23 ms·

This is why I don't give you a job

• mp76 15y ago
  The links below present the governmental spending over the last 100 years or so: - this is partly in Romanian partly in English, but you should get the point: http://www.logec.ro/2011/12/12/ultima-prezentare-a-lui-leszek-balcerowicz-despre-cum-pune-statul-frana-cresterii-economice/ http://www.logec.ro/2011/12/12/ultima-prezentare-a-lui-lesze... - this is for US only: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.ht... What these tell me in simple words is that, more and more, some smart asses are taking decisions on our money. I really can't understand people arguing this as a good think as I can't understand how 300-1000 (representing government and parliement) persons do know better than we what we need. This trend is taking more and more from our rights to decide how, when and what we need. It also reduce the incentives to perform (as Jakab Andor put it in his article) and increase the stimulus for free rides. It also increase the chances of monopolies to develop with all the disadvantages that these are bringing (as a side note, by Misses these are the only real monopolies). Unfortunately, under current conditions, I don't believe this trend will change any time soon and we (both US and EU) have a good chance of becoming socialists with democratic hats in the next 50 years or so. This unless some major shift happens, but most probably this won't be a nice and quiet change. And, frankly, I'm not sure what freaks me out more: going in this direction or hopping for a sudden shift. Secondly, I think discrimination per se is wrong and not productive. However, there are two contradictory types of laws that together increase the cost for a company: the ones that punish discriminations and the ones that adds taxes or additional costs for complying them. This leads to a natural behavior from the business side to reduce their cost. So, in this case I don't believe we are talking about discriminations per se, but about reducing costs in order to compete in a given market. In this respect, I totally agree with him. Whenever this conditions appears there's a good chance to create a black market. The size might differ from country to country based on culture, public enforcing power, the level o burden brought by regulation, but it will exist at some extent. Coming back to the example with pregnant women, I don't think it's fair to say that we as a society want to stimulate birth, but "you" should bear the cost. It would be much fair to have this done on the society cost not on a particular business that have this case… for example, not by making the employer keep the job (or bear any other costs), but by supporting women until they get a job and perform additional activities to increase their changes to get a job. I'm not saying this is what I would recommend, but I think it's much better than the alternative. However, I couldn't stop noticing that Jakab Andor only mentions to ways of doing business (besides the "do nothing" option): struggle with a regular business model with a small margin or cheat. These are both sadly choices. I think he missed the "think bigger", at higher margins, be faster or smarter approach.
• Georgiy 15y ago
  In Russia if you don't minimize taxation with tricks and do it straight, you pay like 1,2$ for each 1$ your company makes. So mostly companies aims for super profitable niches, like selling chinese shit with 1000-5000% margin.
  • Evgeny 15y ago
    Or you have the 'official' salary of $50/month, and you get the rest paid to you in cash in the envelope each month. Well, at least that's how things were about 10 years ago when I left - it could have changed a lot. There was some economist who estimated that if a business in Russia pays EVERY tax it's supposed to by the law, it will pay way over 100% of the profits in taxes. So technically there is no business that is following the law 100%, giving the 'controlling organs' the power to ask for bribes. Could be an urban legend though, I don't have links. Edit: The parent talks about general taxation, and my take is about the taxes a company has to pay for each employee on top of her salary. Still, I think, "white" and "grey" salaries is an interesting point.
    • tsotha 15y ago
      That's how things are done in Korea. Your official salary is only a tiny fraction of your actual salary.
      • white_devil 15y ago
        Care to elaborate? I've been thinking of possibly setting up some kind of shop in Korea, so it would be interesting to know more.
        • tsotha 15y ago
          My ex was Korean. Her dad worked at an insurance company, and every month he got his (tiny) official salary as well as an envelop full of cash, which was 4x more money. I asked her about it and she said small companies are normally completely "off the grid" from a tax standpoint, so mid-sized companies need to do this to compete. And they all do. She opened a bar and never, you know, registered as a business or kept books or did any of the other business things you'd need to do in the US to stay out of jail. Her impression was tax receipts come mostly from the giant chaebol like LG and Samsung.
• kls 15y ago
  Wow I always hear people talking about why Silicon Vally cannot be reproduced in Europe, but I have never seen anyone put it so pointed. Thanks for education someone in the States about the realities of some areas of Europe.
  • _delirium 15y ago
    Things vary on many axes, though. I'm pretty sure that, in Silicon Valley, if you came out and said you would never hire a woman or an old person, you would be fired immediately and blackballed from managerial positions for life (or if you were the owner, sued into oblivion). Meanwhile, in Hungary, I'm going to guess Jakab Andor keeps his job and will be free to hire or not hire who he likes--- because Hungary presumably doesn't take antidiscrimination laws as seriously as the US does. (Also, there's much less corruption in the US, which is probably the key difference.)
    • walkon 15y ago
      Actually he says he wouldn't hire anyone, because he won't be attempting startups in the first place. You shouldn't get in trouble for your hiring policies when it is simply: "I don't have employees."
    • fraserharris 15y ago
      Just because you can't say it, doesn't mean its not in the back of every hiring managers mind. I've certainly heard people refer to it privately. Anything that increases the base costs of starting a business, such as these, will reduce entrepreneurship.
    • jodrellblank 15y ago
      He didn't say he would never hire a woman or an old person, he said he wouldn't hire a woman or an old person in the context of a startup. He might be a HR manager in a larger company with good resources, happily hiring all kinds of people for all we know.
      • andorjakab 15y ago
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• zdw 15y ago
  Simple solution - gender equality for time off related to pregnancy. Paternity leave for the same length of time.
  • masterleep 15y ago
    Simpler solution. Let people make arrangements they want.
    • swombat 15y ago
      Simplest solution: move the fuck out of Hungary.
      • andorjakab 15y ago
        5 out of 10 friends have already done so. Sad thing is, it won't work on a European level. You can't just say, everybody move the fuck out of Europe. :)
    • _delirium 15y ago
      Both approaches seem to work well in various situations, which is why I'm skeptical of the value of these kinds of rants which lack comparative analysis. Apparently it works badly in Hungary; but works well in Sweden. It'd be more enlightening to read some analysis of the differences, since it empirically isn't the case that strong parental leave policies always and everywhere cause high unemployment, even if they anecdotally cause one dude in Hungary to not want to hire women. (I'd personally guess that culture and corruption have more to do with the large economic differences between Sweden and Hungary than taxation or parental-leave policies do, so I think he's barking up the wrong tree.)
      • droithomme 15y ago
        If it's really true that someone who just started work can immediately take three years maternal leave off, fully paid, and then be due 2.5 months accrued paid vacation time when they return, then I can't imagine how that could work. I don't know if it really works that way in Hungary though, or in Sweden for that matter.
