EU labor laws protect the workers.
I dont get why US Americans often think these laws dont benefit the workers.
I've had a few European teammates, and they usually come to the U.S. because they can make 3-5x what they could in Europe. You'll see that a lot in HN comments, where people talk about USD$400K FAANG compensation and European developers will be like "Dang, WTF, I'm just sitting here with my €70K salary".
Right now, going into a bust, everybody wants downside protection. You often make more over the long-term accepting some risk to pick the upside when it's available, though.
I think it's likely that the difference in labour laws is a contributing factor. Switzerland has very little by way of worker protection, instead placing a significant emphasis on unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosenversicherung).
How does the parent commenter acknowledging a single factor in a situation lead you to believe that they assume no other contributing factors exist?
And as we know, the only difference between us and Europe is labor laws. /s
And if you expect help from the government, you need to show that your layoffs actually have a chance to make your company survive. For example, you cannot fire the entire R&D when you are 1 year from product release.
To be clear, that cohort is entitled to the protections they so often reference. What I'm saying specifically is that sometimes it shows. Perhaps it's a vocal minority, and this doesn't actually reflect a wider trend, I don't know. Some of the rhetoric I've encountered from this cohort though has come off as downright hostile towards businesses.
Wealth inequality for instance is something that permeates political discourse. Americans don't give a shit about it at all. Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind.
In the short term, Europe is much better at this than the US, but the long term sustainability of the European welfare state will be under serious threat over the next 50 years due to the horrible demographics of most European countries
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain
Massive bulges over 40 that will require support from a shrinking base of young people.
As most things, the comparison is dependent on what state of life you’re at and your preferences.
My percentiles are based on Payscale data.
Of course this varies state by state, but generally for tech, you net more in US on the average even when you pay for everything that you get with taxes in EU. Starting salaries even outside fang could easily be in like $130k in areas that aren't tech hubs and don't have an inflated COL - in EU this is unheard of.
Starting salary in US for SDE is probably like 100k. Going of single income tax filings your approximate aggregate tax rate will be ~%15. if you have state income tax, prolly like ~20% aggregate.
In Germany you would start at something like $70k and get a 42% tax rate afaik.
So right there you get more than twice the money left over after taxes.
Living costs would probably be close to each other, rent is probably cheaper in Germany cities but groceries and goods are more expensive.
And health insurance and costs are a small percentage of the salary.
The only big difference is that in US you sort of need a car, but again, with monthly cost of a finance for a car you are still not hitting
The biggest difference in cost comes when you start having kids - in US you pay closer to 25% income for all things child related, so that eats into the extra money real quick. For outside of tech, if you make middle class salary in the 70k range, you are much better off in EU, because a lot of things are heavily subsidized.
A friend of mine with a VERY sick disabled kid which prevented her from working night shifts in a home for the elderly would probably have gotten sacked by now hadn't it been for the Swedish labour laws that mandate that the employer tries to find a different position within the same qualifications in the same organisation. Sure, the union had to help and remind them of that obligation, but in the end it worked out for the best for my friend.
I don't think the laws are there to protect someone like me that could get another job, but to protect people like my friend.
Strong worker protection ends up making the cost of hiring new workers higher. Companies react to those costs by a number of means like delaying hiring, hiring contractors first, firing within the probation period when they might not have normally, etc, etc. Whenever the laws are changed, a new "optimum approach" is developed.
And like rent control, labor laws often benefit the people who already rent/have a job. For people who are looking to rent/looking for a job, they can make it harder as the barriers to entry just got higher.
It's not right or wrong, it's just a trade off.
In the case of rent control -- landlords and future renters suffer. In the case the employment -- it's employers and future workers.
i don't know how rentcontrol works elsewhere, but in germany generally it means that rent can't be raised more than once a year or 15 months or something in that range, and it can't be raised more than a few percent each time, but it doesn't mean that it can't be raised at all. not being able to evict a tenant is independent of that.
the general issue here is a power differential. big company vs small family. i know in the US there are more small landlords who only have a few houses or even one. but that is rare in germany. most are bigger businesses with hundreds of apartments, and with that the risk of getting a bad tenant is obviously larger, but the financial risk is also spread over all tenants.
There's many factors in this conversation
Certainly not compared to Europe/UK. I have friends that moved there and have spent many weeks over there myself. Property, living expenses, taxes, and many goods are generally noticeably higher over there.
This is complicated, and it’s insufficient just to state that everything in Europe is generally more expensive than in the US.
For example the "code du travail" is excessively complex as it describes many kind of different private sector workers with very different rights.
As a rule of thumb if you work in a large company you are well protected. In other cases it's very different, which partly explains the violence in the society.
What's that about? Could you please explain?
If you need labour laws beyond basic safety stuff then you're simply not being paid enough.
I would far rather have sufficient income and therefore wealth built to be able to choose for myself whether I want to take time off.
I actually find it juvenile that people want employment to be this way.
What do they think is going to happen when they stop working? Or is the plan - again a juvenile one, seeking a parental figure - "I'll just work for a company until I die"? Have fun with that...