As a Swedish entrepreneur with 2 exits under my belt and a startup in progress, nothing boils my blood more than bullshit like this. You want to encourage entrepreneurs? stop making up bullshit laws and initiatives that does nothing but fuck us over every single day.
Initiatives like this have the exact opposite effect of how they´re advertised as I´ve personally experienced first hand. Yet somehow all you read about is the outgoing PR of how great this place is, when in fact it is a god awful place to conduct business in. Heck just living here is becoming a nightmare as of late.
It´s time to move on from this shit hole to somewhere more welcoming. Too bad the US immigration system is a clusterfuck regardless of how much money you´re willing to throw at it.
</rant>
As requested here is an example:
Lets take the "Right to Leave to Conduct a Business Operation Act" or "maternity leave". In both of cases if you work at an early stage startup and exercise your right to take a leave (paid or otherwise), I as an employer have to hold on to that position for the duration of the entire leave of absence. In the case of maternity leave (~1.5 year of paid leave) for instance, I have to hold that position open for you as an employee. The last startup I was involved in had a female employee that was there for about 6 months and then left work for ages before returning, and then "somehow" in an "unplanned manner" managed to quit a few weeks after. Zero work experience, have to hold the spot open for her, have to hire expensive replacement consultants for the duration of the leave which could be extended at any point and I am also obligated to provide benefits to the workers that come in as temporary replacement at a higher cost???? All of that without having the right to fire or suspend said person.
Imagine being 1 out of 6 employees and you just vanish, leaving behind everything for the company to pick up by having to hire a secondary person as a consultant for far more money, giving them those same benefits while keeping your position open. Startups cannot afford these costs period. Not every startup enjoys the millions of SV dollars. Our bootstrapped startup almost went under because of employee benefit payments for people who were not even showing up to work and we cannot fire by law.
This is beyond sinister and it isnt done to protect employees, it is merely done to extract the maximum amount of value from companies at all stages so that the state can afford to deliver on its never-ending promises of "FREE EVERYTHING".
One of my best friends have had a full salary for the last 5 years and have not worked a single day. Who pays for that do you reckon? and in what world is that fair to the rest of us?
It is really rich that those on HN who are paid 6 to 7 figures would seat on their high horse and disparage OP for complaining about labour law arbitrage from the perspective of an Nordic entrepreneur and yet would be the first to throw a fit if their jobs get shipped or outsourced to Mexico or some other emerging economy.
Funny enough, I just outsourced a bunch to Vietnam and am in the process of moving the rest to eastern Europe. The only part that will remain here is the sales division because that needs to be here.
So yea, looks like the laws are working as intended... amirite?
In my city the IT sector unemployment is around zero point something figures, meaning it's quite difficult to find new qualified workers. I've even heard about cases of French and Belgian citizens moving to Eastern Europe to work in IT. It sounds crazy.
And what the do when they can't exploit said countries as much if they institute stronger labor laws?
Frankly I welcome companies to try and outsource their work. It almost never works out well because they pay garbage rates and get garbage code back. I have zero concerns about software jobs being outsourced.
This is an /r/politics tier comment. Don't boil down someone's thoughtful and informative reply, based in their personal experience to some list that you crafted just to morally shame them. It's really embarrassing behavior that you wouldn't engage in face-to-face. Do better.
I love this reply because it showcases how people hear so selectively and ignore facts. I guess relying on fiction is much easier.
Anyhow, I agree. Seems like the laws are actually working as intended as I have started to outsource to Asia. Your laws did wonders to protect the workers which they were "intended to help". Man this is way to fucking hilarious and sad at the same time.
Your <rant> is basically about you not having (or not willing to budget) enough money to cover the extra risk that the Sweden's work laws impose on your startup. When you think about it like this, the laws and your response to them work exactly as intended.
From Sweden's point of view, the positions you have outsourced will be covered by a company which is willing to pay the price of access to the labor market in Sweden. Which is not unlike a tax.
