll be working as an independent contractor. That status gives you zero employment rights, because you're explicitly not an employee.

Many cases where someone is in practice functioning as a full-time employee are legally employment relationships according to both US and EU law even if the contract and payroll procedures say otherwise, and even if the contractual relationship is directly between a US entity and a worker in the EU. This includes whatever employment rights are supposed to exist, for the number of employees (whether or not misclassified as independent contractors) the company has in that country under its national employment laws.

Lots of US tech companies like to pretend otherwise, but a complaint or two from the misclassified employee can create plenty of pain for the employer for lying to both the US and foreign governments about the genuine nature of the relationship. And these penalties generally go not to the employee but to the employer, since the noncompliance is generally around employer tax, payroll, and reporting obligations as well as laws which are meant to protect employee rights.

In practice, US tech companies literally buy their way out. They pay such a premium for those independent contractors that there would be no such complaints in the first place.

No complaints based on the amount of pay, maybe.

But for example, someone who is fired or laid off in a way that wouldn’t comply with local employment protections if the employment relationship were correctly classified might assert their misclassification claim so that they can also get compensation for their wrongful termination.

If that happens, then the company not only has to scramble to catch up on the overdue social contributions for the complaining employee and pay any applicable penalties, but also likely have to undergo an audit of their other workers in that country plus the same consequences for them.

There’s a reason why any US tech company that’s big enough to be a juicy financial target tends to do this correctly, and why companies like Deel, Remote.com, and their less tech-branded competitors (such as Velocity Global) are gaining popularity among people who want to do this correctly at smaller scales than those for which it makes sense to set up foreign subsidiaries.

When smaller companies take this particular shortcut, are risking severe financial consequences for the company if the authorities discover it, and in many cases this also comes with personal liability for some of the executives who are neglecting their legal duties.

That's usually illegal, unless you're a genuine independent contractor that completes work packages for multiple clients.

If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.

I'm only familiar with UK rules on the topic, and of course the UK is no longer in the EU, but here at least the standard for determining employment status is quite complicated. The ability to work for multiple clients is one of the factors, as it speaks to the control and mutuality-of-obligation tests set by IR35, but it would probably not (alone) be enough to determine employment status either way.

> If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.

That wouldn't work because it would be an obvious sham designed mainly to avoid the EU company's responsibilities under employment law. Courts see through those shams very quickly.

Technical people -- including me -- like to try and reduce the law to a series of digital if/then/else tests, but reality is much more analogue. If you're one of a small number of highly-experienced remote contractors engaged by a US-based client with no local subsidiary, the authorities are likely to accept the arrangement, or at least not to spend significant amounts of time investigating it. If you're one of very many Uber-driver-like "contractors" working for a company that is obviously dodging its local employment law obligations, then they're much more likely to be interested.

A company that has to "follow the rules" is way less desirable to work for then a company that embraces the spirit of the rules. I'm in the US so can't really speak for companies in other countries, but many US companies are doing everything they can to skirt the letter of the law and spending a ton of money to have them rewritten to be less favorable to employees and more favorable to the business. Finding a company that truly cares for employees is a very rare treat!

That's absolutely happening in US-owned companies in EU that used to be great places to work before they became US-owned. They do pay a premium for their bullshit of course.

It's a fundamental problem with large organizations.

In principle, an organization that is built on reciprocal loyalty is more productive than one that treats people as interchangeable cogs, because people are individually happier and go to greater lengths to achieve the shared goals, making them more productive. However, this arrangement can only be built on trust, and trust doesn't scale well past the Dunbar number. Thus, spirit of the rules is replaced by letter of the rules (which can be meaningfully enforced).

Thus, the larger the bureaucracy, the more soulless it is even in individual interactions between people within it, and the more it treats those people as interchangeable cogs that are there solely to serve the overall function of the organization. If the organization is a for-profit corporation, its overall function is profit, and thus megacorps always tend to optimize squeezing their employees.

Short-term this can be reversed somewhat if leadership is concentrated and opinionated. E.g. when the company grows out of a startup dominated by a single founder, and that founder has certain ethical standards or beliefs that they enforce on the org, overriding the natural tendency. This arrangement never lasts long-term, though - either the founder goes away and is replaced by generic management which has neither the desire nor the capacity to go against the current, or the founder becomes corrupt.

