6 ms·

a whole lot of opportunity for personal advancement that is hard to find in other countries, even thriving, developed countries that also have representative go

by mjn 13y ago

a whole lot of opportunity for personal advancement that is hard to find in other countries, even thriving, developed countries that also have representative government, a free press, and broad protection of individual liberties. Out of curiosity, what kinds of things? I was born and raised in the U.S. (have lived in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, and Atlanta), and now live in Copenhagen, and don't feel like I am missing a lot so far, apart from the general experience of foreignness occasionally being strange (might be ameliorated if I were better at learning Danish). If anything the opportunities for personal advancement feel somewhat stronger, due to the social safety net meaning you can start companies or nonprofits or whatever without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare. I'll probably move back at some point, but mostly just because it's where I'm from, not out of any particular dissatisfaction with Denmark. And I'll probably only move back if I have a good job with a salary and benefits lined up first...

busterarm 13y ago
The "American Dream" for a lot of my friends nowadays is to relocate to Europe. Copenhagen is a frequently-mentioned destination and my destination of choice as well. I definitely felt like there was more opportunity in Denmark than here. Gotta say, I'm a bit jealous.
- tptacek 13y ago
  What kind of opportunity are you referring to? Strip it to nuts and bolts as much as you can. I ask because, for instance, it is harder to run a company in Denmark than in the US. Danish employment law requires months of notice before terminating an employee, and allows termination only with cause. It also appears to be somewhat expensive to incorporate there.
  - davedx 13y ago
    Interesting first criteria for judging a country's economic opportunities: the ability to easily terminate your staff. The "Ease of Doing Business Index" actually removed "how easy is it to fire people" from its indicators because of the controversy. Do you think everybody in the USA would agree that being able to fire people at will is a good thing for the US economy?
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Yes. Employment at will is one of the major reasons --- perhaps the major reason --- why it is easier to start a company in the US than in, say, France. In a 3-person company, particularly in knowledge work where headcount costs dominate all other operating expenses, a bad 4th hire is a catastrophic problem: it means 1/4 of your staff is dysfunctional, maybe 1/5th of your operating expenses are being wasted, and as many as 1/2 your existing employees are (a) unhappy and (b) steadily becoming harder to retain. Now imagine not being able to terminate that employee. The Ease Of Doing Business index includes no metrics on employment law at all, not just termination; for instance, employee minimum wage, mandatory holidays, prohibition on contracted employees, prohibition of night work, and maximum work week are also not considered. That they aren't says more about the World Bank index than it does about the importance of these issues.
      - mjn 13y ago
        For small tech companies in Denmark (I don't know much about other sectors/countries), it's common to hire people on a contract or fixed-term basis initially, something like 3-12 months. Then each side can decide if they'd like to make the arrangement more permanent in the future. For tiny companies with uncertain revenues it's pretty common to just have that be the default mode of employment: when you get 12 months of funding, you hire people for another 12 months, because you can't honestly promise any more than that anyway.
        tptacek 13y ago
        Oh, cool, are you a small tech company person in Denmark? Can I ask: why aren't there more small tech companies in Denmark? It can't be for lack of quality education!
        mjn 13y ago
        I'm not; I'm a useless academic. :) Many of the students in my program start small game companies, though (I teach in a game masters program), so I follow that scene a bit. A few examples that have come out of the program here: http://conquistadorthegame.com/ http://conquistadorthegame.com/ http://machineers.tumblr.com/ http://machineers.tumblr.com/ http://www.knapnokgames.com/ http://www.knapnokgames.com/ http://gutefabrik.com/ http://gutefabrik.com/ http://duckandcovergames.com/ http://duckandcovergames.com/ http://www.seriousgames.net/ http://www.seriousgames.net/ Most of the small tech companies I know are pretty low-key, though. Besides the game company route, another common one is a small team of 1-3 people making a living doing iPhone app development, that kind of thing. Some congregate around hackerspaces like: https://labitat.dk/ https://labitat.dk/ Not as much of the typical 'startup' route per se, although there have been a few (Unity3d and Bitbucket come to mind). There's also Copenhagen Suborbitals, which isn't for-profit, but is probably the most widely recognized organization to come out of the Copenhagen hacker/maker scene.
  - mjn 13y ago
    The area where Denmark is most clearly easier, in my opinion, is starting a one-person company ("lifestyle business", freelancing, consulting, etc.). Since most benefits (healthcare, childcare, etc.) are independent of employment, you don't have to worry about all the headaches of losing your benefits when you quit a bigcorp job to go solo. As far as hiring/firing employees, it's not quite that bad. The standard notice is six weeks (on both sides, so employees can't just walk out tomorrow either). Termination does have to be with cause, but changing business conditions or revenues suffices as cause, so it doesn't require proving actual fault on the part of the employee or anything of that sort. The official policy aim is "flexicurity" [1], though it's implemented to varying extents. The goal is to have a flexible labor market where companies can hire and fire as needs dictate (contrary to, say, the French model), and also, but separately, to have a safety net providing income security for workers (through systems like the a-kasse funds [2]). I don't think it's 100% as rosy as the goal, but it's much easier to run a business than in some European countries. It ends up basically tied with the U.S. in the ease-of-doing-business indices I know of. The World Bank's index places it just behind the US (#5 vs. #4) [3], while the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom puts it just ahead (#9 vs. #10) [4]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity [2] Example: http://www.ca.dk/bliv_medlem/dimittend/466.html http://www.ca.dk/bliv_medlem/dimittend/466.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index#Ranking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index#Ra... [4] http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
    - tptacek 13y ago
