[hnlmorg]

I've heard this type of comment a lot but in my experience there isn't any shortage of tech companies in the EU.

What EU regulations hamper isn't job creation, it's employee and customer exploitation. The distinction between "job creation" and "employee exploitation" is important.

What the former means in practice is that there is a massive contractor market in the UK and EU. So if companies need temporary staff, they'll hire a contractor. If they need permanent staff then they'll hire an employee. And contractors in the UK & EU are paid significantly more than their employee peers. In fact their pay is much more equivalent to US employees. So companies will make constant tradeoffs between more expensive labor for short-lived projects vs cheaper staff and knowledge retention but stricter employment laws. It's a fair trade most of the time.

So a more accurate way of comparing US vs EU businesses in terms of employees would be US employees vs EU contractors. Things then begin to look a lot more equivalent.

[scarface_74]

I doubt the tech workers making three to four times EU wages in the US feel “exploited”.

My job is purely transactional. I’ve worked for 10 companies in almost 30 years. I gave them labor and they gave me money. Whenever one side decided the arrangement wasn’t working, I moved on to another job.

[Spooky23]

Tech is always boom/bust. We’re lucky to have had a long boom.

I’m personally well acquainted with many people in tech, especially big tech. Many of them are doing little or nothing, certainly not justifying $300k+ salaries.

What you do has risk but is fundamentally more honest - your skills are around technology and output, not navigating corporate bureaucracy.

[trelane]

I am always skeptical of claims that some workers are just lazy bums skimming money.

I don't think most folks graduate college and think, "You know what sounds amazing? Sitting at a desk doing nothing five days a week!"

I expect most of the time they have good reason to be "unproductive," and would respond positively to those reasons getting addressed, or you're not capturing their contributions accurately with whatever metrics you're using to find "slackers."

[Spooky23]

It’s not the people, it’s the process. In a big organization you need to be actively managing your career to be in the right places.

And people are doing things, I’m not saying they’re sitting making paper airplanes — just things with no value or that drain their value. I had a high school friend who was brilliant, but his career got nerfed when he stuck with a bad tech/business unit.

If you’re the world’s premier expert in some peculiar process that only exists in one place, that’s no mas. Companies have been rolling in dough for a long time and some have way more people than they used to. One big company I deal with went from an account team of 6 to almost 50.

[dmoy]

I haven't seen it on any team I've been on. But also I don't think the implication is people doing literally nothing. Just people doing things that are not worthwhile at all, wasting other people's time, and kinda just puttering around.

Some of it boils down to ineffective management and lack of mentoring, for sure, and could be addressed in a better way. Some of it is people getting in way over their heads.

[scarface_74]

During the first “bust” in 2000 I had four years of experience and living and working in Atlanta - far away from a tech hub. Boring old enterprise dev jobs at banks, insurance companies, etc weren’t affected and I was easily able to get offers.

I worked at a company where utility companies sent us data files and we created, printed and mailed bills.

In 2008 during the financial crisis the next time I looked for a job (my third), I had two offers relatively quickly - one programming point of sales systems and the other that I accepted programming ruggedized Windows CE devices for field service workers.

Fast forward to 2020 at the height of COVID, I got my one and only BigTech job working at AWS (my 8th job).

Unlike the author of the submitted article, when I got Amazoned 3.5 years later, I shrugged, my $40K severance was deposited in my account and I reached out to my network and targeted outreach to some recruiters in my niche and had four interviews and 3 offers within 3 weeks. Why would I waste time getting emotional about a company knowing that the CEO is 6-7 positions up on the career ladder and I’m just a random number to most of the organization?

A year later in 2024 around 9:00 PM I had a “1-1” with my manager invite for the next morning. I already had my suspicions and told my wife that I am probably going to be laid off in the morning. She said let her know how it goes and we went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning, was notified about my layoff asked when I would get my severance and responded to a recruiter that reached out to me about a week prior.

I started the interview process and three weeks later I had a job making the same as I was making at AWS.

