6 ms·

EU labor laws protect the workers. I dont get why US Americans often think these laws dont benefit the workers.

nostrademons 3y ago
They level out both the upside and the downside. If you can never fire people, you're going to be very very cautious about who you hire in the first place. That makes it much harder to get companies into a bidding war that'll actually raise your wages. I've had a few European teammates, and they usually come to the U.S. because they can make 3-5x what they could in Europe. You'll see that a lot in HN comments, where people talk about USD$400K FAANG compensation and European developers will be like "Dang, WTF, I'm just sitting here with my €70K salary". Right now, going into a bust, everybody wants downside protection. You often make more over the long-term accepting some risk to pick the upside when it's available, though.
- throwawaymanbot 3y ago
  [dead]
- regularjack 3y ago
  You're assuming that the differences in wages between US and Europe are solely due to labor laws, which is quite a stretch, in my opinion.
  - aix1 3y ago
    I think it's interesting to compare Switzerland with the neighbouring countries (e.g. France and Germany). I don't know about other companies, but Google Zürich pays much more than Google Paris or Google Berlin/Munich. I think it's likely that the difference in labour laws is a contributing factor. Switzerland has very little by way of worker protection, instead placing a significant emphasis on unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosenversicherung).
    - mrunkel 3y ago
      Cost of Living is much higher in Switzerland.
      - nostrademons 3y ago
        Cost of living is usually higher in areas with higher wages, because it means that residents have more money to spend on living.
        aix1 3y ago
        Right, and Google explicitly doesn't model for cost of living in its comp philosophy.
        waych 3y ago
        They use per market pricing instead, which roughly works out to the same thing in the long term, while not being subject to short term fluctuations.
  - twelve40 3y ago
    I don't see the "assuming... solely" in their post at all. Seems like they are just pointing out a factor, could be one of many.
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    Where did they make that assumption at all? How does the parent commenter acknowledging a single factor in a situation lead you to believe that they assume no other contributing factors exist?
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  > I've had a few European teammates, and they usually come to the U.S. because they can make 3-5x what they could in Europe. And as we know, the only difference between us and Europe is labor laws. /s
  - TexanFeller 3y ago
    I've worked with many UK/Europeans. They are quite similar to us in skills and productivity aside from labor laws(excessive vacations, months/years of parental leave, impossible to fire etc.)
    - wdb 3y ago
      Excessive vacations? What do you mean? It's not impossible to fire you only need a good cause to do so which I find reasonable.
      - TexanFeller 3y ago
        A good reason that often doesn't qualify is that business is down, macroeconomic conditions are expected to be unfavorable for the foreseeable future, and expenses, which for many businesses are dominated by salaries, need to be cut ASAP to ensure the business' long term survival and prosperity. Like now. Businesses in Europe simply have fewer options, like it's much harder to cut early and cut deep(hopefully minimizing future cuts) when trouble is ahead when you have to have protracted negotiations with unions and government agencies who have to sign off on your layoffs.
        kramerger 3y ago
        Union negotiations are about how to organise the layoffs, not whether you can fire the workforce or not. And if you expect help from the government, you need to show that your layoffs actually have a chance to make your company survive. For example, you cannot fire the entire R&D when you are 1 year from product release.
    - pleb_nz 3y ago
- future_i_snow 3y ago
  I make almost exactly €70k in Sweden and I am _very_ happy not making more since I also have very very cheap universal health care, and very very few mass shootings in the public schools my children are attending.
JPLeRouzic 3y ago
I am not sure, at least for France, that it's "all workers". For example the "code du travail" is excessively complex as it describes many kind of different private sector workers with very different rights. As a rule of thumb if you work in a large company you are well protected. In other cases it's very different, which partly explains the violence in the society.
- cutemonster 3y ago
  > partly explains the violence in the society What's that about? Could you please explain?
TechBro8615 3y ago
Well, the salaries are about 30-50% what they are in the US. Maybe it's related.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  Maybe it's related, maybe it's due to the fact that the cost of almost everything in the US is higher. There's many factors in this conversation
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    So companies just pay you out of the goodness of their heart because you need the money?
    - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
      I have no idea how you know from what I said to that. All I said is that available data does not allow you to conclude that the entirety of the difference in pay is due to difference in labor laws. It's not an extraordinary claim, it's quite tame in fact, I would self evident.
  - TexanFeller 3y ago