• deleted 15y ago
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• someone13 15y ago
  Counterpoint to the idea in this article - I don't like the idea of at-will employment. I'll keep the political or ideological ranting off HN, but in short, I don't think that being able to fire any employee for any reason whatsoever is a good idea. Interesting to hear how things are in other parts of the world, though. EDIT: If you're downvoting, by the way, please leave a comment about why. I don't really care too much about the karma, but I'd love to hear why people disagree (and for the record, this comment is at -1 at the time I edit).
  • kiba 15y ago
    Why it isn't a good idea?
    • someone13 15y ago
      Well, in short: 1. Anti-discrimination laws still apply, even in at-will states in the USA, but all that means is that the employer has to state that they fired the employee for ANYTHING ELSE, even if it's actually for a discriminatory reason. 2. Being fired without cause means gives greater opportunity for employers to abuse their employees - and, considering the general principles of game theory, it WILL happen. 3. Notice vs. cause can be separate things, but many people nowadays don't have the ability to survive longer than a couple of weeks to a few months without a job, and being fired without any notice can literally ruin someone's life. Again, this is only a personal view - I'm no economist, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. So, please take this with several grains of salt :)
      • pohungc 15y ago
        Those are certainly valid concerns, though that does bring in a lot of grey area definitions for valid reasons to fire someone that are hard to define :(
        • teamonkey 15y ago
          Such as..? If you don't have a good reason for firing someone, why should you fire them?
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• mrs_doubtfire 15y ago
  I.. am.. job.
• orbitingpluto 15y ago
  What a douche. Guess what? People are messy. But more importantly, people are valuable. The author can whine all he likes. But really, try getting something done without them. Oh, wait, he says he's not going to even try... why are we reading this?
  • InclinedPlane 15y ago
    I'm not so sure. If I had to keep an employee for 3 years while they were on vacation I would just not hire any employees. Or I'd move somewhere with sane business laws.
    • learc83 15y ago
      I'd never have any employees. Independent contractors all the way.
      • moonchrome 15y ago
        Haha you sound like you're from the region. That and proxy employment agencies, and the employees end up with a lower salary (agency takes a cut) and lower protection. Ironically predictable.
  • geuis 15y ago
    It sounds like you didn't even read the article. The author is describing a lot of negative legal aspects in his country that make running a successful business nigh impossible.
    • orbitingpluto 15y ago
      I did. The reason that the article irked me: Imagine this combination: brilliant, an MSc in CompSci, being over 50, female, not white, and an immigrant. I tried to get her hired for the IT department where I worked. Instead she was cheated out of her pay and fired before the standard employee trial period ended. Standard practice for the place. (900 employees in four years, avg occupancy of 50 workers, anyone mid-level and up is white only, and as soon as a project was over almost everybody is fired, continuity of work is not the issue). I've heard all the same excuses before in a much friendlier business environment. All in an attempt to treat people like they are not human beings. I know nothing about the author and I'm not disputing the realities of business in Hungary. But damn I want to shoot the message. And a swath of downvotes in an attempt to do so is worth that...
• bmelton 15y ago
  And this is, in large part, why startups work so much 'better' than larger companies. Startup hires tend to be somewhat self-selecting, as the jobs tend to draw young males without families. The risk of the job makes it more appealing to those types, but the field is generally overrun by men, which is a topic that seems to come up every few months as well. What that means is that the eco-system is better for lean startups. You don't have to have the 'buffer' budget over actual costs that corporations do. Large companies typically offer paid vacation, matching 401k, disability leave, maternity leave and all that jazz. If you're working on a lean startup right now, ask yourself what would happen if your lead developer disappeared for three months. This is one of the real disadvantages we face as a nation because, in large part, the people we outsource labor to don't have these protections.
  • sliverstorm 15y ago
    What? How exactly was he describing a non-lean company? Hell, he was angling his wife as a supplementary source of income, and his home as investment capitol!
    • bmelton 15y ago
      I believe you misunderstand me. I never said that he wasn't a lean company. I was comparing the average lean startup to the average large corporation. Neither made-up example was his company.
      • sliverstorm 15y ago
        I do not understand. Is your comment even related to the article at all then? This whole article is about how startups don't work in Hungary, and you're talking about how this is evidence why startups are so much better?
        • bmelton 15y ago
          I believe you're either taking my comments out of context or are predisposed to bias against it for some reason. The point of the article is that employees are expensive. Certain types of employees are potentially more expensive than others. He wants to avoid hiring the low-risk people, but isn't allowed to. The self-selection of startups is... y'know what? I'm just repeating what I said originally. The hardships encountered in Hungary are the same sorts of hardships that large companies have to put up with, to varying degree. That was the basis for my comparison. If you don't get it, sorry. I honestly don't know how you read the article and read my post and don't know how they relate.
• teyc 15y ago
  While what he says may be true, without employees, his business can't scale. What he is describing is the difficulty of startups competing against established competitors who have a reliable source of revenue. In many countries, smaller businesses get some form of exemption.
• Evgeny 15y ago
  Sort of "meta", but interesting: http://andorjakab.blog.hu/2012/01/03/hungary_not_funny_anymore http://andorjakab.blog.hu/2012/01/03/hungary_not_funny_anymo... That blogpost made me kind of like a celeb, a bloghero or something. Fact is, that single blogpost generated half a million pageviews, 91141 Facebook likes in a matter of days. It was covered on national television, I was "the blogger of the week" at the biggest local blog provider (blog.hu), a whole bunch of responses were written by big names in the trade. Newmedia analysts were trying to figure out what made it such a big meme, out of the blue, from totally nothing, without any mainstream media promotion. People shared it like hell, on Facebook. Likes were rising by hunderds, by the second. Like this: 30145, F5, 30359 ...
  • sliverstorm 15y ago
    What made it big should have been obvious- it hit a nerve. It rang true. He wasn't just ranting and making shit up.
    • mnyary 15y ago
      The right-wing Hungarian government changed the law of work relations. This rant was part of the campaign to gather support for the initiatve. It represents a very popular opinion, but popular does not mean true. For your information:1. Is it almost impossible to get a job if you are over 35; 2. Several people over 55 were fired recently. There are horrible stories.
• NHQ 15y ago
  More and more you are compelled to own the corporation that represents you in business. So we can get around onerous government regulation. We are taxed to pay for the private-public crony-capitalism complex. It may be costly or unconscionable for me to hire you--or to be hired and paid as an individual taxpayer--and let that money go freely into corruption. But we can hire the other's company. How your company uses its money and treats its employees is your business.
• 3am 15y ago
  I submitted a post about this at one point, but Hungary is going through really terrible cultural and political troubles. I really feel for the Hungarian people - in that context, the frustration in this post makes much more sense.
• mhartl 15y ago
  The solution to all such problems is as obvious as it is unlikely to happen. It's not "women get six years' vacation if they want it". It's not "at-will employment". It's complete freedom of contract in the context of secure, effective, and responsible government. You and your employer come to an ex ante mutually beneficial agreement. A secure and effective government will enforce such a contract, unless it represents an egregious abuse by one of the parties. A responsible government will formulate a wise definition of egregious abuse. Once you start to enumerate all unenforceable contracts, you will come to understand how far we are from this situation. And when you look at how insecure, ineffective, and irresponsible governments are, you'll see why we may never get there.
