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I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough wit

I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). Starting is hard enough without the general negative attitudes, the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly). And I was in one of the two best EU countries, God only knows how bad it is in Spain or Italy or whatever where opening for business more than one day a week is seen as aggressive. (again, I exaggerate slightly). If anyone disagrees with this article who's in the US, I dare you to go and try and start something in the EU and report back. Not the UK, the EU. Glory to the US, and the ability to move States with little friction. Glory to the LLC. Glory to firing someone with less than six months notice (I'm looking at you, Belgium). Glory to sales tax below 20%. Glory to the country I chose as home, which so many natives seem to be delusional about how terrible it is. One day I hope the EU lives up to the dream of being a genuine federation of EU states, with zero friction movement of labor (this is completely laughable now compared to the US), defends its borders instead of giving up on them, allows free and fair competition and puts its citizens above the bizarre EU commission and its bonkers methods and plans.

analog31 5y ago
Oddly enough I've struggled to find any data showing that the US is actually better for entrepreneurs. It's all anecdotal. I have a small business but it will stay small because I need my day job for health care. Granted, this is but one article: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-were-the-most-entrepreneurial-country-in-the-world-not-so-fast/263102/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-w...
- ransom1538 5y ago
  "Oddly enough I've struggled to find any data showing that the US is actually better for entrepreneurs" That literally was what the article was about. Tons of figures/facts in the article.
  - analog31 5y ago
    Indeed, I was just skittish about hanging my hat on a single article.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Gdp is not anecdotal.
  - pjbk 5y ago
    Nor productivity: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b2774f97-en/1/2/1/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/b2774f97-en&_csp_=11d9839f3d9224cfd95c09c235f434d0&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b2774f97-en/1/2/1/index....
    - oblio 5y ago
      That only shows the evolution, what are the actual numbers?
      - thow-01187 5y ago
        Let's just say...that the data doesn't exactly support the thesis that the lack of venture funding is a drag on Europe's productivity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour-pennworldtable?country=GBR~ESP~USA~FRA~DEU~ITA~KOR~POL~ROU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...
        effie 5y ago
        Very strange to see UK and South Korea so low.
oneplane 5y ago
On the other hand, people here don't tend to go bankrupt and lose their house, healthcare (ironically) and life (from a social aspect) in general when they don't have a perfect health. They don't have to hide their state of wellbeing from their employer in the hope of not getting fired, and they don't have to worry about living on the street because they don't have a job for a bit. Businesses are fun and all, but in practical terms, they are just sociopaths when compared to what people actually need. Don't misinterpret this as "and therefore it should be hard to have a business", but the American way is one I'd run away from if it ever tried to apply over here. I run a business and it's fine. Not amazing, not a hockeystick and I'm also not interested in either. It's fine, and that's all it needs to be.
- refurb 5y ago
  You know how I know you’ve never lived or worked in the US? Your characterization is laughable. 50%+ of the federal (never mind state!) budget is social programs. But apparently “there is no safety net”.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >On the other hand, people here don't tend to go bankrupt and lose their house, healthcare (ironically) and life (from a social aspect) in general when they don't have a perfect health Only 4% of US bankruptcies are because of medical bills <https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/03/26/the-truth-about-medical-bankruptcies/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0...>. A tipoff that [insert large percentage here] of bankruptcies aren't actually because of medical costs is that only 6% of bankruptcies by those without health insurance are because of that cause. The biggest cause of bankruptcies is lack of income, which health insurance doesn't affect.
  - fy20 5y ago
    > The biggest cause of bankruptcies is lack of income, which health insurance doesn't affect. Maybe that 4% is correct, but for sure how to deal with paying for medical care is a big worry for many people in the US. There was a post a few days ago (or comments at least) discussing how many people working low wage jobs in the US are working 29 hours or fewer specifically so their employer doesn't need to provide health insurance. Are there social programs that cover those people, or do they just not go to the doctor when sick?
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
> general negative attitudes, poor work ethic Citations needed as to how they’re significantly worse in Europe than the US. Perhaps they’re simply smart enough not to work hard for someone else’s benefit. > freedom of movement The only negative (at least in a strictly US context between the states) is that it forces issues that the Constitution says are the domain of the states into problems that only the Federal government can solve. No city can unilaterally decided to end homelessness with its borders if the homeless from the next state over are free to move in.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  GP's comment is a tactless lament of not being able to be a true exploitive business owner.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ouchithurtsma 5y ago
  Europeans are negative with poor work ethic because we're exploited by the government. There is no point in working hard, you don't get anything out of it. Laziness is rewarded, do the math, check the numbers, they dont lie.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
> the low work ethic > glory .. glory.. So you were missing "glory to overwork people to death" and things like "glory to force them to work on weekends, late nights and make them feel guilty and insecure about their jobs"? And things like "glory to people going bankrupt in hospitals", right?
- refurb 5y ago
  Lazy reply. Go work in Asia if you want to see overwork.
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  The first large scale study on overwork deaths says US has less deaths than many countries in Europe. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002208#f0020 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people-are-dying-from-working-long-hours-a-new-who-study-finds https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people... In the U.S., less than 5% of the population is exposed to long work hours, according to a map the WHO published with the study. That proportion is similar to Brazil and Canada — and much lower than Mexico and in countries across most of Central and South America. Good work ethic != Overworking
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - cscurmudgeon 5y ago
    Downvoted for bringing contradictory data. HN is anti-science.
mc32 5y ago
I can confirm with the anecdote of an acquaintance in the EU. Nothing fancy. Just a hair salon. He was complaining about the authorities coming down to inspect it, looking for the smallest details to fine him. Sign was the wrong size, it wasn't illuminated the right way. Something about serving tea. It seemed absurd to me. On the other hand, it was a nice place to get a haircut.
- contriban 5y ago
  Can confirm. My parents own a restaurant in Italy and if the authorities come it’s a € 2000/3000 fine for sure. For a small seasonal business that’s substantial. For example if you give a receipt and the customer misplaces it on the way out and can’t find anymore, you’re liable for tax evasion. Never mind that the POS has its own registry they can check. For the authorities, “you didn’t give a receipt, so they can’t tax you.” When the restaurant was opened about 20 years ago, all sorts of departments came to check it out and suggest whatever ridiculous change. Food safety in Italy however is probably among the best in the world due to this.
  - hermitdev 5y ago
    > For the authorities, “you didn’t give a receipt, so they can’t tax you.” Honest question: is this actually the law, or a tactic of an official seeking a bribe?
    - danmaz74 5y ago
      It's the law
    - choeger 5y ago
      There is a very similar situation in Germany. The reason behind this is that you can use older POS systems for tax fraud (I never fully understood the details), which apparently was quite a thing amongst smaller businesses. The tax authorities then demanded a perfect chain of paper records (apparently the paper recipe contains some kind of a reference to earlier transactions). Bizarrely, they actually asked customers to keep these receipts which pretty much no one really did, but it was a public topic for a couple of weeks. German source: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/FAQ/2020-02-18-steuergerechtigkeit-belegpflicht.html#doc0926b642-b4d2-41cb-8fac-90bbf815fcbcbodyText9 https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/FAQ/2020-0...
nodemaker 5y ago
