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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

WFH may be dead in the US, but it sure is alive and well in Europe.

Not in most of Europe.

Most of the CEE along with Western European countries like Netherlands and Ireland have ass-in-seat requirements for American companies to unlock FDI subsidizes when opening a GCC. Additionally, management culture in London as well as Paris is very hybrid work oriented.

There is a decent proliferation of WFH roles in Europe, but those are the same roles in the US anyhow - we're posting those in Europe it's us offshoring.

Germans need to stop using "Europe" as a stand-in for Germany.

> Not in most of Europe.

I live in Spain, and received WFH job offers from Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish and German companies. For all intents and purposes, WFH doesn't seem "dead" in Europe at all, as far as I can tell.

> like Netherlands has ass-in-seat requirements for American companies

That might be true, but doesn't really tell us about Dutch companies, just what American companies want/does in Europe, doesn't really reflect what European companies are up to.

The Dutch companies I've worked for tend strongly towards a single office day per week, which is an acceptable balance to me.

> doesn't really reflect what European companies are up to

Most tech employment in Europe is via American FDI.

And for a large number of "European" companies it's the same management, board members, and investors as in the US. Heck, I'm on the board of a European company as well.

> Most tech employment in Europe is via American FDI.

Coming from the person who said "Germans need to stop using "Europe" as a stand-in for Germany"... I don't think whatever you personally experienced applies to all of Europe, it's not a tiny place with heterogeneous employment situations across the continent exactly.

Not really, it varies a lot by region. UK and Ireland, absolutely. In Germany or France it's waaaay more mixed. Overall by employee count, most tech jobs in Europe are domestic, not by American FDI

Huh? Where do you get that from?

Mix of anecdotes and law of large numbers - for every 10 person startup founded by hipsters in Berlin you have a 500-1,000 person GCC opening up in Warsaw, such as Google.

Gulf Corporation Council? GNU Compiler Collection?

Google & co have very little footprint in the EU.

citation please

In 2022 they had 25K employees and interns. That's tiny.

Source: https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/di...

You should really try to write abbreviations in full the first time they're used. I have no idea what CEE, FDI and GCC mean.

FDI = foreign direct investment

GCC = global capability center

As a German living in Germany, I had the impression most companies here are anti-WFH.

It got better with COVID, but you still have to dig, to find something 100% remote.

100% remote is rare, yes. But 30-80% WFH is quite widespread in office jobs.

Yes, I was surprised that my girlfriend found a job in a big company where she only has one office say a week.

Same in UK (from my anecdata)

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