Layoffs in US companies are a BCP event. It's like an earthquake or a tsunami. Weeks of chaos while you figure out who survived, and who's now doing the work previously done by a team that no longer exists.

I watched a layoff take out half the security team during an incident. That was fun.

> A business continuity plan (BCP) is a system of prevention and recovery from potential threats to a company.

I feel like global acronym bankruptcy is overdue.

I'm reminded of the last part of 'TLA' form the Jargon File (I had a hard copy back in college that I read cover to cover).

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/TLA.html

...

The self-effacing phrase “TDM TLA” (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin “What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?” Paul's straight-faced response: “There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms.” (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.

Now I want to use the dictionary file to figure the actual probability of a letter appearing in a TLA. It's not nearly 1/26.

There's likely a good bit of analysis that could be done on TLAs. Consider TLA itself is {Adjective : Count} {Noun} {Noun}. Meanwhile, DUI is {Gerund} {Preposition} {Noun} with the stop word 'the' removed.

It might be interesting to take a sample of TLAs used and look what words can be used in those spots. If the third position is 90% likely to be a noun, that could change the distribution... guessing not in a significant way itself but it could be interesting to see.

This is the best work I know on the topic (admittedly having done no literature review): https://gwern.net/tla

GAB, you mean?

BCP events. This makes so much sense. At a previous mega corp I was always confused why such emphasis was made on BCPs for war or natural disaster scenarios which are so rare compared to how much time was spent on the plans. Literally months later we had massive layoffs. The layoff was the (un)natural disaster they were preparing for!

The EU is not a country. Labor laws vary massively between countries.

If anyone here has only worked in the EU and wants to see what the US layoff process is supposed to be on a good day, just watch the movie Margin Call and the scene where Eric Dale is called into the office by HR to be fired.

There's a scene where they put a folder in front of him with a brightly-coloured sailboat on the cover labelled "LOOKING AHEAD." It's exactly as grim as it sounds.

Another "fun" thing about that movie is you see the HR lady who delivered the news with a bunch of false empathy walking out the building with a box in a later scene.

Watched this movie 3 times and never noticed! This is a fun touch.

That’s very subtle. I have not noticed that.

also, the pacing of:

"I hope, considering your [pause to check personnel file] over nineteen years of service to the firm you will understand that these measures are in no way a reflection of the firm's feelings towards your performance or your character"

Up in the Air was another great depiction of the most cynical mode of doing layoffs. And, of course, Office Space.

I was laid off by a consultant. It was somehow even worse than Up in the Air since they made my manager sit in on the call.

I know they probably made this up for the movie, but I almost went through my file cabinet to look for that exact folder because I have been through several layoffs and it looked so familiar

American companies play mental games and gaslight everyone by calling it “a hard decision” and try to place the empathy back on the executives who get paid 10-100x the employees they just fired without warning. It’s sociopathic behavior.

I don’t think that’s really fair. It can certainly be a hard but necessary decision. And what does it matter that a CEO makes more than his employees? Even if he makes 50 times what they make, that means even if he gave up all of his salary he could only save the jobs of 50 employees.

Could he get a bonus if he fires 50 more?

> Layoffs here are always done in conjunction with the unions.

Europe is vastly diverse and your experience is not representative of all Europe.

It sounds representative of every part of Europe I’ve experienced.

You probably never worked in Austria.

Or southern europe

Austria has unions and Betriebsräte, we even have one in a big american company, so op is correct.

You have no idea about Switzerland or Northern Europe. In Denmark and Iceland, layoffs are swift.

That's true. But contracts here usually have a set termination time, with a minimum notice time typically required by law, dependent on how long you've been hired at the company. Tends to be one month for below a year, three months beyond a year.

As in after a termination there's a period during which you're still supposed to work and collect the salary.

Exceptions are B2B contracts (but they still often have one of those) and some piece work contracts.

Of course a particular bastard of a company can still immediately cut you off everything but the salary including the doors.

> Exceptions are B2B contracts (but they still often have one of those) and some piece work contracts.

