Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#91

Post by danmaz74 » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

wjjdjw wrote: post #27

maxxxxx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first learned about this type of contract I couldn’t even believe the concept. How can anybody think it’s ok that a company can claim and kind of ownership over things an employee does in his free time? I have signed up for 40 hours a week and not for being fully owned by the company. What happens if you work another job and invent things there? Do the companies own each other’s stuff?

So would you assume you can work 40 hr and trade secrets from your employer as a side hustle, just because it's not happening within the work time?

If someone wants to trade their employer's secrets, there are MUCH easier ways to do so than creating their own side business. This looks like a straw-man argument.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#92

Post by danmaz74 » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #84

ubermonkey wrote: post #42

This is a great idea, honestly, for the economy at large. If more people start more companies, we're probably all better off even if they don't all survive. If an American political party were TRULY pro-business and pro-entrepreneur, they'd get behind policies like this. They'd also support divorcing health care from employment, because holy COW how many folks would start a new venture IF ONLY they could afford priva…

> If more people start more companies, we're probably all better off even if they don't all survive. Not if the policy causes more inefficiencies itself. If people can, at will, take 6 months off, then all companies need to plan for more redundancy. This is obviously inefficient. So it ends up being a question of whether the benefits outweigh the negatives. Considering that Sweden isn't exactly topping the charts in…

Efficiency is important, but if all the benefits of the efficiencies accrue to the rich, we're not "all better off".

Plus, GDP per capita doesn't capture some very important aspects of of what makes people live better lives, eg job security, not being afraid of health issues, leisure time, etc.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#93

Post by netjiro » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

timc3 wrote: post #24

INTPenis wrote: post #8

I'm an anonymous coward on here so I can give another perspective. My employer struggles to find skilled people and when one guy on my team suddenly disappeared for 6 months it was definitely felt. Before that I hadn't really grasped the idea yet. Even though I've lived in Sweden since I was a child. I just couldn't accept that you can duck out of your job for several months and then come back as if nothing happened.…

If you are in IT in Sweden you might want legal advice to check this out. Anything that you build outside of work might be owned by your employer by default.

Law (1949:345) "rätten till arbetstagares uppfinningar"

It essentially specifies that the employer owns, but must pay a token cost for, "inventions" by an employee outside of his normal employment field and duties.

When you get hired you should _always_ make sure this is stricken by your contract.

> If I'm forced to sign it I will request a new contract without that section in it. Because even before I had my own business I was writing open source code for open source projects that we use and rely on. So it's impossible for my employer to own that code.

You need to _include_ a section that effectively negates 1949:345. Otherwise that law applies if nothing else is stated in the contract.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#94

Post by INTPenis » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

khjo wrote: post #80

INTPenis wrote: post #8

I'm an anonymous coward on here so I can give another perspective. My employer struggles to find skilled people and when one guy on my team suddenly disappeared for 6 months it was definitely felt. Before that I hadn't really grasped the idea yet. Even though I've lived in Sweden since I was a child. I just couldn't accept that you can duck out of your job for several months and then come back as if nothing happened.…

Actually you might be in trouble and the longer you keep it secret the more trouble you will be in. In Sweden you have a duty to be loyal to your employer, which means you are not allowed to plan and/or start a competing business during your employment. Your employer can sue you for violating your loyalty to your employer. However this also means that you have to be able to define what your employers area of business…

>Get their area of business defined.

This is the hard part for me because they do anything from hosting private clouds to buying a digital signage solution and re-selling it as their own.

My business is just consulting and developing. So far my job has been to develop a digital signage solution. Which would be in direct competition with them but I'm not left many options.

They even have a developer department. So the very nature of my employer makes it almost impossible for me to start anything in IT.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#95

Post by INTPenis » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

timc3 wrote: post #24

INTPenis wrote: post #8

I'm an anonymous coward on here so I can give another perspective. My employer struggles to find skilled people and when one guy on my team suddenly disappeared for 6 months it was definitely felt. Before that I hadn't really grasped the idea yet. Even though I've lived in Sweden since I was a child. I just couldn't accept that you can duck out of your job for several months and then come back as if nothing happened.…

If you are in IT in Sweden you might want legal advice to check this out. Anything that you build outside of work might be owned by your employer by default.

The employer in question rolled out a new contract a while back. Different from the one I had signed many years ago when I first started.

The new contract did have a section that stated essentially that anything an employee produces, on or off business hours, in or out of business locations, is owned by the employer.

I flat out refused to sign this and there was apparently no requirement for me to sign it. It was just presented to me digitally because a process had been started in their systems and signing that contract was part of the process.

If I'm forced to sign it I will request a new contract without that section in it. Because even before I had my own business I was writing open source code for open source projects that we use and rely on. So it's impossible for my employer to own that code.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#96

Post by netjiro » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 11:19 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #82

maxsilver wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill. This is what a strong economy actually looks like. It's hard (in my experience) to get Americans to understand this, because our economy here has been so bad for so long, most people here have never experienced anything like this.

> This is what a strong economy actually looks like. Is it actually though? Couldn't it also be a sign of an aging population? Sweden's population is growing, but it's mostly due to immigration. Considering the type of immigration that's mostly happening it's not bringing in lots of skilled workers.

