Earlier quoted context omitted.
EDIT: mis-read post.
I think you misread that. He's saying it's harder to fire someone in Germany than in the USA because in Germany you need a reason.
I believe you are right...
Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
121–130 of 160 posts
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#122Even 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…
VCs have a hit rate of 1 or 2 percent in choosing successful startups. An employee, in contrast, has an even smaller chance to choose well, to get rich via an exit. It just doesn't make sense to join startups to get rich. You do it for the fun, the sense of adventure, the chance to make risky products, the responsibility, the level of engagement, and particularly meritocracy. Founders, on the other hand, have a better chance of gaining money and prestige, even from a minor exit.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#123Earlier 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…
There are huge differences between the countries. I have two friends working for two different us gaming companies doing basicly the same job. One in France and one in Germany. The one in France has a strict work schedule. If he has to do some special works like traveling for a fair or similar, he will be rewarded with freetime and/or money. Working late? Rewarded. The guy in Germany has a real problem. He is working…
The guy in Germany's problem is his contract.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#124Firing is not hard. When my country telecom was privatized and the contract limited the amount of layoffs they could legally make - they just put every parasite in his own room with no internet, no pc-s, totally forbidden to use personal devices and gave them no tasks. They were also under strict monitoring for misusing the company time(reading on work), phones and being strict on arrival/departure. The ones that did…
Interesting.. out of curiosity, which country is this?
Bulgaria - it was 2001/2002 I think. Ancient times when Dialogic phone cards were considered sexy. And ISDN speeds were fast. I was doing some dev work for them on a outside project. The company had payroll of 35 000 and a modern telecom needed only 6-7000. The new owners used every possible combination of scare, carrots, sticks, severances to try and achieve the goal.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 '…
"The work ethos is different as well, europeans tend to regard extreme outliers in wealth as extreme outliers, less as role models.
What does that have to do with work ethos? Do you think there is a strong correlation between working hard and the dream of becoming extremely wealthy? Of the four options, (born poor/rich, working hard/slacking) I agree that (born poor & slacking) is highly unlikely to make you wealthy, but that is about it.
The exaggerated version of my view on workers rights in Europe/the EU (1), compared to the US, is that, in Europe, the class struggle between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat#Usage_in_Marxist_th...) has led to a distribution of power that gives more power to the proletariat.
That is why, for example, consumer laws are stronger in the EU, and that workers have more rights, enforced by the EU, more or less acting for all workers.
In the USA, "workers" and "owners" are more each others enemies than collaborators for a common cause (for an extreme example, see http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...), and workers work hard for two reasons: fear of their employers and the _dream_ of becoming extremely wealthy.
In the EU, on the other hand, bosses respect their employees and give them room for self-development. That makes them work hard (did I say this was the exaggerated version?).
I also thinks similar logic applies to medical insurance and the prison systems in the EU and the USA, but that may be a bit far sought.
Also, some loose remarks on things stated in the article:
- AFAIK, you can start your startup in a garage all you want. Rules about workplace conditions only apply to employees. As long as you don't have employees, you can work wherever and however you want.
- Similarly, you can work as long as you want for your own company.
- Many countries have limited liability companies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability_company) that give you easy protection against losing your house in case your company goes bankrupt. The difficulty of starting one varies by country (Google showed me ads claiming a price of about €400–, or about €3000,– if you want one within four hours for Dutch ones)
- When I learned about it earlier this year, I was surprised that Germans have to have a doctor's approval to report sick. That sounds like bureaucratic waste to me. In the Netherlands, you just report sick.
(1) I know the two are different, but the EU 'exports' its rules outside the EU, too. For example, Switzerland is not in the EU, but it follows many EU directives because it wants to trade easily with its neighbors and even pays towards the EU budget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland–European_Union_rela...); Norway is not in the EU, but it is in the Schengen zone of 'no passport check on travel'. To get there, it has to comply with several EU rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway–European_Union_relations)
On the other hand, there are so many degrees of 'in the EU' that mere mortals cannot keep track of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union#Member_states: 27 members, one almost member, 5 candidates, 4 potential candidates, one potential candidate which is not recognized as an independent country by all, some EFTA countries not in the EU, micro states that have the euro, but are not in the EU, overseas areas of European countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_member_state_territorie...). Nevertheless, I'll treat "Europe" and "the EU" as synonyms. That should do for this rant.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#126What strikes me about this article is the utter lack of understanding . It is a highly subjective, very politicized and ideologically tainted description without any kind of understanding, and some of the attempts at interpretation of cultural and legal differences are either plain wrong or deliberately misrepresented. It's an anti-European rant, nothing more. Here's a great gem for example: "To work hard, to work lo…
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…
That sounds highly company specific. I am Dutch, and I have never encountered this before, despite working at many different companies. While working overtime is not the norm, it is certainly not unheard of, or even particularly rare, when deadlines are approaching. Depending on your contract, you may get comped in money, extra vacation or not at all.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also don't buy the notion that Europeans are generally resentful towards entrepreneurs.
Personally I don't think people are resentful to entrepreneurs but it isn't glorified the way it is elsewhere. If I told an American friend I ran my own business they would usually be very interested and tell me how great that is. Most of the people I know (Europeans) tend to think of it as 'not a real job' and regular tell me 'I should get a real job'. These aren't people trying to hurt me, they legitimately believe…
to be fair I don't think that being a telecommuting software developer is glorified anywhere really.
From France, the view seems to be that small businesses are mainly for artisanal things. People don't really have this idea of working your life away because our culture believes (rightly so? I imagine here the opinion might be opposite) more in that work is not the meaning of life, and so the idea of spending so many hours toiling away (especially in something like software eng, where there are 10000s of consultancies you could work for and probably be beter paid) seems counterintuitive. That or you're just greedy.
I'd also like to point out that Europe is not a country, talking about "Europeans" is silly outside of the context of "people who have access to affordable healthcare", and that mentalities change enormously across borders.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#128As 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...
Because most of what is actually said is inaccurate.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#129Raising money in Europe is also quite difficult for an early stage startup. European investors are quite risk adverse; it's uncommon to invest in a company without existing revenues (even if there is a solid plan for revenue growth in the short term). It ultimately comes down to the perception of failure: if you start a company and fail, in Europe that's pretty much it for you, you've been branded a failure personally. Until that changes, the startup climate in Europe is going to continue to struggle.
Re: Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
#130Wow, 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…
well most countries do have breaks for start ups ans at least the Uk doesn't have the perverse taxing of options that the USA has which can lead to options that are under water and worthless costing 100,000's