      My understanding is that while you have some flexibility on "cause", "cause" gets adjudicated when the employee disagrees, which makes terminating employees risky. I agree that the health care situation in the US is a real problem.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    Danish employment law requires months of notice before terminating an employee, and allows termination only with cause. It also appears to be somewhat expensive to incorporate there. QED
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Extra points awarded for fatuous attempt to reframe the start of a discussion as its ultimate conclusion.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        Fatuous maybe, but your criticism is a restatement of the rhetorical use of "QED" itself. Reframing in your preferred terms, framing always being a function of preferences and selection, just so happens here to speak to an instability in the US worksphere that has affected The American Dream (were that it ever existed).
  - busterarm 13y ago
    Damn, you're really holding my ass to the fire here, tptacek. For starters, I should make clear that I was communicating two separate ideas in my comment: 1) that most people I know want to leave the US on an extended-permanent basis. 2) that Copenhagen is a desirable place to live for us. I know only one person who has actually relocated to Copenhagen. Most have actually ended up in Asia, actually. Singapore, Thailand and Japan. Of the European countries that people I know have relocated to, it has mostly been the UK and Germany with a few going to Italy (family reasons). Anyway, as far as "why Denmark", I actually have a handful of Danish friends who work in software. All of them are well paid and have a good quality of life. All of them live within city limits with a ~15-20 minute commute time. All of them either own an apartment or are in a rent-to-own situation and at reasonable rates. They all have _great_ financial situations. I'm from NYC where really none of what I mentioned is possible. I understand that running a business may be more inflexible, but not impossible. I know it's really flexible to start business here in the US, but to do so in a good location in a fantastic city to live in is much harder. I've done a ton of traveling around the US and other than New York, New Orleans is the only other city I've been to where I've said "I would really enjoy living here." That statement comes much easier to me traveling around Europe with Copenhagen standing out the most to me. Quality of life seems to be really good there. Despite the generally pessimistic attitude towards the future that most Danes seem to have, prospects for the future seem really good there. I don't have a similar feeling about the US.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I'm really not trying to hold your ass to the fire; I'd just rather see the conversation driven towards direct comparisons. Something to consider about your evaluation of Copenhagen vis a vis the US: you're a software developer with enough career mobility to opt into working in Copenhagen; ergo, you are probably very much situated in the 10% of Americans that Tyler Cowan believes will be the US "elite". So: of course you find Copenhagen congenial: you get to pick where you live based on aesthetics and luxuries. (More power to you!) But then: would most of the US middle class be well served by considering a move to Copenhagen? I suggest that they probably would not.
      - 13y ago
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >I ask because, for instance, it is harder to run a company in Denmark than in the US. That affects company founders (and mostly of non serious startups, that don't bring much to the job table in the first place). The reverse, which affects employees (which are more numerous than employers by definition) is that it's easier to be an employee in Denmark than it is in the US.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      It's not that simple. Things that affect employers also effect employees by changing the nature of the kinds of companies that offer employment.
      - coldtea 13y ago
        We prefer the kinds of companies that offer stable employments and long term businesses in Europe (and "lifestyle business" that is what we call "actual companies"), rather than startups aiming at some acquihire or fast cash-out that benefit mostly their founders.
tokenadult 13y ago
I was born and raised in the U.S. (have lived in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, and Atlanta), and now live in Copenhagen I see you say that people in Denmark, including expatriates like you, can "can start companies or nonprofits or whatever without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare." Is that what you are doing, running your own business in Denmark? I recall that there are a couple of other HN participants who are Americans living in Denmark. Is the labor market for American expatriates that flexible everywhere in Europe? I have read of other countries in Europe where it is certainly possible to start a business, but then very complicated to hire workers as the business begins to grow. I'm curious about how that issue plays out in Europe. And, to answer your question, I think that's what my family likes about America. On the one hand, the labor market is very flexible here, so we can trade off time with our children by adjusting our employment--my wife and I are both self-employed, in different occupations--to maximize our family life and personal schedule flexibility. My late dad had a catastrophic accidental injury just more than a decade ago--it would be catastrophic in any country, with any health-care system, because he was paralyzed from the chin down after the accident--and that hammered our family's time and thus our income for the last six years of his life, but I observed that the United States safety net was adequate enough to keep both him and us from becoming homeless. Taiwan (where my wife is from) has a single-payer national health insurance program that covered us the last time we lived there (until just before my dad's accident) but even though that is a vibrant, thriving country that I enjoy living in (and I can speak Chinese), we still prosper better here in the United States.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  You have some misconceptions about Europe. Here in the UK you can happily fire anyone in their first 2 years without any reason whatsoever[1]. After that firing people is still fairly easy if you go through a simple process[2] and redundancy again is easy if you go through a fairly simple process. All of Europe is different. American healthcare seems viciously regressive to someone with the NHS. [1] I believe it's 2 now, labour reduced it to 1 a decade or so ago, think the Tories increased it again to 2 recently [2] think it's usually verbal warning, written warning, some sort of meeting, then fire. Not sure if it's mandated or you just have to have a process NB check this stuff for yourself, I'm merely reciting this from memory
andyl 13y ago
Well - Denmark. Places like Norway/Sweden/Switz/DK are gonna be comparable to the SF peninsula/Marin/Westchester, in terms of opportunities/culture/mentality.