Did you budget for Sweden's taxes in your startup? Not doing that and then posting a <rant> that you suddenly have to pay taxes and that the existence of the tax code forces you to outsource to Asia would be quite similar to your post here.
People who start new companies don't automatically have infinite amount of money. Or you think that if one is not insanely rich one has no right to start any business?
This is so cynical to support regulation of small starting up companies and huge international corporations by the same laws, ignoring the scale. Only 1 company of 100 actually survive to become profitable. No wonder corporatism "wins" around the world. Though usually it's ignorance, in case of Sweden what they do to small business seems to be done intentionally.
No system is perfect, and sometimes we need to acknowledge that unsavory unintended consequences do exist.
I recently went to a european country with similar laws and was talking to an american ex-pat woman running the tour I signed up for. She said when she first decided to stay a while in this country and started looking for jobs, people were asking her strangely personal questions like how serious she was with her boyfriend. Only after she took her maternity leave a few years later did she realize they were actually gauging how big a maternity leave risk she was going to be while not quite asking her that outright because that would be technically illegal.
The kicker is now she was running her own small tourist business, and she flat out said that she would think long and hard about hiring a woman in her 20's for the exact same reason. In this country she would have to pay a person taking maternity leave out of pocket for up to a year and the government would reimburse her a year or two after the person comes back. The issue was that for a small 3-4 person operation, losing a person for a year while paying whatever % of salary is a significant risk to the business -- she wasn't sure she could stay afloat while waiting for the government to reimburse her (plus this was a mediteranean government not known for german levels of solvency...)
None of this is to say any of this is right or just, but it's just a first-hand tourist story I got that shows it's difficult to create a system that works (at least if "works" is defined solely as "maximizing business growth"). Even if something is formally illegal doesn't mean it doesn't appear as some of the informal mental calculus, and an honest discussion about this would say "yes, these policies can impact business growth and have unintended consequences." The followup conversation no one in the US is willing to have, though, is should we really be fetishizing business growth above all else?
Is Sweden's tech industry an utter joke, though? Stockholm and Sweden rank very high, both when it comes to old-style tech companies (Ericsson, etc) and startups.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/sweden-...
"Stockholm produces the second-highest number of billion-dollar tech companies per capita, after Silicon Valley"
Also, tech salaries are quite high -- as a consultant, you make more than in London at least.
I had no idea the IT consultant salaries were higher in Stockholm compared to London. What kind of rates would an IT consultant be expected to pull in Sweden?
Assignments that are accessible by "anyone" at the consultant brokers are often listed around 750-950 SEK/hour, which means ~470 to ~600 GBP/day if you work 8 hours per day -- clients usually don't mind you working more though. Tax isn't that different last time I checked, but CoL is of course much higher in London.
you are forgetting however that the 750-950 SEK/h includes self-employment taxes (arbetsgivaravgifter) of ~30% + 30% income tax. That´s before all other taxes and fees.
This was essentially the whole point of my original post about consultants. But people dont get this. After all taxes are paid, you get something like 375-475sek/h if even that as this is the above average level of salary.
Compared to when I lived and worked in London, this is a joke. That´s before factoring in cost of living relative to income. You live a much better life in London than you do in Sthlm for instance so I am not sure where you got that last part from. Especially if you consider how massively fucked the Krona is right now
I'm quite aware of the taxes involved -- as I said, I've been working as a consultant for some time now. What you might be forgetting is that, with a company, you can plan your taxes better. Take out a minimal salary and put everything in an ISK and you don't have to pay any capital gains tax, for example.
You're also going to pay taxes being self-employed in the UK, and whether you prefer London over Stockholm is subjective; what you need to consider is the cost of real estate mainly vs statistical incomes, rather than anecdotes.