Hmm so 1) the corporate tax rate and other tax benefits in many EU countries is much lower than the US (I imagine you must have heard of US companies using their European operations to dodge us taxes) 2) The quality of labor you can hire is generally higher in europe (for example its common knowledge that facebook london has better engineers) I think what the us has is access to venture capital which i agree is difficult in europe.
- deertick1 5y ago
  I have a really hard time believing theres higher quality talent in Europe in general.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Why? The EU has a higher population than the US and it has many top notch universities. Europe tends to lose many of its tech talents to the US, but if you pay comparable salaries you'll keep them.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      Because on average all of the top talent goes to the US companies that pay an order of magnitude more than the locals (FAANG).
      - oblio 5y ago
        My point was that there is local talent. Just pay US salaries and it will stay put.
      - sveme 5y ago
        Hyperbole much? I earn around 100k€ in Munich. You‘re saying the local google or apple would pay me a million per year? Wow.
        krakatau1 5y ago
devoutsalsa 5y ago
Speaking of frictionless employment labor movement… In the USA I once called in sick on a Monday & was retroactively fired the previous Friday.
- contriban 5y ago
  It depends, were you hired the previous Thursday?
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    Nope. I’d been there for 6 months.
  - mikro2nd 5y ago
    So what if they were? If you're ill, you're ill and should not have to go in to work. Sometimes ill-timed shit happens. Only in the US you can get fired for it. My mind boggles at the concept of "retroactive" firing... wtf is that even?
    - devoutsalsa 5y ago
      I suppose the upside is you can quit at anytime with no notice. That’s great from an employee perspective, in a feeling of freedom sense.
- ouchithurtsma 5y ago
  Companies should be able to fire as they like. They ain't your caretakers. Workers have to be prepared to lose their job any day, people gotta be responsible for their own life? edit: Are the leftists flagging all my comments or what. Am I not allowed to speak my opinion anymore? What happened to HN
vmception 5y ago
> Glory to the country I chose as home, which so many natives seem to be delusional about how terrible it is. The US is a great hopping off point. As in, its great to start from here and take advantage of any system almost anywhere else in the world. But I would say a wealthy EU or wealthy Swiss starting point is good too. But I wouldn't incorporate there and especially not have employees. Both systems work the best for business in intangibles. Many US states are very incompetent and bureaucratic and slow in business formation as well. Its just that those states are completely ignored for the ones that excel in those products.
poopypoopington 5y ago
Lack of national healthcare really puts a damper on free labor movement in the US. You want to start a company but also have health insurance for your family? That'll be $12,000 with a massive deductible... Gets in the way of a lot of would be entrepreneurs
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  As much as I'd like to agree (I am pro-national healthcare for the US) - if you don't have $20,000 (let's say that covers your annual premiums & deductible) - you sure as heck don't have the funds to quit your job and become a full-time entrepreneur.
  - yarcob 5y ago
    You can start a software business in Austria with just a laptop and get health insurance for 32€/month (total social security payments if you don't make profits are about 150€/month). Fees for registering a company are waived/reduced for founders. I had nowhere near $20000 when I started. Sure, if you want to open a capital intensive business like a restaurant, you'll need more money. But that's the same everywhere.
    - woodson 5y ago
      It's somewhat more difficult for founding a limited liability company there, where the capital requirements are much higher than in most other countries (Eur 35K).
      - yarcob 5y ago
        Yeah, that's why most founders don't actually register a GmbH. Many small businesses are sole proprietors, even businesses with a few employees.
        7steps2much 5y ago
        Isn't it possible to fund a "mini" GmbH with only 10.000€ and build up to the 35.000€ over a span of a couple of years or something? I think I remember something like that being the case.
ddalex 5y ago
On the other hand the people in EU are happier, have better social protection, better benefits, better health systems, better consumer protection, better application of rules and laws, they make for more productive employees. Do the shareholders get as rich as fast as in the hyperactive US economy? Not, but the society functions better. I very much prefer the EU.
- SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
  have you tried to start a company there?
  - Tesl 5y ago
    Did you completely fail to parse what he was saying there or something?
    - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
      responding to a question with a question. rhetorical brilliance.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    Why should society optimize for how easy it is to start a business?
    - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
      gee, i wonder... clearly a bunch of social geniuses in here on a slow friday night.
    - apatters 5y ago
      Because if you don't you'll end up with fewer businesses, which will concentrate wealth, which has documented negative effects on society.
      - yoz-y 5y ago
thijsc 5y ago
Reporting back: Your comment is utter nonsense. There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Reliable and cheap health care is a huge boon for small entrepreneurs. There’s little regulation to deal with as a software company. Child care and great schools are cheap or free. Yes firing people is much harder, that is a different context compared to the US you have to properly plan for. Which we do over here. Overall many countries in Europe are amazing places to start a business in.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  > There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Is there really ? I see attempts at copying the US tech scene, but a lot of it seems structured to suck money out of government funds and programs. I see very little private investment. Just recently I talked to a local VC, in a casual chat about how they started their fund I found out they pulled money out of a EU fund, they had to put up like 25% of the money and the rest was just EU grants to stimulate entrepreneurship. Do I need to say that their portfolio looks like a garbage bin of knockoff attempts and small businesses masquerading as startups.
  - 238475235243 5y ago
    This is entirely accurate from my experience. It's cargo cult "tech scene".
  - davidgatti 5y ago
    This description is UE startups in a nutshell :) Countries like Poland for example, get massive amount of money from the EU, and there are business that specialize only in getting grants for people, which then they use to make a "company" for a year or two, and when the money runs out they close it and reopen another one with the next grant. With no revenue stream idea what so ever. In this type of country's if you have a EU grant base company, you are a meme. Italy on the other hand, dose not use the grants, because here nobody have a clue what's the point of a company, what it means to work to build something successful, and if you talk to an Italian about the grind, or working a minimum of 16h a day, they look at you as a complete lunatic - while complaining that they don't have money. Well... Either you grind or you meet every day with your friends for an Aperitivo, and live the Dolce Vita.
cjblomqvist 5y ago
In Sweden you can more or less fire anyone as long as you're a small company, without any long notice. I don't recognize the other negative comments either. Taxes are high, but VAT doesn't matter at all unless you're a B2C company (and really it's the consumer paying for it, not you). Vacation is 5 weeks which I realize is a lot compared to the US (I've worked in US so know how it works). But if those extra 3 weeks are what kills your company? Tax on salaries are quite high, but salaries are significantly lower (especially compared to the level of competence you get - but it varies). On the other hand we have free health care (with a quality level similar to the top 20-50% level you get in the US is I'm not mistaken) and great support systems should you fail or something happens. Admin is not obscene and you actually get a lot of help should you need it from the government agencies like the tax authorities. Then Sweden has a similar level of entrepreneurship per capita as California or the SF region even I believe. Access to capital do suck compared to the US (based on my limited perspective). Fear of getting sued for silly shit is unheard of here compared to the US. TLDR; It varies a lot between countries in the EU. It can be problematic to be overly generalistic in your description. It's for sure different, but I'm not sure everything just sucks compared to the US.
tasogare 5y ago
> the low work ethic Incredible to read this... the top-15 of most productive countries [1] are all European save for the US and Australia, which are populated with a huge population of European descent. [1] https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/ https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/
- kmlx 5y ago
  having lived and worked in Asia, I have to say that table looks weird. i have found no other place in this planet where people work longer and better than certain places in Asia.