by mjn 13y ago

busterarm 13y ago

The "American Dream" for a lot of my friends nowadays is to relocate to Europe. Copenhagen is a frequently-mentioned destination and my destination of choice as well. I definitely felt like there was more opportunity in Denmark than here. Gotta say, I'm a bit jealous.

tptacek 13y ago
What kind of opportunity are you referring to? Strip it to nuts and bolts as much as you can. I ask because, for instance, it is harder to run a company in Denmark than in the US. Danish employment law requires months of notice before terminating an employee, and allows termination only with cause. It also appears to be somewhat expensive to incorporate there.
- davedx 13y ago
  Interesting first criteria for judging a country's economic opportunities: the ability to easily terminate your staff. The "Ease of Doing Business Index" actually removed "how easy is it to fire people" from its indicators because of the controversy. Do you think everybody in the USA would agree that being able to fire people at will is a good thing for the US economy?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Yes. Employment at will is one of the major reasons --- perhaps the major reason --- why it is easier to start a company in the US than in, say, France. In a 3-person company, particularly in knowledge work where headcount costs dominate all other operating expenses, a bad 4th hire is a catastrophic problem: it means 1/4 of your staff is dysfunctional, maybe 1/5th of your operating expenses are being wasted, and as many as 1/2 your existing employees are (a) unhappy and (b) steadily becoming harder to retain. Now imagine not being able to terminate that employee. The Ease Of Doing Business index includes no metrics on employment law at all, not just termination; for instance, employee minimum wage, mandatory holidays, prohibition on contracted employees, prohibition of night work, and maximum work week are also not considered. That they aren't says more about the World Bank index than it does about the importance of these issues.
    - mjn 13y ago
      For small tech companies in Denmark (I don't know much about other sectors/countries), it's common to hire people on a contract or fixed-term basis initially, something like 3-12 months. Then each side can decide if they'd like to make the arrangement more permanent in the future. For tiny companies with uncertain revenues it's pretty common to just have that be the default mode of employment: when you get 12 months of funding, you hire people for another 12 months, because you can't honestly promise any more than that anyway.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Oh, cool, are you a small tech company person in Denmark? Can I ask: why aren't there more small tech companies in Denmark? It can't be for lack of quality education!
        mjn 13y ago
        I'm not; I'm a useless academic. :) Many of the students in my program start small game companies, though (I teach in a game masters program), so I follow that scene a bit. A few examples that have come out of the program here: http://conquistadorthegame.com/ http://conquistadorthegame.com/ http://machineers.tumblr.com/ http://machineers.tumblr.com/ http://www.knapnokgames.com/ http://www.knapnokgames.com/ http://gutefabrik.com/ http://gutefabrik.com/ http://duckandcovergames.com/ http://duckandcovergames.com/ http://www.seriousgames.net/ http://www.seriousgames.net/ Most of the small tech companies I know are pretty low-key, though. Besides the game company route, another common one is a small team of 1-3 people making a living doing iPhone app development, that kind of thing. Some congregate around hackerspaces like: https://labitat.dk/ https://labitat.dk/ Not as much of the typical 'startup' route per se, although there have been a few (Unity3d and Bitbucket come to mind). There's also Copenhagen Suborbitals, which isn't for-profit, but is probably the most widely recognized organization to come out of the Copenhagen hacker/maker scene.
- mjn 13y ago
  The area where Denmark is most clearly easier, in my opinion, is starting a one-person company ("lifestyle business", freelancing, consulting, etc.). Since most benefits (healthcare, childcare, etc.) are independent of employment, you don't have to worry about all the headaches of losing your benefits when you quit a bigcorp job to go solo. As far as hiring/firing employees, it's not quite that bad. The standard notice is six weeks (on both sides, so employees can't just walk out tomorrow either). Termination does have to be with cause, but changing business conditions or revenues suffices as cause, so it doesn't require proving actual fault on the part of the employee or anything of that sort. The official policy aim is "flexicurity" [1], though it's implemented to varying extents. The goal is to have a flexible labor market where companies can hire and fire as needs dictate (contrary to, say, the French model), and also, but separately, to have a safety net providing income security for workers (through systems like the a-kasse funds [2]). I don't think it's 100% as rosy as the goal, but it's much easier to run a business than in some European countries. It ends up basically tied with the U.S. in the ease-of-doing-business indices I know of. The World Bank's index places it just behind the US (#5 vs. #4) [3], while the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom puts it just ahead (#9 vs. #10) [4]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity [2] Example: http://www.ca.dk/bliv_medlem/dimittend/466.html http://www.ca.dk/bliv_medlem/dimittend/466.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index#Ranking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index#Ra... [4] http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