In the UK big corporations got a loophole where they can get employees without affording them any rights. It's called IR35 that Tory government amended to facilitate this, as Brexit benefit (the regulation would have been illegal otherwise if we were still in the EU).

It's totally legal to fire employee without any notice for any reason or even pay them below minimum wage.

Out of curiosity, why "bastard"? ...if you're being terminated, isn't the best possible outcome that you get your salary but don't have to go to work?

Do you guys not even get the chance to send a goodbye mail to colleagues?

Shrodinger's Europe. It could be homogeneously like Denmark, Sicily, Monaco, Hungary, London or Belarus or anywhere else. You don't know which until you have an asinine blanket statement you need to back up.

* Experience in Central- and Eastern Europe (CEE) may differ.

Well, getting escorted out definitely doesn't happen here either at least.

> Well, getting escorted out definitely doesn't happen here either at least.

It 100% does. It happened to me in Brno, Czechia, and this February I interviewed someone to whom the same thing happened and who was attempting to sue for unfair dismissal.

> Weird, as someone from Europe I've never experience anything else.

As someone from Europe, I’ve never experienced US salaries. Go figure.

The problem in France for example is that while there is a system to protect people on all fronts, you have to be inside the system to benefit from it. Quitting a company by your own initiative excludes you from that system. If you were pushed to do it you'll have to take the company to court.

I would prefer to have a higher salary and be "allowed" (thanks to my own money) to quit (even if I don't want to).

weird

You probably never experienced their working hours either.

As someone who has worked for a string of US companies, 38 hours for me is a busy week.

FWIW in my 15 years of experience working in big tech in US, I never had a job in which there was an expectation of doing more than 40 hours, working weekends etc.

Such things definitely exist, but they are far less common than is often implied here on HN and elsewhere. I think this is largely because people who don't work long hours are much less likely to wax poetic about it, just because, well, it's not at all unusual or interesting.

what about US costs of living?

West Europe is far from cheap. Housing, childcare etc is unaffordable for many in the middle class (and as dev, you are in most cases in Europe not a very high earner). Universal healthcare is the main (last) advantage Europe has over the U.S (and its a big one.)

If you can afford housing and child care in the US you don’t care about healthcare because you are probably on a good employee plan.

Jee sounds like a swell arrangement for 20% of the population ...

More like 80%. Americans are simply richer than Europeans.

80% of Americans are definitely not on what I'd consider a "good healthcare plan".

What is considered a "good healthcare plan"? Can you compare American insurance plans with Europe's ones?

92% of American had health insurance in 2023. Some people may have more than one insurance plans, thus the total number below is greater than 100%.

Of the subtypes of health insurance coverage, employment-based insurance was the most common, covering 53.7 percent of the population for some or all of the calendar year, followed by Medicaid (18.9 percent), Medicare (18.9 percent), direct-purchase coverage (10.2 percent), TRICARE (2.6 percent), and VA and CHAMPVA coverage (1.0 percent).

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-28...

Dental coverage, for starters. It's surprising how many plans are extremely skimpy on this.

Does anyone actually have good dental insurance? I think mine just does a small copay when i clean but even before I had dental out of pocket for that is only like $70 every 6 months if you bother listening to dentist (most don’t after mom stops taking them up to having a bad tooth issue later in life). Any actual work done on my teeth even with insurance has been out of pocket because in the eyes of the insurance company, having functional teeth is a cosmetic matter. Extraction? Hope you have $2500 to pay an american dentist for that. Or you can get the exact same procedure done from someone with the same training and experience for about $700 if you drive or fly to Tijuana for it.

US Big Tech healthcare plans do. I don't recall last time I had to pay anything out of pocket for dental cleaning, for example, and it's covered 4 times / year. I had root canal and wisdom teeth extraction too, and while those had some copay, it was nowhere near the numbers you quote.

Other countries don't do that either. IIRC the main reason for this is that dentistry was invented very recently and dentists are frequently just scammers who love unnecessary procedures.

Many European cities aren't exactly low cost of living, and those that are have even lower salaries.

In the end someone who was working at Google in the Bay Area for 15-20 years can retire if they didn't have life style creep (which is different than cost of living). Not the case in Europe.

'Someone who worked at one of the best paying companies in the world can retire after 15-20 years'.