  - effie 5y ago
    The table is not about work ethic, but about how much money is made. The latter is probably correlated with the former, but only partially.
  - emptyfile 5y ago
    If they worked "better" then they wouldn't be working longer. Their French counterparts do the same job in 5 hours instead of 10.
deleted 5y ago
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throwaway184747 5y ago
> I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). I moved here from the US to start a company, and for anyone reading, listen to the above advice. (I'm not a US citizen, so non-trivial to do a startup).
- danieldk 5y ago
  Since we are piling up anecdotal evidence. I am in the NL and starting a company took, I don’t know, 30 minutes of my time? Filling in a form on a website and a 10 minute appointment at the Chamber of Commerce. Filing taxes is really straightforward. E.g., for VAT , the administration program that we use spits out quarterly numbers, a submit them through the tax office’s website. Having started a business twice, both times I was surprised how easy and straightforward it is. I have to add that the overhead of starting a company probably varies a lot between countries. We once considered opening a company in Germany and it seemed like a lot of paperwork. The problem was not the language barrier — my wife is a native speaker.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Was this an eenmanszaak ( sole propietor ) or VOF ?
tchvil 5y ago
Having started 3 companies in Belgium, and one in Spain. My experience differs. Opening an branch in the US was a pain in comparison. I love our continent, for its project, its diversity, and trying to find the right balance between work and social welfare. Life can be more than GDP or market cap. I stopped my The Economist subscription long time ago, per their constant anti-European bashing.
- sdoering 5y ago
  Also the measure of market cap could be debated. One could question if it is the right measurement and if market cap is a good approximate of economical prosperity. Or of a fair share of this prosperity being distributed to society. There are many ways to measure and argue what the author is trying to convey. They choose one that fit their argument. As a counter point one could look at the writings of authors like Varoufakis for example and see a different world view. Because imho the article is based on the authors world view. With cherry picked metrics and stats to support. It isn't empirical but using data to appear as such. There is much to critique in Europe. But the article sadly fails to tackle the interesting things. It just opens up the field for an argumentative pissing match EU vs. US (pardon my French). ps: I also started a company. It was as easy as filling out a form. Even taxes are doable on my own. So nothing too much of a hurdle there.
  - thow-01187 5y ago
    There's a case to be made that Europe is playing the smart game here. At this point, US has cumulatively burned a few trillions in funding for their software corporations. Europe, meanwhile, gets the fruits of it, mostly for free (1). Case in point - I personally spent more money last month on a fish tank cleaner than to all Silicon Valley corporations combined, and even that's an aberration in my social circle - most of the others do not wire a single cent there. Yes, the overall money flow in IT is from EU to US, but expressed as ROI, it's unlikely to be very impressive. (1) - apart from Microsoft. Imho they're the true crown jewel of the US software sector. Most of the world's economy runs on Microsoft Office in one way or another
    - 5y ago
mongol 5y ago
It makes no sense to talk about how hard it is to start a company in the EU because it will differ between every country. Better you say which country your experience is from.
andi999 5y ago
I agree on most things on the list, but work ethics? At least here it seems pretty strong, and result focused (so getting things done is more important then doing overtime).
brnt 5y ago
Sounds like an awesome place for workers!
- oblio 5y ago
  Yeah, but you won't make OP a billionaire so shame on you!
- kortilla 5y ago
  Low pay and not meaningful/interesting work but otherwise it’s good as a “lifestyle” gig.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Where was DeepMind founded?
    - kmlx 5y ago
      in London, UK, which is a different beast than the continent.
      - meheleventyone 5y ago
        Still part of Europe and until recently the EU as well.
shoto_io 5y ago
I have founded 3 companies in Germany and I have lived in the States. A couple of comments: 1. Founding the companies was complex I have to admit, and costly. But I would not refrain from founding the next one. It’s just a matter of practice I guess. Still I’d love to have an easier, less expensive way. 2. The EU is a composition of many states, just like the US. People, processes differ a lot. 3. FWIW, filing personal taxes in the States was way more than complicated than over here.
linspace 5y ago
Your comment would be more interesting without hyperbole. I'm surprised by the low work ethics remark. In my (little) experience I didn't find americans so high on work ethics. It's more like your career is more important to self esteem. This can correlate with being good at work or at posturing.
- watwut 5y ago
  Americans are willing to work longer hours which is used as proxy for hard work. Which is then coupled with collegues being whole your social network and meetings socialization. Afaik, by all studies, working 10 hours a day wont make you produce more, but it feels like it does.
bennybob 5y ago
I think the whole western world has been fed a pile of anti American garbage for a generation. My wife actually said she wouldn't live there because she was afraid of getting shot. Ridiculous. Meanwhile everyone in the non western world wants to get to the USA. I'm in the UK and I'm now glad we have left the EU. The vaccine debacle has maybe shown us what the eu actually is: a massive bureaucracy where no one takes any responsibility for failings. (I voted to remain, I shouldn't have)
- refurb 5y ago
  As someone who isn’t an American but has lived/worked in half a dozen countries, yes, the US is pretty great. Is it perfect? No. But claims of it being a “living hell hole” are just internet tough talk.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    As someone in a similar situation, the US is extremely variable. It can be great or it can really suck. If your standard for greatness is that there are parts of it that are great then most countried in the world are great. What is more interesting is the bottom quintile and the worst it can get. Because you'll find developped cities and rich neighborhoods with high safety and good healthcare in a lot of places. How bad it's likely to get and how much you have to worry as the average person is the better metric.
Entalpi 5y ago
Ah, ”the EU”, only something like 27 countries with highly different laws and economies..
- kmlx 5y ago
  … languages, markets, histories, governments etc etc
coldtea 5y ago
>the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly) I'd say we better keep our lifestyles and worldviews and be corporate also-runs, than be slaves also-run-by-corporations like the US.
- jamil7 5y ago
  This thread is full of people explaining that Europeans are lazy and unproductive workers lacking ambition based on anecdotes of completely normal occurrences like an employee taking a vacation.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Disagree. It’s the mentality, not the vacation. My job in the US gives 5 weeks vacation per year. You are expected to disconnect and it’s embarrassing if email/text while on leave - people think you’re nuts. But the work attitude is usually “lets do something cool”, “lets solve that problem”, “why can’t we be the best?” versus a work mentality of “i don’t think that will work” and “we’ll never get support for that idea” and “i can start on that after the holiday”. I’m not knocking the lifestyle at all! If work is just a paycheck, then hats off to you. But don’t expect innovation and money to flow. It’ll go elsewhere.
    - bruce511 5y ago
      I think it's worth understanding that there are two categories of employee. The first is a tiny sliver of people who make good money doing interesting, possibly even fulfiling work. Like say running their own business, or building great new tech. The larger slice though don't have this. They work long ours doing meaningless boring tasks for long hours and low wages. Think amazon warehouse, and any service level job. There's a middle ground for qualified trades - like say plumbers - but that's getting eroded. So when comparing things like leave, ability to fire, heath insurance etc, it's worth understanding that your view in those things is relative to your job. For the lucky few millionaires, the US is great - it's a very easy place to live if you are rich. But for the rest Europe with lots of vacation time, shorter working hours, free health and education is a lot more appealing.
deleted 5y ago
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raverbashing 5y ago
> the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly) No country has 8 weeks of vacations. Not even counting statutory + public holidays > Glory to the LLC. Glory to firing someone with less than six months notice I don't think even Italy is 6 months. Germany isn't. But way to go generalizing it for the whole EU. (also pop quiz, what do the acronyms GmbH, SARL and OÜ mean?) > with zero friction movement of labor (this is completely laughable now compared to the US) Not my experience, but not surprising given the amount of fiction in your post.
