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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

They level out both the upside and the downside. If you can never fire people, you're going to be very very cautious about who you hire in the first place. That makes it much harder to get companies into a bidding war that'll actually raise your wages.

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.

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You're assuming that the differences in wages between US and Europe are solely due to labor laws, which is quite a stretch, in my opinion.

I think it's interesting to compare Switzerland with the neighbouring countries (e.g. France and Germany). I don't know about other companies, but Google Zürich pays much more than Google Paris or Google Berlin/Munich.

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).

Cost of Living is much higher in Switzerland.

Cost of living is usually higher in areas with higher wages, because it means that residents have more money to spend on living.

Right, and Google explicitly doesn't model for cost of living in its comp philosophy.

They use per market pricing instead, which roughly works out to the same thing in the long term, while not being subject to short term fluctuations.

I don't see the "assuming... solely" in their post at all. Seems like they are just pointing out a factor, could be one of many.

Where did they make that assumption at all?

How does the parent commenter acknowledging a single factor in a situation lead you to believe that they assume no other contributing factors exist?

I make almost exactly €70k in Sweden and I am _very_ happy not making more since I also have very very cheap universal health care, and very very few mass shootings in the public schools my children are attending.

> 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.

And as we know, the only difference between us and Europe is labor laws. /s

I've worked with many UK/Europeans. They are quite similar to us in skills and productivity aside from labor laws(excessive vacations, months/years of parental leave, impossible to fire etc.)

Excessive vacations? What do you mean? It's not impossible to fire you only need a good cause to do so which I find reasonable.

A good reason that often doesn't qualify is that business is down, macroeconomic conditions are expected to be unfavorable for the foreseeable future, and expenses, which for many businesses are dominated by salaries, need to be cut ASAP to ensure the business' long term survival and prosperity. Like now. Businesses in Europe simply have fewer options, like it's much harder to cut early and cut deep(hopefully minimizing future cuts) when trouble is ahead when you have to have protracted negotiations with unions and government agencies who have to sign off on your layoffs.

Union negotiations are about how to organise the layoffs, not whether you can fire the workforce or not.

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.

I would be more inclined to say the US lacks more than Europe has excess.

Aside from the difference in labor laws, I've noticed a certain sense of entitlement coming from a very vocal cohort of people that appears to stem from such strong worker protections.

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.

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