  - tptacek 13y ago
    My understanding is that while you have some flexibility on "cause", "cause" gets adjudicated when the employee disagrees, which makes terminating employees risky. I agree that the health care situation in the US is a real problem.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Danish employment law requires months of notice before terminating an employee, and allows termination only with cause. It also appears to be somewhat expensive to incorporate there. QED
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Extra points awarded for fatuous attempt to reframe the start of a discussion as its ultimate conclusion.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      Fatuous maybe, but your criticism is a restatement of the rhetorical use of "QED" itself. Reframing in your preferred terms, framing always being a function of preferences and selection, just so happens here to speak to an instability in the US worksphere that has affected The American Dream (were that it ever existed).
- busterarm 13y ago
  Damn, you're really holding my ass to the fire here, tptacek. For starters, I should make clear that I was communicating two separate ideas in my comment: 1) that most people I know want to leave the US on an extended-permanent basis. 2) that Copenhagen is a desirable place to live for us. I know only one person who has actually relocated to Copenhagen. Most have actually ended up in Asia, actually. Singapore, Thailand and Japan. Of the European countries that people I know have relocated to, it has mostly been the UK and Germany with a few going to Italy (family reasons). Anyway, as far as "why Denmark", I actually have a handful of Danish friends who work in software. All of them are well paid and have a good quality of life. All of them live within city limits with a ~15-20 minute commute time. All of them either own an apartment or are in a rent-to-own situation and at reasonable rates. They all have _great_ financial situations. I'm from NYC where really none of what I mentioned is possible. I understand that running a business may be more inflexible, but not impossible. I know it's really flexible to start business here in the US, but to do so in a good location in a fantastic city to live in is much harder. I've done a ton of traveling around the US and other than New York, New Orleans is the only other city I've been to where I've said "I would really enjoy living here." That statement comes much easier to me traveling around Europe with Copenhagen standing out the most to me. Quality of life seems to be really good there. Despite the generally pessimistic attitude towards the future that most Danes seem to have, prospects for the future seem really good there. I don't have a similar feeling about the US.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I'm really not trying to hold your ass to the fire; I'd just rather see the conversation driven towards direct comparisons. Something to consider about your evaluation of Copenhagen vis a vis the US: you're a software developer with enough career mobility to opt into working in Copenhagen; ergo, you are probably very much situated in the 10% of Americans that Tyler Cowan believes will be the US "elite". So: of course you find Copenhagen congenial: you get to pick where you live based on aesthetics and luxuries. (More power to you!) But then: would most of the US middle class be well served by considering a move to Copenhagen? I suggest that they probably would not.
    - 13y ago
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I ask because, for instance, it is harder to run a company in Denmark than in the US. That affects company founders (and mostly of non serious startups, that don't bring much to the job table in the first place). The reverse, which affects employees (which are more numerous than employers by definition) is that it's easier to be an employee in Denmark than it is in the US.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    It's not that simple. Things that affect employers also effect employees by changing the nature of the kinds of companies that offer employment.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      We prefer the kinds of companies that offer stable employments and long term businesses in Europe (and "lifestyle business" that is what we call "actual companies"), rather than startups aiming at some acquihire or fast cash-out that benefit mostly their founders.

