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by logicalmonster 1277 days ago
If the European standards are so good, where are all of the influential European tech companies?

To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the European system and if there's a link between European labor standards and the lack of influential European tech companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many capable and educated technology workers, yet almost always all of the tech companies we're ever talking about are American. Why is this?
4 comments
BigRedDog1669 1277 days ago
Good company to work for is not the same as big company everyone is talking about on hacker news. Those are two different things. Why should people optimize for computer nerd prestige? I might not care to work for Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Influential can be a bad thing if they are negatively influencing society.
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logicalmonster 1277 days ago
> Why should people optimize for computer nerd prestige?

The thing I'd like to focus on isn't nerd prestige, but good jobs, as the article was about inequality as nothing fixes social alienation and inequality more than lots of people having a good income and being part of society. These big tech companies, whatever major negatives they provide to the culture in many ways, at least employ a lot of people and give them a path to being part of that comfy middle class.

If the concern is inequality, then is a pile of great paying jobs with worse labor standards better than a few ok paying jobs with great labor standards? See where I'm going with that?

These are complex issues...I don't think I have all of the answers, but I just want to point out that there might be some tradeoffs to the good sounding things like unions and much better labor protections.

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faitswulff 1277 days ago
A simple answer is that being able to abuse workers allows businesses to move faster.
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bombolo 1277 days ago
> Why is this?

Because EU is a puppet of USA and doesn't have strong enough protections to stop USA companies to acquire every single startup that exists in EU.

Most of that amazing USA made software is not done in USA. For example some of that is made by me… a guy who has never been in USA.

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rejectfinite 1277 days ago
Spotify, Skype, Minecraft, Battlefield, Ericsson, SAAB

oh and the Linux kernel.

Is your brain broken?

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bombolo 1277 days ago
Saab makes mostly weapons. And yes some software here and there.
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