This has nothing to do with Europe. This is particular a tech thing

It's a particular tech thing in not Europe, specifically.

Europe has tech companies. They just pay less.

What about European taxes? I', paying 48% + there is 21% VAT on almost everything. Plus taxes for water (taxes, not pay-per-used-m3, and this payment is here too), energy (atop of market energy prices), roads, gasoline, etc.

Slightly tangential question for you- does 48% taxes include healthcare? How about pension? It’s tax week in the US, I think my rate was 22% overall. But another 10% of compensation is health insurance. Another 15% is retirement savings. My municipal water bill last quarter mostly was not for actual water usage (about 40% was for water) rest is system charge and storm water fees. Regarding the VAT thing… we may be effectively getting the equivalent with tariffs on goods and materials supposedly taking effect!

German here. Me and my employer pay 12 (together) for healthcare. I have no clue where the idea of „free“ healthcare came from, but it’s far from free. 20% of your wages is the general rule for healthcare here.

On paper, my employer pays me 72k per year. I net 36k of this after taxes and social insurances are paid.

Laughs in 150 EUR per month of basis zorgverzekering from the bottom of the sea

> How about pension?

Fun fact I learned the last time this topic came up, social security in the US pays more than German government pensions.

There is more than one pension -- one for old age (which the government is paying) and another from the company plan. The usual trick is to also pay out mortgage by this time, sell the house to buy something smaller and enjoy your life somewhere in a sunny place.

48% doesn't include healthcare (it is another about 170 euro/month per person, and, really, you don't have choice for better or worse conditions, formally there is "market" for this but it is very regulated) or pension. Some industries (but not software/IT one) have industry-wide pension funds, but it is additional payments and if you are in industry without this fund you can go to one of the "open" pension funds and put your money in them.

You can use numbeo to compare. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Basically, almost all places, particularly in the UK, have worse salary to cost of living ratios.

Ams is same or even worse than some US areas when it comes to costs of living.

That's not universal though. My dad's company was bought up by a foreign investor, shrunk over multiple reorganizations from its peak of ~500 people in the 70's or 80's down to a skeleton crew of ~50. They weren't fired, they were told the company was going bankrupt and needed to be emptied out. People who worked there for 40+ years were basically given a few months' pay if that and a "good luck". There's a formula for severance pay; years worked * month's wage, this would give people a lot of leeway to find a new job or just sit out until their retirement, but of course that's very expensive so they weaseled their way out of it through various constructions. Dozens of people fired a few years before retirement, most never found another job again. And the boss kept the company, which is now a shell company / sales / license holder, which the parent company was always after of course because production is cheaper to do in e.g. Poland.

> People who worked there for 40+ years were basically given a few months' pay

Those few months pay thing is the key difference. That is legally mandated.

You also get a few months pay in the US unless the company is truly broke.

Incorrect. It's at-will employment.

"At-will employment" is a meme here. In reality, the company gives you a few months of pay and you sign a document saying you won't sue them for firing you during a layoff.

If you get fired for fraud or for being incompetent, for example, it's often different.

That's the convention, but AFAIK it's not enshrined on law.

Some states require payout for unused, earned vacation time.

State-managed unemployment pay is also a thing, assuming the employee wasn't fired for cause. I think some states require employers to pay into this via a payroll tax.

It really depends on the people you work for, it's not like Europe is some kind of paradise in this matter. I was working as a contractor for a company in Germany, after a few years working together, they cut me off from one day to the next (the new manager decided to start saving money), even though my contract included a clause about a one-month notice period. They didn’t even bother to pay the invoice for the work I had already done that month (it was the 23rd of the month, so we’re talking about a few thousand euros). And since I wasn't living in Germany, extracting that money from them was almost impossible.

Yes, it may be different for full-time non-contract jobs, but once you're on a contract, nobody cares.

Yeah but that's kinda the point of being a contractor, no?

Here in the Netherlands contractors are also 'at will employed' as the Americans say.

But they pay you more so...

Sounds like a case every lawyer in Germany would like to take. 500€ for first letter to send to the manager reminding the contract conditions. It is enough for most companies not to go further with shady activities. As a contractor one should know how to deal with the clients.