- thow-01187 5y ago
  Yes, vacations are financed as a hidden tax on normal working days - the worker pays for it from his labor cost. What exactly is the problem with having 10% lower salary in exchange for 10% more time? How is it supposed to be a drag on business formation? btw, LLCs are a possibility everywhere Every EU country I've been to has a concept of probation periods - during the first ~3 months, the employer can freely terminate the new employee, or at least choose not to extent his contract. Also, collective dismissals are about equally as difficult in most of the EU than in the US (1) What is unarguably easier in the US is to capriciously fire an individual on the spot for trivial reasons. I wouldn't call that a feature, though (1) - https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EPL_OV https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EPL_OV
potamic 5y ago
If work ethic = employees working very hard, I don't think it is a good indicator of a business doing well. From my experience in software at least, Europeans tend to have an excellent work discipline with healthy work-life boundaries. When you look at aggregates, the productivity is pretty much on par if not better, and you have to question why other countries promote this culture of peer pressure where employees constantly feel the need to outcompete each other, while the business thinks it's extracting maximum value out of its resources.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
I've looked into this, and moving to the US has absolutely zero appeal. The US corporate tax code is incomprehensible, healthcare is an expensive and high-risk potentially deadly nightmare, small businesses in tech are permanently at risk from litigation by patent trolls, scam artists, and other white collar thuggery, if you're reliant on a big corporate provider for payments or market access or promotion - and you usually are - they can shut you down without notice on a whim. But - best of all - I don't need to worry about being murdered by some rando on my way to work. Good luck being allowed to move to the US unless you're already a high net worth individual or have a high public profile. An EB-x series visa isn't going to get you far unless you're already a household name or you have an unusually in-demand skill. Most startups don't count. While you can game the system in various ways, or at least try to, the reality is that your immigration status is likely to be precarious for a good long time.
knuthsat 5y ago
I found that opening a company in one of the most bureaucratic countries in EU (Austria) was very easy. I did everything online, from my personal immigration to founding an LLC. The only in person meeting was for establishing a permanent residence. Yes, the taxes are high, social security is high, but being a programmer makes things much simpler as we are the high earners in this age.
tluyben2 5y ago
You are exaggerating as you say yourself, but these things are mostly not issues at all. You just hire people (and that does not cost much: made a company including employees a few weeks ago for 1000E first year including accounting and payroll, no work from me; if 1000E is an issue, maybe do something else) to handle them, and, you put some provisions in for the stuff you mention, like in the US, to use your ranting language, you do for the over the top insane crazy bonkers legal crap you have there and find normal. At least paying some poor sod I have to fire a few months more does not keep me up at night as I know this upfront. Legal shit does but that's not relevant in the EU (sue me, see where that goes). You are used to the one, I am to the other. The real EU problem is on the one hand conservative nature: almost no way to get significant investment here without actually proving you already (before you started!) can pay it back 10x. And then what you rightly say: this is not a union (yet): most countries just don't mesh and the language and culture barriers are somewhat crippling. Not how you say because those barriers do not exist anymore for decades already. Not like the current US yet but things take time: think you had some civil war and such. We are still recovering from border altering world wars and some idiots cutting up this continent like it was a cake after. Let's give half to an idiot Russian dictator and let's not bother to remove Franco. This takes time. Unless you install an actual dictator for the entire thing, this takes time in any place. Not sure if these will be solved ever but not in my lifetime. And another cultural thing: I like free time: that you do not probably means something you might want to discuss with someone, but working all hours of the day is something I do not miss and do not wish on anyone. And as last point: what company do you run or what is your yearly turnover? Because, besides all your ranting, there is the real meat. How is the great US of A working out for your personally with all its blessings? Because I am afraid it will be slightly disappointing after all this. I mean with my 8 weeks a month vacation I have time to write tripe like this, but you...
- allendoerfer 5y ago
  This comment gets it. I would say there is a European identity in the sense that we all kind of know our ancestors have been here for a long time and have dominated world history in most regards. Our fellow Europeans neighbors have the same identity, since they did the same thing in general. They also created successful nations. We created humanism in the process. But that’s about where it stops. We mostly killed each other in the whole process after all. There is no such thing as a European work ethic. Maybe a Spanish or a German, but even those places are diverse.
suction 5y ago
Yet again, people start companies all the time and succeed - just not megacorps like in the US. Maybe you just hadn't what it takes?
CalRobert 5y ago
Having moved to the EU from the US nearly a decade ago I really have to agree - everything happens at a _glacial_ pace. Not just business - everything. Buying a house takes months, getting anything built takes months, medical appointments take months, paperwork for immigration takes _years_, the "grants" from the government for innovation are maybe a few months' pay in the US, and notice periods you have to give your employer are customarily _shockingly_ long. Why the hell should I have to work for 3 months after giving notice?!?!! The EU gets a lot of things right but starting a company here would be playing on hard mode, to say the least.
Dudeman112 5y ago
I do not want the EU to become like the US. All those things make for a stronger top 0.1% at the detriment of the rest of society.
vt85 5y ago
The truth, so well described.
minipci1321 5y ago
You are of course entitled to your personal opinion, and sharing it is OK, but this: > ... the low work ethic .. (I exaggerate, slightly). is a very wide-sweeping generalization which insults many of us. Why is it that, every time someone complains about "low work ethics", the underlying context is always "my employees don't want to spend mad hours working on my idea for the compensation I think should be fair for them"? Work ethics goes both ways BTW, and your "glory to firing someone with less than six months notice" doesn't sit square with me. "firing" is terminating for serious misconduct, notice is not due. I assume you meant laying off for economical reasons. So you want exemplary work ethics from the employees, and then quickly get rid of them when you think you don't need them anymore, did I get that right?
- malshe 5y ago
  I am not a European but I have spent some time there. I agree with you totally. I always find it bizarre that Americans complain about European work ethic as if people there are just slacking off. I look back at my experience there and I can say I have only respect for my ex-colleagues’ work ethics. There are slackers everywhere and the US is no different. It’s just that for many people in the US answering your emails on the weekends and staying late in the office equate to stronger work ethics. Btw, this same culture exists at many companies in Singapore too. But I don’t recall Singaporeans calling Europeans lazy because of that.
Joeri 5y ago
It used to indeed be the case that in Belgium to fire someone the notice period could be quite literally years. However, Belgium changed its laws in 2014. For firing someone it's now 1 week the first 3 months, and then it goes up more slowly. For example, for someone who's been there 4 years it is a 3 month notice period. As for free movement of labor inside the EU, it is mostly irrelevant how easy it is because of cultural barriers. People don't want to work in a region where they don't speak the language. See for example how workers in Belgium mostly do not cross the language boundary between north and south, despite having an identical legal regime. Europe's polyglot nature makes it quite literally impossible to match the U.S. or China wrt the movement of labor.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  China and Japan were both rife with incompatible dialects for a long time. Japan fixed this using a ruthless campaign that basically analogized non-eastern dialect speakers as hillbillies and through standardized education abd media. China did some of that. Both did language reforms. The US also has a program like this, albeit much softer and mostly generational. India is a massively polyglot nation that has used a program of education and incentives to maintain and grow English. The fact that Europe has not nominated a cross-EU language and taken action to move toward linguistic unity is actually an outlier. Note that I’m not saying that this would be a good thing but it certainly would have upsides.

