151–160 of 474 posts
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BTW in Germany, if a company decides to lay off people just to save money, they have to coordinate with some government agency -- and if the company doesn't have financial trouble, those layoffs can be blocked. This happened to Alphabet/Google when they wanted to lay off 6% of their workforce, but were wildly profitable. They couldn't in Germany. (This probably wouldn't have applied in the Twitter case, because Twitt…
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I'm so glad most European countries have robust labour laws which often favour the employee in case of doubt, not the employer. This type of behaviour - unilaterally changing the employment agreement without even specifying them in their entirety! - should never be possible. I hope other employees and EU countries follow suit and slap X with more fines, if this impacted other citizens as well.
Can't wait until the US wakes up and we get an endless 'that's why the startup/innovation culture in the EU sucks and will never be comparable to the US'
I am glad to hear that workers rights are being enforced in Europe. As an employee in Germany, it sounds deranged to receive an email saying I have one day to completely change my work contract, or be fired from my job.
I'm so glad most European countries have robust labour laws which often favour the employee in case of doubt, not the employer. This type of behaviour - unilaterally changing the employment agreement without even specifying them in their entirety! - should never be possible. I hope other employees and EU countries follow suit and slap X with more fines, if this impacted other citizens as well.
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this also means companies are much more hesitant to hire
Having short term contracts solved this a long time ago and is mostly a fallacy.
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"This works both ways - employee can quit any time too." I think employees have been allowed to quit at any time since the early 20th century in most western countries. Of course there is a probationary period involved, but it's nothing like earlier times when police would possibly come and take you to your place of work, or it was illegal to be unemployed in several jurisdictions up to 20th century (e.g. USSR) etc.…
When I worked in Europe I had to give 3 months notice. If I left before that I had to pay the company the equivalent salary . So let’s say I leave after 1 month of giving notice. I now owe the employer 2 months salary.
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You are effectively buying those labour protections with the difference in salary. There may be some truth to this, but it's not as stark as some think. The average cost of a "moderate" house in.. say, Palo Alto is around $3M USD. Those are typically older houses, smaller lots, less desirable neighbourhoods. Everything is more expensive in such an area. Property tax on that $3M USD house is likely going to be about $…
Housing in Ottawa is ridiculously expensive. Good luck buying a home for less than $1M and even then you’re looking at a considerable commute. How one can take a 67% pay cut and have housing still high means you have more in your pocket you’re going to have to explain.
And it's not just the house itself, goods and services associated with real estate have blown up with it. Home renovations and maintenance work on your home (if you can even find a contractor) are just stupid. So even if you bought in years ago (like I did), the carrying costs are very high.
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You are effectively buying those labour protections with the difference in salary. Companies could even offer that as an option. We pay you $97k with no labour protections, or $68k but we promise to give you all the labour rights that Germany has, including nice long holidays, unions, no unpaid overtime, can't be fired without cause, etc. Your choice. (And those figures are the median programmer salary in the USA and…
You are effectively buying those labour protections with the difference in salary. There may be some truth to this, but it's not as stark as some think. The average cost of a "moderate" house in.. say, Palo Alto is around $3M USD. Those are typically older houses, smaller lots, less desirable neighbourhoods. Everything is more expensive in such an area. Property tax on that $3M USD house is likely going to be about $…
You can also choose to live in California for a few years as a renter if you are young, save money and go live elsewhere with the savings. Ask me how I know you can do that...
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This actually used not be the case. About six years ago I was in San Francisco for work, and was surprised how inexpensive it was. Like, it wasn’t cheap, but I’d heard it talked up as basically the most expensive place in the world, and it was largely cheaper than Dublin. Going back recently, it’s a _lot_ more expensive; home has gotten more expensive too, but not at the same rate. (Some of this is due to the currenc…
Your mistake there is comparing to Dublin - I live in an expensive Uk city (Edinburgh) and it’s just incredible how expensive going home to Dublin is. The other bit is that you’re comparing living in Dublin to visiting SF. Rental prices in SF make Dublin seem cheap. You’re still probably financially better off living in SF as an engineer, but I’d rather the quality of life of Ireland/Europe
> Rental prices in SF make Dublin seem cheap
Oh, yeah, they definitely do _now_, but pre-Covid it wasn’t as clear-cut.
> You’re still probably financially better off living in SF as an engineer
I think even that probably isn’t totally clear at this stage. If you’re in Big Tech(TM), you’re probably getting on the order of 60-70% pay in Dublin that you’d get in the same role in the same company in Silicon Valley (there’s some variation, but that’s about the usual ratio). If you have to pay SF rent or mortgage (plus property tax) with that, then you may not come ahead. If you can afford to buy outright or with a small mortgage, you’re probably doing better in SF, but even most big tech workers can’t afford that.
(I think the pay gap probably is bigger outside big tech, tho)
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That's not true. The higher wages in the US are not related to labour protections. They are related to vastly higher wages in tech because of big corps pushing up those wages to have the best of the best working for them. Proof is simple: Since a lot of low paying jobs in the US have no labour protections. Or look at what Tesla does in Texas, with the "unprotected" third party companies that don't have labour protect…
> Proof is simple: Since a lot of low paying jobs in the US have no labour protections. That doesn't follow. The low paying jobs exist because the value to the employer of hiring someone exceeds the low pay. For those jobs, if the employer is required to provide paid vacation etc. then it can push the cost of hiring someone over the cost of offshoring the job or automating it, so the alternative then isn't high pay v…
Your argument makes no sense.
It was a bubble, but a bubble that has been inflated for a very long time.