Partially anecdotal:

The problem with hiring is from what I've seen not due to ageing population. Instead, due to very protective employment regulation employers in Sweden are absurdly slow and picky when hiring. Resulting in a very large temp staffing sector. They are also surprisingly conservative in expectations.

Contrasting anecdotal rant:

In 2014-2018 I was trying to help a Swedish company get a tech dev project going. They needed to bring in about five experts. For years this project was delayed until it was no longer relevant, because they had a pointlessly limited view on who they needed to hire, at what cost and under which structure. They would not accept a 15% salary increase above their opinion of the norm, and neither a distributed project nor a collaborative partner network construct. This loss of opportunity was huge for them.

During the same time I was staffing, running, and completing two projects in Switzerland, total of 25ppl. No issues, quick handling, excellent outcome. The Swiss investors understood that it's ok to run a project distributed across five countries and pay an extra 20-50% if it's difficult to find good people locally in a given field. Skill and speed is more important than location, cost, surname, language[2], etc.

This is not the only such situation I've come across in Sweden. I work as an R&D consultant specialised in setting up and running distributed collaborative high risk tech projects. Despite being a native Swede it's easier for me to run projects in Switzerland than in Sweden. Kind of sad.

For your second point:

For skilled immigrants (stem university degree) the situation is quite good.

From what I've heard, 2nd-3rd generation immigrants and onward tend to outperform the "native" population. This may change in Sweden after the large influx of unskilled refugees in the last 20-30 years, vs the predominantly work based immigration of 1950-1980s.

Statistically [1]: Sweden has one of the highest gaps in unemployment between European and non-European unskilled immigrants. If you're uneducated you _really_ should migrate to somewhere else if you _ever_ want to get a job.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/graph/png/Immigrat...

2: as long as they know English well enough :)

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#97

Post by parski » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 11:35 AM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #62

CalRobert wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, in 1973, there was a good chance you had a partner who could stay at home to watch the kid(s). Now you have both people working whether you like it or not, because you're competing with two-income households for housing. Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing, but making it (on average) necessary for two people to work to afford a home when before it took one is a bad thing.

> Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing Any reason you used the term servitude which implies a negative connotation, when many women were happy with that arrangement? It also implies none of the women received positive utility from staying at home with the kids and it was always a chore, which seems a little ridiculous. We should be embracing every opportunity for more personal involveme…

I think we would all be happy to be financially independant with our families but reality is different. Every society is severely broken by patriarchal norms which is hurting everyone. Most of all women. Enabling domestic servitude (which is both negative and the appropriate term) by catering to utopian fantasies only is only enforcing these norms and directly crippling women.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#98

Post by CorvusCrypto » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

mrmekon wrote: post #13

Since maternity and paternity leave are frequently more than 6 months long, employees temporarily leaving for a big chunk of the year is just a fact of doing business here. Granting unpaid leave to go try your own thing for a while is, from the employer's perspective, not any different. Some people never come back, most people do. The same is true for parental leave (many quit their jobs towards the end of their leav…

I think it depends on the company too. For tech companies especially in Stockholm and Malmö, It's really easy to hire developers. If it's a startup good luck getting unpaid leave during huge rushes as well as during industrisemester. So of course as always it depends.

However the thing I think that is more unique to Sweden and drives these kind of nice benefits is that it's really hard to get rid of an employee. Employees are protected so much with rules and regulations that even if you get let go you have a required three month grace period unless otherwise negotiated with the employee.

It's not uncommon I would say to see tech workers "fired" but then still on the payroll for an extra 2 months while they are arbetsbefriad (paid leave)

Pretty nice if you know how to game the system

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#99

Post by CorvusCrypto » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

adetrest wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, in the US and Canada, you are forced to sign clauses that gives your employer full ownership of anything you invent ever while employed and you have to ask your ~parents~ employer if you could please do something else on the side. Good for Sweden, these feodal rules are dragging everyone down.

Actually in Sweden you have this also. Most people just have it removed from the contract. In the US it is the same. or you get a version that instead just says they own anything done during company time or using employer resources.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#100

Post by mxuribe » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

TheBeardKing wrote: post #73

52-6F-62 wrote: post #2

I think this is brilliant, but I’m interested to hear criticisms or arguments against it.

I wonder how such a policy isn't abused. Do you need to provide some kind of proof for your entrepreneurship? What's to stop me from just taking the occasional 6-month sabbatical to start a travel blog and travel the world? I'd love to be able to save up for 6 months of leave knowing I have a guaranteed job to come back to. Also, what sort of employer benefits are provided during these periods? I'm assuming Sweden ha…

I would have to guess that there's probably some small amount of abuse...but aside from that, i think it is the fact that it is unpaid leave. I think if the leave were paid, there would be tons more abuse. To be sure, there's still risk in trying to go off on your own. Imagine that you hate your current job, have this chance, then take the chance...and then you fail spectacularly...Would you really feel good about going back to your crappy job? Maybe because i'm thinking through the mind of a sad American (sad because we lack many social safety nets such as this program)...but returning to a shitty job after failing big time doesn't sound like the nicest of feelings. Still, as much as America thinks that we're entrepreneurial, i sure wish we had this system.