• leak 15y ago
  This was a really long, enjoyable article. My question is, how does the company that he works for manage to pay him enough to buy a 90k flat? Are they shaddy like the other companies he described? Is he shaddy and not paying his taxes? How did his employer manage to do it and why can't he just follow that path?
  • veszig 15y ago
    In Hungary smaller companies usually cheat on their taxes... it's a national sport.
    • leak 15y ago
      haha I really do believe that is true.
  • daliusd 15y ago
    Maybe he simply inherited it. Maybe he works for Google Hungary or other international company (overall charging rate he has mentioned in article does not look that bad in international context). What really looks bad how Hungary's laws make companies noncompetitive. E.g. higher employment taxes means people will work in other EU countries if there is possibility.
• ootachi 15y ago
  The author realizes that these 5 restrictions don't even apply in Silicon Valley, right? 1. I can fire you, if I want to. California has at-will employment, but you sure can't fire someone based on gender or age anywhere in the United States—and he opens with his desire to do just that. 2. If VAT goes down to at least 20%, better yet 15%. Sales tax alone is not 20%+$.01 anywhere in the Bay Area, but there are a surprising number of added taxes here and there—Healthy San Francisco, for example, or the California state gasoline taxes—that can make the surcharges on consumer goods add up to that level. 3. If the state takes away "only" 30% of your money. Federal income tax + California state income tax + FICA significantly exceeds that for most people in the technology industry in Silicon Valley. 4. If higher income is not exponentially punished. The US certainly does have a progressive income tax scheme. 5. If the states punishes corruption instead of decent companies. No-bid contracts, anyone? The US is hardly free of corruption. He's asking for a place that doesn't exist. Moreover, it's a place I wouldn't want to live in; I don't want to live in a place where it's legal to discriminate against minorities, in particular.
  • Gotttzsche 15y ago
    > but you sure can't fire someone based on gender or age anywhere in the United States—and he opens with his desire to do just that. i think his desire was to be able to fire people who don't do their job or dont do it well
    • mrtron 15y ago
      ...or get pregnant. It is a very grey area. Too much government regulation and how the hell can it be profitable to hire someone. Too little and individuals get borked if they get pregnant/sick/etc. Personally I would sacrifice less pseudo stability for less regulation. I believe many problems start off with good intentions, especially when it comes to more regulation.
      • mixmastamyk 15y ago
        I think you guys didn't quite catch his point... he doesn't hate women and children, he hates that the state forces him to employ a person for 3-6 years! without working. I support maternity leave but that's ridiculous if true.
• danmaz74 15y ago
  Just as an added fact, for those who don't know it, Hungary is currently ruled by an extreme right-wing party which is pretty much doing away with democracy. Edit: The EU is considering if measures should be taken; I hope they will, and fast.
  • daliusd 15y ago
    I hope Hungary will not get financial aid from IMF and ECB (if I remember correctly) or will make it extremely hard to get it. That will harm Hungary in short term but in long term it will be good for all the Europe. It will send very good signal for all other Europe countries where right-wing extremists do stupid things (especially Eastern Europe). P.S. I'm from Eastern European country and I see some similarities with Hungary.
    • danmaz74 15y ago
      I would like even more the EU to have a direct way of dealing with this kind of situations, but for now I agree with you - that's the fastest way to pressure the Hungarian government.
  • deleted 15y ago
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    • deleted 15y ago
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  • mnyary 15y ago
    The current Hungarian government is not extreme right-wing, but surely undemocratic. But they changed the work code in favour of Mr. Andor Jakab. There is a new mass movement against the government, based on the trade unions. A new democratic government would mean an unhappy Mr. Andor Jakab.
    • ajuc 15y ago
      Right-wing label does not mean anything. The same's true for left-wing label. Politics has more than one dimension, and we're not even sure which dimension is described by this left-right dychotomy.
• lalitm 15y ago
  pathetic reasons for not hiring women.
  • nosse 15y ago
    Maybe, but they are true. Small companies sometimes just don't have the money. I heard about this hairdresser shop that was about to get bankrupt as four of it's six employees were on maternity leave at the same time. Ok it's rare occasion that 4/6 would reproduce at the same time, but if the owner nice enough to hire mostly just graduated hairdressers, it starts to look possible.
• mavelikara 15y ago
  Sounds like a place where businesses are actively discouraged. I wonder how the guy who (hypothetically) buys his €90K apartment made his money? Probably from running a €9/hr shop under-reporting revenues.
  • alga 15y ago
    Na-ah. The €9/hr "competition" are students living on instant noodles. You can't make a business out of that.
• toyg 15y ago
  After the first paragraph I was already thinking "Wow, I don't want to work for E760 per month, that's basically on the poverty line!"... then I checked where the guy was from; Hungary is a backwater, and absolutely NOT representative of the EU, probably not even of the old eastern bloc. Three-years maternity leave? That's unheard of in western Europe, most countries allow for less than a year (my wife got 6 months in the UK); men only recently started to enjoy some rights in that sense (in the UK it's two weeks). He talks about a post-50 "protected age" where you can't fire people. That doesn't exist in the UK, where we have the opposite problem (firms firing people near pension age, and then hiring youngsters at 1/3rd of salary). I know in other countries laws are tighter (in Italy it's fairly hard to fire people, for example), but as people say over there, "Facta lex inventa fraus" (as soon as a law is written, a way around it will be found"): in countries with rigid laws, firms now hire almost exclusively on a temporary basis, i.e. they hire people as contractors for years or even decades, abusing the relationship. The high taxes and pension contributions are also a factor in Italy and in France, but not elsewhere. What this post is representative of, is the general douchebaggery of European "entrepreneurs"; they usually come from "old money" (banks are very conservative with their lending, favouring entrenched players) and bring a terrible mindset to the workplace, i.e. "screw the employees, they're just idiots anyway". This obviously doesn't motivate workers, keeping productivity low.
  • white_devil 15y ago
    > Three-years maternity leave? That's unheard of in western Europe, most countries allow for less than a year (my wife got 6 months in the UK); 9 months is the "baseline" maternity leave in Finland. My sister had a baby and ended up being away from work for almost two years. She just started working again this week, and the same company was legally obligated to take her back.
    • toyg 15y ago
      Still not three years. You wouldn't get three years in Italy, nor in France or UK, i bet not even in Germany.
      • 15y ago
• viandante 15y ago
  I would just add that you can make money with such a system, you only need to find a business with more added value (difference between cost and price). And this brings to a whole lot of other topics such as if it is fair for a State to raise the bar in such way, so that less added value businesses simply cannot exist, if this improves growth and unemployment in the long run (I don't think so). Etc.