I don’t think that’s shady? When I was hiring contractors it was always project based with mutual understanding things could end quickly if the project or collaboration didn’t work out.

Yes, they get paid 1.5-2x, and that also prices in that it’s not always 100% utilization. Only once had a contractor oppose that, but that was in the context of (severe) underperformance.

In his case, the contract had something different, and they did not pay the actual invoice - that's the shady part.

With contractors, you have more freedom of choice when you write the contracts, but whatever contract you agree on, you still have to honor the contract as agreed.

Oh my bad, I thought you referenced contractors in general. In that case I agree: agreements are to be honored.

OP said that they did this for contractors too!

Sure it was possible, just not convenient. Small claims charges in EU court do work. One major benefit of EU.

Working as a contractor means you're self-employed and the relations you have with "your boss" are a B2B relationship where you agree to get something done in exchange for money - no different from renting office space or servers. Since you're a business owner, you're expected to be competent in the areas of business (which can be cut-throat) and law. You chose to take on this risk by being a contractor.

The legal responsiveness for contractor disputes is definitely not as good as employment. Messing up employment relations in Europe ends up really expensive in most jurisdictions because there'll usually be some mix of unions, government agency or charity that'll have the employee's back.

Contractors don't have that kind of support pretty much anywhere (that's sort of the point), and it's just a standard contract dispute that lawyers argue about.

So what you're saying is your company had a customer that breached contract and didn't pay. I wouldn't compare that to being fired?

Oo? It should have been no issue at all for you to get this money.

We are a law and order country.

You got yourself played

That is obviously criminal though.

I have seen this in EU too

In which country?

Austria

that’s very business hostile tbh. I wouldn’t start a company there.

Treating people with dignity is “business hostile”… welcome to Hacker News comment section.

It's more like "welcome to US mindset" IMHO

This mindset is what moves us forward. Union of soft nations don’t add much these days.

Define "forward".

dignity sure, unions are just corporate blackmailing.

in any company, plans change. if that means going on a multi-year “managing out” of useless employees, idk why would i hire in EU.

Plans change, and so they should be communicated and negotiated with the employees going to be affected by the change. It's the dignified way of doing it, people are people, not fungible commodities, treat them as people and unions won't be an issue at all.

> unions are just corporate blackmailing.

This is such an absurdly ignorant take that is hard to start educating you, it also depends a lot on what society you live in since your view on unions will be tainted by what you see in it.

In places like the Nordics, unions are one of the cornerstones of a free labour market, look up how Sweden has a freer labour market than the USA to learn something at least :)

I don't even disagree with you, but your way of argumenting is terrible and actively deterring people from your point that union are a core component of a healthy free market.

If your point is to score virtue point, keep at it, but if you actually want to change anyone mind, avoid terms like "is hard to start educating you", it just makes you sound like a douche

I was being very honest, it is hard to start educating someone coming from that position since there is so much bullshit wrapped around a statement like "unions are just corporate blackmailing" which is hard to pull apart without knowing how the person came to that conclusion.

I don't even think it's possible to change someone's mind who already think that way, since it's purely from a point of absolute ignorance and I'm not willing to put enough effort to cite literature that could give them good starting points to understand something they are very likely not even willing to start understanding. They have a lazy position, I reply lazily.

They have an ideological position, based on ignorance, and from a single statement it's pretty clear they aren't curious and willing to change their mind.

Hence why I cite to look into how unions work in the Nordics, at least that is a starting point if they want to learn more about labour movements. It takes someone being curious though.

In the end, it was absolutely honest: it is hard to start educating someone who holds that position a priori and based on pure ignorance, and if not ignorance it's maliciousness, there's not much of a spectrum in this case.

I work for a paycheck. I can’t exchange “dignity” for goods and services. The guy got paid nice compensation for his labor.

Therefore, let's throw everything non-monetary under the bus because work should be purely transactional?

What else should it be? Do you believe that your company is like “your family”? Your coworkers or especially your manager are “your friends”?

Why else do you go to work?

I don't believe my office is my family, but I expect to at least be treated with a baseline level of decency, civility, dignity, respect, and kindness, which are non-monetary and (by my reading of your post) unnecessary in your office full of Vulcans.

