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Comment by devmach | Hacker News Reader

This made me think:

* Apple, Google, Microsoft et al. have many foreign workers (green card, H-2B, or maybe L1 visa) and it is easier for american citizens to move/work outside of US than foreigners to get work visa in US. So the question is, if a country (like Spain or Greece) promises tax advantage for next 25 years and makes easier to get visa for employees, would these companies move their hq there?

* If, say, European Union provides better shield, would Apple move its HQ to Germany or Spain?

* Infrastructure: I can say most European counties have better infrastructure than US and it looks like most us companies build their own if needed. With $500 billion on hand, what would prevent these companies to build a better infrastructure in a host country.

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>So the question is, if a country (like Spain or Greece)

>If, say, European Union provides better shield, would Apple move its HQ to Germany or Spain?

Two words. Labor laws.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ceo-employee-lawsuits-killed-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9663421

Good point. But I would like to know other side of the story too, not just from the CEO.

Although, while I'm not an expert on France's labor laws, I agree laws in most EU countries are on the side of employees. But that doesn't mean when you hired someone, he/she will be working at the company for rest of his/her life without doing some work. Maybe someone who's expert on labor laws can clarify.

Edit: Also different countries in the EU has different laws. It might be difficult to `get rid of bad employee` but it might be easier in Spain...

> Although, while I'm not an expert on France's labor laws, I agree laws in most EU countries are on the side of employees. But that doesn't mean when you hired someone, he/she will be working at the company for rest of his/her life without doing some work. Maybe someone who's expert on labor laws can clarify.

As someone who lives and works in the EU, none of the conditions seems to be particularly unreasonable. If you're talking about someone who isn't working, presumably you'd be firing them for cause. Which you can do: you need to follow a process and document that you're following it, you need to give them explicit warning that their performance is not up to par and give them the opportunity to fix it, and you need to do all of this within a reasonable timeframe.

The Mandriva guy was explicitly not doing that; if you're making people redundant then you're declaring that there was no problem with them specifically, the company just needs to eliminate those positions. If you then rehire people for those positions within the next few months, the courts tend to take a rather dim view of that.

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