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Comment by distant_hat | Hacker News Reader

All tenure does is largely protect you from getting fired. They can still do a fair amount of damage though you still have employment. Lab space can be reduced, it can get harder to get approvals for research, decreased funding etc.

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It's not a deflector shield, but "Protects you from getting fired" is, itself, a powerful tool. Especially at public universities with potentially hostile legislatures/boards of regents.

In many other countries you can not fire someone by default (it's illegal) so calling it a powerful tool sounds wrong.

In what country can you not fire your own employees?

Tenure doesn't prevent you from being fired ever; it just requires a process to determine that you are being fired for cause. That is already the case for all workers in countries without US-style at-will employment.

For example german academics suffer from the fact that they have to change state after some years. Short term contracts can only be prolonged so long. After that you get a permanent position which university rarely wants. Therefore they tell you good bye. And that is because it’s almost impossible to fire someone with a permanent position. (Not the best source: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/unijobs/article/academi...)

In Sweden you cannot fire people on permanent contracts (that you need to give after 2 years) if you still require their work, i.e., you cannot fire someone without cause and then hire someone else to their exact job. In the Netherlands it is also extremely difficult to get rid of an employee with a permanent contract that you need to eventually give to them. In all cases I personally know of, permanent contract employees were basically paid by the company to agree to leave.

Does this not create an incentive for companies to rotate through short term workers rather than keep anyone on for more than 2 years?

The 2 years is an extreme if you abuse the system. Standard is 6 month probation and then your employment becomes permanent.

In many (most?) European countries you cannot legally fire an employee at will. There needs to be a process, and the employer has to be able to show that the employee cannot or will not perform even adequately (or actively harms the employer eg. by stealing), cannot be trained or reassigned to a more suitable position.

Countries where unions and work laws actually work, like many European ones.

Sure firing is still possible, but be ready to prove in court it was done properly.

Quick firing like in US, only if it was something really bad and even then, a notice period might be required.

In Bolivia, there’s a right to “job stability” in the constitution written in 2008. Supreme Court here interpreted it as “right not to be fired”. There is precedent of people complaining to the ministry of labour asking to be hired again after getting fired and getting away with it. It’s stupid, but it’s a counter example.

    In what country can you not fire your own employees?

In Germany, you need strong reasons to fire an employee: intentionally causing accidents/damage, theft and other felonies related to your work (so, no firing your employee for drunk driving off the job) or failure to improve performance. The other thing is due to closing of the department or the location or the company going bankrupt, but these cases are often enough fought over in court and especially if the company is not bankrupt it's difficult to get someone fired.

Very interesting, honestly I prefer the American system where you can be fired at any time but if fired without cause you are entitled to continue receiving some portion of your paycheck from unemployment insurance.

The problem here is that you need to be able to afford the lawyer, the time for the court proceedings etc. in order to get said money.

Which means: those hit the most hard by "fire at will" are the poorest.

So if I am an employer in Germany and I fire an employee for misconduct but he claims I fired him for no reason how is the dispute resolved?

Let’s not engage in Whataboutism. We’re talking about the US, specifically. In the US, specifically, being tenured and having protection against being fired is a powerful tool.

It's still a powerful tool in any country regardless if it's the default or not.

It's not a tool. It's a basic human right.

"At the University of Florida, our professors do fearless research" -- title to a piece by the UoF PR department, milking an easy win for all it's worth.

You can’t eat PR.

You can't eat dermatology products either.

I don't think it is reasonable to require research conclusions to be censored or changed just because big money is involved.

Why don't the opposition fund some independent research or independent replication study if they believe so strongly that this research needs to be shown incorrect.

“Even when they have no skin in the game”

Surely you can leverage your quality research to find better funding. If anything, situations like this should actually help your career—what better signal you’ve found a good vein of research?

> If anything, situations like this should actually help your career—what better signal you’ve found a good vein of research?

How'd it go for Charles Murray?

He had a long and successful career under the patronage of eugenicists and scientific racists who hung on to obsolete ideas after their time had past.

I'm not sure that knee-jerkingly smearing him (by association) as a racist eugenicist quite disproves the point that tenure is not protection from misguided attacks.

Shockingly, very few things protect you from people saying bad things about you on the Internet.

No need to turn to his associations for evidence, you're free to read his work and judge for yourself.

The whole point of character assassination is to make people less likely to actually read it.

You can read his work and evaluate for yourself.

Not the same situation—he lost status on the strength of his work.

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