    > the cost of almost everything in the US is higher Certainly not compared to Europe/UK. I have friends that moved there and have spent many weeks over there myself. Property, living expenses, taxes, and many goods are generally noticeably higher over there.
    - cr1895 3y ago
      To counter your anecdote with mine, I’m always shocked whenever I return to visit the US how expensive basic things like groceries and rent are. Much more so than the Netherlands. This is complicated, and it’s insufficient just to state that everything in Europe is generally more expensive than in the US.
refurb 3y ago
Just like rent control does more than just "control the price of rent" because landlords change their behavior to optimize their financial returns, so do labor laws. Strong worker protection ends up making the cost of hiring new workers higher. Companies react to those costs by a number of means like delaying hiring, hiring contractors first, firing within the probation period when they might not have normally, etc, etc. Whenever the laws are changed, a new "optimum approach" is developed. And like rent control, labor laws often benefit the people who already rent/have a job. For people who are looking to rent/looking for a job, they can make it harder as the barriers to entry just got higher. It's not right or wrong, it's just a trade off.
- dantheman 3y ago
  There's definitely a right and wrong - it is morally wrong to use force to enrich yourself at the expense of others. In the case of rent control -- landlords and future renters suffer. In the case the employment -- it's employers and future workers.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    how does rentcontrol let future renters suffer?
    - refurb 3y ago
      If, as a landlord, you know you can never raise the rent, and you can't evict a tenant except for very limited reasons, well then you have your own internal set of screening criteria and you only take the most qualified renters. It's far better to leave the unit empty for a few months because the loss of rental income is tiny compared to the financial loss of choosing the wrong tenant.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        i see your point but i don't think this is true. i believe that bad tenants are uncommon but exist at all price levels. raising rent is not going to keep them out and they will have to be screened anyways. i don't know how rentcontrol works elsewhere, but in germany generally it means that rent can't be raised more than once a year or 15 months or something in that range, and it can't be raised more than a few percent each time, but it doesn't mean that it can't be raised at all. not being able to evict a tenant is independent of that. the general issue here is a power differential. big company vs small family. i know in the US there are more small landlords who only have a few houses or even one. but that is rare in germany. most are bigger businesses with hundreds of apartments, and with that the risk of getting a bad tenant is obviously larger, but the financial risk is also spread over all tenants.
bjoli 3y ago
I think it is because it benefits workers differently. People with high salaries would usually get even higher salaries in the states, whereas people with low-earning jobs would get less paid with a less stable employment. The HN selection is just skewed. A friend of mine with a VERY sick disabled kid which prevented her from working night shifts in a home for the elderly would probably have gotten sacked by now hadn't it been for the Swedish labour laws that mandate that the employer tries to find a different position within the same qualifications in the same organisation. Sure, the union had to help and remind them of that obligation, but in the end it worked out for the best for my friend. I don't think the laws are there to protect someone like me that could get another job, but to protect people like my friend.
TexanFeller 3y ago
Strong worker protections are a major reason that big tech and many other industries have a much smaller presence in Europe and pay far less to Europeans. You're worth less if you might be absent on parental leave for a year at a time. You're higher risk to hire if you can't be fired easily etc. Protections have a cost. My friends that moved to UK/Europe get half their former salary and have much higher living expenses and taxes. I also have several friends that moved to TX because compensation in Europe is terrible.
- dingusdew 3y ago
  [dead]
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  It all depends on what you value. Dutch labour laws are not written for highly educated tech bros but designed to protect everyone. Wealth inequality for instance is something that permeates political discourse. Americans don't give a shit about it at all. Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind.
  - dantheman 3y ago
    Making society nicer for everyone requires investment.
    - smcleod 3y ago
      * in people, not profits.
  - throwaway6734 3y ago
    >Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind. In the short term, Europe is much better at this than the US, but the long term sustainability of the European welfare state will be under serious threat over the next 50 years due to the horrible demographics of most European countries
throwaway22032 3y ago
I am British. If you need labour laws beyond basic safety stuff then you're simply not being paid enough. I would far rather have sufficient income and therefore wealth built to be able to choose for myself whether I want to take time off. I actually find it juvenile that people want employment to be this way. What do they think is going to happen when they stop working? Or is the plan - again a juvenile one, seeking a parental figure - "I'll just work for a company until I die"? Have fun with that...
tripleaaa 3y ago
[dead]

