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Comment by zarzavat | Hacker News Reader

It is possible to ignore laws if it's too much bother to comply with them... it's hard to imagine the authorities will come after someone for mailing out 10 anti-static bags.

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That's a very American mindset. I've worked across both the US and EU at a variety of companies with customers, partners, etc and it's a clear pattern:

- Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway.

- Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you suggest otherwise. Being process oriented is great for high stakes industries where lives and safety are on the line but destroys startups, likely slowing or even killing innovation.

There is no floor to the level of "petty" that can happen here: the UK - granted, not the EU - goes after individuals who don't pay their TV license and determine the who by triangulating unlicensed TVs via radio trucks and inspectors looking in your windows.

I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them.

That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.

> But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.

I'm intruiged, can you give an example?

Not sure if it's a pattern but when I interviewed with an EU company recently, they explicitly asked if I was married and if I had kids. They explained it as they had a "European mindset towards weekends and holidays" and they expected me to NOT be online.

I was fine with the mindset but never expected to get those questions in an interview, as it'd be illegal in the States.

It had to be made illegal to ask in the states, because so many employers used that information in an adversarial way.

In places that don't have such a history, there's no reason for it to be taboo.

To be clear: the question isn't illegal. What is illegal is using it to discriminate against a protected class, so as a result, no interviewer with half a brain will ask those questions.

"you should lose weight"

Whenever I call out things like this to European friends they just think I am being an overly-sensitive American. But saying that to a colleague can absolutely get you fired in the US.

wtf are u talking about? some examples would be in order...

I don't really have this experience. A lot of business I have worked with followed the "let's just do it and figure out the risk later" approach. In highly regulated environment it was different, but then looking for ways to squirt around the rules was the game. See for example the CumCum (don't blame me, it was called like that) tax-evasion scheme put in place by french banks.

Depends on what Europe you mean. Europe can be quite different depending on where you are. I wouldn't say northern Europe wants to do it by the book all the time like the Germans.

Quite common to view Europe as all the same, but Europe varies much more than what US does.

The TV license is silly but the detector van situation is bogus, at least in the present day; really they just blanket mail demand letters to every address in the database on the assumption that everyone watches TV.

> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book

Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.

(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)

There's a famous website about it, I've been following since 2008: https://www.bbctvlicence.com/

Most people are under the impression that those triangulating trucks can't detect anything and they're just an obvious looking enforcement truck used as a scare tactic, is that not the case?

> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you suggest otherwise.

My experience working for small European companies is the opposite. Mostly companies run by kids of old money who truly believe rules apply to them

Don't apply* !

Maybe it's super convenient for you in the moment, but the aggregate effect is pretty bad. If everyone just ignores laws because they're too much hassle and they don't expect to get caught, enforcement becomes incredibly difficult. You end up with loads of laws that technically exist but are only selectively enforced, which is a pretty serious problem.

Yeah, I always ignore them, first in my own country (NL) and after that in EU. Even if they fine (which they don't for small companies/persons), they will not spend money/efforts to cash the fine anyway, especially across borders. I had a few useless fines in the 35 years of my company, never will pay them.

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