> In Europe it is common for multiple months of high pitch negotiations between "wanting to lay off" and layoffs. Usually without any riots or panic.
I'm kind of tired of seeing this "well actually, in Europe..." -- there's a reason there's zero major tech innovation happening in Europe. There's a reason Google/FB/Netflix/etc. and 99% of other major software unicorns (save Spotify and handful of others) are from the US. To be successful as a company, you need to be nimble, not burn your runway with bureaucracy.
Working for a startup is a risk and money, for the time being, is very tight.
Unity was started in Europe. It moved to the US when it stopped being a startup. I think there is plenty of innovation in Europe. But you are right, there is something that makes it easier to go from small/medium to big/huge that is easier in the US, and laxer labour laws is probably part of the story.
You mean the low margin unprofitable company that is at the mercy of the record labels and their “product” is the equivalent of a minor division for Google, Amazon and Apple?
Maybe so. But isn’t it a Pyrrhic victory for a for profit company to have a better designed product that is still losing money? That’s not exactly a definition of a “successful company”
So we’re going to gloss over the near total lack of innovation? You guys innovate in design, cars and nuclear physics (colliders to power plants), and that’s about it.
You don’t think any of that has to do with the employment contract?
Way to undersell Europe. Yes, we're a bit lower on global tech innovation. Much of our tech innovation is region specific, which should make it obvious why one, the US won't see much of it, and two, the markets aren't there for VCs to just throw money at it. There are legal and social reasons why they don't target the global market more, too.
>You don’t think any of that has to do with the employment contract?
The Netherlands has a legal notice period of 1 month baseline. Despite that, many companies opt for a longer employee notice period, which then requires them to double that amount from their side. Doesn't sound like the employment contract is at fault here as much as the risk-averse culture, when nothing is keeping these companies from keeping the notice period shorter. Surely, a talented developer does not have to worry about finding a new job so much it requires more than a month.
God forbid I mention Japan, which despite still using fax machines and having similar structures, still produces plenty of global products. Unless your idea of tech is "just software".
It's not as simple as you try to imply. Spend a bit more time doing research between what is legally required, what employers offer and what developers realistically need.
I'm mostly playing devil's advocate. dvt asked a question, and andyjohnson0 deflected by arguing about a sentence fragment.
What's the layoff policy in Japan? I would say it used to be 'never' and that hasn't been the case for some time, but a lot of the innovation ramp for them occurred before the 90's recession that started breaking the social contracts, so that isn't really a point in dvt's favor.
Culture definitely plays a role here, as does need (see also the Netherlands who send consultants worldwide to talk about water management). People like to talk about how different Scandinavian culture is from American culture, but from what I know of Japanese culture, it's at least as far away from say Norway as Norway is away from America. So if dvt thinks that Europe is missing some secret sauce and not just American Exceptionalism, I would say that Japan has substituted a different sauce to good effect.
Japanese companies are more likely to try and get you to resign peacefully or keep you around in a place where you won't cause any damage than to create layoff / firing scenarios. Japanese employees are lifetime employees, far stickier than Europeans.
Layoffs can still occur for economic reasons, but that's the same as in Europe.
>not just American Exceptionalism
There is very little "exceptional" about America in and of itself. What America has, is a lot of cash to throw at getting exceptional people and mess around forever. When your markets are huge, you can throw huge money and gain it back. When your markets are small, you can't.
Which then comes back to the question "so why don't European countries target the English market like the US does? Why care for your local market if you can make much bigger money targeting the global one?". And unfortunately, I don't know why beyond risk-aversity, culture and "that's just how it went". At least in Japan, the Japanese-only market is still far bigger than most [insert non-English European language]-only markets.
Point being, if dvt is arguing "it is the bureaucracy!", that doesn't explain why Japan works, China works, and why Europe tech scene continues to import bureaucracy-heavy approaches from the US tech scene, like you know, big Agile.
Nobody used the web until a couple college kids in corn country added images to it. You can call that market fit if you like and I won't argue with you about it, I just don't agree.
I had to listen to too many rants about the quality of Tim Berners Lee's code to allow that he invented the web. I place too high a premium on execution, which is a big part of my problem with IP and patents. You made a box. Congratufuckinglations. Can you make a million of them? And not chop anyone's fingers off?
If the web were the automobile, he's no living embodiment of Rudolf Diesel. Maybe closer to a valued employee of James Watt. He was channeling Engelbart, channeling Bush, and stuffing it into SGML.
Rudolf Diesel, there's a European inventor. We went a little crazy with that car thing. Sorry about that.
Edit: That was also 30 years ago for the one, 40 for the other. That's quite a long time. Whole countries have cycled though low-end tech to innovator to resting on their laurels in that time.
You going to tell us the US tech market is not boggled down by bureaucracy? Surely you jest. Do you need a reminder who sets the trend for the remainder of the market?
I'm kind of tired of seeing this "well actually, in Europe..." -- there's a reason there's zero major tech innovation happening in Europe. There's a reason Google/FB/Netflix/etc. and 99% of other major software unicorns (save Spotify and handful of others) are from the US. To be successful as a company, you need to be nimble, not burn your runway with bureaucracy.
Working for a startup is a risk and money, for the time being, is very tight.