How European Startups Are Battling Labor Laws For Developers and Programmers 293
Nerval's Lobster writes "The United States with its H-1B controversy isn't the only country going through that sort of immigration upheaval. As the cult of entrepreneurship spirals upward in Europe, the intricate vagaries of immigration policy on the continent are being newly scrutinized by our company-building classes. Freshly venture-backed European Internet companies want talent, and they are going to remarkable lengths to get it — but not always legally. Milo Yiannopoulos talked to whole bunch of entrepreneurs and investors in Europe about the fudges, shortcuts, workarounds and, in some cases, 'strategic decision-making' are — just about — getting their companies the talent they need. For example, one well-known Parisian venture capitalist told Milo that he knows of 'at least nine' startups in France employing developers illegally, keeping them off the books not only to avoid France's notoriously onerous labor laws but also because it would have been impossible, or simply too expensive, to import them officially."
Re:Buy American? (Score:5, Informative)
That's all fine and dandy for the worker, and for corporations who can easily absorb the average costs incurred in a large group of employees. But in small startups, having to pay a worker who is unproductive one way or another for a long period of time can kill the company. You can insure against that, but the premiums are unbelievable.
Re:Buy American? (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as someone who hires and fires people, firing people and hiring new ones is far easier said than done, even if you propose to pay them well.
Even with a labor market full of candidates with the skills you need, you're still looking at a few weeks to get them in the door. In the meantime, your project is disrupted. Sure, you can try and train up someone on your team and make them work harder for a month or so, but they don't just learn stuff overnight, and your good team member is going to be overworked because those people still have to get their own code/project out the door on time as well.
I don't know where you have worked, but it's about ten times more likely to see people laid off than it is for them to be fired for performance, and there is a reason for that. I'm not afraid to fire someone who is not performing, but that's usually after at least working with them for some period of time to try and rectify the issues. The last thing I want to have to do is fire anyone unless they are richly deserving and that usually is demonstrated by a history of failure over time. So, if I have a "problem", he's going to be my problem for awhile. Thankfully, if you do find the right candidates, the failures are few and far between.
I work in a "right to work" state in the US. So, I don't even have to worry about half the stuff a European employer will have to when it comes to letting people go. There is nothing simple about it.
And there's the fact that you're going to fire someone. Unless the guy is an asshole, even doing what you must for good reason is not a pleasant task. In no way do I want to work for people who think I am going to fire people at the drop of a hat.
Re: so why not set up shop elsewhere? (Score:0, Informative)
i just came back from the cinema in ireland. i went alone. i sae happy friends there eatching movies. they werent irish. irish people are too busy slaving off debts to go. maybe too proud like me to have friends when theu have no job. better to be an immigrant.
Re:Buy American? (Score:5, Informative)
If someone is churning out substandard code and causing schedules to slip... be they an American or H1-B holder... replace them... it's that simple.
You haven't worked with people who ask you to... do the needful... have you? The substandard code is a byproduct of a combination of culture, language barrier, and a lack of experience. Note that I said experience, not education. American labor often stresses that people take their own initiative in solving a problem. You're expected to come up with a solution on your own, with little oversight or guidance, and you're given some leeway in making that happen. Yes, some companies are worse about this than others -- I am speaking in generalities here. YMMV. The culture of many of our immigrants is to not take that initiative -- but to only do things under the express guidance of their leaders. They see a problem and unless it's in the three ring binder that says "Things Management Says You Should Do When You Spot Problem X", it doesn't exist. They don't even see it. If you ask them about it, they'll say they don't know.
I'd snark you back and say "it's that simple," but nothing about conflicting cultural ideas and attitudes is. Nothing. You can't just replace people who have good attitudes but limited experience or have been trained to not take the initiative... you're just passing the buck on to the next person then. And it won't save your project. Software development isn't like factory work -- you can't mongolian hoarde the problem and solve it faster. In truth, a lot of times adding new people or more people makes the project take longer. This is a "people" problem, but it's commonly seen in all engineering disciplines. It's just the nature of the work.
The H1-B problem is not about putting down immigrants. We want them. Hell, we need them for some industries. The problem is that you can't destabilize an industry by radically changing either supply, or demand, and not have it hurt everyone. The H1-B program radically increased supply, and as a result, the cost of technical labor dropped -- a lot. It dropped so much that a lot of people who had invested in an education in it were left high and dry, and many people who had solid experience suddenly found themselves knocked several notches down on their career path and had to scramble to find a way to support their current lifestyle at a much lower income, with often tragic results. So a lot of experienced people left the industry to move into fields that were more stable, and the overall quality of the labor dropped.
This, in turn, fueled more cries for H1-Bs because high level positions were now going unfulfilled -- there was a glut of low-level workers, and very few experienced people because they didn't want to move 'down' in their career and simply moved out. That gap simply couldn't be filled no matter how many workers you threw at the problem. So the entire problem became cyclical... more H1-Bs mean more experienced workers leave, which mean lower overall quality of work, and now businesses are scrambling to find anyone who's qualified amongst a veritable sea of resumes... none which have the amount of experience needed.
And that, right there, is how our industry collapsed. It was because of short-term thinking -- they wanted to tap into the global labor market, so they poked a hole in the dam of regulations holding them back, thinking they could suckle off the new supply of cheap labor. But they were trying to drink out of a firehose, and then the dam exploded and washed out the entire industry.
There is no new tech now in this country. It's all gone to shit. It died because of short-term thinking, and now our high tech industry is just an empty shell, unable to produce any better than the third world, because that's the only labor source we have left.
Re:Hate labor laws? (Score:3, Informative)
Happening in Canada as well. (Score:2, Informative)
Tim Horton's, a freaking donut shop, has been using the 'skilled worker' loophole in labour laws here to import "temporary foreign workers" (H1-B analogue). They were claiming there were no Canadian workers able to fill the positions. At what they are willing to pay, perhaps, but that's the real problem isn't it?
Royal Bank of Canada was playing similar games, under the guise of "internal position transfers" which were supposed to be limited to people with unique expertise, and for short terms like 6 weeks -- but keeping them for 2 years or more.
Re:Buy American? (Score:4, Informative)
Most of those rules either exempt small companies or they get reimbursed in turn by the state for the costs. In Sweden, for example, the employer pays for the first 14 days of sick leave (which is lower than your regular pay), the state covers anything beyond it. Same kind of thing with the other costs.
Re:Buy American? (Score:2, Informative)
But that is exactly what you are suggesting. Or you are simply acting as a "useful idiot" arguing for it for those who do. Because "flexible labor laws" mean "I can own people". Literally. Look at the condition of people who are imported illegally. That is the ideal state of a worker for these employers.
Slavery is better then that.
Re:so why not set up shop elsewhere? (Score:2, Informative)
You need to read up on Robber Barons and Company stores and then follow it up with some reading on the labor movements of the 1920's which helped stop working 12 year olds 72 hours a week.
Unlimited Capitalism and competition is REALLY ugly.
You need to decide some reasonable boundaries and allow competition inside of those boundaries.
Otherwise you end up with most people basically slaves with shoddy, unhealthy (even poisonous) products that break quickly.
The only thing that makes capitalism and competition work are strong labor laws, strong drug laws, strong warranty laws, strong pollution laws and a government that enforces them.