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Comment by faitswulff | Hacker News Reader

It's clearly not an apples-to-apples comparison, but for comparison, Gabe Newell's response when an employee (Erik Wolpaw) was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis:

> Expecting his condition to require a departure from the company, he spoke with managing director Gabe Newell, who surprised him by offering an extended leave with pay. "Your job is to get better," Newell said. "That is your job description at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you are better."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Wolpaw#Personal_life

We can't all work at the most lucrative game company on earth, but that sure was classy.

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There are many countries in the world where it would be illegal to fire an employee with such a condition, and his sick leave pay would be compensated by the government so it's not up to the employer's benevolence. Just saying that you don't have to work for Valve...

(A common argument is that "Companies wouldn't thrive in such a socialist environment". But you can look at Supercell, King and Mojang: all are Nordic game companies with multi-billion dollar valuations and more profits than Valve.)

Not to mention the fact that Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, has strict employee protection laws and strong unions.

And an uncompetitive job market for programmers

In terms of raw income, sure. However one might consider modern social security and employee protection standards as part of the compensation.

Does the money really arrive at the programmer in the US? The guy at your gated community opens the hand, the states prison opens the hand, the privately paid doctor opens the hand, your university's creditor opens the hand and its all gone. What good is earning less money, when you have to live in constant fear of getting shot?

Who lives in constant fear of getting shot?

Europeans who have never been to the US and only know it by its stereotypes, I guess.

As an Australian living in America, I think "constant fear" is a bit of an overstatement but you have to understand that non-Americans are coming from a place where gun violence is near nonexistent. We have to worry about being shot just about as much as we have to worry about a freak meteor strike.

In America, not only is it now possible, but the UNODC intentional homicide rate [0] is about 4x higher than my home country (Australia) and most of Europe. Yes the rate is still small, yes we're probably overreacting. I have a feeling this will be an unpopular comparison but I'd say our fear of being shot in America is similar to American fear of terrorism after 9/11. Before 9/11 you simply never had to worry about it. It'd never happened, it wasn't possible. Suddenly it happened and even though the chance a terrorist will kill you is vanishingly small, people worry about it a hell of a lot.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

Thank you for the explanation.

Living in the United States I have never been in fear of a shooting and never been exposed to a robbery or such where I was in danger of getting shot.

I just looked at the FBI's UCR statistics to see what others see about my country ;) In my city 1 person was killed in 2014 by any form of murder or negligent manslaughter, regardless of a firearm having been used. I suspect that was a data entry error that should have been zero.

Granted, the US has far more deaths per capita by guns than places that don't have as many guns per capita. Upon research I found this table on wikipedia, showing overall homicides rate per 100,000 by country. This also seems drawn from the dataset you mentioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

The US was lower than I had expected at 3.9. This is very close to the 4x relationship you mentioned compared to Australia. However, the US Virgin Islands must be horrible at 52.6 per 100,000 people. Guadeloupe (France) is 7.9, and the real loser seems to be Honduras with 84.6 intentional homicides per 100,000 people. That makes me think that for someone living in Honduras, at least one of the people you see today will be dead tomorrow.

I definitely understand people's concern about not wanting to be subject to the dark death dealing of hammer, knife, and machine gun toting drugged Americans, but we're really like any large country. Things have to do with the city that is visited, since the country is vast with many cultures and differences throughout.

> I definitely understand people's concern about not wanting to be subject to the dark death dealing of hammer, knife, and machine gun toting drugged Americans, but we're really like any large country. Things have to do with the city that is visited, since the country is vast with many cultures and differences throughout.

I understand that things depend a lot on where you are within a country but as someone speaking about the safety of a country as a whole, the average is pretty important. It's also worth pointing out that many of the places a tourist would consider visiting are places with above average crime rates.

Not if you get ulcerative colitis, cancer, or similar.

Or if you get a baby and want parental leave.

Or if you want to send your kids to university.

How so? The wages seem to be on a standard European level. Unless you really mean "less than in the US" which is pretty irrelevant for several reasons.

Why is it irrelevant?

because you also need to factor in the cost of healthcare, paid days off, sick paid sick days, property prices, cost of living, parental leave, social safety nets, crime rates, social mobility, labour protections, regulatory standards and countless other things that contribute towards overall satisfaction as a developer in either country.

Just saying "makes less than a programmer in the US" isn't enough to make a comparison.

I broke a hip and my pay was slashed to the legal minimum requirement after 10 days off.

I was able to burn through my holiday/vacation time for a bit to avoid bouncing debts but this is in the UK where we actually have job protections and rights never mind in the US where (I've heard) you can be fired for anything with no notice. I'm still paying off the debt I racked up during that time (~2 years or so).

They can't fire you because of the injury but they can and will start keeping a hawk eye on you to see what they can get you on if you're not useful anymore.

You have to differentiate between businesses that have a monopoly* business model vs those that are operating on slim margins. Slim margin companies wouldn't thrive in such a socialistic environment, but monopoly* model businesses still could.

*By monopoly, I mean the Peter theil sense of the word, as used in his book Zero to One.

Mojang is owned by Microsoft now though. Also, it's extremely unlikely that Mojang makes more money than Valve (remember, they take a cut of every steam transaction).

Otherwise your argument is accurate.

Yeah, well. I hate being that guy but a good social security net takes care of that for everyone, not just the wealthy working for lucrative companies :/.

Apple engineering in Cupertino was at least as classy in my experience, when two family members became ill, eventually terminally, and I was the only one able to care for one of them. My VP gave me an incredibly long leash and it was never exploited, and will always be appreciated, and allowed me to care and work, just with random timing.

It is easy to be classy when you have superprofit.

Yeah, poor Google. When will they ever earn money?

Then again, this is the same Gabe Newell who fired the host of an international gaming tournament, in the middle of the tournament, and then took directly to Reddit only to call him "an ass": https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/47sc46/update_from_t...

To be fair, that guy could have been an ass..

He is a complete ass. That is why people like him. Being completely professional in a video game tournament is bland and boring.

The host in question introduced himself to his co-hosts by telling them all about his pre-tournament porn search and jerkoff session, on live camera, and then continued in much the same vein.

He was an ass, and the only thing Valve did wrong was letting him host in the first place. He's always been like that, and they should have known what would happen.

Louis CK jokes about masturbation too; They're entertainers and raw humour is 2GD's trademark. It's like hiring Don Rickles and then complain that he wasn't nice to the attendees.

The issue with that hosting gig is that the tournament logistics were a disaster and he ended up having to stretch a solid 10 into several hours of filling dead air.

You can read James' rebuttal on these points here

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B061Rs4gw4zkCec35Q5v2r57...

James is an ass and its his casting style, I certainly don't hold this against him.

That doesn't seem like a particularly damming criticism of someone though....

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