[danbmil99]

How many startups come from NZ? The point here isn't "employment law", it's the fact that in the USA (generally, in the private sector) employment is considered a contract, not an entitlement.

If people at Square don't like the environment, they are free to find another job. Similarly, if Dorsey doesn't like an employee's output for any reason, or "the cut of his jib" for that matter, he pays him up to the day and fires him. If it can't be shown to be due to discrimination (race, gender etc), and there was no employment contract, that's that.

Without this culture, starting a company would be nearly impossible. You can see evidence of this in the number of innovative startups out of more heavily regulated countries vs. the US.

[edit: I would add that there is a perverse incentive here: I believe US startups under-hire women and people of color _precisely_ because it is not that difficult to make a case for discrimination in promotion, compensation, and treatment of employees here. Hiring white, upper-middle-class males greatly reduces that risk. I think it's an unfortunate unintended consequence of the desire to redress discrimination.]

[_delirium]

I'm not sure there's a very solid correlation on that. It's true that the U.S. has a lot of startups, and also at-will employment, but actual experimental data is pretty weak, and the U.S. has been a technological leader through various routes for decades, not all of them startup-ish. For example, the old-line engineering firms (AT&T, Boeing, Lockheed, IBM, etc.) drove technical innovation for decades, and had much more "Europe-like" working conditions, where working more than 40 hours/wk was uncommon, employees were rarely fired except for gross incompetence, etc.

If anything, the 80-hour/wk and ready firing of employees thing was traditionally seen as a more "mom-and-pop business" type culture, associated with lower-status industries like the family-owned restaurant, not with technology.

[melloclello]

Everyone here likes to believe there's a bit of a startup boom in Wellington at the moment - government R&D grants and the Grow Wellington business incubator certainly seem to have gone a long way towards helping the culture along. In any case you can't walk down Cuba St without running into people from all the different tech startups these days. It's great, since fifteen years ago the only other employment options in this town were cafés or the public sector.

[rsynnott]

> How many startups come from NZ?

Quite a few startups come from the UK, Ireland and Germany; in all three countries the alleged behavior by Square would be highly illegal.

[roel_v]

Like who? How much revenue do they make, combined, compared to the combined revenue of US companies? Let's not kid ourselves here - I'm European, there are many things I like about the place I live, but the tech company scene is laughable here. It's hard to find anyone who is even capable of thinking beyond the 'I set up Active Directory network and fix pc's' or 'I make websites for the local pizza place' level.

(yes there are some counter examples, I know, but I'm talking about magnitudes, not frolicking in the margin)

[yuhong]

Personally, as I said in another thread, I think the US anti-discrimination laws are fundamentally flawed. Hiring is an art, not a science. But that is another topic.