5 ms·

I sometimes wonder how companies survive in France in a difficult business environment! The labor laws alone is a major barrier!

by aborsy 3y ago

calamari4065 3y ago
Have you considered that labor laws protect workers, and workers who are happy and feel safe and not exploited are more productive? It's entirely possible to run a business without exploiting your workers and trying to squeeze every red cent out of them.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "Have you considered that labor laws protect workers, and workers who are happy and feel safe and not exploited are more productive?" I remember reading an interview with Stephane Israel, the director of Arianespace, who complained that with a leisurely 35-hour workweek, they have no chance competing with workaholics at SpaceX. While it would be a much nicer world if you were right, I am not sure you are. East Asians work even more and they seem to be overtaking the Western Civilization lately.
  - jackcosgrove 3y ago
    > East Asians work even more and they seem to be overtaking the Western Civilization lately. I think East Asian working culture is pushing the limits of human physiology and psychology. I've seen documentaries on South Korean work culture, for example, where people consistently receive less sleep than is healthy because they work so much. To use the example of Korea again, their work culture is probably contributing to the low birthrate which is ultimately counterproductive. There's a vignette I've heard about a movie theater. Imagine someone in the front of the theater stands up to get a better view. The person behind them then needs to stand up to maintain the same view. Eventually everyone is standing up, with the same view as before and more uncomfortable than when they were sitting. It's an analogy for heavy work cultures, which can be counterproductive and unnecessary after a certain point. Could French work culture be more productive than American, or Korean, work culture? I don't know, but it's not simply a matter of measuring short term outputs and ignoring externalities such as rates of depression, alienation, poor health, or low birthrates.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    I value not working way more than raising the GDP. It is not a competition for first place where you will receive some kind of medal from Wikipedia.
- aborsy 3y ago
  This is a simplistic view. The protective labor laws protect some workers, but can bring about a host of adverse effects. The good and bad are equally protected. For example, my work place in France was so toxic that over time I developed psychological problems, because the institution could not address the abuse, harassment, bullying, etc, since everyone had secure permanent contracts (CDI) strongly protected by unions and could afford arbitrary behavior. A lot of people didn’t care doing their jobs properly, bringing about an environment with problems everywhere.
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    Yes, hence why pushing for extreme protection against firings can be even worse than no protection at all Especially with no way to fire the person not even 'virtually'
  - Saline9515 3y ago
    That's an excellent point, it's even worse in the public administration where everyone is un-fireable. The only way to get the bad apples out is usually through a promotion :-/
- baby 3y ago
  It’s actually quite hard to find a stable job in France due to these laws: companies only give short term contracts and then rotate you out once they get in danger zone (you need to hire them full time now). Also my friends back in France are always in holidays. They’re forced to take a full month in some positions like banking as they need to ensure continuity of business even when people are not there for extended periods of time. A friend of mine has 45 days off. Personally I think it’s great but if you’re in a competitive industry AND competing with the American Workaholics you don’t have a single chance.
  - JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 3y ago
    Everything you wrote is either lies, or very specific to an industry that I have never seen in the past 50 years. But I would say lies or FUD because it’s ridiculous.
    - baby 3y ago
      Truth is hard to accept, what can I say.
  - genman 3y ago
    Aw, poor Americans and their tiny 2 week long vacation. :) People in Europe will never understand this mindless slaving. ;)
  - LelouBil 3y ago
    Well, in france, rotating short term contacts for a long term position is illegal.
    - Saline9515 3y ago
      It's harder to prove, as the employees move out of the company.
  - Saline9515 3y ago
    Unless I'm wrong, there are more than 45 days of work in a year. How come the are "always in holidays" then? Joke aside, American friends seem to me that they're always fighting a perpetual burn-out, as they can't take holidays and get some real rest. When I was working in France, I used to take a 1 month break in summer. I always felt that after the third week, something changed in my body, as my nervous system was fully rested and I was ready to go back work my ass off. So maybe there's a reason, and if taking a month off allows you to be 1/12 more productive for the whole year, it's worth it?
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Safer individually, but the whole ship goes down together.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sebastiennight 3y ago
Having run a business in France for 16 years (with employees), I do not consider the labor laws to be such a barrier. I think if you ask many SMBs owners in France, we'd gripe more about the tax system (which got slightly less opaque since RSI was finally shut down, but no less onerous) or the paperwork. Allowing people who dedicate their workweek to your business, to have social benefits, free healthcare, retirement benefits and unemployment money if they get fired seems like a fair deal to me. Especially if you consider that even taking into account those "extra costs", total comp seems to me to still be lower than what you'd have to pay a US employee for the same job
bertil 3y ago
Labor laws are seen as a plus by many people, even in a hot market like AI. - Candidates know they won’t be showered with praise and sign-on bonuses here and now but ignored and thrown out the back after the first review cycle. If anything happens to them (let’s say, a bouldering accident), they know they’ll be given time, care, and consideration. They know they’ll have weekends off to train bouldering, too. If you know people won’t fire you on a whim, you know they’ll hire responsibly, invest in you, and encourage lateral moves when your path isn’t leading anywhere. - Employers might want to look very attractive, but that coffee machine, that micro-kitchen is no guarantee—not anymore after the last two years. It’s nice to promise the best private health plan: I got one through a big tech company. Never needed it. But I’ve heard from people who did that it’s nowhere near what a patient would want. After that, I remember asking a small start-up in the UK if they offered anything similar. That was stupid: they could never afford anything like it. And they were puzzled… Every resident has access to the NHS, by law. They didn’t list that as a benefit because they thought they were competing with local companies. They hired a lot of Americans, and every one of them could not stop talking about how much better the care was. Now that I mention it, it’s suspicious that all of them needed medical care as soon as they arrived… It goes beyond that: a society with a strong safety net is better off. Countries with strong social nets have safer streets. Many candidates might be males over-estimating their ability to get out ahead in a street fight and be indifferent to high crime rates, but some have partners that might not care for headlines like “Mugging capital of the world” and “Precinct ran out of rape kits”. I like knowing that my loved ones don’t do “active shooter drills” routinely. Personally, I left a job that was really great for several reasons. A big one was that, during my 5-minute walking commute (in the Northern Quarter in Manchester, UK), I had to walk past 50 or so people standing unconscious, wobbling, clearly high on “spice” (a cluster of synthetic “zombie” drugs so destructive and violent, the only survivor on record testified one should never try it and do something “chill, like heroin,” instead). I’d much rather live in a country where I know the emergency psychiatry and addiction programs are publicly financed, free for patients, and well-staffed. But that’s because my partner is the one working there, so I’m biased. Experiences like that, seeing human lives wasting on the pavement daily, might seem extreme and definitely foreign to people from, say, San Francisco. Still, if you know about human tragedy directly, you prefer to live somewhere that addresses that.