They level out both the upside and the downside. If you can never fire people, you're going to be very very cautious about who you hire in the first place. That makes it much harder to get companies into a bidding war that'll actually raise your wages. I've had a few European teammates, and they usually come to the U.S. because they can make 3-5x what they could in Europe. You'll see that a lot in HN comments, where people talk about USD$400K FAANG compensation and European developers will be like "Dang, WTF, I'm just sitting here with my €70K salary". Right now, going into a bust, everybody wants downside protection. You often make more over the long-term accepting some risk to pick the upside when it's available, though.

throwawaymanbot 3y ago
[dead]
regularjack 3y ago
You're assuming that the differences in wages between US and Europe are solely due to labor laws, which is quite a stretch, in my opinion.
- aix1 3y ago
  I think it's interesting to compare Switzerland with the neighbouring countries (e.g. France and Germany). I don't know about other companies, but Google Zürich pays much more than Google Paris or Google Berlin/Munich. I think it's likely that the difference in labour laws is a contributing factor. Switzerland has very little by way of worker protection, instead placing a significant emphasis on unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosenversicherung).
  - mrunkel 3y ago
    Cost of Living is much higher in Switzerland.
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      Cost of living is usually higher in areas with higher wages, because it means that residents have more money to spend on living.
      - aix1 3y ago
        Right, and Google explicitly doesn't model for cost of living in its comp philosophy.
        waych 3y ago
        They use per market pricing instead, which roughly works out to the same thing in the long term, while not being subject to short term fluctuations.
- twelve40 3y ago
  I don't see the "assuming... solely" in their post at all. Seems like they are just pointing out a factor, could be one of many.
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  Where did they make that assumption at all? How does the parent commenter acknowledging a single factor in a situation lead you to believe that they assume no other contributing factors exist?
hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
> I've had a few European teammates, and they usually come to the U.S. because they can make 3-5x what they could in Europe. And as we know, the only difference between us and Europe is labor laws. /s
- TexanFeller 3y ago
  I've worked with many UK/Europeans. They are quite similar to us in skills and productivity aside from labor laws(excessive vacations, months/years of parental leave, impossible to fire etc.)
  - wdb 3y ago
    Excessive vacations? What do you mean? It's not impossible to fire you only need a good cause to do so which I find reasonable.
    - TexanFeller 3y ago
      A good reason that often doesn't qualify is that business is down, macroeconomic conditions are expected to be unfavorable for the foreseeable future, and expenses, which for many businesses are dominated by salaries, need to be cut ASAP to ensure the business' long term survival and prosperity. Like now. Businesses in Europe simply have fewer options, like it's much harder to cut early and cut deep(hopefully minimizing future cuts) when trouble is ahead when you have to have protracted negotiations with unions and government agencies who have to sign off on your layoffs.
      - kramerger 3y ago
        Union negotiations are about how to organise the layoffs, not whether you can fire the workforce or not. And if you expect help from the government, you need to show that your layoffs actually have a chance to make your company survive. For example, you cannot fire the entire R&D when you are 1 year from product release.
  - pleb_nz 3y ago
future_i_snow 3y ago
I make almost exactly €70k in Sweden and I am _very_ happy not making more since I also have very very cheap universal health care, and very very few mass shootings in the public schools my children are attending.

JPLeRouzic 3y ago

I am not sure, at least for France, that it's "all workers". For example the "code du travail" is excessively complex as it describes many kind of different private sector workers with very different rights. As a rule of thumb if you work in a large company you are well protected. In other cases it's very different, which partly explains the violence in the society.

cutemonster 3y ago
> partly explains the violence in the society What's that about? Could you please explain?

