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Showing posts from July, 2013

Starting Up: Brain Gain Romania

There's this tumblr blog making a buzz in startup circles. It's written by the co-founder of an unnamed startup that's about to meet its demise. It was started a a month ago, so we're somewhere at the conclusion of this dramatic affair. It's actually not any more dramatic than what hundreds of other startups are going through right now, but the real talking point is over the honesty with which the blog's author is describing his plight. To juxtapose a bit, one commentator said, "when CEOs talk about their startups, the future is always so bright that we have to wear shades." This is why getting a live feed of the sinking ship is viral worthy. Why do I bring it up? Simple, I'm starting something too. It's modest but the dream is big. I want to help create a country we're all proud to be living in. If we had a country full of people who faced challenges head on with a positive attitude,  a country of people willing to take big risks for ...

5 Reasons Romania Needs To Move Away From a Minimum Salary Economy

No matter how much I try, I can't stay away from Politics and Economics. The basics have remained unchanged since time immemorial; amass personal wealth and trade it for influence, or vice-versa. We're still living that same old rat race, and to some extent humanity always will be. I'm not going to say that there's a utopian solution that will change things, but I do think that there are certain man-made mechanisms that level the playing field, even if only slightly. One such mechanism, alien to Romanian employees and employers alike, is remuneration in the form of an hourly wage.  I've looked through the Romanian Labour Code and as far as I was able to find, there is nothing stopping employers from offering salaries based on an hourly wage. What does make things complicated is that, in Romania, the minimum wage is defined in terms of a monthly salary. Whereas the minimum wage in Ontario is $10.25/hr, the Romanian 'minimum salary according to the economy' ...