tokenadult 13y ago

I was born and raised in the U.S. (have lived in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, SF Bay Area, and Atlanta), and now live in Copenhagen I see you say that people in Denmark, including expatriates like you, can "can start companies or nonprofits or whatever without worrying about ending up homeless or without healthcare." Is that what you are doing, running your own business in Denmark? I recall that there are a couple of other HN participants who are Americans living in Denmark. Is the labor market for American expatriates that flexible everywhere in Europe? I have read of other countries in Europe where it is certainly possible to start a business, but then very complicated to hire workers as the business begins to grow. I'm curious about how that issue plays out in Europe. And, to answer your question, I think that's what my family likes about America. On the one hand, the labor market is very flexible here, so we can trade off time with our children by adjusting our employment--my wife and I are both self-employed, in different occupations--to maximize our family life and personal schedule flexibility. My late dad had a catastrophic accidental injury just more than a decade ago--it would be catastrophic in any country, with any health-care system, because he was paralyzed from the chin down after the accident--and that hammered our family's time and thus our income for the last six years of his life, but I observed that the United States safety net was adequate enough to keep both him and us from becoming homeless. Taiwan (where my wife is from) has a single-payer national health insurance program that covered us the last time we lived there (until just before my dad's accident) but even though that is a vibrant, thriving country that I enjoy living in (and I can speak Chinese), we still prosper better here in the United States.

mattmanser 13y ago
You have some misconceptions about Europe. Here in the UK you can happily fire anyone in their first 2 years without any reason whatsoever[1]. After that firing people is still fairly easy if you go through a simple process[2] and redundancy again is easy if you go through a fairly simple process. All of Europe is different. American healthcare seems viciously regressive to someone with the NHS. [1] I believe it's 2 now, labour reduced it to 1 a decade or so ago, think the Tories increased it again to 2 recently [2] think it's usually verbal warning, written warning, some sort of meeting, then fire. Not sure if it's mandated or you just have to have a process NB check this stuff for yourself, I'm merely reciting this from memory

andyl 13y ago

Well - Denmark. Places like Norway/Sweden/Switz/DK are gonna be comparable to the SF peninsula/Marin/Westchester, in terms of opportunities/culture/mentality.