analog31 5y ago

Oddly enough I've struggled to find any data showing that the US is actually better for entrepreneurs. It's all anecdotal. I have a small business but it will stay small because I need my day job for health care. Granted, this is but one article: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-were-the-most-entrepreneurial-country-in-the-world-not-so-fast/263102/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-w...

ransom1538 5y ago
"Oddly enough I've struggled to find any data showing that the US is actually better for entrepreneurs" That literally was what the article was about. Tons of figures/facts in the article.
- analog31 5y ago
  Indeed, I was just skittish about hanging my hat on a single article.
ekianjo 5y ago
Gdp is not anecdotal.
- pjbk 5y ago
  Nor productivity: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b2774f97-en/1/2/1/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/b2774f97-en&_csp_=11d9839f3d9224cfd95c09c235f434d0&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b2774f97-en/1/2/1/index....
  - oblio 5y ago
    That only shows the evolution, what are the actual numbers?
    - thow-01187 5y ago
      Let's just say...that the data doesn't exactly support the thesis that the lack of venture funding is a drag on Europe's productivity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour-pennworldtable?country=GBR~ESP~USA~FRA~DEU~ITA~KOR~POL~ROU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...
      - effie 5y ago
        Very strange to see UK and South Korea so low.

oneplane 5y ago

On the other hand, people here don't tend to go bankrupt and lose their house, healthcare (ironically) and life (from a social aspect) in general when they don't have a perfect health. They don't have to hide their state of wellbeing from their employer in the hope of not getting fired, and they don't have to worry about living on the street because they don't have a job for a bit. Businesses are fun and all, but in practical terms, they are just sociopaths when compared to what people actually need. Don't misinterpret this as "and therefore it should be hard to have a business", but the American way is one I'd run away from if it ever tried to apply over here. I run a business and it's fine. Not amazing, not a hockeystick and I'm also not interested in either. It's fine, and that's all it needs to be.

refurb 5y ago
You know how I know you’ve never lived or worked in the US? Your characterization is laughable. 50%+ of the federal (never mind state!) budget is social programs. But apparently “there is no safety net”.
TMWNN 5y ago
>On the other hand, people here don't tend to go bankrupt and lose their house, healthcare (ironically) and life (from a social aspect) in general when they don't have a perfect health Only 4% of US bankruptcies are because of medical bills <https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/03/26/the-truth-about-medical-bankruptcies/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0...>. A tipoff that [insert large percentage here] of bankruptcies aren't actually because of medical costs is that only 6% of bankruptcies by those without health insurance are because of that cause. The biggest cause of bankruptcies is lack of income, which health insurance doesn't affect.
- fy20 5y ago
  > The biggest cause of bankruptcies is lack of income, which health insurance doesn't affect. Maybe that 4% is correct, but for sure how to deal with paying for medical care is a big worry for many people in the US. There was a post a few days ago (or comments at least) discussing how many people working low wage jobs in the US are working 29 hours or fewer specifically so their employer doesn't need to provide health insurance. Are there social programs that cover those people, or do they just not go to the doctor when sick?

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

> general negative attitudes, poor work ethic Citations needed as to how they’re significantly worse in Europe than the US. Perhaps they’re simply smart enough not to work hard for someone else’s benefit. > freedom of movement The only negative (at least in a strictly US context between the states) is that it forces issues that the Constitution says are the domain of the states into problems that only the Federal government can solve. No city can unilaterally decided to end homelessness with its borders if the homeless from the next state over are free to move in.

crossroadsguy 5y ago
GP's comment is a tactless lament of not being able to be a true exploitive business owner.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ouchithurtsma 5y ago
Europeans are negative with poor work ethic because we're exploited by the government. There is no point in working hard, you don't get anything out of it. Laziness is rewarded, do the math, check the numbers, they dont lie.

crossroadsguy 5y ago

> the low work ethic > glory .. glory.. So you were missing "glory to overwork people to death" and things like "glory to force them to work on weekends, late nights and make them feel guilty and insecure about their jobs"? And things like "glory to people going bankrupt in hospitals", right?

refurb 5y ago
Lazy reply. Go work in Asia if you want to see overwork.
cscurmudgeon 5y ago
The first large scale study on overwork deaths says US has less deaths than many countries in Europe. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002208#f0020 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people-are-dying-from-working-long-hours-a-new-who-study-finds https://www.npr.org/2021/05/17/997462169/thousands-of-people... In the U.S., less than 5% of the population is exposed to long work hours, according to a map the WHO published with the study. That proportion is similar to Brazil and Canada — and much lower than Mexico and in countries across most of Central and South America. Good work ethic != Overworking
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  Downvoted for bringing contradictory data. HN is anti-science.

mc32 5y ago

I can confirm with the anecdote of an acquaintance in the EU. Nothing fancy. Just a hair salon. He was complaining about the authorities coming down to inspect it, looking for the smallest details to fine him. Sign was the wrong size, it wasn't illuminated the right way. Something about serving tea. It seemed absurd to me. On the other hand, it was a nice place to get a haircut.

contriban 5y ago
Can confirm. My parents own a restaurant in Italy and if the authorities come it’s a € 2000/3000 fine for sure. For a small seasonal business that’s substantial. For example if you give a receipt and the customer misplaces it on the way out and can’t find anymore, you’re liable for tax evasion. Never mind that the POS has its own registry they can check. For the authorities, “you didn’t give a receipt, so they can’t tax you.” When the restaurant was opened about 20 years ago, all sorts of departments came to check it out and suggest whatever ridiculous change. Food safety in Italy however is probably among the best in the world due to this.
- hermitdev 5y ago
  > For the authorities, “you didn’t give a receipt, so they can’t tax you.” Honest question: is this actually the law, or a tactic of an official seeking a bribe?
  - danmaz74 5y ago
    It's the law
  - choeger 5y ago
    There is a very similar situation in Germany. The reason behind this is that you can use older POS systems for tax fraud (I never fully understood the details), which apparently was quite a thing amongst smaller businesses. The tax authorities then demanded a perfect chain of paper records (apparently the paper recipe contains some kind of a reference to earlier transactions). Bizarrely, they actually asked customers to keep these receipts which pretty much no one really did, but it was a public topic for a couple of weeks. German source: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/FAQ/2020-02-18-steuergerechtigkeit-belegpflicht.html#doc0926b642-b4d2-41cb-8fac-90bbf815fcbcbodyText9 https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/FAQ/2020-0...

nodemaker 5y ago

Hmm so 1) the corporate tax rate and other tax benefits in many EU countries is much lower than the US (I imagine you must have heard of US companies using their European operations to dodge us taxes) 2) The quality of labor you can hire is generally higher in europe (for example its common knowledge that facebook london has better engineers) I think what the us has is access to venture capital which i agree is difficult in europe.

