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Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

english.martinvarsavsky.net

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Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#71

Post by justincormack »

michaelfeathers wrote: post #53

Nice article, at least as a heads up for people. But, there are two areas that he did not go into. One was possibility of building a business around relationships with contractors rather than employees. I can imagine there being laws that would make that hard also. The other is that maternity/paternity leave is big consideration also. While I think they are great in many contexts, I've heard from business owners in N…

I dont know of any laws making working with contractors hard, so long as you are not apparently using them to avoid tax. Maternity and paternity are not usually a problem, obviously if your company is small anything can be a problem.

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#72

Post by mongol »

skreech wrote: post #7

Article is ridden with errors, mostly based on a faulty premise. Europe is not a country. Europe isn't even the EU. Laws, regulations, attitudes and tax rates vary widely. If you want to do a startup in Europe, choose a country first and then read up.

Yes. I am European, working as a contractor in my own limited company, and am not in a position to speak out for the busines climate in all of Europe. I can say how taxes, pensions and health care works in Sweden, but going beyond that, I would mostly be speculating.

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#73

Post by Rexxar »

rickmb wrote: post #47
jdkx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's most certainly true in France and I guess in other Latin countries.

So how did entrepreneurs like Sarkozy and Berlusconi ever get elected? Get off it. Entrepreneurs aren't worshiped like gods by default just for being entrepreneurs, that's all.

Sarkozy is not an entrepreneur. It's theorically a lawyer but he is a full time politician for 30 years (He was mayor of Neuilly since 1983).

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#74

Post by martinvars »

I stand by my comment that I could not start a company in the garage of my father in law in Mulheim an der Ruhr. Many of those commenting here should see how companies get started in USA. And yes kudos to Germany for its changes in recent years. Other European countries should follow its lead. But lets remember one thing, a deregulated work environment in USA has led to engineers getting paid 2 or 3 times as much and that does not include stock options taxed at capital gains rates.

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#75

Post by james4k »

skrebbel wrote: post #43

Even though most of the dismissal comments here are fair and true, I find that this article contains some true gems: > When starting a company in the US, informality rules, we all know the HP story that HP was started out of a garage. Now in Europe work is so regulated that you can’t start a company out of a garage because you can’t legally work in a garage. > A friend of mine was fed up with an employee who worked p…

Stock options give employees a sense of ownership and responsibility in the company, which is a powerful thing.

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#76

Post by HarryHirsch »

RyanZAG wrote: post #14

I don't live in a country with the kind of employee protection rules as in Germany, but the article still comes off as a rant against employee protections. 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,…

This article is worse than a rant. People rant in response to intolerable conditions.

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.

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#77

Post by Xylakant »

justincormack wrote: post #59
Xylakant wrote: post #42

There's some light and some shadow in this article. I can't tell about southern europe, but most of this does not apply in germany - even the parts that are specifically about germany. There are recommendations about how a work-place should look like but they are mostly common sense [1] and not mandated by law, at least not in the IT Business. There is a law about workplace safety [2] but that's like 12 pages long an…

Thats the problem with generalizations about Europe, there has been some progress towards harmonisation but lots of things vary hugely from country to country. For every statement you have to add "except in Belgium", "except in Germany" etc, and he mostly just added the "except in UK" ones.

There are some valid generalizations about europe. There are some mandated minimum holidays for example (4 weeks IIRC) and the tendency to have stronger employee rights. The work ethos is different as well, europeans tend to regard extreme outliers in wealth as extreme outliers, less as role models. The problem is that this article takes some assumptions that might be true for spain and uk and tries to sell them as 'europe'. I'd be interested if the majority of american investors see europe this way or if this is an outlier.

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#79

Post by Xylakant »

growse wrote: post #56
james4k wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but when I was working in the Netherlands, my colleagues and I were repeatedly told that we could not stay to work in the office past normal working hours. Even with impending deadlines that for the life of the company could not be moved, which is why we were working the long hours in the first place. To put it in perspective, at one point we were even told to work from home if needed, but to not tell t…

Just because you once had a job where your employer told you the law said a particular thing, doesn't mean the law actually says that particular thing. I've worked long weeks before without any issue between myself and my employer (in the UK). Most people I converse with/encounter would probably say the same thing. All the EU working time directive ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive ) says is that…

Not in germany. The law mandates ab absolute maximum of 10 hours a day, 10 hours break between shifts and max 60 hours a week unless there's some case of emergency. These already are the extended hours, that are only possible if the overtime can be taken off within a reasonable timeframe. The regular work-hours are 6 days of 8 hours. The employer is legally responsible that these limits are enforced.

Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe

#80

Post by venomsnake »

Nursie wrote: post #58
venomsnake wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were under contract to not cut more than 3K jobs per year, but had to get rid of almost 20K persons. Saw what constructive dismissal is - how is this making the employee life unbearable - he is getting full salary for doing nothing and nobody is harassing him. He is just not allowed to communicate with the rest of the company.

Making them sit in a room for hours at a time with no work, monitoring them for any activity they use to distract themselves so you can use it to fire them - that's basically abusive, verging on mental torture. The company being under contract is no excuse for abusive conduct.

Have you noticed the word parasites in my original post? As a post communist regime company in Eastern Europe half were communist party related nepotists, third were incompetent and 20% did medal of honor worthy deeds to try and do all the work there was. It was common for a lot of people to come to work just to drink coffee and do nothing but gossip. They just took away the coffee and the gossip.
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