• fierarul 15y ago
  The title should be "why I don't give you a job without doing tax evasion". In Romania it's about the same: the taxation for an employees is high and so is social security (pregnancy leave, difficulty firing, etc). But people don't complain as much because tax evasion is really high. Of course, this is really annoying for me because if your customer is in the US they will not pay you behind the counter, they will do a wire payment or such, which goes straight into accounting and is taxed. In this regard, tax evasion becomes unfair competition.
  • bad_user 15y ago
    Also in Romania - Some companies are preferring contractual work and abusing it, by putting clauses in the contract that employees cannot quit for the next 5 years. This works in the cases were employees need to travel a lot (for example) and in the contract it is stipulated that if you quit, you have to pay the costs of accommodations, food and "training" provided during the contract, which is not feasible for most people. This IMHO, is equivalent to modern slavery. If you're not able to quit, you cannot complain, you cannot negotiate a higher salary and you are at your employer's mercy.
    • reinhardt 15y ago
      It's only fair if employers cannot fire people at will (without being sued to oblivion). "I can leave anytime I want but you cannot fire me" doesn't make sense. (For the record I am for at-will quitting and firing)
      • oelewapperke 15y ago
        It would be fair if both parties had a choice. Neither does.
      • jubalfh 15y ago
        Good luck at your next meeting with the firing squad!
    • Maro 15y ago
• jan_g 15y ago
  The thing (in many European countries) is that government doesn't 'steal' your money, but that out of every salary you have to pay for many different things. Income tax is only one aspect. For those interested, this is the reality in my country, Slovenia, which borders Hungary (I may have botched some numbers regarding taxation, but the principle behind calculations stands): 1. Out of every monthly salary you pay: income tax, state/public pension fund, health insurance and also a small tax (<1%) called parental security. 2. A woman or a man may take up to 12 months of parental leave, which is fully paid by the state. The government uses money from 'parental security' tax to pay for this privilege. It works, because at any given moment there are many,many more employees not on parental leave than those on parental leave. 3. A woman is entitled to sick leave during pregnancy if her doctor makes such decision. So it may well be that she is absent for two years from her job. And it is also true that many women abused this privilege simply by convincing their doctors that they 'cannot perform on the job while pregnant'. A few years ago there's was a sort of clampdown to this practice by tightening the control on the doctors' decisions. So it's not that pervasive anymore. 4. A woman is also entitled to reduced workday (only 4 hours instead of 8) while her child is under 6. Her salary is of course halved, but state covers her pension fund as if she worked 8 hours. Many women don't decide to use this option, simply because a halved salary puts a lot of strain to majority of families' incomes. 5. Regarding firing workers: similarly to Hungary it's very difficult to fire someone and almost impossible to fire pregnant women or old people. Therefore, majority of people under 35 don't have regular contracts, but they work via independent contracts or the so-called self-employment companies (you establish a company in which you are a sole employee and then go work to another company which pays you via your small company). Needless to say, job security is practically non-existant if you aren't on regular contract. 6. Progressive income tax is also here, however it's not as brutal as in Hungary. Lower salaries (<1k euros) are actually not taxed that much. The problem is only that the highest tax bracket (41%) comes already at 2k euros and that hits middle class the most. We, skilled professionals, are usually complaining the most about this fact. There are discussions to change this taxation in order to stem the brain-drain. It's also important to know that progressive taxation is applied on 'past-the-post' principle: e.g. you are taxed 41% only for your income that goes over a certain amount. This means that if your salary is 2k euros, you'll be taxed 41% only on income past 1.5k euros, that is 500 euros will be taxed 41%, 1.5k euros 27%. 7. Grey economy/tax evasion is certainly a problem, however the tax bureau is becoming more and more powerful and it's connected with banks. It's actually not that easy to cheat anymore. That goes for majority of people/businesses, richest top 5% still game the system by moving the money to Cyprus/Luxemburg shell companies and so on, but this can't really be helped unless it's solved on EU level. Ok, I'll stop now :-). If you have any further questions, then do ask.
• nestlequ1k 15y ago
  This guy is a complete asshole. Why is this #1 on HN?
  • xlpz 15y ago
    Well, it's not complicated to do the math...
  • vixen99 15y ago
    Anyone idiot or indeed a wise man can crank out an opinion or even cliched abuse but don't you find it more interesting when they bother to offer a counterpoint or an argument or pertinent further evidence regarding the issue?.
• kayoone 15y ago
  I run a company in germany, if my employees want EUR 1500 net salary, which is very little for a trained professional, it costs my company roughly EUR 3000. So not that much better. I dont know what this guy is doing but he should just sell his service internationally so he could easily charge double the money and would solve most of his problems.
  • troels 15y ago
    Exactly my thoughts. Most of EU has similar tax/vat and generally in favor of employees. Yet it's not a problem to start a company in the "west block". He complains about corruption too, though. I can believe that being an issue i Hungary.
    • alga 15y ago
      But he's hyperbolising, too. An illegal freelancer for a quarter the price is no competition for a legitimate business. Most business clients will not even consider paying black cash in an envelope, and the illegal freelancer will also lose out on social insurance.
  • vacri 15y ago
    It's interesting that you speak of salary in net. In Australia we speak of it in gross, and the rule of thumb is that an employee costs about 30% more than their gross, which includes 9% mandatory superannuation, payroll tax, and other sundry employment costs.
    • alga 15y ago
      See! The net salary and the total cost of employment are the sole interesting figures when comparing internationally, the gross salary is a largely arbitrary figure between those two.
• zeynalov 15y ago
  "Many of my employees would only come to work for me to learn my business secrets and to steal my clients." For that issue there is a non-compete contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause
  • andorjakab 15y ago
    Yeah, that's very nice when you have a working legal system. In Hungary a case like this will take 5 years, and you will most probably loose. They can steal your software, your artwork, your clients, your intellectual property, and you loose the case. Absurd. Happens all the time, not only to me. Judges are clueless in such matters.
    • zeynalov 15y ago
      Actually you're not alone. I have a startup in Azerbaijan, the same situation. I divided the work between workers, they can't to the work alone, so they don't know actually what they are doing. I teached the some parts of the business, they do the mechanical work, without asking the questions. I also made a non-compete clause between them for 2 years. Here are some tips from other HN community for this issue: 1. Split your workers into departments. No one single worker should handle all the processes. 2. Use forms to guide people through the process. It will make your processes easier to automate. 3. Take some upfront payment. That will discourage customers from dealing with your employees on the side. Another trick that I learnt from somebody else is to hold one key process to yourself. Someone I knew gets clothing manufactured in China. But before it is sold, they do an adjustment to it that is not known to the factory. Just as Coke has its "secret recipe", you have to make clear to your freelancers that you have a secret step. It will be enough to discourage them from running away with business. -----
      • andorjakab 15y ago
        Look, of course it's possible to find workarounds. But the issue is still valid. There's a huge problem with work ethics. People too often feel they have the right to steal whatever they like, unless of course I can stop them. And the issue is still there. Our justice system does not do justice. I don't want to create an 1984 work envorinment. I do want to trust the people I'm working with. And if they - after signing all the good contracts - in an environment that is built on mutual trust, they steal my property, I want the justice system to do justice.