deertick1 5y ago
I have a really hard time believing theres higher quality talent in Europe in general.
- oblio 5y ago
  Why? The EU has a higher population than the US and it has many top notch universities. Europe tends to lose many of its tech talents to the US, but if you pay comparable salaries you'll keep them.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Because on average all of the top talent goes to the US companies that pay an order of magnitude more than the locals (FAANG).
    - oblio 5y ago
      My point was that there is local talent. Just pay US salaries and it will stay put.
    - sveme 5y ago
      Hyperbole much? I earn around 100k€ in Munich. You‘re saying the local google or apple would pay me a million per year? Wow.
      - krakatau1 5y ago

devoutsalsa 5y ago

Speaking of frictionless employment labor movement… In the USA I once called in sick on a Monday & was retroactively fired the previous Friday.

contriban 5y ago
It depends, were you hired the previous Thursday?
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  Nope. I’d been there for 6 months.
- mikro2nd 5y ago
  So what if they were? If you're ill, you're ill and should not have to go in to work. Sometimes ill-timed shit happens. Only in the US you can get fired for it. My mind boggles at the concept of "retroactive" firing... wtf is that even?
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    I suppose the upside is you can quit at anytime with no notice. That’s great from an employee perspective, in a feeling of freedom sense.
ouchithurtsma 5y ago
Companies should be able to fire as they like. They ain't your caretakers. Workers have to be prepared to lose their job any day, people gotta be responsible for their own life? edit: Are the leftists flagging all my comments or what. Am I not allowed to speak my opinion anymore? What happened to HN

vmception 5y ago

> Glory to the country I chose as home, which so many natives seem to be delusional about how terrible it is. The US is a great hopping off point. As in, its great to start from here and take advantage of any system almost anywhere else in the world. But I would say a wealthy EU or wealthy Swiss starting point is good too. But I wouldn't incorporate there and especially not have employees. Both systems work the best for business in intangibles. Many US states are very incompetent and bureaucratic and slow in business formation as well. Its just that those states are completely ignored for the ones that excel in those products.

poopypoopington 5y ago

Lack of national healthcare really puts a damper on free labor movement in the US. You want to start a company but also have health insurance for your family? That'll be $12,000 with a massive deductible... Gets in the way of a lot of would be entrepreneurs

GiorgioG 5y ago
As much as I'd like to agree (I am pro-national healthcare for the US) - if you don't have $20,000 (let's say that covers your annual premiums & deductible) - you sure as heck don't have the funds to quit your job and become a full-time entrepreneur.
- yarcob 5y ago
  You can start a software business in Austria with just a laptop and get health insurance for 32€/month (total social security payments if you don't make profits are about 150€/month). Fees for registering a company are waived/reduced for founders. I had nowhere near $20000 when I started. Sure, if you want to open a capital intensive business like a restaurant, you'll need more money. But that's the same everywhere.
  - woodson 5y ago
    It's somewhat more difficult for founding a limited liability company there, where the capital requirements are much higher than in most other countries (Eur 35K).
    - yarcob 5y ago
      Yeah, that's why most founders don't actually register a GmbH. Many small businesses are sole proprietors, even businesses with a few employees.
      - 7steps2much 5y ago
        Isn't it possible to fund a "mini" GmbH with only 10.000€ and build up to the 35.000€ over a span of a couple of years or something? I think I remember something like that being the case.

ddalex 5y ago

On the other hand the people in EU are happier, have better social protection, better benefits, better health systems, better consumer protection, better application of rules and laws, they make for more productive employees. Do the shareholders get as rich as fast as in the hyperactive US economy? Not, but the society functions better. I very much prefer the EU.

SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
have you tried to start a company there?
- Tesl 5y ago
  Did you completely fail to parse what he was saying there or something?
  - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
    responding to a question with a question. rhetorical brilliance.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Why should society optimize for how easy it is to start a business?
  - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
    gee, i wonder... clearly a bunch of social geniuses in here on a slow friday night.
  - apatters 5y ago
    Because if you don't you'll end up with fewer businesses, which will concentrate wealth, which has documented negative effects on society.
    - yoz-y 5y ago

thijsc 5y ago

Reporting back: Your comment is utter nonsense. There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Reliable and cheap health care is a huge boon for small entrepreneurs. There’s little regulation to deal with as a software company. Child care and great schools are cheap or free. Yes firing people is much harder, that is a different context compared to the US you have to properly plan for. Which we do over here. Overall many countries in Europe are amazing places to start a business in.

reader_mode 5y ago
> There is a thriving tech scene in Europe and we do quite well! Is there really ? I see attempts at copying the US tech scene, but a lot of it seems structured to suck money out of government funds and programs. I see very little private investment. Just recently I talked to a local VC, in a casual chat about how they started their fund I found out they pulled money out of a EU fund, they had to put up like 25% of the money and the rest was just EU grants to stimulate entrepreneurship. Do I need to say that their portfolio looks like a garbage bin of knockoff attempts and small businesses masquerading as startups.
- 238475235243 5y ago
  This is entirely accurate from my experience. It's cargo cult "tech scene".
- davidgatti 5y ago
  This description is UE startups in a nutshell :) Countries like Poland for example, get massive amount of money from the EU, and there are business that specialize only in getting grants for people, which then they use to make a "company" for a year or two, and when the money runs out they close it and reopen another one with the next grant. With no revenue stream idea what so ever. In this type of country's if you have a EU grant base company, you are a meme. Italy on the other hand, dose not use the grants, because here nobody have a clue what's the point of a company, what it means to work to build something successful, and if you talk to an Italian about the grind, or working a minimum of 16h a day, they look at you as a complete lunatic - while complaining that they don't have money. Well... Either you grind or you meet every day with your friends for an Aperitivo, and live the Dolce Vita.

cjblomqvist 5y ago

In Sweden you can more or less fire anyone as long as you're a small company, without any long notice. I don't recognize the other negative comments either. Taxes are high, but VAT doesn't matter at all unless you're a B2C company (and really it's the consumer paying for it, not you). Vacation is 5 weeks which I realize is a lot compared to the US (I've worked in US so know how it works). But if those extra 3 weeks are what kills your company? Tax on salaries are quite high, but salaries are significantly lower (especially compared to the level of competence you get - but it varies). On the other hand we have free health care (with a quality level similar to the top 20-50% level you get in the US is I'm not mistaken) and great support systems should you fail or something happens. Admin is not obscene and you actually get a lot of help should you need it from the government agencies like the tax authorities. Then Sweden has a similar level of entrepreneurship per capita as California or the SF region even I believe. Access to capital do suck compared to the US (based on my limited perspective). Fear of getting sued for silly shit is unheard of here compared to the US. TLDR; It varies a lot between countries in the EU. It can be problematic to be overly generalistic in your description. It's for sure different, but I'm not sure everything just sucks compared to the US.

tasogare 5y ago

> the low work ethic Incredible to read this... the top-15 of most productive countries [1] are all European save for the US and Australia, which are populated with a huge population of European descent. [1] https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/ https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/

kmlx 5y ago
having lived and worked in Asia, I have to say that table looks weird. i have found no other place in this planet where people work longer and better than certain places in Asia.
- effie 5y ago
  The table is not about work ethic, but about how much money is made. The latter is probably correlated with the former, but only partially.
- emptyfile 5y ago
  If they worked "better" then they wouldn't be working longer. Their French counterparts do the same job in 5 hours instead of 10.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwaway184747 5y ago

> I've lived in a few different parts of the EU, and couldn't imagine a worse idea than starting a company there (which I did, once). I moved here from the US to start a company, and for anyone reading, listen to the above advice. (I'm not a US citizen, so non-trivial to do a startup).