Yes. It's a short term money grab that will have profound effect on financial services industry, pharma, construction, etc. After killing contracting in the public sector the time has come to abolish the one-man consultancy in the private sector. It's still there, but no client (esp. big companies) wants to put the risk of audit on themselves so they largely have a blanket policy of 'no contractors' in place come April.
According to my friends there, a programmer in Sweden makes SEK 30k - 40k a month, or $37-49k. Europe is a low-cost outsourcing centre which occasionally spits out bright people who run startups, just like China or India or Vietnam.
I have toyed with the idea of working in the US, and I'd have to make about two times the salary in the US to have the same quality of living as in Sweden. Three to four times the salary to have access to the same kind of medical care. Maybe.
Perfectly doable of course, for someone into tech. But just to put things into perspective.
Most employers (tech) pay 90%+ of healthcare costs. Worst case scenario you might be responsible for $6k per person per year if you heavily used the healthcare system.
Because to get to the same level of care and to emulate zero copay, I’d need better insurance or more savings allocated for health bills. Also cost of living is MUCH higher near many tech jobs in the US.
A first year student of some community college in the US is twice as good as the average developer here.
You think I am talking shit? well... I studied in the US and worked as a program director for a technical University based in Stockholm whose sole job was to output developers into the market in line with what all the hundreds of CTOs that I interviewed required.
Trust me when I say this, that article you linked to is pure PR bullshit. You can find the same article written about Paris, London, Berlin, etc. It´s all PR bullshit that people spin in order to attract foreign capital.
> Also, tech salaries are quite high -- as a consultant, you make more than in London at least.
at some point you ought to realize that what you´re saying is bullshit, and this sentence should have tipped you off to the fact that you´re talking out of your ass.
I don't understand your anger, but it's interesting that you've got such a completely different experience of the situation. FWIW, I've also studied in the US, and I've hired developers in Stockholm. There are of course both good and bad developers, but if you pay more, you tend to get better ones.
The article might or might not be bullshit, but there's a lot of highly valued tech companies per capita in Sweden, and I know for sure the consultant prices aren't bullshit as I've worked for quite a long time as just that. I'm usually not the kind of person that "talks out of my ass".
> At some point you ought to realize that what you're saying is bullshit too.
My previous startup was a tech one. The current one that is in Vietnam is for production and manufacturing of physical goods. The parts I moved to Vietnam are the manufacturing parts and the parts that moved to Eastern Europe are the tech parts where you can a lot more value for much less.
So no I am not talking shit, you just dont know enough about my specific case to judge it, yet somehow you have managed to do just that.
Dude, I am also a swedish entrepreneur and I don't have the same expectation that I can shit on my colleagues (yes, i don't see them as resources to maximize my exit). I wrote elsewhere in this post, that currently 25% of my company will be on parental leave this year (including me and 3/4 of us are male). You know what, we plan around it. Get over it - that's the system here. And why would you bring in a consultant - if you're a startup you're growing, continually hiring FT people. That's what we're doing. We hired somebody who was going to be on parental leave in 6 months, because they were good. The govt pays when they are off. Then they come back, and they're still good.
>Too bad the US immigration system is a clusterfuck regardless of how much money you´re willing to throw at it.
There are countries in the world other than the United States and Sweden. Also why should any country have an obligation to open their doors just because you're willing to throw money at them?
That aside, one of my Canadian friends spent a year in Chile creating a startup because the Chilean government paid a good chunk of his living expenses in an effort to bootstrap their tech entrepreneur scene. There are many interesting options around the world of you seek them out.
> There are countries in the world other than the United States and Sweden. Also why should any country have an obligation to open their doors just because you're willing to throw money at them?
Yea not none is really pro business the same way as the US is unfortunately. Also the US offers multiple states with multiple jurisdictions so you can decide for yourself what level of regulation you are willing to tolerate and move accordingly. That´s like 50 countries in 1 :D
Also, no one has to open up their doors. I am just personally disappointed because I want to work hard and prosper in a place that is pro-business that speaks English. I have considered moving to Asia for a long time but I dont think that I´d enjoy living there.