TechBro8615 3y ago

Well, the salaries are about 30-50% what they are in the US. Maybe it's related.

hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
Maybe it's related, maybe it's due to the fact that the cost of almost everything in the US is higher. There's many factors in this conversation
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  So companies just pay you out of the goodness of their heart because you need the money?
  - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
    I have no idea how you know from what I said to that. All I said is that available data does not allow you to conclude that the entirety of the difference in pay is due to difference in labor laws. It's not an extraordinary claim, it's quite tame in fact, I would self evident.
- TexanFeller 3y ago
  > the cost of almost everything in the US is higher Certainly not compared to Europe/UK. I have friends that moved there and have spent many weeks over there myself. Property, living expenses, taxes, and many goods are generally noticeably higher over there.
  - cr1895 3y ago
    To counter your anecdote with mine, I’m always shocked whenever I return to visit the US how expensive basic things like groceries and rent are. Much more so than the Netherlands. This is complicated, and it’s insufficient just to state that everything in Europe is generally more expensive than in the US.

refurb 3y ago

Just like rent control does more than just "control the price of rent" because landlords change their behavior to optimize their financial returns, so do labor laws. Strong worker protection ends up making the cost of hiring new workers higher. Companies react to those costs by a number of means like delaying hiring, hiring contractors first, firing within the probation period when they might not have normally, etc, etc. Whenever the laws are changed, a new "optimum approach" is developed. And like rent control, labor laws often benefit the people who already rent/have a job. For people who are looking to rent/looking for a job, they can make it harder as the barriers to entry just got higher. It's not right or wrong, it's just a trade off.

dantheman 3y ago
There's definitely a right and wrong - it is morally wrong to use force to enrich yourself at the expense of others. In the case of rent control -- landlords and future renters suffer. In the case the employment -- it's employers and future workers.
- em-bee 3y ago
  how does rentcontrol let future renters suffer?
  - refurb 3y ago
    If, as a landlord, you know you can never raise the rent, and you can't evict a tenant except for very limited reasons, well then you have your own internal set of screening criteria and you only take the most qualified renters. It's far better to leave the unit empty for a few months because the loss of rental income is tiny compared to the financial loss of choosing the wrong tenant.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      i see your point but i don't think this is true. i believe that bad tenants are uncommon but exist at all price levels. raising rent is not going to keep them out and they will have to be screened anyways. i don't know how rentcontrol works elsewhere, but in germany generally it means that rent can't be raised more than once a year or 15 months or something in that range, and it can't be raised more than a few percent each time, but it doesn't mean that it can't be raised at all. not being able to evict a tenant is independent of that. the general issue here is a power differential. big company vs small family. i know in the US there are more small landlords who only have a few houses or even one. but that is rare in germany. most are bigger businesses with hundreds of apartments, and with that the risk of getting a bad tenant is obviously larger, but the financial risk is also spread over all tenants.

bjoli 3y ago

I think it is because it benefits workers differently. People with high salaries would usually get even higher salaries in the states, whereas people with low-earning jobs would get less paid with a less stable employment. The HN selection is just skewed. A friend of mine with a VERY sick disabled kid which prevented her from working night shifts in a home for the elderly would probably have gotten sacked by now hadn't it been for the Swedish labour laws that mandate that the employer tries to find a different position within the same qualifications in the same organisation. Sure, the union had to help and remind them of that obligation, but in the end it worked out for the best for my friend. I don't think the laws are there to protect someone like me that could get another job, but to protect people like my friend.

TexanFeller 3y ago

Strong worker protections are a major reason that big tech and many other industries have a much smaller presence in Europe and pay far less to Europeans. You're worth less if you might be absent on parental leave for a year at a time. You're higher risk to hire if you can't be fired easily etc. Protections have a cost. My friends that moved to UK/Europe get half their former salary and have much higher living expenses and taxes. I also have several friends that moved to TX because compensation in Europe is terrible.

dingusdew 3y ago
[dead]
WeylandYutani 3y ago
It all depends on what you value. Dutch labour laws are not written for highly educated tech bros but designed to protect everyone. Wealth inequality for instance is something that permeates political discourse. Americans don't give a shit about it at all. Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind.
- dantheman 3y ago
  Making society nicer for everyone requires investment.
  - smcleod 3y ago
    * in people, not profits.
- throwaway6734 3y ago
  >Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind. In the short term, Europe is much better at this than the US, but the long term sustainability of the European welfare state will be under serious threat over the next 50 years due to the horrible demographics of most European countries

throwaway22032 3y ago

I am British. If you need labour laws beyond basic safety stuff then you're simply not being paid enough. I would far rather have sufficient income and therefore wealth built to be able to choose for myself whether I want to take time off. I actually find it juvenile that people want employment to be this way. What do they think is going to happen when they stop working? Or is the plan - again a juvenile one, seeking a parental figure - "I'll just work for a company until I die"? Have fun with that...

tripleaaa 3y ago

[dead]