I sometimes wonder how companies survive in France in a difficult business environment! The labor laws alone is a major barrier!

by aborsy 3y ago

I sometimes wonder how companies survive in France in a difficult business environment! The labor laws alone is a major barrier!

calamari4065 3y ago

Have you considered that labor laws protect workers, and workers who are happy and feel safe and not exploited are more productive? It's entirely possible to run a business without exploiting your workers and trying to squeeze every red cent out of them.

inglor_cz 3y ago
"Have you considered that labor laws protect workers, and workers who are happy and feel safe and not exploited are more productive?" I remember reading an interview with Stephane Israel, the director of Arianespace, who complained that with a leisurely 35-hour workweek, they have no chance competing with workaholics at SpaceX. While it would be a much nicer world if you were right, I am not sure you are. East Asians work even more and they seem to be overtaking the Western Civilization lately.
- jackcosgrove 3y ago
  > East Asians work even more and they seem to be overtaking the Western Civilization lately. I think East Asian working culture is pushing the limits of human physiology and psychology. I've seen documentaries on South Korean work culture, for example, where people consistently receive less sleep than is healthy because they work so much. To use the example of Korea again, their work culture is probably contributing to the low birthrate which is ultimately counterproductive. There's a vignette I've heard about a movie theater. Imagine someone in the front of the theater stands up to get a better view. The person behind them then needs to stand up to maintain the same view. Eventually everyone is standing up, with the same view as before and more uncomfortable than when they were sitting. It's an analogy for heavy work cultures, which can be counterproductive and unnecessary after a certain point. Could French work culture be more productive than American, or Korean, work culture? I don't know, but it's not simply a matter of measuring short term outputs and ignoring externalities such as rates of depression, alienation, poor health, or low birthrates.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  I value not working way more than raising the GDP. It is not a competition for first place where you will receive some kind of medal from Wikipedia.
aborsy 3y ago
This is a simplistic view. The protective labor laws protect some workers, but can bring about a host of adverse effects. The good and bad are equally protected. For example, my work place in France was so toxic that over time I developed psychological problems, because the institution could not address the abuse, harassment, bullying, etc, since everyone had secure permanent contracts (CDI) strongly protected by unions and could afford arbitrary behavior. A lot of people didn’t care doing their jobs properly, bringing about an environment with problems everywhere.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Yes, hence why pushing for extreme protection against firings can be even worse than no protection at all Especially with no way to fire the person not even 'virtually'
- Saline9515 3y ago
  That's an excellent point, it's even worse in the public administration where everyone is un-fireable. The only way to get the bad apples out is usually through a promotion :-/
baby 3y ago
It’s actually quite hard to find a stable job in France due to these laws: companies only give short term contracts and then rotate you out once they get in danger zone (you need to hire them full time now). Also my friends back in France are always in holidays. They’re forced to take a full month in some positions like banking as they need to ensure continuity of business even when people are not there for extended periods of time. A friend of mine has 45 days off. Personally I think it’s great but if you’re in a competitive industry AND competing with the American Workaholics you don’t have a single chance.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 3y ago
  Everything you wrote is either lies, or very specific to an industry that I have never seen in the past 50 years. But I would say lies or FUD because it’s ridiculous.
  - baby 3y ago
    Truth is hard to accept, what can I say.
- genman 3y ago
  Aw, poor Americans and their tiny 2 week long vacation. :) People in Europe will never understand this mindless slaving. ;)
- LelouBil 3y ago
  Well, in france, rotating short term contacts for a long term position is illegal.
  - Saline9515 3y ago
    It's harder to prove, as the employees move out of the company.
- Saline9515 3y ago
  Unless I'm wrong, there are more than 45 days of work in a year. How come the are "always in holidays" then? Joke aside, American friends seem to me that they're always fighting a perpetual burn-out, as they can't take holidays and get some real rest. When I was working in France, I used to take a 1 month break in summer. I always felt that after the third week, something changed in my body, as my nervous system was fully rested and I was ready to go back work my ass off. So maybe there's a reason, and if taking a month off allows you to be 1/12 more productive for the whole year, it's worth it?
HPsquared 3y ago
Safer individually, but the whole ship goes down together.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sebastiennight 3y ago

Having run a business in France for 16 years (with employees), I do not consider the labor laws to be such a barrier. I think if you ask many SMBs owners in France, we'd gripe more about the tax system (which got slightly less opaque since RSI was finally shut down, but no less onerous) or the paperwork. Allowing people who dedicate their workweek to your business, to have social benefits, free healthcare, retirement benefits and unemployment money if they get fired seems like a fair deal to me. Especially if you consider that even taking into account those "extra costs", total comp seems to me to still be lower than what you'd have to pay a US employee for the same job

bertil 3y ago

Labor laws are seen as a plus by many people, even in a hot market like AI. - Candidates know they won’t be showered with praise and sign-on bonuses here and now but ignored and thrown out the back after the first review cycle. If anything happens to them (let’s say, a bouldering accident), they know they’ll be given time, care, and consideration. They know they’ll have weekends off to train bouldering, too. If you know people won’t fire you on a whim, you know they’ll hire responsibly, invest in you, and encourage lateral moves when your path isn’t leading anywhere. - Employers might want to look very attractive, but that coffee machine, that micro-kitchen is no guarantee—not anymore after the last two years. It’s nice to promise the best private health plan: I got one through a big tech company. Never needed it. But I’ve heard from people who did that it’s nowhere near what a patient would want. After that, I remember asking a small start-up in the UK if they offered anything similar. That was stupid: they could never afford anything like it. And they were puzzled… Every resident has access to the NHS, by law. They didn’t list that as a benefit because they thought they were competing with local companies. They hired a lot of Americans, and every one of them could not stop talking about how much better the care was. Now that I mention it, it’s suspicious that all of them needed medical care as soon as they arrived… It goes beyond that: a society with a strong safety net is better off. Countries with strong social nets have safer streets. Many candidates might be males over-estimating their ability to get out ahead in a street fight and be indifferent to high crime rates, but some have partners that might not care for headlines like “Mugging capital of the world” and “Precinct ran out of rape kits”. I like knowing that my loved ones don’t do “active shooter drills” routinely. Personally, I left a job that was really great for several reasons. A big one was that, during my 5-minute walking commute (in the Northern Quarter in Manchester, UK), I had to walk past 50 or so people standing unconscious, wobbling, clearly high on “spice” (a cluster of synthetic “zombie” drugs so destructive and violent, the only survivor on record testified one should never try it and do something “chill, like heroin,” instead). I’d much rather live in a country where I know the emergency psychiatry and addiction programs are publicly financed, free for patients, and well-staffed. But that’s because my partner is the one working there, so I’m biased. Experiences like that, seeing human lives wasting on the pavement daily, might seem extreme and definitely foreign to people from, say, San Francisco. Still, if you know about human tragedy directly, you prefer to live somewhere that addresses that.