> That aside, one of my Canadian friends spent a year in Chile creating a startup because the Chilean government paid a good chunk of his living expenses in an effort to bootstrap their tech entrepreneur scene. There are many interesting options around the world of you seek them out.
I tried South America for a while. It didnt work for me as I dont speak the language and English isnt very dominant at times. So I´d need a year or two to learn the language before I can even get started in a place like that.
Do try Eastern Europe then. English is spoken in most places where it makes sense to run a startup and you won't have to deal with corruption as you're not doing real estate or working for the local government. Plus you have different EU tax jurisdictions, at least until Bruxelles screws things up.
> One of my best friends have had a full salary for the last 5 years and have not worked a single day. Who pays for that do you reckon? and in what world is that fair to the rest of us?
I somehow doubt this is the full story. Would you mind going into a bit more detail?
She had several kids in a row by timing their birth perfectly so that she never has to work. And obviously, for each kid the parents get parental leave. Not that hard and far too common of a thing to do here.
And paid by the state, not the company in question. Some companies have agreements to cover the difference to your regular salary and similar but that's only goodwill.
But what´s your point? it could be one cent on the dollar, that does not change a thing for me as a business owner though. It isnt the money that is the primary problem even though it is a problem.
I know first hand small employers that had employees go on parental leave, hired replacements, and then without too much hassle could keep the replacements and fire the one on leave, because there are many exceptions you can do as a small employer. So I find your entire rant confusing and not matching my experience.
I’ve been on parental leave myself and my small employer hired a replacement, and by the time I got back we were both needed because they ran a successful and expanding business.
Again, you leave out important details. It's also capped at a low level - like 80% of 3000 Euros/month or something. So high earners like you (and me) feel a bit more pain. But you know what, it's worth it. I cherish the time I have spent with my kids on parental leave, it's worth all the money in the world.
> Our bootstrapped startup almost went under because of employee benefit payments for people who were not even showing up to work and we cannot fire by law
That’s unfortunate but that’s what you need to handle if you are an employer. You know the rules when you start a company and when you hire someone. There are some exceptions in place for smaller employees too.
Competition means that successful companies that survive are those that manage to cope with such terrifying things as employees going on parental leave.
I’m not sure how you ended up managing a company with several employees while seeming surprised by the labor laws in the countries where it operates?
I don't think they wrote they were "surprised" or that they didn't handle these laws or the situations caused by them. The author just wrote that those laws are very difficult for business and are not as "entrepreneur-friendly" as advertised by these "Sweden does _____" articles.
> That’s unfortunate but that’s what you need to handle if you are an employer.
100%, and we managed because I had taken into account all of that stuff. But people cant claim that this place is great for business while exposing startups to these massive risks.
> I’m not sure how you ended up managing a company with several employees while seeming surprised by the labor laws in the countries where it operates?
Plenty of these laws came to me personally as a shock because it isn´t really easy to know all of your obligations ahead of time especially when there are thousands of things to take into account.
It saddens me to say this but every time I hire someone I have to put aside 125% of their salary aside for both employer taxes as well as a "rainy day fund". Imagine claiming that such a place is business friendly. That´s my beef, nothing else.
> every time I hire someone I have to put aside 125% of their salary aside
You can't answer if that is unreasonable unless you compare to other countries. As an example, in the US you would have to also pay for health insurance. And if the employee were to get sick they might still not see a doctor immediately because of the premiums, leading to further time off.
I would be surprised if the majority of the people who downvoted the comment have actually lived in Sweden. It's more likely it was because the comment wasn't (initially) specific, or because it didn't match the universally positive image they have of Sweden.
I live in Sweden and I don't have a “universally positive image” of it — but I've also heard complaints about the burden on employers from [insert any country here]'s policies before, so it's not a very interesting comment to me.
