51–60 of 206 posts
The location is also decent as it is attractive for many eastern Europeans who tend to be well trained and not hyperexpensive.
German labor law has some features that might interact in interesting ways with startups. Germany lacks employment-at-will; it appears that disputed terminations can easily become lawsuits there (but German law also seems to have orderly mechanisms for resolving these disputes, which boil down to mandatory severance). German law has what appears to be a strict policy on hours worked per week and per day, and on worki…
> German law has what appears to be a strict policy on hours worked per week and per day, and on working over weekends. If it's anything like over here in The Netherlands (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), this will have very little interactions with startups: you simply work regular hours on paper, but simply make a lot of hours in the evenings / weekends at home.
Also, let me be quite open: if you hire someone for 40 hours and expect him to work more then 40 hours, don't be surprised if some come back and sue. You broke contract.
This really does bias the types of immigrants we get. As much as people might complain about immigrants coming in and then going on welfare, it just doesn't happen with any frequency. Instead, we get immigrants who come here and start companies at twice the rate of natural born citizens.
Our labor laws also select for people who really want to work - at least compared to our European counterparts. I don't mean to say that people who emigrate to Europe don't want to work, but the perception that you have to work longer hours in the US certainly does weed out the people who are overly concerned about working too much.
As long as we continue to have people who want to come to the US, I can't see why we'd want to make the process easier unless we can continue to keep these filters in place.
I've seen that France was creating a "startup visa" to help foreigners founders to create companies there. Is there something similar going on on Germany?
Im realling looking over this, and was thinking about Berlin, Paris or Rio (on my own country)
Edit: I also can go for the Polish citizenship as a polish descendant and get into the EU that way as another option
For anyone considering working in Germany, I would definitely recommend looking into the Blue Card, which offers some advantages over the normal work permit:
- It's initially valid for 4 years. For limited contracts, it's valid for the length of the contract plus 3 months.
- After 36 months with a Blue Card, you can apply for permanent residency (as opposed to 5 years with the normal work permit). This is lowered to only 21 months if you can prove B1-level German proficiency.
- You can leave the EU for up to 12 months without losing your visa status (versus 6 months with the normal work permit).
- After 18 months, you're free to live and work in any other EU country.
Further details: http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If really wanted to work in Berlin or elsewhere, you'd do it, and it wouldn't be a big deal. This is simply getting at the notion of the premium - how much I value working abroad. A more formal way of asking this question, assuming for simplicity a $100K/year salary: "How attractive (measured in dollars) is the idea of working in Berlin?" If it's worth $30,000/year, you'll do it as long as you can make 70% of your…
Berlin is a relatively cheap place to live. So depending on where you live now you might actually need much less money when living in Berlin.
This is controversial but it is my personal experience: As a non-white, living in Germany is hard; the level of bigotry and racism in my opinion makes the nuisance of the US visa system negligible. Most tech immigrants are non-whites so I think a debate over immigration should take into account the quality of life for the techies and their family. Sure the US still have a lot to do to improve its visa system, but the…
Most importantly (imo) Berlin is a European capital with fun stuff to do and very affordable rent and cost of living. The location is also decent as it is attractive for many eastern Europeans who tend to be well trained and not hyperexpensive.
*"The Germans appreciate their visa-application process in comparison with America’s, but in the end, it’s still a slower process than many techies are willing to tolerate."
German bureaucracy may not be the worst in the world, but it is significantly more convoluted than the United States.