danieldk 5y ago
Since we are piling up anecdotal evidence. I am in the NL and starting a company took, I don’t know, 30 minutes of my time? Filling in a form on a website and a 10 minute appointment at the Chamber of Commerce. Filing taxes is really straightforward. E.g., for VAT , the administration program that we use spits out quarterly numbers, a submit them through the tax office’s website. Having started a business twice, both times I was surprised how easy and straightforward it is. I have to add that the overhead of starting a company probably varies a lot between countries. We once considered opening a company in Germany and it seemed like a lot of paperwork. The problem was not the language barrier — my wife is a native speaker.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Was this an eenmanszaak ( sole propietor ) or VOF ?

tchvil 5y ago

Having started 3 companies in Belgium, and one in Spain. My experience differs. Opening an branch in the US was a pain in comparison. I love our continent, for its project, its diversity, and trying to find the right balance between work and social welfare. Life can be more than GDP or market cap. I stopped my The Economist subscription long time ago, per their constant anti-European bashing.

sdoering 5y ago
Also the measure of market cap could be debated. One could question if it is the right measurement and if market cap is a good approximate of economical prosperity. Or of a fair share of this prosperity being distributed to society. There are many ways to measure and argue what the author is trying to convey. They choose one that fit their argument. As a counter point one could look at the writings of authors like Varoufakis for example and see a different world view. Because imho the article is based on the authors world view. With cherry picked metrics and stats to support. It isn't empirical but using data to appear as such. There is much to critique in Europe. But the article sadly fails to tackle the interesting things. It just opens up the field for an argumentative pissing match EU vs. US (pardon my French). ps: I also started a company. It was as easy as filling out a form. Even taxes are doable on my own. So nothing too much of a hurdle there.
- thow-01187 5y ago
  There's a case to be made that Europe is playing the smart game here. At this point, US has cumulatively burned a few trillions in funding for their software corporations. Europe, meanwhile, gets the fruits of it, mostly for free (1). Case in point - I personally spent more money last month on a fish tank cleaner than to all Silicon Valley corporations combined, and even that's an aberration in my social circle - most of the others do not wire a single cent there. Yes, the overall money flow in IT is from EU to US, but expressed as ROI, it's unlikely to be very impressive. (1) - apart from Microsoft. Imho they're the true crown jewel of the US software sector. Most of the world's economy runs on Microsoft Office in one way or another
  - 5y ago

mongol 5y ago

It makes no sense to talk about how hard it is to start a company in the EU because it will differ between every country. Better you say which country your experience is from.

andi999 5y ago

I agree on most things on the list, but work ethics? At least here it seems pretty strong, and result focused (so getting things done is more important then doing overtime).

brnt 5y ago

Sounds like an awesome place for workers!

oblio 5y ago
Yeah, but you won't make OP a billionaire so shame on you!
kortilla 5y ago
Low pay and not meaningful/interesting work but otherwise it’s good as a “lifestyle” gig.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Where was DeepMind founded?
  - kmlx 5y ago
    in London, UK, which is a different beast than the continent.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      Still part of Europe and until recently the EU as well.

shoto_io 5y ago

I have founded 3 companies in Germany and I have lived in the States. A couple of comments: 1. Founding the companies was complex I have to admit, and costly. But I would not refrain from founding the next one. It’s just a matter of practice I guess. Still I’d love to have an easier, less expensive way. 2. The EU is a composition of many states, just like the US. People, processes differ a lot. 3. FWIW, filing personal taxes in the States was way more than complicated than over here.

linspace 5y ago

Your comment would be more interesting without hyperbole. I'm surprised by the low work ethics remark. In my (little) experience I didn't find americans so high on work ethics. It's more like your career is more important to self esteem. This can correlate with being good at work or at posturing.

watwut 5y ago
Americans are willing to work longer hours which is used as proxy for hard work. Which is then coupled with collegues being whole your social network and meetings socialization. Afaik, by all studies, working 10 hours a day wont make you produce more, but it feels like it does.

bennybob 5y ago

I think the whole western world has been fed a pile of anti American garbage for a generation. My wife actually said she wouldn't live there because she was afraid of getting shot. Ridiculous. Meanwhile everyone in the non western world wants to get to the USA. I'm in the UK and I'm now glad we have left the EU. The vaccine debacle has maybe shown us what the eu actually is: a massive bureaucracy where no one takes any responsibility for failings. (I voted to remain, I shouldn't have)

refurb 5y ago
As someone who isn’t an American but has lived/worked in half a dozen countries, yes, the US is pretty great. Is it perfect? No. But claims of it being a “living hell hole” are just internet tough talk.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  As someone in a similar situation, the US is extremely variable. It can be great or it can really suck. If your standard for greatness is that there are parts of it that are great then most countried in the world are great. What is more interesting is the bottom quintile and the worst it can get. Because you'll find developped cities and rich neighborhoods with high safety and good healthcare in a lot of places. How bad it's likely to get and how much you have to worry as the average person is the better metric.

Entalpi 5y ago

Ah, ”the EU”, only something like 27 countries with highly different laws and economies..

kmlx 5y ago
… languages, markets, histories, governments etc etc

coldtea 5y ago

>the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly) I'd say we better keep our lifestyles and worldviews and be corporate also-runs, than be slaves also-run-by-corporations like the US.

jamil7 5y ago
This thread is full of people explaining that Europeans are lazy and unproductive workers lacking ambition based on anecdotes of completely normal occurrences like an employee taking a vacation.
- refurb 5y ago
  Disagree. It’s the mentality, not the vacation. My job in the US gives 5 weeks vacation per year. You are expected to disconnect and it’s embarrassing if email/text while on leave - people think you’re nuts. But the work attitude is usually “lets do something cool”, “lets solve that problem”, “why can’t we be the best?” versus a work mentality of “i don’t think that will work” and “we’ll never get support for that idea” and “i can start on that after the holiday”. I’m not knocking the lifestyle at all! If work is just a paycheck, then hats off to you. But don’t expect innovation and money to flow. It’ll go elsewhere.
  - bruce511 5y ago
    I think it's worth understanding that there are two categories of employee. The first is a tiny sliver of people who make good money doing interesting, possibly even fulfiling work. Like say running their own business, or building great new tech. The larger slice though don't have this. They work long ours doing meaningless boring tasks for long hours and low wages. Think amazon warehouse, and any service level job. There's a middle ground for qualified trades - like say plumbers - but that's getting eroded. So when comparing things like leave, ability to fire, heath insurance etc, it's worth understanding that your view in those things is relative to your job. For the lucky few millionaires, the US is great - it's a very easy place to live if you are rich. But for the rest Europe with lots of vacation time, shorter working hours, free health and education is a lot more appealing.