Why do you think it’s against guidelines? The OP comment started a very interesting thread IMHO. Not everything has to be a “reasoned critique”, sharing personal feelings about a situation can be a great way to get to a constructive discussion.
Oh boy, bad time to being saying this. All of the Americans on here have been hearing that Sweden is just better...it is so easy, "free" healthcare, "free" everything...build a wall, make Goldman Sachs pay for it.
The reality is somewhere in the middle. Generally in Northern Europe, excluding UK, you have a history of huge (monopolistic) companies that dominate the economy. So you end up with labour policies that reflect that...which is kind of terrible for the way the world is going. If you could take the job market flexibility and social policy without the freeloading, that would be something...I am not sure anyone has done this. And btw, this model would bring the US to its knees. It will be interesting to watch if it occurs...but I also hope it doens't.
It’s very much true that Sweden’s labor laws are deeply influenced by a heritage of large industries like Ericsson, Volvo, SKF and the like. They work well when employers are large, employments are long.
It’s equally true that these laws may not create a great climate for small tech startups.
I don’t think there is an easy answer to how to liberalize the labor market without it damaging large groups of blue collar workers (which would make it politically impossible). Denmark has an interesting model where employment security is weaker but in return the safety net is better. I think this is where Sweden could be headed as well.
>You're coming off as a disgruntled employer. Sweden is trying to make it better for employees.
Bullshit. It´s a way to purchase votes and generate tax $$ plain and simple. Workers lives are not bettered by crippling startups. That´s the EXACT opposite of what is true. You want more business rather than less so the worker have more choices to pick from and there is more competition for the labor of said worker which would enable him to get an even better life and living standard.
> I'm sorry but I'm just a bit shocked because I didn't think Swedes had lost their socialist spirit so much.
The fact that you´re shocked tells me all I need to know about how well this PR game has been played. Sweden isn´t "socialist". How many times do we need to repeat that? Just because a company has a state run safety net that does not mean that it is a socialist country. By that definition, every country is a socialist country. Your definition of socialism is pretty fucked. Read about the 90s and the restructuring of the Swedish economy post the Housing crisis for Christ sake. It´s like facts seem to magically get altered just because Bernie said so.
> Clearly you're a product of the Bildt era.
I wonder how many calories you burn a day by jumping into conclusions... and no I am not. Not even close. I am merely an observer of two contradicting messages that are being put on display: 1) Sweden is one of the best places for startups, and 2) startups are burdened unlike any other country I have been to or read about. I cant personally square that circle and pointing that out does not make me a "product of Bildt" era, as if that actually means anything...
> That freedom of choice he advocated in health care for example has already backfired multiple times where the end user/consumer has suffered.
1. Dafuq does that have to do with anything?
2. ah I see, you categorized me as a "Bildt follower" just so you can assassinate me by association. Noice! Well played but... naah try again. That shit doesn´t fly here.
3. if "freedom of choice" backfires for some reason, then freedom ought to be suspended in favor of centrally planned alternatives? give me a break, not even real socialist doctors (not your kind of quasi-socialist) would accept that premise.
4. You want to talk about consumer suffering? Open up the USD/SEK or EUR/SEK chart and see what the currently lovely policies have done to the consumer.
>Your vision of Sweden would only benefit yourself and your own kind, business owners and employers, in the long run.
Sadly enough, That´s the exact opposite of what I am trying to achieve because if we keep on going the way we currently are, Sweden will be a graveyard a few decades from now. A businessman ALWAYS wants a strong and rich consumer so that he in turn can make money off of said consumer. My goal is to enrich the consumers of society not reduce their wealth. But then again, I can´t expect logic to come easy to a sophist.
Please follow the site guidelines even when someone else has broken them. If you react by breaking them yourself, it discredits your points and means your comment will probably get (correctly) moderated. It's much better to stick to making your substantive points thoughtfully. Let the audience see for themselves how you didn't take the bait; your case will be stronger for it, and you won't contribute to damaging the commons here.
Because shit like that is generally against the law in countries that care about workers rights. It's utterly transparent and anyone can see through it. It's the same reasons Uber aren't allowed in many European countries - at least not in the way they are in the US. You can't just claim that the people that are effectively your employees are simply contractors.
How does this violate the law? Could you point me to any European country with laws prohibiting this?
> You can't just claim that the people that are effectively your employees are simply contractors.
No, they are the employees of my subsidiary. They are entitled to all of the protections of labour law, including all the maternity leave and all that. If the subsidiary goes out of business, too bad. That's what they're for.
If this actually was a functioning way of handling the situation, every single company would be structured this way. Worker protection laws are a huge pain for employers in Sweden, so they wouldn't hesitate a second if they could work around them through such a loophole.
Calling for us to point to a certain paragraph of a certain law is not really fair, because we're generally not lawyers here. Can you instead explain why all companies are not structured the way you suggest. Because all managers are idiots, or because they've realized that it's not legally sound?
Because it's bad PR, and because few people bother to be bold enough to innovate. Sweden, like most of Europe, is a country of conformism. There is very little innovation being conducted there, just like with the Chinese.
In America, people have a long and proud tradition of coming up with Byzantine workarounds for laws. In Europe, not so much.
I can't prove a negative, but you can prove a positive.
Either this isn’t happening because people wouldn’t accept that form of employment, or it isn’t happening because it’s too cumbersome or the cost of it cancels the gain. Or it isn’t happening because the laws are successful in preventing it. Who knows - either way it’s not happening.
The only gain is that you can employ a new full time employee instead of hiring a temp while waiting for the person on leave to come back. It's a minor gain compared to the hassle/risk of trying to circumvent a law anyway.
As a Swedish entrepreneur with 2 exits under my belt and a startup in progress, nothing boils my blood more than bullshit like this. You want to encourage entrepreneurs? stop making up bullshit laws and initiatives that does nothing but fuck us over every single day.
Initiatives like this have the exact opposite effect of how they´re advertised as I´ve personally experienced first hand. Yet somehow all you read about is the outgoing PR of how great this place is, when in fact it is a god awful place to conduct business in. Heck just living here is becoming a nightmare as of late.
It´s time to move on from this shit hole to somewhere more welcoming. Too bad the US immigration system is a clusterfuck regardless of how much money you´re willing to throw at it.
</rant>
As requested here is an example: Lets take the "Right to Leave to Conduct a Business Operation Act" or "maternity leave". In both of cases if you work at an early stage startup and exercise your right to take a leave (paid or otherwise), I as an employer have to hold on to that position for the duration of the entire leave of absence. In the case of maternity leave (~1.5 year of paid leave) for instance, I have to hold that position open for you as an employee. The last startup I was involved in had a female employee that was there for about 6 months and then left work for ages before returning, and then "somehow" in an "unplanned manner" managed to quit a few weeks after. Zero work experience, have to hold the spot open for her, have to hire expensive replacement consultants for the duration of the leave which could be extended at any point and I am also obligated to provide benefits to the workers that come in as temporary replacement at a higher cost???? All of that without having the right to fire or suspend said person.
Imagine being 1 out of 6 employees and you just vanish, leaving behind everything for the company to pick up by having to hire a secondary person as a consultant for far more money, giving them those same benefits while keeping your position open. Startups cannot afford these costs period. Not every startup enjoys the millions of SV dollars. Our bootstrapped startup almost went under because of employee benefit payments for people who were not even showing up to work and we cannot fire by law.
This is beyond sinister and it isnt done to protect employees, it is merely done to extract the maximum amount of value from companies at all stages so that the state can afford to deliver on its never-ending promises of "FREE EVERYTHING".
One of my best friends have had a full salary for the last 5 years and have not worked a single day. Who pays for that do you reckon? and in what world is that fair to the rest of us?