I know the answer is “because neolibs,” but I think at least one politician might want to campaign a little on how companies are replacing US employees with cheap labor abroad. I don’t even need to take a side on the matter. Objectively it seems they’re dropping the ball rather hard.
Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
41–50 of 96 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the remote jobs I see from Germany also hire only those who live in Germany, so it seems to me that Germans don't even want EU citizens, just Germans.
In EU since Jul'23 cross-border remote work is free of extra taxes and similar obligation if done up to 50% abroad. One can come to Germany for 3 days and come back to his country to work for 2 days remotely and spend weekend. More here https://socialsecurity.belgium.be/en/internationally-active/...
Unfortunately this is effectively useless as you need to submit your employees one by one to get this exception. I know of an employer ($4bn revenue) who said this is simply not feasible.
EU bureaucrats are just stupid.
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The comparison to U.S here makes absolutely no sense. Why not? My ex German boss moved to the US to work for a company there and since the position is remote, he can live and work in any state he wants. You can't do that in the EU which limits labor mobility which hurts the EU economy and innovation versus the US.
United States is one country. European Union is not a country, it is a collection of many independent countries with separate laws, languages, cultures, governments. You can also live and work from any corner of the same country in EU if you want, provided that your job is also in the same country, just like in the U.S. This is not any different. What you're saying is like can you work for a Canadian company while li…
I never said the EU is a country (nor does it need to be to fulfill my point), but as an economic block, if it wishes to compete with the US in terms of economy and innovation, it needs to do better in terms of labor mobility, and the current status quo is holding it back.
I hope my point of what I originally meant is clear now and you don't need to explain anymore about why the EU is not a country like the US.
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#44When this topic comes up I usually check https://layoffs.fyi/ which typically has roughly up to date data, but isn't 100% accurate of course, because it relies on submissions.
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the bureaucracy in question? Required salary for the blue card is really low now, especially for tech workers, so basically you just go ahead and hire as I understand.
You can of course hire a contractor and tax them as usual business costs. But for a permanent position the employee needs a European Social ID, a Tax ID, health care account and a bank account. All this is needed before you can pay the employee’s first loan.
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Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and every developer (at least those we met and signed) know their worth What about those you didn't sign? What about the SW bodyshops aka visa shops, who pray on desperate foreigners from broken countries trying to emigrate at any cost? I know more of those sleezy bodyshops than I have fingers on my hands to count. I never said your comapny does this, but you can't pretend immigration wage dumping doesn't exist and…
These foreigners will quickly learn the cost of living in Germany and what their colleagues get, I don't think it's a significant factor. What really keeps wages down IMO is the lack of high-margin/high-growth businesses, lack of German "unicorns", general risk-averseness of German capital (which can be explained by the previous two).
> IMO is the lack of high-margin/high-growth businesses
It's not really a German-only thing. Other than the US and China almost no other country currently has such things. EU is mostly traditional businesses and risk-averse investors.
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
You pay income tax based on where you live though. So I can earn money from Germany, but if I live in Estonia, my taxes go to Estonia. Most remote workers I know are set up as LLC's, and they simply invoice their clients for the work, entirely avoiding any tax or social security issues for the employer, since you the employee have to deal with it yourself in your own country.
At first you pay taxes in the country the company you work for is registered (there might be b2b options, which might differ). Then you pay rest in the country where you have a tax residency. In your example, at first you pay taxes in Germany and if Estonian taxes are bigger, you pay the difference there.
I am partly working for an Italian company from Germany. Billing is very simple. I invoice the Italian company according to the so-called reverse charge procedure: My invoice does not include VAT, but only the European VAT number of my and the customer's company. The customer must settle the VAT with his tax office. I only have to inform my tax office at regular intervals about the turnover with the individual companies, so that the European tax authorities can check whether the customer has declared his taxes correctly.
I invoice via my own company. But this is not mandatory. You can also apply for a VAT number as an individual and follow the same procedure. I did this before I set up the company.
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#48Japan: It's very hard for companies to lay off employees here, and I haven't seen any reports of large layoffs in the Japanese business press. However, a lot of IT work is subcontracted to smaller companies, and cutbacks in subcontracting might not make the news. Employment cutbacks by smaller IT firms might fall under the media radar, too.
The picture of the overall employment situation as conveyed by the news media here is of a tight labor market and of difficulty for companies in finding and retaining employees.
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#49I can only speak for the UK, but the tech market is very different here. We don't really have large tech companies like in the US. Most tech work in the UK is in sectors like finance, retail, or public sector. While our economy isn't great and there are lay offs it would be wrong to call it "tech layoffs". We have some tech startups here too though, and those are obviously struggling right now, but startups don't nor…
> We don't really have large tech companies like in the US.
No, but you do have the governemnt, HFT and banking industry which pays contractors well, plus local branches of many top US companies which is still a leg up on the labor market comapred to most EU memebers, meanign salaries at the top end are much higher than most of the EU.
Look for jobs in countries without top banking and no branhces of top US companies and see what salaries are like. UK will seem like a paradise.
Re: Ask HN: Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
#50According to Bitkom, the German IT trade association, there are 149,000 open IT positions reported in Germany as of 2023-12-13, which is 12,000 more than one year ago.[1] The absolut numbers are not so significant here, because this is only what is reported and a lot of IT positions exist outside of the IT industry in the narrow sense, but the trend is quite meaningful. [1] Source: https://www.bitkom.org/Presse/Press…
As someone who had a difficult time finding a job last year I took a look at press release and I found exactly what I thought I would find: 61% of companies say that the applicants' salary expectations "do not match the company's established salary structure", 35% of them see poor German language skills as a difficulty, and 48% are putting their hopes on AI to solve the skilled workers' shortage.
To my cynical eyes this looks like "we want skilled workers, we want them to speak fluent German, and we want them cheap". And as the saying goes, you can choose two of those things but rarely all three.