I don’t need to “justify” what I’m making. I have a skillset and experience that are in demand and companies are willing to pay me for it because by employing me they get a positive ROI.

[deepakarora3]

What skillset and expereince do you have which is in demand? Just curious to know.

[scarface_74]

I’ve found my biggest differentiator over the last decade was soft skills - writing, dealing with stakeholders, knowing how to talk to normies, being comfortable in the room with decision makers, being able to do effective presentations and project management skills.

And knowing how to “deal with ambiguity” and focus on how to add business value. If you look at the leveling guidelines of any tech company, anything above mid level is focused on “scope”, “impact” and “dealing with ambiguity”.

Knowing AWS really well is just a tool and it doesn’t hurt that I have a stint at AWS ProServe on my resume

Notice “codez real gud” is not a differentiator.

There is no hard skill you can learn that thousands of of others don’t know that will set you apart.

Well except for some vertical market stuff that will leave you pigeonholed.

Sources:

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html

https://dropbox.tech/culture/sharing-our-engineering-career-...

[margorczynski]

Your post somehow suggests that when a bust comes European companies won't start laying off people. And in the same boom period the US dev will make much more money (and have a biggger safety pillow) than the European one.

[Ancalagon]

Until the US dev has a medical expense, that is.

[scarface_74]

A cursory amount of research shows that the average premium for an insurance policy on the open market through the ACA is between $400-$2000 a month depending on options - family status, deductibles etc.

There is also COBRA that lets you stay on your employer’s plan. You have to pay the entire premium. I pay $600 a month now and my employer pays $1200 a month. That’s me + family.

[margorczynski]

I think a lot of you guys from the US don't really get how high the taxes are here that pay for this stuff, especially for people that make more than the average.

If you would work non-contract here in Poland for an equivalent of ~$120k you would pay around $1k USD. If your wife is working she will also pay, of course this also covers all you kids.

So lets say both of you make around $120k here - so you would pay $2k monthly for "free" healthcare and its quality is atrocious. Even for serious stuff you many times need to wait 1-2 years for something, all hospitals are understaffed, the care quality is abysmal.

If you are ambitious and make good money the US is better. Europe in general is better for people that don't aim too high and want the state to enforce some minimum of QoL for them at the expense of the rest.

[hnlmorg]

You're focusing on one word and missing the meat of my comment. The EU equivalent to US employment in terms of employee rights and pay is contracting.

People in IT who take the employment route rather than contracting, do so because they want job security. eg they might have families. And much as you might be happy with your arrangement, there are plenty in the UK and Europe who do prefer longer-term job security over a few extra £££ in their pocket.

[varispeed]

In the UK you have worst of both worlds now - insecurity of contracting and employee level wages, thanks to amended IR35 lobbied by big consultancies.

[hnlmorg]

I think the bust of the job market played a bigger part here. When IR35 originally came in, some companies would bump pay inside IR35 to compensate elsewhere risk getting poorer pol of talent. Since the job market crashed there have been fewer jobs all round, which has pushed the contractor market down too.

But you’re right that IR35 really hasn’t helped situations either.

Some of my friends have commented that the last few years has been the worst time in their 20+ years as a contractor.

[varispeed]

That take is a bit reductive - it downplays the structural collapse of independent contracting in the UK post-IR35 reform. This wasn't just a "bit of market downturn" or a few companies cutting rates. People lost the ability to operate as businesses, to manage their tax affairs fairly, to invest in their own skills, and to retain profit. What they got in return was, at best, a modest day-rate bump—hardly compensation for losing all autonomy, business deductions (like training, equipment, downtime), and legal protections.

It forced highly specialised professionals into employment in all but name, just without the rights, security, or support. A square peg jammed into a round PAYE hole. And the long-term effect? Exactly what you'd expect: the best talent either left the UK, shifted to servicing overseas clients (where Chapter 10 doesn't apply), or left the field altogether. The real talent pool shrank, not because of market conditions, but because there was no longer a viable way to operate independently.