• georgieporgie 15y ago
  This guy won't ever hire anyone because all he does is imagine the worst possible outcome for a given situation with no eye toward actual likelihood or his own ability to select a good candidate. Good luck with that attitude, 'entrepreneur'.
• sirwitti 15y ago
  [EDIT]: if you downvote, please explain why. i understand that depending on your country it maybe hard to create good and profitable companies. i'm from austria, europe btw. but on the other hand what to do with women and old people? i personally hate the idea of selecting employees this way. if nobody hired old people and women, someone, propably the state (read: everybody) had to pay for those people. for me this boils down to a greater question: how to deal with work/life/family? anybody here from a country with innovative ways of handling this?
• blago 15y ago
  What struck me was the premise of the article. Creating a startup company by selling your house is no walk in the park in any country. I can see a similar article written about the US. Quit whining, there are other ways. If there isn't a well developed capital market in Hungary, move somewhere else. Even in the States, there is only one silicon valley and people move there. A big part of the allure: access to capital.
• andorjakab 15y ago
  It's an honour to be discussed here, HN is my #1 source of useful information. I won't disturb. But please let me use this chance to get some tech help. The Hungarian version of this post (http://jakabandor.blog.hu/2011/07/27/tolem_ezert_nem_kapsz_munkat http://jakabandor.blog.hu/2011/07/27/tolem_ezert_nem_kapsz_m...) has 'lost' it's Facebook likes. I can't figure out why. If you check it with a tool (http://saqoo.sh/a/labs/fblinkstats/ http://saqoo.sh/a/labs/fblinkstats/) it's there, but 0 is displayed on the blog. Any ideas?
  • zeynalov 15y ago
    I see 91,143 people like this - on that blog post. Facebook like are seen when you type exact same URL. When there is a link with dynamic atributes like http://www....blogpost?commentform234 http://www....blogpost?commentform234 than it'll not show the likes, comments etc.
    • andorjakab 15y ago
      That's not the issue. It doesn't work with a clean URL either. What I see now is strange. It doesn't work with Firefox, but it does with Chrome. I have this issue for half a year now with likes disappearing.
• GigabyteCoin 15y ago
  Is it just me or does this writer have an incredibly pessimistic view on his own workers? Re [sic]: "they will just steal my ideas...", "women will take 6 year vacations (out of spite?)", etc.
  • andorjakab 15y ago
    It is reality. It does happen, that you're a smallbusiness owner, and somebody you used to hire 6 years ago shows up. She's back from maternity leave. And you have to rehire her, increase her salary to present level, pay her 4 months of fully paid vacation. And either grow your company - if you can -, or make room for her. How? By laying off somebody else. Maybe the one who had to hire when your employee 6 years ago went left to raise children. This is not a 'pessimistic view', this is what happens all the time.
    • GigabyteCoin 15y ago
      Nobody ever said the transition from a small business to big business is a simple one.
      • andorjakab 15y ago
        Especially not this way. Whenever the goverment says they're about to help us in the transition, I'm already in horror.
• mtts 15y ago
  A classic among businessmen all over Europe (I'm Dutch). And it's wrong(1). When you spend 3000 Euros to hire someone who nets 1500 Euros, the difference is not "stolen" by the government, it's what you pay to have access to a pool of highly educated potential employees who get free(ish) health care, childcare, pensions that you as an employer don't have to worry about. There are of course places where such taxes are not levvied, but it's a mistake to assume an employer can simply pocket the 1500 Euros difference as employees will demand higher salaries so they can save up for their own medical care, child care and pensions. (1) Except the bit about maternity leave: it may not be three years (!) all over Europe but even if it's a mere six months it's enough to cause small businesses to be very reluctant to hire women in the child bearing age.
  • mseebach 15y ago
    Did you see the chart in the article? Did you read the bit in the article where he declared that he considers 30% fair? According to the chart, Hungary takes 50% more than the Netherlands. Are there any objective metrics at all that suggests that Hungarians are 50% better educated, have 50% better health and child care or 50% better pensions? Stealing might be an inflammatory word, but what's going on in Hungary (and, indeed, many other European countries) certainly isn't a mutually beneficial transaction.
    • mtts 15y ago
      Hungary might be an outlier but right after it comes France and I'd say that the French get quite a lot for their money. So like most things, "it's complicated". This article oversimplifies to the point of it being flat out wrong. And not only that, it's completely unoriginal, being an exact transcript of what every shopkeeper in Europe will tell you after you've bought him a few drinks.
      • andorjakab 15y ago
        Look, my post isn't about Europe, but Hungary. And here, we do not get enough for our money. When you go to a hospital, you're scared to death. Okay, I didn't write a dissertation. It does simplify things, yes it sounds like whining. But it's very original. :) It is how I felt when I first wrote it in Hungarian, and I was sober. I wanted to buy beers, but they refused to sell it after 10 pm. Why? It's now legal to drink, but illegal to buy at night. My overall point is that the state is like an elephant in a porcelain store.
• mihaela 15y ago
  I'm a woman running a small ISV in Croatia, and a mother too. I would never hire a woman either, for the same reasons. As a matter of fact I wold not hire anyone locally, I just opted for the "outsoucing" via VAs and such. The thing is that it's very hard to fire someone, and human workers cost too much.
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
• hmottestad 15y ago
  I always say. A country can be valued by how it protects it's weakest. I wish people would realize that in a society we should all work together rather than have the strong huddle in a little pile and point and laugh at the weak or needy. I propose a new law for Hungary saying that every company with more than 10 employees should have the same percentage of female/male as that of the population or in special cases (like with IT) that of the field at universities. This would stop some companies profiting from healthy 30 year old single men, and then throw them away like rags once they start feeling the pressure or want children. To give incentive to the law I propose giving higher tax to those companies not following the laws and increasing them at an exponential rate yearly :)
  • daralthus 15y ago
    The real problem is not that women won't get a job, but that the non-corrupt tax paying companies get kicked out of the price war, because they have to charge more, to compensate for the high taxes. Hungary takes more than a half of peoples salary (and a whole lot more after), and most of the companies just don't pay the taxes for your real salary, only for the minimal wage.
  • andorjakab 15y ago
    I'd like to think of myself as responsible person in all possible aspects. That of course means, that I'd like to be socially responsible too. I would even go as far as saying that I actually am socially responsible. My point is, the sort of regulations you are proposing don't work. They impossibly violate the rules of life, especially when it's a small business. These regulations do a lot of harm. I do believe seriuosly, that society must protect its weakest. So goverments should make it cheaper to employ them. That's fair enough. And then, please, let us do our business. We businesses are people too. We can't be treated like this, or we just can't survive. We have to close shop, if all sorts of regulations are against our freedom to do business the way we think it makes sense. Well, something like this... :)
    • hmottestad 15y ago
      If it governs every business I'm sure the fittest business would survive. And I think that regulations mostly do good and are important to stop bullies from eating up society. I'm sure most business thought that outlawing slaves in the US would ruin them. Now business are thinking that hiring women of child bearing age will ruin them. They probably also think that not being allowed to dump their waste in the river will ruin them too.
