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Comment by debarshri | Hacker News Reader

When I mean contract, here in Netherlands it refers to the offer. It is not a hourly contract position. It is position with all the benefits.

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Except job security. If you join a company in Finland on a permanent contract, once you have passed the trial period (6 months nowadays), it's quite difficult to get rid of you.

Changing jobs can be a hassle. It means learning new names, potentially changing private healthcare provider, getting new equipment and setup, learning new company politics.

True, but here in Netherland, you can give out 3, 1 year offers before you forced to give a permanent contract.

Three years sounds reasonable, one not so much. For the lack of security at one year, an actual contracting role might be more lucrative.

Is it the case you can earn (quite a bit) more as a contractor, compared to full-time employment in NL? At least when I was doing contracting in the UK contracting roles could earn me almost twice as much as permanent roles (without the benefits of course).

Quite a bit more as contractor. Yes.

>At least when I was doing contracting in the UK contracting roles could earn me almost twice as much as permanent roles (without the benefits of course).

The rule I have always followed - though I don't remember where I picked it up - is that contracting should earn you twice as much as your full time salary - that way the risk etc. evens out.

> when I was doing contracting in the UK contracting roles could earn me almost twice as much as permanent roles

Sadly this is not the case any more; with the new IR35 rules it's common to get a contract that is taxed as salary, except it does not include any benefits. Contracts outside IR35 exist, but they are very rare and pay even less.

>True, but here in Netherland, you can give out 3, 1 year offers before you forced to give a permanent contract.

I guess this just sounds weird to me. I would have to be pretty desperate to take a 1 year contract from a company that only paid me full-time wage as opposed to a contractors wage.

I have to assume the Netherlands has a lot of developers seeking employment for this to work.

It's pretty much the standard across all industries. It's extremely difficult to get rid of an "indefinite" employee, so most roles will start with a first fixed-term contract.

You don't really get any less security than in a country like the U.K, where you can't claim unfair dismissal under two years of service.

There's the same system in France.

As GP says, it's because taking an employee on an indefinite contract is a huge responsibility, and you basically can't fire them unless they set your office on fire.

In France, there's a huge temp ecosystem that was built because of that. Companies don't hire developers, they subcontract to temp agencies for limited time. The advantage for them is if they need to downsize their team, they can simply terminate the contract without risking liability.

The temp agency obviously takes a big cut on the developer's salary, until (at least in my individual experience) the developer decides to fuck off and do contracting directly instead and starts thinking, you know what, the French job market for developers sucks, I should probably send resumes to american companies instead.

Ok in Denmark the system is that you get hired, if they fire you in the first month you get 2 weeks severance, after which you have (IIRC) 3 months, this part is somewhat based on seniority / contract some times you might get a 4 month severance period.

You can be fired for basically any reasonable reason though.

I again have a hard time believing you need to set fire to the office before they fire you, don't French companies ever downsize?

It's an hyperbole. Downsizing is allowed, but there's some heavy paperwork involved, you have to meet some guarantees, etc. The company can't do it at will. (Then again, I'm not a company owner, I don't know the details)

It's the same in Germany as well (but I think the law has changed recently), but it highly depends in which field you work. I've never ever heard of such a thing in IT, whereas my wife is a social worker and it was pretty common to only get a 1 year contract at first up until recently. And if every employer in your field does it, there's not much else you can do.

How would a mortgage lender feel about it?

You can ask the company to give an intent to extend or give permanent contract and that works with mortgage lenders here.

Former independent software contractor turned real estate agent here... I am not a mortgage lender, but I work closely with them. You've likely need (at least) two years worth of bank and tax statements and a good credit score and then they'd be a-ok. Regardless of whether you are self employed or an employee, build those relationships with lenders early so they can advise appropriately.

It's a permanent full time role.

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