Greek startups to look out for in 2016
eu-startups.com
eu-startups.com
The weather is great but prohibitive taxation (and social security contributions), confusing and sloppily implemented regulation, absence of infrastructure and bad work ethics don't help. It's much easier to set up shop in Cyprus.
You are also obliged to pay for state health insurance in order to own a company which also changes constantly and upwards all the time. I you fail to pay your own health insurance you can go to jail. You cannot stop the health insurance. You have to close the company. If you owe health insurance payments and cannot pay them you cannot close the company and the health insurance debt keeps mounting up.
Ah, yes. I wouldn't suggest it for having the offices there. Just to incorporate. And with online teams, you can be anywhere too.
Since they're freelancers you're just going to be one of many clients. They will charge you only for the hours worked. This means that whatever their social security cost is, it's going to be spread out among their different clients. Also when you're a freelancer the social security cost is much lower anyway.
Also the OP is talking about "outsourcing" work to Greece. I really don't understand where social security comes in. By definition he's going to look for freelancers.
Unless he's planning to open shop in Greece, for some weird reason, in which case social insurance is going to be the least of his problems.
Even that doesn't matter, social security and taxes will be calculated in your hourly rate the same way whether you have multiple clients or you work full time for only one client.
The only way it makes sense to work from Greece as a contractor is having foreign customers. Otherwise, you're better off working as a regular employee.
That said, my insurance is 200 euros/mo (fixed), so I'm not sure where the 70% figure is coming from. Maybe my insurance carrier (TSMEDE) is just cheaper.
I never said you're not going to factor in your social security costs. I don't know why the conversation is going that way.
My question is still unanswered: why would he pay explicitly their social security costs?
My social security costs are about 225/mo. I mean seriously, even if you wanted to push 225 per month to only a single client, it would be such an inconsequential number that I don't know why we're talking about it. We are still talking about software engineering jobs right?
But from 1700 to 3000 there's a huge gap. Plus, as I previously said, the overhead of having to deal with the Greek social security system is so prohibitively high that I don't understand why someone would go through such trouble.
Please don't tell me again about how someone with higher insurance costs will cost more per day. No one is discussing this. At least not me. This is simple math. Actually I've even said the same thing myself higher up.
This is going to be my last effort of explaining where the OP, I replied to, is wrong. Because he is wrong, there's no way around it. If I fail, well I'll blame myself for not expressing myself correctly. But please, make an effort to read carefully my replies.
There are 3 key points in the OP's comment: 1) He talks about outsourcing, 2) he talks about social security costs and 3) he mentions a figure(1700 net which amounts to 3000 after the costs)
I've never heard anyone who's looking to outsource work talking about social security costs. In order to care about such things it means that you are a domestic employer. If we were talking about this particular case, the OP should have to have a Greek business, so by definition it wouldn't be outsourcing.
I work as a contractor. My employer(outside of Greece) knows nothing about my tax rate, social security costs, etc. Nothing! I sent him an invoice, they send me the money.
The strange thing about what the OP mentioned is the figure. The figure is correct BUT only if he's talking about the IKA social security system. Which of course is wrong, since he should be looking for freelancers who DON'T have IKA but either yours(ΤΣΜΕΔΕ, can you be a freelancer with ΤΣΜΕΔΕ? I don't know) or mine(ΟΑΕΕ/ΤΕΒΕ). In other words, he was misinformed and scared away.
Since if he's willing to give 1700 eu/mo to a Greek developer, even if said developer absorbs the social security costs, he's left with ~1500, which is decent compared to what is the current standard in today's Greek economy.
I hope I made my point. Have a nice day.
Why is it an acid test of competence to you? For the theoretical knowledge they imply?
Because they are so basic. If you've never heard of a linked list, it means that you've got absolutely no education (formal or self-directed) in programming. (Even looking at the Java docs, you'd eventually notice the core LinkedList class.) If you've heard of a linked list but have no idea what it is, it means you've got a terrible education (if formal) or no curiosity (if self-directed). If you know what a linked list is but can't program one, it means you're incompetent.
I can't imagine the existence of a competent dev who can't write a linked list class/struct/whatever.
Even if you don't know how to implement them you at least need to know how they work and their performance characteristics. I would not expect them to be able to implement one in C but at least they should what the fuck it is.
This kind of 'orthodoxy' (you must know about X) confuses computer science (purely academic) with business outcomes (what engineers are paid to deliver).
I've never had to create a GPU, but if I didn't know what it was, I wouldn't be good at graphics development.
So even if seller and buyer are in Greece, freelancer.com (warning: don't use them) is in Australia. Receipts won't make it to the authorities. Also: freelancer.com won't care if you use a fake identity, as they're extremely scummy and in this case it works to your advantage.