[asiachick]

I am curious how much regulation plays a part. I had a friend in Belgium running a 2 person indie game dev company. They needed to hire an artist and mentioned all the regulations in place making is very hard to actually hire.

Basically, it seemed like they were on the hook forever (very long) regardless of how well their company was doing. I don't know all the details and I'm not suggesting in any way that they should have tried to take advantage of anyone. Only that it would seem to me that they should be able to be up front with the artist (we're a small company, we have no income but some funding, there's no guarantee our product will be successful, we can pay you a reasonable and legal salary, but we can't guarantee your employment for more than 3 months. Do you except?)

But AFAIK that was not a option. If it was more like, if they couldn't guarantee employment forever then they were not allowed to hire.

That's an exaggeration as I don't know all the regulation. My only point was it sounded like it made it very hard to run a startup.

[crote]

There are definitely options around that, though. For example, hire the artist as a freelancer. Alternatively, hire them through an employment agency. Or just give them a short-term contract. That could even be a zero-hour contract, meaning basically zero liabilities. A company going bankrupt of course voids any employment contract.

In general, the regulations make it harder for a company to screw over their employees at any moment they wish to do so. The employer is expected to assume certain risks and burdens in case of long-term employment. But there's not a lot you need to commit to for short-term work.

[zx8080]

Not sure about zero-hour or short contracts in EU, but

> hire the artist as a freelancer.

this probably could be an issue due to investor's funding conditions (I've obly heard things like this, not experienced myself, so not sure).

> Alternatively, hire them through an employment agency.

This is super expensive, especially for the short contract like 3-6 months, easily could be around x2.5 comparing to hiring fulltime. So for a startup this is usually not an option, just because of the price.