• tbsdy 15y ago
  Good. I wouldn't want to work for you, after all you seem to spend more time writing about why you want to fire me than how to make money!
• henrikschroder 15y ago
  Yes, social responsibility is a bitch for the individual businessman. Boo hoo hoo. But for society as a whole, these things are good. Long maternity (and paternity!) leave is good for the children that will one day grow up and become productive members of society. Having laws around parental leave preventing discrimination means that society doesn't have to deal with paying unemployment welfare for women around 30, and having a hard time re-integrating them into the workforce at 40. Instead this cost is spread out among all the companies in the form of employment laws. I understand that all businesses wish to have a workforce consisting only of young well-educated males that are never sick, never take vacations and work lots of overtime, but there's a cost to getting that, and almost all businesses forget, or refuse to understand the value society provides to them. You want a workforce? Sure, it's gonna cost you, both in corporate taxes, and in social responsibility by employing less desireable individuals. Tough shit, pay up.
  • itmag 15y ago
    Why can't social responsibility be handled at a different layer, though? Why is it the individual businessman who has to pay special taxes for things like that? Why not just take it from general taxes across the board? Here in Sweden, employing people can be a crippling move for small businesses.
    • phillmv 15y ago
      >Why not just take it from general taxes across the board? Politics. Most people don't see or hear about payroll taxes, but they would notice if you added 5% to their income taxes. Plus, in a lot of cases it's administratively easier to say "the funding for this social program comes directly from this source of taxation". You're right that taxes should be designed better; in a lot of cases they provide disincentives for a lot of beneficial behaviour. Taxes are just really hard to design correctly. It's a huge problem no one has control over.
      • itmag 15y ago
        This leads to an interesting digression... My hacker's mind sees society the same way it sees ie software layers, kernels, APIs, libraries, etc. And from that POV, current society practices seem very inefficient and disorganized, and could be improved readily with a dollop of hacker values (eg lazy but smart) and cold hard logic. One example: I am becoming more and more in favor of a minimum guaranteed income provided by society. Here are some good arguments in favor of that: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-income/ http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc... Of course a MGI is heresy in today's society because we are still in a mindset where it's crucial that everyone pull their own weight lest other people suffer - a lingering meme from the days when 90% of the population was occupied with food production. This of course ignores the notions that 1) society is insanely productive thanks to automation and it requires very little labor to pay for the true necessities of life (see for instance http://www.earlyretirementextreme.com http://www.earlyretirementextreme.com - he lives on $7k a year) 2) many jobs today are marginally useful at best - think paper-shuffling mid-management 3) most of our income goes toward consumerist escapism which fails at making us truly fulfilled 4) much of the economy just exists to satisfy society's need for a status stratification mechanism (eg one is considered middle-class because one has such-and-such job title and education - if this classification went away then there would be general status confusion). Then again, trying to fix society the same way one re-factors code may be hubris on my part...
• exor 15y ago
  I run a business and could relate so strongly, I registered for HN just to comment: this is why I find it so difficult to hire locally in the U.S. - the incentives make it so much easier to offshore work.
• antalbud 15y ago
  Dear Andor, It is hard to leave this post without response. Both because I am Hungarian, and also because I happen to be an entrepreneur. The only reason I think this post deserves a response is because it seems you haven't started your business yet. So here is my advice: don't do it. Just don't. Not because of the taxes, but because of your utter lack of respect towards your future employees. If what's really holding you back is that you couldn't deliberately fire them, I see no reason why you would even want to hire them in the first place. I think what you don't realize is that you as an employer would become responsible for your people. They would depend on you and their monthly salary, and I think if you see your employees as some company assets you can just get rid of as soon as things get tough, you really shouldn't hire anyone to begin with. I would like to believe you are slightly distorting reality to shake things up. But if you are actually serious about founding a business, I would suggest you do not hire your 12 males in their twenties right in the beginning, instead, you hire a few people you actually _want_ to work with, and pay them a decent salary. And pay the taxes, as high as they are. Just because _you_ would be happier with lower taxes, does not mean that it would help the country's economy. Maybe try innovating and charging more instead of low-balling.
  • andorjakab 15y ago
    Dear Antal, I am well aware of this type of criticsm, because I've already got it with the original, Hungarian post. I could have rephrased it to avoid some of the misunderstanding. But I didn't change a word, only translated to English what has already provoked a lot of thought. In fact during my long life as an entrepreneur I employed more people than most of my harshest critics. Most of my employees were actually women. I treated them with great respect and I'd like to believe they're thinking about me as a good boss. In fact, this post isn't really about me. It's about something much bigger than me. I know it's provocative, over simplifies many things, even populist if you will. It's not an academic lecture. It's how many smallbusiness owners feel about an environment that is leathaly poisoned by corruption. In which being honest makes you very uncompetitive. I get a lot of advice about how to survive under these circumstances, how to trick the system, how to avoid employees stealing my (intellectual) property, how to do business. In fact, that wasn't my point. I know all that. I'm fine, in fact I'm one of the last persons who will not be fine in Hungary. In fact I don't mind high taxes and strong social security. What I'm worried about is that it's ok for others not paying these duties, and they make honest smallbusinesses uncompetitive. Among many other things that make this society really, badly, deeply screwed up. So badly, that Hungary is now marching towards national socialism. Something, that every intellectual should fight tough against. And that's what I'll try to do with my blog.
• lizzard 15y ago
  This is why we need better legal and financial structures to create co-operative, worker-owned businesses.
• alain94040 15y ago
  Being from Europe originally and having lived in Silicon Valley now for more than 10 years, I did the math on comparative taxes. In the end, it's a wash. If you take into account everything. I make more money in the US. But my retirement costs are higher. And by the time I put two kids through college (college is free in some European countries), it basically balances the extra cash I made over a 20-year career. Of course, for any given situation (single, dual income no kids), your results will vary. But I'd argue that a household with 2 kids is fairly common.
  • kcima 15y ago
    Even if it is a wash, and the costs of things end up being the same, the real issue is the question of who should be spending the money you earn. Should the government be allowed to forcibly take your earnings away to pay for your kids college and purchase retirement for you? What if you decide your kids would be better off earning their own way through college, or what if you want to retire in a location with nice weather and a very low cost of living? It sounds like living in Silicon Valley has not made you more wealthy, it's just provided you with a wealth of choices that the author of this article doesn't have.
• ricardobeat 15y ago
  > It's only Hungary that is so fucked up That's because you're only looking at Europe. Come to Brazil for a show (minus the huge maternity leave).
