Italian labor laws are (righteously) under attack right now. Basically, a company can hire people with three main types of job contracts:

• Project-based contract: it defines a project that the employee (which is not really an employee but rather more of a contractor) will have to work on, with defined objectives and milestones. The compensation and the way it's paid can also be defined arbitrarily.
• Permanent contract: the employee is hired permanently and given a monthly compensation.
  
• Fixed-term contract: the employee is hired for a defined period of time and given a monthly compensation (this is almost the same as permanent contract).

There are a number of other weird contracts, but they apply to specific sectors and are not interesting right now. The key topic here is that all job contracts in Italy, unless you're a freelancer with a EU VAT ID, are strictly regulated by labor laws. This kind of approach comes from decades of social unrest and fights by workers and unions.

Project-based contracts have been introduced only ten years or so ago, and have completely disrupted the job market. Such contracts are much easier and cheaper for employers and in turn give less guarantees to workers. Permanent contracts are precisely designed to protect workers, which in general is a good idea, but in reality it turned into a mess in Italy. I'll spare you the details, suffice it to say that project-based contracts are at one end of the scale, while permanent and fixed-term contracts are at the other, causing all sort of trouble and even more social unrest. The vast majority of new workers, typically graduates, are hired with project-based contracts that can be terminated at any moment and give them less benefits. Another aspect that is being widely discussed right now is that if the employer has more than 15 permanent contract employees, then they cannot be terminated without a good reason (the law defining what a good reason is - not doing a good job is not a good reason). This causes problems when companies plan to lay off many workers, even if they can no longer afford to pay them. That in turn is causing more and more project-based contracts to be used (many of them stretching labor law beyond its limits) because they give employers more flexibility - or rather more freedom to fire workers (everything gets down to that). But I'm getting off-track.

So what should a startup do? How should new employees be hired?

The problem with project-based contracts is they must define a project and its objectives. In a startup, pretty much all employees do a variety of things, from programming to... emptying trash cans. If you hire someone with a project-based contract, she is prevented from doing anything but what's in the contract. In reality no one really cares, but still it's something that breaks the law to some extent and could cause problems. As you can see, this is totally unflexible and unagile.

On the other hand, permanent contracts, while allowing almost complete flexibility for the actual work the employee will perform, due to social insurance and taxes are much more expensive (roughly 1.5x compared to project-based contracts), thus would seem unaffordable for a cash-constrained startup - or any small business in general.

Is that even true?

The points to considers are multiple. Firstly, a bad hire is disastrous for a startup, no matter the type of contract. Secondly, startups surely need flexibility, but also need to make employees feel at home and to retain them. A project-based contract goes against both those principles. The answer is that - probably - a permanent contract is much better, even if it costs a bit more.

In an ideal Italy, project-based contacts would not exist, and permanent and fixed-term contracts would cost less while providing the same level of protection for the workers. The key point currently under discussion is the 15-employees thing, which is insane, because the outcome is that growing businesses either hire with project-based contracts or via body-rental companies, precisely because they don't want to cross the 15 employees threshold. A rule that was meant to protect workers is actually causing them harm, preventing growth and causing social unrest. In a small startup that doesn't really matter, but now the project-based contract thing is so rooted in the job market that it seems the only way to hire people in small businesses.

Well, it's not, and it causes more harm than good if you depend on your employees, their loyalty, happiness and thus productivity, which are vital for a tech startup.

Does an email like this even deserve to be replied to?

I am personally more than willing to answer emails regarding what we do, and ScrewTurn Wiki in particular. It's my job after all.

I always try to ignore grammar mistakes, typos, casing issues and misspelled names, but in this case the email is beyond my tolerance threshold.

Who the hell is your friend? Do I know him/her? Obviously, there's no way for me to know that, because you haven't mentioned his/her name.
What college? From his name, I can only assume the writer is from some middle-eastern Country or from India or Pakistan, I'm not even sure, but that's it. He could be from Mars for all I know.
It is also blatantly clear that the guy didn't even spend 30 seconds on our website, because it contains all the information he needs (assuming he knows what he's talking about, which I seriously doubt).

I was seriously tempted to reply something along these lines:

Hello,
thank you very much for contacting us, we really appreciate it.

Regarding your request, customizing screw turn wiki is about taking the engine of your car very near to its built-in RPM limit. Basically, you have to turn the screw usually marked with "RPM adjustment" rightwards, with the engine on, until you can hear it almost blowing up. Your results may vary, and you may end up damaging the engine, but it surely is worth for your final year project. Keep a fire extinguisher at hand, and just to be on the safe side don't forget to wear protective clothing.

Instead I replied with this message:

Hi,
thank you for your email. From what you've written, however, it is totally clear that you don't even know what you're talking about, and haven't spent a minute reading our website, as it contains all the information you need. In other words, I'm not going to give you the least bit of information because it's obvious that you either don't care about your final year project, or aren't able to communicate with other people (or both). When you ask for help, don't expect an answer if you can't even write an email explaining what you're looking for, adding all relevant context information, and most importantly showing that you've done your homework. Failing to do so, especially when you're in school or university, will simply demonstrate that you are lazy and no one will help you.

Am I attracting bad karma? Probably. Am I being an asshole? Likely. Have I wasted more time writing that email than what I'd have wasted simply giving him the information he wanted? Surely.

But people have to learn. We have to crush such behaviors, otherwise they'll spread like a disease and we'll waste our lives babysitting these idiots. As if we don't have enough things to do already.

</rant>

The Lazy Tax on 37signal's SVN blog is right to the point. Digitally-delivered goods are often as expensive, or more expensive, than their physical counterpart. Being able to download your purchases off the web, from home, is very convenient. I've personally verified the digital-costs-more-than-physical phenomenon for:

• Kindle books (not all of them, let's say 50%, it mostly depends on the novelty of the book, the author and the publisher)
• Videogames
• Music.
  

This is the perfect example of a market whose prices are tied to the demand and are not decided as cost+margin. Surely, bandwidth-intensive digital goods such as videogames, music and movies do have relatively high costs, because letting you download several gigabytes worth of content does not come for free. The cost is probably around 2¢/GB. If you consider that you could download the same item many times, the bandwidth cost becomes significant, and probably not too far from posting a DVD across the world. But yet there is no CD/DVD to manufacture and package, no paper to produce, print, bind and shrink-wrap. Most importantly, digital goods don't have the risk of lying there unsold on the shelf. In the end, producers are making good money, the environment is spared several tons of plastic/paper to produce (and dispose of, at some point), and we're happy because we don't have to rip new CDs just to put the music on our smartphone or digital player. I wouldn't call it a tax.