The fact that these things are seen as optional and unimportant explains a lot of what's happened to public discourse.

Was it indecent for Google to lay someone off, remove all access and give him 16 weeks of severance + two additional weeks for each year of service?

I didn't say anything about Google.

The submitted article was about Google…

You're taking "Human resources" a bit too literally.

We are resources. The one Big Tech company I have worked for has 1.556 million employees. What else was I besides a “resource”?

It's not a binary between "we are family" and "we are resources", it's a spectrum.

In your case, yes, you were absolutely a resource. This is exactly why companies of that size simply shouldn't exist - because they cannot not treat their employees as resources, with all the inhumanity this implies.

Yes because a small company could deliver a national same day shipping infrastructure and worldwide network of cloud servers including its own undersead cables.

And again, work is a transaction. I’m perfectly fine with being treated as a resource when I was getting a quarter million a year and working remotely…

I'm okay with not having same day shipping if this means that companies don't have to treat their employees like dirt.

But, more importantly, a company that large is simply too much concentrated economic power (which then translates to political power). Even if it was all just robots, I'd still say no. Our political system is in shambles in large part because of these kinds of entities.

So exactly what “power” does Amazon have over your life?

Our politics is in shambles because of religious nutcases, anti science, anti intellectuals, who are afraid of the country becoming majority-minority and straight out racism and bitterness.

Amazon has nothing to do with that.

You can literally just punch "Amazon lobbying" into Google and get pages of results.

Okay? Name one policy that the current administration has done that helps Amazon?

I didn't say anything about "current administration", so I don't know why you think that is relevant.

Okay, name one law that was passed during the pass 20 years as a result of Amazon’s lobbying that was favorable to Amazon?

It's older than 20 years, but not needing to collect sales tax was definitely a big benefit for Amazon (and other ecommerce providers) and presumably involved lobbying to keep it for as long as possible.

That wasn’t based on lobbying, it was the law at first and Amazon took advantage of it.

Amazon didn’t have any significant lobbying 20 years ago and it definitely was the behemoth it is today. That being said, even today it isn’t as large as Walmart and was definitely not a large retailer back then.

It was seriously in doubt 20 years ago whether Amazon would ever survive and definitely wasn’t consistently profitable.

Totally, I completely agree that they didn't lobby for the original exemption.

However, I would be very surprised if they weren't lobbying heavily to keep said exemption for as long as possible.

Pretty sure they wouldn't want someone like you to do so either.

they are doing great!

Thanks.

People are more important than businesses

that’s only what employee handbook says.

Always someone with a horrible opinion to give in this hellsite

i have had to avoid hiring excellent candidate(s) from EU, just because they would become unflushable if it comes to that.

> just because they would become unflushable if it comes to that

Your choice of verb tells a lot about what you think of your employees.

sure i am being dramatic but my point stands. if my company can’t be fluid and can’t react fast to market due to bs unions and backward laws of some land, that place is what i avoid.

And people in those places will thank you for avoiding hiring them, some folks prefer to not be treated miserably for your own greedy exploitation :)

This is a genuine question: do you make these views clear during hiring? Because if you believe in them and think that they make sense, there shouldn't be any harm in sharing them with the candidates upfront, right? Especially since these views directly affect their livelihood. And if you don't, why not?

The fact you refer to people as “unflushable” or “useless” is chilling.

If your business is contingent on the behaviour of one employee then you have failed to hire properly or build a resilient business...

In many cases problematic employees can and are removed from EU companies.

many cases isn’t competitive when i can find equal talent with no such restrictions.

How exactly would they become "unflushable"?

Also, surely if they were excellent candidates then you'd be doing your absolute best to keep them around?

> Also, surely if they were excellent candidates then you'd be doing your absolute best to keep them around?

Well to be fair excellent candidates are excellent on paper. It sometimes happens (not often, but not once in a blue moon either) that the candidate turns out to be completely unsuitable for the job.

"had to"

Please post the name of your company so we can be sure to avoid it.

done

I take it that this was posted in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"?

Thats just not true.

You don't sound like a big company ceo. If you have a good reason, even as a small company, and revenue / affordability is one, you can fire people.