• 3pt14159 15y ago
  I can't believe how pro-government interventionist the views are here. Sure the guy's rant was over the top, but isn't this Economics 101? Arn't all the added costs the government puts on hiring workers perfectly reflected in the supply demand curve resolution? You might not hear about it all that much because it isn't cool to blog about it, but doesn't it make sense that women make less money when, on average, it costs more to hire them? This isn't about right or wrong, it's math. > Yes, social responsibility is a bitch for the individual businessman. Boo hoo hoo. - henrikschroder Social responsibility for a business is to provide goods to the public through voluntary exchange while adhering to the non-aggression principle. Every other benefit should be provided by personal savings, family support, and voluntary donation. If you really want forced help to new mothers or other "disadvantaged" people then provide it by the state where the costs are transparent. The people hurt most by these policies are women who do not want to be mothers. > But for society as a whole, these things are good. - henrikschroder I disagree. These interventionist practices increase tension between subcultures. They turn the world into an "us" vs "them" environment, where it would be more optimal to have a "me" and "you" environment. For example: Affirmative action. Many blacks that get into Harvard and graduate are treated as sub-students by employers like major banks. The reason is that by definition they have, on average, poorer standings when they enter university. A black person that truly deserved to get into Harvard is indistinguishable from one that got there only after the bump from affirmative action. Employers remembering their time at Harvard recall that the black people in there class, while smart, were not of the same caliber as the rest of the class on average. Furthermore, since affirmative action shifts the whole bell curve to the right, blacks are disproportionally more likely to drop out of university, since they are likely the least academically qualified to be there. This creates further racism as over the years professors tend to note that the blacks they teach tend to drop out. Another example: Social Security. While the baby boomers were all working they enjoyed some of the lowest rates around. Now forward projections show that the US is unable to meet its SS obligations. Again turning it into "us" vs "them" (Gen X/Y/Z vs Baby Boomers). > Long maternity (and paternity!) leave is good for the children that will one day grow up and become productive members of society. Having laws around parental leave preventing discrimination means that society doesn't have to deal with paying unemployment welfare for women around 30, and having a hard time re-integrating them into the workforce at 40. Instead this cost is spread out among all the companies in the form of employment laws. - henrikschroder People make choices. My choice may be to work until I have enough money to where I can earn enough interest passively while I go to Africa and join Engineers without Borders. Or my choice might be to have children. Either way, my productivity, savings, and future goals need to be harmonized for my plans to come to fruition. Most responsible, productive people find it very easy to return to the workforce. Sometimes they are a step down or two (as in the case of my mother, who was a former research manager at IBM before she had my brother and me) but if their skills haven't eroded, they quickly gain back, and even exceed their position (she's now fairly high up at AT&T managing the internet pipes between Asia and the Americas, as well as VPN services to huge companies like Siemens). If the problem that right to return to work solves is post child rearing un/underemployment, and the solution is to stem from the government, then the government should set up organizations that empower employment seeking mothers, not coerce organizations to hire them again. Furthermore, I've never met any business owner that didn't want to rehire a former staff member after they have had their maternity leave. The only time I've seen someone lean on that law was when they knew they were going to get fired (written up twice out of three times) so they had a child to reset the write-up policy. > I understand that all businesses wish to have a workforce consisting only of young well-educated males that are never sick, never take vacations and work lots of overtime, but there's a cost to getting that, and almost all businesses forget, or refuse to understand the value society provides to them. You want a workforce? Sure, it's gonna cost you, both in corporate taxes, and in social responsibility by employing less desireable individuals. Tough shit, pay up. First off, most businesses do not want a workforce of men like me. Young, well-educated, male, lots of OT. We're too much like cowboys. We hate process. We hate meetings. We might be great at startups, but we are terrible in most other organizations, and yet most of us don't even know it. As for the cost, "that is what the money is for" if it is citizens that want to be educated. Citizens that want to build roads. Citizens that want to have a safe and peaceful place to live and work. Citizens that want to buy products in an open market. Then those citizens will vote for those things. If you want to tax and impose rules on corporations then extend them the right to vote. No taxation without representation and all that (ironically, this is why governments are taken over by lobbyists, since the defense for having lobbyists was that the government makes rules that impact corporations and that corporations need "sway" in congress to protect their interests). Otherwise, recognize that the products that you use are brought by corporations to you, something most people forget. > When you spend 3000 Euros to hire someone who nets 1500 Euros, the difference is not "stolen" by the government, it's what you pay to have access to a pool of highly educated potential employees who get free(ish) health care, childcare, pensions that you as an employer don't have to worry about. - mtts It depends on how it has been "spent". From the employer's perspective income tax should be none of his concern. If the citizens vote for a 50% income tax then that is what they should see on their payment stub. > Being from Europe originally and having lived in Silicon Valley now for more than 10 years, I did the math on comparative taxes. In the end, it's a wash. If you take into account everything. I make more money in the US. But my retirement costs are higher. And by the time I put two kids through college (college is free in some European countries), it basically balances the extra cash I made over a 20-year career. - alain94040 I did the math from Ontario, Canada to Texas a couple years ago. Even with a 10k bump in pay and full benefits, it was a wash. America pays a lot of taxes. > I propose a new law for Hungary saying that every company with more than 10 employees should have the same percentage of female/male as that of the population or in special cases (like with IT) that of the field at universities. This would stop some companies profiting from healthy 30 year old single men, and then throw them away like rags once they start feeling the pressure or want children. - hmottestad That would be disastrous. Special cases governed by whom? Elected officials? There is about another 500 pages of laws. Logging towns, IT, Nurses, flight attendants, basketball players, elementary teachers, the list goes on and on.
• mekoka 15y ago
  Don't blame businesses, don't blame women. Blame governments that refuse the responsibilities of taking hard, but necessary decisions, because they're afraid it'll cost them votes. They instead play shady games that only appear to resolve issues, when all they do is to force/allow both businesses and people to dabble in gray areas. Let's speak hypothetically. Let's say we're a government that sees that we have too many expenses and as a result have very high taxes. Yet, we still have some unresolved social issues for which we have no budget, such as maternity programs and 50+ employment protection (yes, these should be state responsibilities, no reason to offload it to businesses). We could decide to reshuffle our current programs to make room for these, but that would certainly means cutting into some other established programs (unpopular decisions = no no in politics). Alternatively, we could yet again openly increase taxes, at the risk of looking even more expensive than neighboring countries and losing even more businesses (no no). We will do neither, instead we'll come up with laws that makes us look good with the people (3 years maternity, ensured reemployment, 50+ protection, all bankrolled by businesses), while allowing employers to find loopholes (discrimination). The issues themselves remain unresolved and everybody goes home happy.
• rabble 15y ago
  For what it's worth, the same basic setup is in place in Latin America. Brazil the effective cost is 2x the take home pay for people as well. Maternity leaves are much shorter, and you can fire somebody, you just need to pay a hefty severance. As somebody else mentioned, the way most companies work is to have each developer with their own tiny company.
