As a person on both sides of this regulation I have to say I'm not conflicted at all were I stand. On a professional level this will have a huge impact on the firm that I've been employed for more than 5 years because of the legacy practices used in the software. This has been the proverbial "clusterfuck" at work. This might even have serious implications to the future of the firm as most of our customers reside in EU. Nevertheless on a personal level I'm so happy and relieved that finally something is being done to protect information. In fact I believe that the tighter the screw on the regulation the better. If some businesses have to stop entirely in order to reevaluate what has been done, why it shouldn't be done this way(I like the analogy about slavery I read in the comments here) and start from scratch if possible at all, then so be it. Even if it threatens my job security(and I just bought myself an apartment) I'd still be in favour of this. In fact I believe that in a few years if this sticks it would be much easier if not trivial to deal with GDPR regulations and then my only regret would be that this was not implemented sooner.