You just need to be able to pay them for min. 3 month if thats your contract length and as a business owner you should know how to calculate.

vs. i can hire in canada/ukraine/india/pakistan/china for a more skilled person with no such bs restrictions.

This doesn't make sense. If you hire them to work in local offices in those countries, they often have even more employee protections than Europe does. And if you bring them over to US, then it's the same law regardless of where they are originally from.

why would i establish a local office in say paris if laws are so hostile towards startups.

people are getting quite snippy about this comment, but hating this mindset means you lock yourself away from so much actual wealth. It means you confine and condemn people to significantly worse economic conditions by limiting people's ability to freely associate and disassociate.

just to hammer this point home: Every mandatory employee benefit has a huge cost, and adding enough of them kills your economy. It makes it more expensive to have an employee than X many jobs can justify. That X grows every year, and that's X people who cant do that job and get paid money for it.

exactly, as a startup founder i wouldn’t commit to a yearly reserved ec2 instance for a year let alone an employee.

Wow, that's an interesting perspective.

Meanwhile, Big tech (pre-2022) went to pretty extreme lengths to keep tenured employees around because of all the knowledge they'd built up which made them valuable to the company.

But whatevs, you do you. I'd advise you to only hire contractors if you want people to stay less than a year.

And it's worth noting that you appear to be responding to people who are in German speaking countries, where 3 months notice is standard. Other parts of Europe are not like this, and in Ireland you can fire as per the US for the first 6 months/year, and only need to pay redundancy if they've been there 2+ years.

Not even building and exporting widebody aircraft?

outlier.

You're not starting a business anywhere, so no one cares.

too late

"Coping about being a europoor" definitely sounds like a fair assessment that isn't politically motivated at all, and is sure to improve the quality of discussion. /s

> is quality discussion for you?

If it was, why would I be evaluating whether you're improving it or not? Surely a discussion only needs improvement if it has room for it, right?

> edit: you are another coper europoor.

Strong words from someone who recurringly goes into US vs. EU discussions just to post inflammatory garbage. [0] [1] [2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43417884

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43411189

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43374322

> Weird, as someone from Europe I've never experience anything else.

Yeah, no. Also European, and have been marched out without notice, cut off that day with no chance to say goodbye, etc.

It would be interesting to know.

1. Which countries are we talking about? Europe is not homogeneous

2. Which type of business? Are workers unionized?

I have experienced this while working as a journalist in Britain and while working as a technical writer in the Czech Republic.

I worked a at large European company. They announced there would be layoffs. But not who, just the date. On that date, they came round during the day, tapping people on the shoulder, who walked out of the room and were never seen in the office again. Grown men were crying, who weren't even let go.

I never felt good about that company ever again.

What company was that?

That is mostly in Central and Nothern Europe, unfortunely in the south even with unions, things not always go as they should be.

I worked at a company with a US division and a German division.

It was stark, the difference in process between the two countries. Leadership was openly complaining about how they couldn't close out shuttering the company because it was going to take six months to handle legal compliance in Germany.

This was during an all-hands, and one delightfully brave soul who knew it didn't matter much what he said since we were all exiting anyway commented in the public channel "Because of those laws, the American employees also get a six-month heads up instead of a locked door when they drive in in the morning, so today, we're all very grateful to Germany and our German peers."

It makes sense in the US where they have terms like "going postal" and easy access to guns

The idea of being able to keep a laptop sounds absurd to me. Of course many European countries have labor laws which make it near impossible to fire someone on the spot.

>Only in very critical jobs they'd walk you out immediately but then you still get the pay.

Presumably you are also still employed, just not given any tasks. I do not think that here in Germany there is any way to immediately fire someone, just because he was working on something critical.

Many companies refuse to do layoffs entirely. Which often means that they have difficulties responding to changes in the environment or need to heavily rely on contractors.

Re: Germany - for sure there is. Aufhebungsvertrag if you as employee agree. Kündigung mit sofortiger Freistellung if you don't agree.

>Aufhebungsvertrag

That is something both sides have to agree on. So it can not be considered "firing".

>Freistellung

You are still employed, just have no tasks assigned to you. Completely different scenario for the employee, who now can look for a new job, while still being paid as if he were employed. Arguably it is even better than being let go, but having to continue working. Definitely anything but a "firing on the spot".