  • GFischer 15y ago
    Be careful with that, if the tax authorities find out it can be construed as avoiding taxes (it's pretty complicated, but usually they'll find you in violation of at least one tax law as it's almost impossible not to). Starting a business in Latin America is tough. There are huge incentives for tax evasion (and even when not, you might be evading unknowingly).
• OpieCunningham 15y ago
  1- The competition sells the same service, but illegally, under really crappy circumstances, charging €9 per hour. They simply pocket the money, without even issuing an invoice, it doesn't even include the VAT. They don't have to take any responsibility, there are no warranties, they officially don't even do anything, there's not even an official, legal trace of their existence. They don't have to rent an office, hire an accountant. By doing this 5 hours a day, they can easily make €1,000. They would point their middle fingers to my €760 job offer, where they wouldn't be allowed to do crappy work, but show up in time every day and meet very high professional standards in their work, they wouldn't be allowed to defraud the customers, and if they did, they would be fired. If your business plan calls for entering a market where the going hourly rate (legal or not) is 9 and you want to charge 37, your business plan is seriously flawed to the degree that every other explanation you've provided for not starting the business is moot. You have no business plan and therefore you won't hire anyone because you have no business. Find a new market. 2- The competition would do smear campaigns against my company. I would have to face anti-capitalist propaganda, I would be seen as a greedy asshole who charges €37 for what they charge €9, I would be an enemy of the nice Hungarian people, while others work honestly for the fraction of my price... Without knowing what business you're talking about, it's hard to view this complaint as anything more than irrational defeatism. 3- Many of my employees would only come to work for me to learn my business secrets and to steal my clients. They would lure them by lying that they will get the same value and quality of service, but at the fraction of the price. After they stole enough clients, they would deliberately cause a lot of harm to my company to get themselves fired. They would then go to court, stating that I fired them illegally, and they would win the case. In the meantime, they would of course work happily for the stolen clientele, that has cost me a fortune to build up. And of course they would be offended. They would trumpet on all kind of forums, that they have worked for my company, they know what they're talking about. Not only it is very expensive, but the service is a piece of crap too. Granted, I'm entirely unfamiliar with Hungarian employment law, but this also sounds like irrational defeatism, or at least a failure on your part to understand best practices in documenting employee behavior. In addition, why doesn't this cataclysmic issue affect the 9/hour competition? 4- Complaining about all this wouldn't help, no one would give a flying fuck. Complaining about real issues is one thing. Complaining about the market when your business plan is pie-in-the-sky and everything and everyone is out to get you is quite another.
• mcantelon 15y ago
  >our customers would pay €37 / hour for our service. That seems low.
• dreamdu5t 15y ago
  Why are businesses forced to pay for maternity leave, and not taxpayers?
• kcima 15y ago
  Governments like the one described in this article remind me of a massive monolithic PHP program where all the functionality is lumped into a single blob of spaghetti code. Ugh. The negative impact of government regulations like this are proved by reducing the size of a company to one. Example: if you start a business, and hire yourself as the first employee, should you be forced to give yourself 3 years off for maternity leave? Of course you could never do this. It would kill your business instantly. Just like the Unix philosophy of writing programs that do one thing and do it well. Society functions better when we have many smaller social institutions with focused roles. Government doesn't need to do everything. There are plenty of other social constructs that have proven more capable of providing many of society's needs. Governments should stick to the task of protecting individual liberty. Businesses should stick to the task of providing quality and innovative goods and services. Family, community, churches and private charity should stick to the task of taking care of those less fortunate. We as programmers and developers can help improve society by demanding that (like our small but beautiful software), social institutions stick to singular responsibilities to which they are most suited.
  • alga 15y ago
    If you want USA, you know where to find it.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• 16s 15y ago
  I had a female boss once. She said the exact same thing about not hiring women because they get pregnant. I'm a man in the U.S.A. We don't have all of the laws as described in this article (most of us can be fired for any reason at any time). We're on our own. My wife got 4 weeks leave when she gave birth and that was at 50% of her normal income. Then she went back to work (and governments wonder why births are declining). Anyway, I was shocked that my boss felt that way about women employees and because she was so matter of fact about it. She didn't have children herself and was past child-bearing age. She was very successful (several master degrees and a very wealthy husband). She was one of the best managers I ever had. But basically, she was a woman who would not hire other women.
  • andorjakab 15y ago
    My message is completely different. I do want women to be able to have a long, paid maternity leave. It makes sense. But my goverment shouldn't kill my business either. Isn't that fair to ask? When I'm doing business, I'm a paying a ton of money, thousand times more than the average guy. It doesn't make sense to further punish me, through killing my business via absurd regulations that don't make sense.
    • 16s 15y ago
      Oh yes. I was just sharing my past experience. I don't mean to take a side.
    • alga 15y ago
      Then you're not making sense. Do you want to be able to fire pregnant women, or do you want to be able to refuse them employment after they return? That would be a horrible thing to do, perhaps it's good that you're not an employer then ;-)
      • andorjakab 15y ago
        You misunderstand. Taking care of people is not my responsibilty. It's the state's responisbility. That's why we pay all the taxes and social security. A business - especially a small business - isn't a place for altruism. I just can't afford hiring people to help them get along with their lives. A business is a business, not social welfare itself. It pays for welfare, but it _is_ not welfare. I stated exactly what I want. I want to be able to decide on my own, who I hire, who I do not hire. It is as simple as this. They CAN create regulations that FORCE me, but then I choose NOT to do business. I also suggest other means of helping underpriviliged people to obtain jobs. Such as making me pay LESS if I employ them. That would make sense, in business terms too.
• danbmil99 15y ago
  This is so, so true. Whether through pure rational amoral choice, or subconsciously, every employer knows that some employees come with a hidden extra cost. In the US, maternity (+paternity) isn't crazy in most states, and I suspect that's not a major issue. However, the fact that anyone but a white male has potential cause to sue if fired (due to their ability to claim gender or race discrimination), is a subtle but insidious reason to think twice about hiring a woman or person of color. The truth is that these sort of market-distorting regulations, while possibly well intended, frequently end up hurting the people they are designed to help.
• hodbby 15y ago
  Although each country has its own rules (maternity leaves, vacations, VAT, etc...) but the problems are common share to all of us. Great post!
• WhatsHisName 15y ago
  Based on the discussions I can't help but wonder how many people here recognize that this article was written for Hungary and not the USA?
• swah 15y ago
  That's pretty much the same reason why Milton Friedman is against a minimum wage stipulated by state.
• factorizer 15y ago
  people like these are what class struggle is for, amirite?
• dr_win 15y ago
  my solution: get into business where you can hire machines, not people + outsource the rest.
• digitalengineer 15y ago
  The country of Hungary is almost broke. It's big, bloated government and corruption that's the cause. Hell, the guy's post reads like Atlas Shrugged and he's John Galt. He's "stopping the motor of the world" If you haven't read it, have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged