What he meant is that the whole capitalist culture, less regulations, creates a more thriving economy which creates more jobs and hence more options to go to.
What he meant is that the whole capitalist culture, less regulations, creates a more thriving economy which creates more jobs and hence more options to go to.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
What skillset and expereince do you have which is in demand? Just curious to know.
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-...
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.
Until the US dev has a medical expense, that is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think you're still underestimating how fundamentally IR35 reforms changed the environment for small business operators in IT, especially since 2021.
> I don’t know a single IT contractor that lost that ability.
I do. In fact, I knew dozens of people who ran small, legitimate limited companies - offering high-quality services across IT disciplines - who were forced to shut down or stop trading as businesses once clients tightened their risk assessments. In the early days, yes, some niche contractors were spared because they were too hard to replace. But even that dried up as corporate legal teams standardised engagement models and de-risked by banning sourcing services from small business entirely.
> You also seem to suggest that IR35 prevented contractors from claiming expenses back in tax, and that simply isn’t true either.
This is misleading. If you’re inside IR35 or forced into an umbrella, you can only claim expenses on the same terms as an employee of the client. That means you can't offset training, equipment, home office, insurance, downtime, software etc. - because your business isn't recognised as a business anymore. And if you can't make profit, you have nothing to deduct from anyway.
> 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.
This is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. There is no “2-year” IR35 rule. That might relate to travel expenses. IR35 assessments depend on control, substitution, and mutuality of obligation. Even short, project-based work can be deemed inside. And under Chapter 10, only clients carry the liability - so they default to "inside" for anything remotely borderline, including repeat work.
And that’s exactly the issue: having loyal clients and repeat business — something any serious business would strive for — is now penalised. The system structurally disincentivises hiring genuine small consultancies, because clients now carry legal and tax risk for treating you as "outside." So naturally, they avoid it.
And that quote about companies “describing work in ways favourable to IR35” to avoid falling foul of the rules - you realise you’ve just described a legal minefield that only small businesses are forced to navigate? If an individual or a small consultancy tries to deliver a long-term service or repeat work, they're suddenly in danger of being labelled "too BAU" and dragged into inside IR35 or worse, accused of misrepresentation.
Meanwhile, large consultancies are completely exempt. They can supply entire teams of workers to perform exactly the same repeat, embedded, long-term services - even effectively occupying roles inside the client’s organisation - and no one blinks, because the worker isn't the owner of the delivery company. IR35 doesn't apply.
So what you're pointing out as a "grey area" for independents is actually a core business model for Accenture, Capita, Deloitte, etc. - and it's legally protected. They can pump in as many BAU bodies as they like, make profit to their heart's content, and face none of the scrutiny aimed at smaller suppliers. It's a structural bias against worker-owned businesses and it's about making sure the same work flows through corporate channels, where the big business win - and independent economic actors are locked out.
> But it wouldn’t have been catastrophic for the contract market had the employment bubble not also pop shortly afterwards.
That reverses cause and effect. IR35 was the trigger. It removed the incentive to engage skilled local contractors as businesses. Clients - especially in the public sector - stopped hiring small operators entirely to avoid compliance risk. The result wasn’t just tighter budgets - it was the structural removal of independent contracting as a viable model.
And just as IR35 pushed domestic professionals out of the market, post-Brexit immigration reforms ("Boriswave") made it easier for companies to import overseas workers on lower salaries - with sponsorship pathways explicitly designed to undercut local rates. So the market didn't just shrink—it shifted, away from experienced, independent professionals toward cheaper, controllable labour with fewer rights and no negotiation leverage.
The combination was catastrophic. It collapsed the domestic contractor market from both ends—removing the supply of viable independent businesses, and removing the demand for them by creating cheaper alternatives. That wasn't an unfortunate consequence — it was a predictable outcome of policies designed to centralise control and reduce labour costs at all levels whilst maximising corporate profits.
> Contracting is still better than being employed.
That may be true for a small segment of high-end day-rate earners, but it ignores how many people used contracting as a sustainable, long-term way to build independent businesses. For them, IR35 removed the very basis of that independence-profit, autonomy, and client trust.
A lot of detail there. Sounds like I was underestimating the effect IR35 had.
Thanks for taking the time to share that.
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”.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
> 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.
I think they suggested that in the US employees are paid better than contractors, but have low job security.
I feel that the opposite is the case.
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.
Yeah I’d argue this is so clearly the case and it’s one reason among many why the US has an enormous amount of successful tech companies and Europe has some amount that basically rounds to zero in comparison.
The ability to hire and fire easily is critical if you want to build successful companies.
There’s a reason ambitious founders move from Europe to the US and why most billion dollar tech companies are American. Europe has made really bad policy decisions around this for decades and their economy reflects it. Europe is poor and to an extent I don’t think Europeans really understand.
> There’s a reason ambitious founders move from Europe to the US and why most billion dollar tech companies are American.
Yes, and it's because of larger, more liquid capital markets make it much easier to obtain VC funding.
> Europe is poor and to an extent I don’t think Europeans really understand.
Europe is definitely not poor in terms of either wealth or income (particularly Western Europe, which is the appropriate comparator for the US).
Indeed, but that is just ideology, not based on any facts.
low eu salaries implies finding job is hard. fact.
There's a higher monthly salary in the US, sure. However, you're expected to work very long hours (60-80 hours per week) and get basically no time off
In my current position I'm hired for an expected 37 hours per week. This can be more if I'm asked to work overtime, but my weekly hours cannot exceed 45 hours per week on average in a 3 month window without additional compensation
Additionally I have six weeks of paid time off every year plus public holidays
If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies
That's not to mention the security of having a legally mandated termination period of minimum 3 months (in which you're, in most cases, not expected to work)
I worked 80 hours a week in medical school, depending on the rotation. From that experience I can tell you, the majority of people that say they work 80 hours a week, don't even know what that looks like.
This 60-80 hrs/week maybe a startup myth. Since Europe in general has far fewer startups than US people hear these wild numbers in Europe far less. For normal big tech worker, or enterprise workers 40 hrs is really the norm. Now many people specially in contracting, consulting can stretch hours for billing purpose or impressing upon clients thats a different matter.
I have never in 28 years across 10 jobs including one in BigTech been “expected” to work more than 40 hours a week.
It’s a bunch of copium thinking that American tech workers are working 60-80 hour weeks.
And I know it’s not the norm, but right now I have “unlimited PTO” and most people take at least 5 weeks a year.
If the average American tech worker is making 2x - 4x the average EU worker, they should be able to save more than enough to have a three month cushion.
And we are talking about Google. They have a very generous severance package. Even Amazon where I use to work gave me three months severance.
"Unlimited PTO" is discretionary in practice, and there are studies showing that it translates to less PTO on average, which is exactly why companies do it.
And I mentioned on average people take 20-25 days a year and managers are dinged if their reports don’t take at least 15 days a year.
I don’t care what the “average” is. I plan on taking 30 days this year.
Your last sentence reads a bit like "I don't care about statistics, I prefer my anecdote".
Okay.
First link -16 days for unlimited PTO vs 14 days without
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/ive-been-an-hr-professiona...
I'm genuinely curious if you've actually read the article you linked to, given that the line literally above the numbers you quoted says, in large font and bold caps: "Employees don’t get more time off (and may actually get fewer days away from work)". Did it not make you wonder why?
Now if you look at where those numbers come from, this article quotes another article from WSJ (https://archive.is/MVRur) which is also titled "Why You Should Be Wary of the Unlimited Vacation Perk". Hmm...
And the WSJ article, in turn, takes its number from this report: https://www.empower.com/the-currency/work/pursuit-of-pto-res...
Now when you look at the survey, the problem with comparing those numbers is that they are averages for all workers. That is, 14 days without PTO is the average across all companies, not just those that had adopted UPTO. And the 16 days with UPTO is, of course, only for those companies. So the numbers don't actually tell you anything about the effect of "unlimited" PTO adoption in a given company. Those companies where 14 days is the norm are generally not the ones that decide to switch to UPTO because, well, there's no actual benefit in it for them. Companies that do adopt it, like many Big Tech firms in the past few years, are also the ones that had much more generous paid PTO to begin with - at Microsoft, for example, as a senior engineer, I had four weeks of PTO before the switch.
So, you need to look at comparisons before and after UPTO adoption for the same company to see the trend. Conveniently, that very article you linked to has some sources for that, e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-...
There are other negative aspects to it, too. For example, when you have guaranteed vacation PTO, it is wholly separate from other things like paid medical leave. But with UPTO, it's that much harder to argue for it to your manager if you have already taken medical leave that year.
None of the BigTech firms have unlimited PTO unless you consider NetFlix “BigTech” and by market cap, they aren’t.
I’m not going to look up the PTO for other BigTech companies. But the one I worked for (Amazon) had 15 days PTO and 5 personal days.
And most people who have defined PTO, also don’t take all of their allocated days off.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/more-than...
That’s not evidence of defined vs unlimited PTO as a limiting factor of UPTO.
And because of laws in different states, companies with unlimited PTO also often have a separate bucket for sick time.
Do you consider Microsoft "big tech"? It switched to UPTO back in 2023, just in time for layoffs. And I can tell you that it was a very unpopular move among rank and file.
This is not what we usually hear about employment in the US. The reason many Europeans think American tech workers are working 60-80 hours per week is not copium, but simply because that's what many Americans tell us.
I will just add another +1 to say it's not common to work 60-80 hours per week in the US tech industry. It's not unheard of, and some companies (Amazon) are notorious for expecting that of their employees. But most of the time what you will see is that most people work 40ish hours (some weeks a bit more, some a bit less), and only a handful of colleagues with an unhealthy relationship to the job will work 50+ hours per week. Management doesn't generally expect people to do that, though of course bad managers do exist and can make your life miserable.
The only time I've ever been expected to put in those kinds of long hours was in case of an emergency. Stuff like, a natural disaster hit the company's primary data center so they needed to be all hands on deck to get services restored. But it's definitely not common day to day, and even in case of emergencies the company generally gives you a little something (extra time off, a bonus, whatever) to compensate you for the long hard hours you had to work.
Why would they be complaining about working 40h a week? You will obviously hear more about bad experiences than the norm.
We hear enough about it that it gives the impression of being very common, even if it might not be the norm.
its not common but i know nothing can convince you of that
How can you know that? Please don't assume stuff about others just to make a rhetorical point. If you say it's not that common as it's often made out to be, why wouldn't I believe you?
Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US and not from other countries.
> Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US
because internet is dominated by 'stories mostly from US'
I see plenty of stories from Europe, and they too complain about work, but never about having to work 60-80 hours. Even if it's rare in the US, it still seems more common than in Europe. Similarly, I hear stories about working 3 jobs in the US which I don't hear from Europe. I do hear people complain about managers, pay, or office politics in Europe.
yes pbly more common that europe . even i worked two jobs at one point to double my income to like 700k/yr but it was very hard to sustain that beyond 1 yr. i know many ppl who've done it for years.
How much content you consume comes from the US vs other countries? The US has a full cultural supremacy in the west. That's why you speak english and read YC.
The world is larger than just the US, though. Even at HN. Just look around you.
U.S. tech worker here. The only time I’ve ever worked 60-80 hour weeks was at a much smaller company, where for a month or two leading up to a trade show a whole bunch of work that had been put off was attempted to get crammed into the product. At my subsequent BigTech jobs I’ve never been asked/required to work more than 40 hours a week. I mean, nobody was tracking exact hours, but nobody was also pinging me at 8PM or on the weekend and expecting me to be working.
My experience is limited - I work in the UK for a US company and haven't spoken to US developers from a wide variety of companies. However I've not heard any US developers talking about working such long hours. Closest thing I've heard is for devs to sometimes work over the core hours to build up time-in-lieu for extra vacation, over and above the paltry standard 2 week holiday allowance.
fascinating. I thought the meme was that FAANG tech workers were all day and lazy and didn't have to work that hard and were grossly overpaid, but that's as much a stereotype as the next one.
never worked more than 40hr/week (including hellhole amazon). i get 28 days pto now and unlimited sick days.
> If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies
prbly not.
What a waste of a comment. Low salaries typically imply finding a job is easier, because more potential employers can afford to pay you. Can you add any kind of evidence, argument, anything? Saying "fact" after an armchair guess does not make it one.
> Low salaries typically imply finding a job is easier, because more potential employers can afford to pay you. Can you add any kind of evidence, argument, anything?
sorry i forgot to add "typically" which apparently is a license to spout any BS .
You started the argument!
> low eu salaries implies finding job is hard. fact.
Does it? Sounds more like an opinion than a fact to me.
If there was demand the salaries would rise. It's capitalism.
Umm... output. Outside of hyperscalers and probably the tier below them, most EU tech companies aren't making the kind of money per headcount to justify huge salaries.
There is demand for tech workers, but the output of EU tech companies can't afford huge salaries. Lower margins.