Isn't this something the market will mostly take care of, especially in tech where people can easily change jobs?
"Jobs for life" is a net negative in Italy: it keeps young people out of jobs, and it makes people hold on for dear life to jobs they hate and aren't great at just because they are Permanent Jobs. Far better to have a lot of flexibility, and state support for the unemployed, rather than turning employers into supporters of people they do not wish to employ.
His views are far far from being mainstream...
Only if there is a perfectly functioning market. Which there often isn't in many cases. Hence the laws.
Markets often work well even if they're not "perfectly functioning". Governments certainly solve other kinds of problems decently even if they are not "perfectly functioning" either. I'm pretty happy with the health care here in Italy, for instance.
But this fellow has been entrepeneur-ing in Europe for more than 15 years, he has done quite well by his own admission, and now, after all this time, comes up with this hit piece against employee rights. It's deeply dishonest.
Perhaps related is the fact ostentatious displays of wealth are generally frowned upon. In the US it seems fashionable for entrepreneurs to become fabulously wealthy, then flaunt their wealth as 'inspiration' to other would-be entrepreneurs. In Britain, if not the rest of Europe, this draws resentment more so than admiration.
Her Mum as an ex Air hostess was refered to as ‘doors to manual'
From France, the view seems to be that small businesses are mainly for artisanal things. People don't really have this idea of working your life away because our culture believes (rightly so? I imagine here the opinion might be opposite) more in that work is not the meaning of life, and so the idea of spending so many hours toiling away (especially in something like software eng, where there are 10000s of consultancies you could work for and probably be beter paid) seems counterintuitive. That or you're just greedy.
I'd also like to point out that Europe is not a country, talking about "Europeans" is silly outside of the context of "people who have access to affordable healthcare", and that mentalities change enormously across borders.
I completely agree. I was just referring to it as the article referred to it. I was talking specifically about the UK & Ireland.
Also: http://www.garann.com/dev/2012/what-the-fuck-is-an-entrepren...
Every time that you get your espresso and you don't get a receipt (which is more often than not), the owner of the café pays no taxes.
Especially because for the past 20 years being an entrepreneur has mostly meant legally stealing big corporations. At least in the eyes of many. There are a lot of decent entrepreneurs, but they don't get any press.
However, the general mantra is "He has more than we do, he is obviously a scoundrel and a thief. You can't get there by being honest."
Which is really the problem with targeting anything at "Europe" (be it a blog post or a business): there's always something new that differs enormously across countries.
Get off it.
Entrepreneurs aren't worshiped like gods by default just for being entrepreneurs, that's all.
Can't afford to treat your employees like humans? Want to give them big bonuses and then fire them the following year so they can't pay the mortgage on that house they put a deposit down on with that bonus? Don't want to shell out a bit of money on decent offices, and rather shove them in some little basement somewhere?
None of this is required for a startup. You can actually treat your employees as human regardless of the stage of your business - especially considering that this guy can easily afford this stuff.