Some anecdata from Belgium: the software market is dead. Hardly anyone is hiring. Rates have plummetted. There are (virtually) no startups. Big corpos are hiring in Southern and Eastern Europe instead, when they're not outsourcing to India.

Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.

> Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.

That's because it effectively is gambling. Maybe if you are one of the first 50 employees in a startup that is one of 100 to reach "unicorn" stage, you have the chance to strike it big... but then you are 0.01% of all employees of startups.

The 99.99%? They'll have had their company fold or let them go due to the company "pivoting" or "having to look better in quarterly reports", they'll have left voluntarily for one reason or the other, or they'll have been let go right before the vesting period to save the company money and end up with nothing vested, or the company will have gone to three, four, five or more rounds of funding watering down existing options, or the company will have gone bust... all while having traded the "chance" of striking it big for lower pay, thus reducing payments into our tax, social security and healthcare systems.

Europe does not like gambling with the lives of its citizens and the stability of our systems.

I've been lead to believe that, in lieu of startup founding cash in the bank, there's a better social safety net, for use in cases like these. Is that not the case?