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> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time.

Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons - I see people change 2 jobs within a year, demand all sorts of things - last round of job interviews I did the interviewers spent double the time explaining why their company was a great fit for me instead of actually interviewing me for position - compared to the usual narrative of asking why I fit them.

The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage. Firing and quitting can have negative implications for both sides, just depends on scenario.

I don't see where shame enters the equation.

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What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms?

- It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day.

- It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid.

- It's considered normal for potential employers to do background checks, call references, and even run credit checks on potential employees. Ask a potential employer for references or any information on their financials, and that's weird. The latter is particularly strange, because the employer is paying the employee, so the employee has a much larger interest in making sure the employer can pay them.

> It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day.

Nope.

"Nope." is cute and shows you're cocksure about that. However, the reality is that this happens all the time and is never punished by culture as "unprofessional" for a corporation to do. Who would punish them? The customers?

>Who would punish them? The customers?

Future potential employees. If I go on glassdoor and read about this happening I'm either going to

A: raise my rates as I need to keep a larger emergency fund to deal with these guys

B: decline to work there at all

They end up only ever getting entry level kids to work for them. The system sort of works in that regard if you come from a non-traditional background you can work for a year or two at a job like that, skill up and move on.

There have been many threads on HN where the debate is "Do employees have enough power to [punish companies] if they need" but none of them have really every made a coherent case one way or the other, but they seem to lean "no" Disclaim: My personal Anecdote^

If someone steals my car, and I don't have a means to punish them, is it also okay for them to steal my car? I don't really get your reasoning here.

Saying it's okay, that's up to you. Do they get away with it? YES!

> However, the reality is that this happens all the time

Murder also happens all the time and it is not okay. Something happening does not mean it is okay.

Saying it's okay, that's up to you. Do they get away with it? YES!

> It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day.

So where does the sentiment that it is completely okay come from?

The company's self-bias https://actualized.org/insights/aliens-confirmed

My explanation is you are just wrong about all of those things. A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts. Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law and you should definitely be doing both legal and financial research on any perspective employers.

> A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts.

Not everyone works at "firms": this is extremely common in food service, for example.

> Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law

Citation? I've worked at least one place where it was explicitly against the rules to share what you were paid with your coworkers (although this was years ago--I'd be happy to hear if the situation has changed).

> you should definitely be doing both legal and financial research on any perspective employers.

Obviously, but you simply don't have the same tools to do that. Have you tried asking employers for references?

Discussion of pay (and other workplace issues) is a "protected concerted activity" under the National Labor Relations Act, even when it happens outside the context of a union: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/rights/employee-right...

The NLRB has taken action against companies that have attempted to use such handbook policies against workers: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/enforcement-activity/... (click the pin on Missouri, it isn't direct-linkable :()

Interesting, I'm glad to be wrong on that one. I guess that means my previous employer just had some unenforceable policies (not too surprising).

It's worse than an unenforceable policy, it's an explicit violation of the law for which they can (and should) be sued over.

It is not a norm for non-professionals to provide 2 weeks notice. Leaving a good service job without providing notice will have no ramifications on your food service worker reputation.

I routinely ask my perspective boss for references. I also routinely ask for financial data before accepting a job. It has never caused even an eyebrow to be raised.

>What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms?

OK. You can't just assert things and then when someone disagrees challenge them to come up with their own explanation. The null hypothesis is "I don't know".

The person I'm responding to said:

> The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage.

If that hypothesis is true, then they can use that hypothesis to explain the existent phenomena.

>If that hypothesis is true, then they can use that hypothesis to explain the existent phenomena

Why would that be the case? It is true that supply/demand largely explains what happens in the job market. It is also true that there are are socio/political/cultural forces at play. For example, supply and demand is not a good explanation for why you can't come into most work environments in your undergarments.

I think maybe we agree.

I was disagreeing with the one-sided claim, "The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage."

But you said something more balanced which I agree with: "It is true that supply/demand largely explains what happens in the job market. It is also true that there are are socio/political/cultural forces at play."

> For example, supply and demand is not a good explanation for why you can't come into most work environments in your undergarments.

Sure, when we get to ridiculous cases. But things just short of that, supply/demand is a huge contributor to. Showing up to work in shorts and flip flops? How acceptable this is depends a lot upon how hot the job market is.

Of course, no matter how hot the demand situation is-- it is never going to cause one to tolerate behavior so egregious that it scares away other employees and makes the supply picture worse.

Showing up to work in shorts and flip flops? How acceptable this is depends a lot upon how hot the job market is.

