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Europe is going to have a long hibernation in the global scene. Whatever existed was killed by bureaucracy and taxation. Whatever doesn't exist, it will simply
by 46d24 3y ago
Europe is going to have a long hibernation in the global scene. Whatever existed was killed by bureaucracy and taxation.
Whatever doesn't exist, it will simply not happen, the ship has sailed
- audunw 3y agoWhat do you base this opinion on? Northern European countries consistently rank at the top of the world in ease of doing business https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index Some of them have more entrepreneurs per capita than USA. What you don’t have is the ability to attract a crazy amount of international capital to mega corporations like in California/Texas or some places in China. So it’s hard to build the very largest tech corporations there. I think European companies tend to be less consumer oriented, not as visible, and focusing on more “behind the scenes” technology. So you get the impression there’s fewer of them than there actually are. Like, in my industry, there’s nothing like Nvidia or AMD. But there’s ASML and Zeiss for instance, without which Nvidia couldn’t make their chips. There’s nothing like the mega super high performance foundries like TSMC and Samsung but there’s a whole bunch of smaller specialised foundries focusing on very high power, very low power and optics and MEMS stuff.
- jacquesm 3y agoAny article that mentions Europe either directly or in passing will attract at least a couple of comments that mention 'regulation' and how everything is going down the drain here. It's all bs but that doesn't seem to stop the influx of these comments, in this case from a brave novelty account no less.
- 46d24 3y ago[flagged]
- 46d24 3y ago[dead]
- woah 3y agoOne quick example: Germany has a 3 month required severance period. So if you are doing something where funding may be uncertain, a German employee is somewhat risky. A startup in California that fails to raise funding can cut staff and take another swing in 6 months. In Germany, this is less likely. You could just budget for this up front and sock away 1/4 salary for every hire, but along with the employer taxes, that really starts to negate any cost advantage vs California. It also cuts the other way. German hires often cannot start for 3 months, so in addition to the time it takes for a developer to start learning the codebase once they’re hired, it might take 6 months between the time that you realize you need a developer and when they are hired and up to speed. I’m not sure, but I believe it is also more complex to freelance in Germany, requiring more of an official business entity, vs the US where you can just send someone an email with an invoice and everyone’s happy. Adding this all together, German employment law is heavily tilted towards larger businesses with longer time horizons and the funding and scale to absorb uncertainty.
- jacquesm 3y agoAn alternative viewpoint for you to consider: Germany recognizes that employing someone is much more a risk for the employer than for the employee. So they protect the employee's interest. That there are countries where employees have fewer rights gives the employers in those countries and edge, but that's only because there is a 'race to the bottom' element here. In spite of all that Germany is an economic powerhouse and even if the companies don't make profits as ridiculous as those in countries where such protections do not exist your average employee in Germany is going to have a far less stressful life on account of this than elsewhere. Freelancing all over Europe is best done through a business entity, it offers some basic liability protection and allows you to defer taxes.
- woah 3y agoThat's nice, just pointing out that German employment law gives large and predictable businesses an edge over small ones
- 46d24 3y agoTo attract top tech talent you need to offer 200k per year at least. A salary like this in Western Europe pays 70% of taxes (UK is the most favorable one with "only" 50%)
- hiq 3y agoSwitzerland is better than the UK compensation-wise, see e.g. https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater-zurich-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... and https://ch.talent.com/en/tax-calculator?salary=200000&from=year®ion=Z%C3%BCrich https://ch.talent.com/en/tax-calculator?salary=200000&from=y....
- 46d24 3y ago[dead]
- tadaima 3y agoYour numbers are plain wrong. France, Spain and Germany are at around 43%, worst case scenario. As someone who pays tax in one of these countries and manages/recruits people across all Europe (as well as Americas and Asia) I can confirm these calculators are very accurate. Taxes (incl. pension + unemployment + health insurance and other social contributions) for 200K euros annual salary, for a single, no-dependents employee (the most unfavourable situation) Spain (1): Taxes: 81,915 EUR as % of income: 40.96% France (2): Taxes: 87866.28 EUR as % of income: 43.94% Germany (3): Taxes: 86,439.33 EUR as % of income: 43.22% (1) https://cincodias.elpais.com/herramientas/calculadora-irpf/ https://cincodias.elpais.com/herramientas/calculadora-irpf/ (2) https://www.urssaf.fr/portail/home/utile-et-pratique/estimateur-de-cotisations.html?ut=estimateurs https://www.urssaf.fr/portail/home/utile-et-pratique/estimat... (3) https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gross_net_calculator_germany.php https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gross_net_calcu... Quoting fantasy numbers with an air of authority, without sources and using an aggressive/dismissive tone throughout all your comments strikes me as pretty pathetic but, who knows, it might convince others. (edited for layout fixes)
- 3y ago
- brnt 3y agoDon't know mate, seems to me Europe controls a, maybe the, major component of tech through ASML. If they decide you can't buy their machines anymore, then good luck with your home grown chips on 10+ year old lithography.