As an American Entrepreneur I find this article quite insightful.
But from the comments here it does seem to have agitated quite a few European employees...
Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
101–110 of 160 posts
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#102Earlier 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.
In the U.S., an employee has the right to do the work they were hired to do, owing to the need for career development and currency.
This is true in most European countries too.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#103I 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…
> But lets remember one thing, a deregulated work environment in USA has led to engineers getting paid 2 or 3 times as much
Are you sure you're not confusing correlation and causation? China for example has no work regulations but engineers there don't get payed 3 times as much as in Europe. And China here is not an exception, US are.
You'd have to do much more research to claim that deregulation leads to better payed jobs.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#104There'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…
It protects the employees on one side, but why would I want them to work more than 8 hours a day on a regular schedule when productivity drops sharp after 8, maximum 10 hours.
Do you have any modern (i.e., post 1940) evidence for this? What little empirical evidence I've seen suggests 60 hours is optimal. (But what little evidence there is applies to industrial fields, and likely doesn't generalize to knowledge work.)
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/work-hour-skepticism.h...
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/construction-peak-60hr...
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#105Great article (I am from UK). Dunno why its attracted so many haters.
I guess it's because it's talking about "Europe", and focusing on the very Western Europe. For entrepreneurs or startups, I would consider Berlin, Nordics or London, based on how internationally accessible they are and for their startup scene. Also I think telecom industry in general is much more old fashioned than web, mobile or gaming startups.
For example in Helsinki, probably every startup event / meetup is always in English, as well all the sites. Also I haven't come across that many legal hurdles working or hiring for startups. The contracts have been pretty similar what I have gotten in US startups.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#106Wow, this isn't just advice for those moving to Europe but also how European countries can step up their game and integrate the good ideas from American culture while avoiding the bad.
Or the opposite. Most of what I heard in the article about Europe I think was good, and protected the employees. The guy was mainly complaining about not getting tax breaks for capital gains and about having to pay more to fire people. And he didn't even understand the concept of people being motivated by more than just money.
Perhaps more folks would be more willing to work at startups if they knew they couldn't be fired at the drop of a hat with no or little severance. I also think it's good to have a penalty (or risk) for firing folks. People aren't just a commodity to be disposed of when not needed. Of course it would also be nice to have universal health care, and a culture that didn't glorify monetary gain above all else.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#107At one point the author complains about 20k of social charges overhead on a 50k job. Then a few lines later he says that it's cool that in Europe you mostly don't need to pay 800/mo in health insurance. Those 20k are the equivalent of the health insurance + 401k. The only difference is that they are mandatory (and IMHO are a much better allocated).
The landscape in the UK has changed somewhat in the last 5 years. Some foreigners like to think when we pay 30% in tax we receive unlimited resources whenever we retire and the government will tap in to our pot of "savings" whenever we need medical assistance. This simply isn't true. The "national insurance" payments don't even cover the cost of the NHS (£96.5 billion in 2010-2011 vs NHS budget for 2011-2012 of £106 billion).
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#108There'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…
And certainly in the Uk severance packages are not a Q for start ups as.
A The statutory redundancy payment only applies if you have worked for two years (which most failed start-up wont have)
B If a company goes bust badly the state pays the redundancy - some multinationals have abused this by artificially making a subsidiary bankrupt the 100's redundant workers redundancy where paid by the Government when the parent company got of of Scot free.
And don't forget get that IT workers are considered professionals and so don't have the full protection of the working time directive.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#109Great piece of advice!
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#110Even 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…
er that's bollocks in the UK the share save schemes are wildly popular - I know people who got £40k tax free out of one years at BT
And one at my current employer that comes out next year will pay out £20k if you maxed out your contributions 4 years ago
And a lot of mainland Europeans give out 1/12 bonuses at year end the "13th Month"