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Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

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Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#51

Post by em-bee »

dantheman wrote: post #50
refurb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like rent control does more than just "control the price of rent" because landlords change their behavior to optimize their financial returns, so do labor laws. Strong worker protection ends up making the cost of hiring new workers higher. Companies react to those costs by a number of means like delaying hiring, hiring contractors first, firing within the probation period when they might not have normally, etc,…

There's definitely a right and wrong - it is morally wrong to use force to enrich yourself at the expense of others. In the case of rent control -- landlords and future renters suffer. In the case the employment -- it's employers and future workers.

how does rentcontrol let future renters suffer?

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#52

Post by greeny7373 »

ActorNightly wrote: post #43
aseerdbnarng wrote: post #32

How daft do you have to be go on a hiring binge in Europe without looking into the labour laws. These laws didn't just fall out the sky last Tuesday

You assume that they hired with eventual plan of firing. Thats not the case. They hired because opportunity cost of not hiring was too high.

I still don't get Google and the others having huge revenue per employee.

Google could easily put these people in making more money.

But instead they launch weird products like their Blockchain service, miss out on AI etc.

Google Io is in May, if they don't announce google personal ai assistant they don't have enough visionary people.

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#53

Post by ActorNightly »

greeny7373 wrote: post #52
ActorNightly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that they hired with eventual plan of firing. Thats not the case. They hired because opportunity cost of not hiring was too high.

I still don't get Google and the others having huge revenue per employee. Google could easily put these people in making more money. But instead they launch weird products like their Blockchain service, miss out on AI etc. Google Io is in May, if they don't announce google personal ai assistant they don't have enough visionary people.

When it comes to increasing revenue, nobody really knows how the userbase is going to adopt a product. Look at Vine vs Tik Tok. Same exact format, but one died and one took off like a rocket ship.

When companies can invest money, they do so without concern for long term in the hopes that they can just bruteforce project with manpower and make something stick. If you don't participate in this, you risk missing out establishing a product that has long term staying power and thus long term revenue.

So it figures that when these costs start running high, things get cut. And when everyone is downsizing, and you don't and instead choose to invest, you risk losing money on a failed product that you could have spent later on something profitable.

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#54

Post by pleb_nz »

TexanFeller wrote: post #18
hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had a few European teammates, and they usually come to the U.S. because they can make 3-5x what they could in Europe. And as we know, the only difference between us and Europe is labor laws. /s

I've worked with many UK/Europeans. They are quite similar to us in skills and productivity aside from labor laws(excessive vacations, months/years of parental leave, impossible to fire etc.)

I would be more inclined to say the US lacks more than Europe has excess.

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#55

Post by yladiz »

ActorNightly wrote: post #44
deserialized wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if you're from FAANG land. I took 10k cut (90k to 80k) from my salary leaving Seattle but gained a union, 20 more days of vacation, a 8% holiday bonus, 90% cheaper insurance, and 500$ less in rent per month in Amsterdam

You took way more than $10k cut when you consider taxes involved. Of course this varies state by state, but generally for tech, you net more in US on the average even when you pay for everything that you get with taxes in EU. Starting salaries even outside fang could easily be in like $130k in areas that aren't tech hubs and don't have an inflated COL - in EU this is unheard of.

Even for tech I’m skeptical of this, and so please cite if you have data to back it up. What are you considering part of what you get in, for example, Germany with taxes, but paid for out of pocket in the US?

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#56

Post by yladiz »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #34
WeylandYutani wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on what you value. Dutch labour laws are not written for highly educated tech bros but designed to protect everyone. Wealth inequality for instance is something that permeates political discourse. Americans don't give a shit about it at all. Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind.

>Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind. In the short term, Europe is much better at this than the US, but the long term sustainability of the European welfare state will be under serious threat over the next 50 years due to the horrible demographics of most European countries

Please cite if you have some sources to back this up, in particular the solvency of the welfare system across multiple European countries and the projected demographics over the next decades. I’m skeptical it’s as anywhere close to as bad as you state here.

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#57

Post by smcleod »

dantheman wrote: post #27
WeylandYutani wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on what you value. Dutch labour laws are not written for highly educated tech bros but designed to protect everyone. Wealth inequality for instance is something that permeates political discourse. Americans don't give a shit about it at all. Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind.

Making society nicer for everyone requires investment.

* in people, not profits.

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#58

Post by greeny7373 »

ActorNightly wrote: post #53
greeny7373 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get Google and the others having huge revenue per employee. Google could easily put these people in making more money. But instead they launch weird products like their Blockchain service, miss out on AI etc. Google Io is in May, if they don't announce google personal ai assistant they don't have enough visionary people.

When it comes to increasing revenue, nobody really knows how the userbase is going to adopt a product. Look at Vine vs Tik Tok. Same exact format, but one died and one took off like a rocket ship. When companies can invest money, they do so without concern for long term in the hopes that they can just bruteforce project with manpower and make something stick. If you don't participate in this, you risk missing out est…

Google doesn't need to play the unicorn game.

They have plenty of services to make better or add features like Google cloud.

They can do things like what Ms does: have multiple dominating products and still have no issues with companies using azure.

Google just could disrupt any industry the wish.

They could spend much more on enabling 3th world / emerging countries

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#59

Post by ActorNightly »

yladiz wrote: post #55
ActorNightly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You took way more than $10k cut when you consider taxes involved. Of course this varies state by state, but generally for tech, you net more in US on the average even when you pay for everything that you get with taxes in EU. Starting salaries even outside fang could easily be in like $130k in areas that aren't tech hubs and don't have an inflated COL - in EU this is unheard of.

Even for tech I’m skeptical of this, and so please cite if you have data to back it up. What are you considering part of what you get in, for example, Germany with taxes, but paid for out of pocket in the US?

You can look at the cost of living comparators, but here is a rough outline.

Starting salary in US for SDE is probably like 100k. Going of single income tax filings your approximate aggregate tax rate will be ~%15. if you have state income tax, prolly like ~20% aggregate.

In Germany you would start at something like $70k and get a 42% tax rate afaik.

So right there you get more than twice the money left over after taxes.

Living costs would probably be close to each other, rent is probably cheaper in Germany cities but groceries and goods are more expensive.

And health insurance and costs are a small percentage of the salary.

The only big difference is that in US you sort of need a car, but again, with monthly cost of a finance for a car you are still not hitting

The biggest difference in cost comes when you start having kids - in US you pay closer to 25% income for all things child related, so that eats into the extra money real quick. For outside of tech, if you make middle class salary in the 70k range, you are much better off in EU, because a lot of things are heavily subsidized.

Re: Google and Amazon Struggle to Lay Off Workers in Europe Due to Labor Laws

#60

Post by throwaway6734 »

yladiz wrote: post #56
throwaway6734 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind. In the short term, Europe is much better at this than the US, but the long term sustainability of the European welfare state will be under serious threat over the next 50 years due to the horrible demographics of most European countries

Please cite if you have some sources to back this up, in particular the solvency of the welfare system across multiple European countries and the projected demographics over the next decades. I’m skeptical it’s as anywhere close to as bad as you state here.

Look at the demographic pyramids:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain

Massive bulges over 40 that will require support from a shrinking base of young people.

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