To make matters worse, the government compounded this by lowering the barriers to import cheaper labour from abroad ("Boriswave"), creating a race to the bottom on wages, with zero incentives for local upskilling or long-term investment in the domestic workforce.

So yes, the job market took a hit - but IR35 didn't just "not help" - it actively accelerated the decline by removing the last flexible, self-directed model for highly skilled work. The damage wasn't cyclical. It was engineered.

[hnlmorg]

You may think I’m being reductive but I think you’re massively overstating things too.

For example:

> People lost the ability to operate as businesses, to manage their tax affairs fairly, to invest in their own skills, and to retain profit.

I don’t know a single IT contractor that lost that ability. Maybe in other business sectors, but we are talking about IT here.

> What they got in return was, at best, a modest day-rate bump—hardly compensation for losing all autonomy, business deductions (like training, equipment, downtime), and legal protections.

This is also an exaggeration.

And you’re overlooking the point that IR35 only affects contractors working on BAU or who have worked with the same company for more than 2 years.

Firstly 2 years is a long time in contractor terms. And secondly, most occasions for hiring contractors was to work on new developments. So most of the IT contractors were still outside of IR35.

That’s not to mention that many companies would describe the work in ways that are favourable to working inside IR35 (not to the extent of tax fraud, but to the extent where any BAU responsibilities that were required weren’t the primary responsibility in the job specification.

Ironically places hardest hit by IR35 were government departments rather than businesses. Some of who ended up just adding ~40% to the contracted salary so the government still ended up covering the tax rather than the contractors.

And the very few contractors who were inside IR35 and didn’t get a bump in the contract fee would tell me they were still better off contracting rather than being employed (even taking loss of perks into account).

Now I’m not going to say that IR35 made things easier for contractors. Clearly it didn’t. But it wouldn’t have been catastrophic for the contract market had the employment bubble not also pop shortly afterwards.

You also seem to suggest that IR35 prevented contractors from claiming expenses back in tax, and that simply isn’t true either.

Edit: I will concede that it’s been 3 years since I was last given a budget and told “go hire, you decide who” so if there’s been any legal changes to IR35 since then I might have missed it.

[JustExAWS]

I also have a family. I’ve managed to support my family across those 10 jobs. I need a job to support my family. But my duty is stay *employable”.

[hnlmorg]

You misunderstand me. My comment wasn't suggesting that people who contract don't have families. Plenty of them do. It's that people who choose employment over contracting do so because they want the additional stability, for example if they have families.

Lots of people, when evaluating the risks of contracting vs employment, find the reward far outweighs the risk. It sounds like you'd be one of them if you were presented with the same choice. And that's a fine decision for you to come to. But that's not going to be the same conclusion for everyone.

[JustExAWS]

What I’m saying is simple math. I would much rather make more than twice the equivalent worker in the EU and take the chance of a layoff. I can afford to have my own emergency fund to survive the gap in employment.

Every employee in the US is “at will”.

[apwell23]

this doesn't make sense. so why do usa companies hire contractors then? I worked as a contractor for decades and made 150% what perm employees made.

[hnlmorg]

That I don't know. But the contractor market in the US is very different to the contractor market in the UK and EU. And from hiring in both US and UK, my experiences have been that US employees are more comparable to UK contractors in terms of rights and pay.

[apwell23]

> US employees are more comparable to UK contractors in terms of rights and pay

did you account for rsu value too or just basepay/hours . now that i am a perm employee a big share of my comp comes from rsu.

[isbvhodnvemrwvn]

I think they suggested that in the US employees are paid better than contractors, but have low job security.

[saagarjha]

I feel that the opposite is the case.

[amalcon]

There are more regulations around employees than contractors here also, which often makes it not worthwhile for short term workers. Those regulations just mostly aren't around when you may terminate employment.

E.g. the entire I-9 thing and other IRS paperwork, who (if anyone) is responsible for various insurances (unemployment insurance, workers comp, liability insurance, etc), minimum wage and overtime for hourly employees, etc. Many things depend on this distinction.

I can't speak to differences from Europe as I am not familiar with that side of the Atlantic.