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raverbashing 5y ago

> the government insanities, the insane taxes, the low work ethic, the 8 weeks of vacation every month (I exaggerate, slightly) No country has 8 weeks of vacations. Not even counting statutory + public holidays > Glory to the LLC. Glory to firing someone with less than six months notice I don't think even Italy is 6 months. Germany isn't. But way to go generalizing it for the whole EU. (also pop quiz, what do the acronyms GmbH, SARL and OÜ mean?) > with zero friction movement of labor (this is completely laughable now compared to the US) Not my experience, but not surprising given the amount of fiction in your post.

thow-01187 5y ago
Yes, vacations are financed as a hidden tax on normal working days - the worker pays for it from his labor cost. What exactly is the problem with having 10% lower salary in exchange for 10% more time? How is it supposed to be a drag on business formation? btw, LLCs are a possibility everywhere Every EU country I've been to has a concept of probation periods - during the first ~3 months, the employer can freely terminate the new employee, or at least choose not to extent his contract. Also, collective dismissals are about equally as difficult in most of the EU than in the US (1) What is unarguably easier in the US is to capriciously fire an individual on the spot for trivial reasons. I wouldn't call that a feature, though (1) - https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EPL_OV https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EPL_OV

potamic 5y ago

If work ethic = employees working very hard, I don't think it is a good indicator of a business doing well. From my experience in software at least, Europeans tend to have an excellent work discipline with healthy work-life boundaries. When you look at aggregates, the productivity is pretty much on par if not better, and you have to question why other countries promote this culture of peer pressure where employees constantly feel the need to outcompete each other, while the business thinks it's extracting maximum value out of its resources.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

I've looked into this, and moving to the US has absolutely zero appeal. The US corporate tax code is incomprehensible, healthcare is an expensive and high-risk potentially deadly nightmare, small businesses in tech are permanently at risk from litigation by patent trolls, scam artists, and other white collar thuggery, if you're reliant on a big corporate provider for payments or market access or promotion - and you usually are - they can shut you down without notice on a whim. But - best of all - I don't need to worry about being murdered by some rando on my way to work. Good luck being allowed to move to the US unless you're already a high net worth individual or have a high public profile. An EB-x series visa isn't going to get you far unless you're already a household name or you have an unusually in-demand skill. Most startups don't count. While you can game the system in various ways, or at least try to, the reality is that your immigration status is likely to be precarious for a good long time.

knuthsat 5y ago

I found that opening a company in one of the most bureaucratic countries in EU (Austria) was very easy. I did everything online, from my personal immigration to founding an LLC. The only in person meeting was for establishing a permanent residence. Yes, the taxes are high, social security is high, but being a programmer makes things much simpler as we are the high earners in this age.

tluyben2 5y ago

You are exaggerating as you say yourself, but these things are mostly not issues at all. You just hire people (and that does not cost much: made a company including employees a few weeks ago for 1000E first year including accounting and payroll, no work from me; if 1000E is an issue, maybe do something else) to handle them, and, you put some provisions in for the stuff you mention, like in the US, to use your ranting language, you do for the over the top insane crazy bonkers legal crap you have there and find normal. At least paying some poor sod I have to fire a few months more does not keep me up at night as I know this upfront. Legal shit does but that's not relevant in the EU (sue me, see where that goes). You are used to the one, I am to the other. The real EU problem is on the one hand conservative nature: almost no way to get significant investment here without actually proving you already (before you started!) can pay it back 10x. And then what you rightly say: this is not a union (yet): most countries just don't mesh and the language and culture barriers are somewhat crippling. Not how you say because those barriers do not exist anymore for decades already. Not like the current US yet but things take time: think you had some civil war and such. We are still recovering from border altering world wars and some idiots cutting up this continent like it was a cake after. Let's give half to an idiot Russian dictator and let's not bother to remove Franco. This takes time. Unless you install an actual dictator for the entire thing, this takes time in any place. Not sure if these will be solved ever but not in my lifetime. And another cultural thing: I like free time: that you do not probably means something you might want to discuss with someone, but working all hours of the day is something I do not miss and do not wish on anyone. And as last point: what company do you run or what is your yearly turnover? Because, besides all your ranting, there is the real meat. How is the great US of A working out for your personally with all its blessings? Because I am afraid it will be slightly disappointing after all this. I mean with my 8 weeks a month vacation I have time to write tripe like this, but you...

allendoerfer 5y ago
This comment gets it. I would say there is a European identity in the sense that we all kind of know our ancestors have been here for a long time and have dominated world history in most regards. Our fellow Europeans neighbors have the same identity, since they did the same thing in general. They also created successful nations. We created humanism in the process. But that’s about where it stops. We mostly killed each other in the whole process after all. There is no such thing as a European work ethic. Maybe a Spanish or a German, but even those places are diverse.

suction 5y ago

Yet again, people start companies all the time and succeed - just not megacorps like in the US. Maybe you just hadn't what it takes?

CalRobert 5y ago

Having moved to the EU from the US nearly a decade ago I really have to agree - everything happens at a _glacial_ pace. Not just business - everything. Buying a house takes months, getting anything built takes months, medical appointments take months, paperwork for immigration takes _years_, the "grants" from the government for innovation are maybe a few months' pay in the US, and notice periods you have to give your employer are customarily _shockingly_ long. Why the hell should I have to work for 3 months after giving notice?!?!! The EU gets a lot of things right but starting a company here would be playing on hard mode, to say the least.

Dudeman112 5y ago

I do not want the EU to become like the US. All those things make for a stronger top 0.1% at the detriment of the rest of society.

vt85 5y ago

The truth, so well described.

minipci1321 5y ago

You are of course entitled to your personal opinion, and sharing it is OK, but this: > ... the low work ethic .. (I exaggerate, slightly). is a very wide-sweeping generalization which insults many of us. Why is it that, every time someone complains about "low work ethics", the underlying context is always "my employees don't want to spend mad hours working on my idea for the compensation I think should be fair for them"? Work ethics goes both ways BTW, and your "glory to firing someone with less than six months notice" doesn't sit square with me. "firing" is terminating for serious misconduct, notice is not due. I assume you meant laying off for economical reasons. So you want exemplary work ethics from the employees, and then quickly get rid of them when you think you don't need them anymore, did I get that right?

malshe 5y ago
I am not a European but I have spent some time there. I agree with you totally. I always find it bizarre that Americans complain about European work ethic as if people there are just slacking off. I look back at my experience there and I can say I have only respect for my ex-colleagues’ work ethics. There are slackers everywhere and the US is no different. It’s just that for many people in the US answering your emails on the weekends and staying late in the office equate to stronger work ethics. Btw, this same culture exists at many companies in Singapore too. But I don’t recall Singaporeans calling Europeans lazy because of that.

Joeri 5y ago

It used to indeed be the case that in Belgium to fire someone the notice period could be quite literally years. However, Belgium changed its laws in 2014. For firing someone it's now 1 week the first 3 months, and then it goes up more slowly. For example, for someone who's been there 4 years it is a 3 month notice period. As for free movement of labor inside the EU, it is mostly irrelevant how easy it is because of cultural barriers. People don't want to work in a region where they don't speak the language. See for example how workers in Belgium mostly do not cross the language boundary between north and south, despite having an identical legal regime. Europe's polyglot nature makes it quite literally impossible to match the U.S. or China wrt the movement of labor.

foobiekr 5y ago
China and Japan were both rife with incompatible dialects for a long time. Japan fixed this using a ruthless campaign that basically analogized non-eastern dialect speakers as hillbillies and through standardized education abd media. China did some of that. Both did language reforms. The US also has a program like this, albeit much softer and mostly generational. India is a massively polyglot nation that has used a program of education and incentives to maintain and grow English. The fact that Europe has not nominated a cross-EU language and taken action to move toward linguistic unity is actually an outlier. Note that I’m not saying that this would be a good thing but it certainly would have upsides.