That's really more of a cultural question, though, where the culture obviously takes the kind of job into account. Specifically, showing up to a programmer job in shorts and flip flops is going to remain accepted in most places even when the job market gets less hot, until culture changes for some unrelated reason.

The supply-demand situation is only relevant when people are going against the culture.

Termination without notice or payment is definitely considered bad form, short of the company closing due to bankruptcy.

I have never worked anywhere that did not provide notice or some severance. Even at a startup that cut 50% prior to going down in flames, they paid those half that were released two weeks pay and two weeks insurance coverage. (even though they were asked to leave immediately)

Large corporations tend to offer minimums plus based on years of service at termination.

Even termination with cause (performance, not legal) will generally be after a half year of 'remediation' training, then plenty of notice to find a new job.

The couple times I've been laid off, the severance was dependent on signing over new legal requirements like new non solicits for who they didn't lay off.

Are you US-based? Because severence packages are absolutely an exception, rather than the norm. Most of the US has "at-will" employment, which states that employers can terminate employees at will, for any reason, without warning. And companies take advantage of this all the time.

The other thing is that you seem to be speaking as a developer. Everyone knows that our industry treats employees better than average. You really need to look at the broader landscape though.

For layoffs, severance is common.

For other terminations .... there should be a performance improvement plan in place and you should have seen it coming for a long time.

Only the most severe, egregious situations should result in a off-the-cuff, surprising firing.

[I'm not saying that everyone lives up to this standard, but it's the way it should be.]

Sure, but that goes back to the point that supply and demand are driving these sort of concessions by employers. Devs are in high demand and low supply, so the concessions are much higher than say, a retail job. I would say severance is common in "professional" roles, whether that be an accountant or middle manager. It's certainly less common in blue collar work and lower skill work. Despite the existence of at-will employment in some states, many companies in these states still choose not to fire indiscriminately. I think that it's smart business practice to offer severance, because companies are reviewed these days on sites like Glassdoor. A company with a bad reputation for treating employees is going to have a hard time attracting talent.

A quick search suggests that "many" firms pay severance, but I couldn't find hard numbers. In my experience it's not that unusual for people to give no notice or less than 2 weeks notice when they leave blue collar jobs like restaurant work.

https://businesstown.com/articles/should-you-pay-severance-w...

"Most of the US has "at-will" employment, which states that employers can terminate employees at will, for any reason, without warning"

I think this is a misleading (although frequently stated) comment.

Large companies I've worked for have a bureaucratic procedure before they fire anyone, and generally allow people to save face even when they really want you gone.

Technically it's "at will", but I think it's primarily the mom & pop businesses that are going to fire on a whim.

Furthermore, you are implying that there are no constraints on companies in the US, like for instance the WARN act.

"primarily the mom & pop businesses that are going to fire on a whim"

Talk to some people in the hospital business who are over 50. I have a friend who worked for a huge hospital, was good at her job, had been doing it for many decades. One day an HR person called her into the office, said she needed to take a test, and said she had to leave that day until she took the test, administered by some 3rd party. A younger worker, doing the same job, also didn't have this credential they invented, but she got to stay. She wasn't making as much money because she hadn't been there as long.

My friend had a couple of weeks to study for this test, which was about the physics of the machine she had been using for 30 years. She failed the 1st time, they wouldn't tell her her score, and wouldn't tell her what she got right or wrong. The test itself was ridiculous: how many of us could explain in detail the physics of how our hard drive works? She was given a small severance and told to sign papers that I'm guessing gave up her rights to sue. And besides, it's well known in my area that suing a hospital is a fool's errand. The local lawyers do so much business with hospitals that they won't even take cases against them.

If you tell someone "your job ends today, but we'll give you a month's pay if you sign these papers", many people have no choice but to sign: they can't afford to have zero income starting today.

Most of your points feel out of date and just not true unless you're working in the boonies ie backwater areas with only 1-2 dominant employers

> It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid.

This is no longer the case. Some companies have even taken the transparent route where everyone's salary is publicly available.

> Ask a potential employer for references or any information on their financials, and that's weird

You can work for a publicly traded company if you really want access to financial data. Even some startups will provide it if you just ask.

You can also glean insight through sites like Glass Door. They have existed well over a decade now. This issue mainly stems from employees not habitually doing enough due diligence on companies, unless there are legal and financial barriers that I missed.

What proportion of the total jobs market [in your country || in your supply chains] are you looking at though.

The parent might be a generalisation but you're objecting based on the thinnest sliver of contrary occupations. Seems like the parent could well be on the money for all menial roles?

The whole thing is much better explained through supply demand and security. When job supply is low you want to maintain a close relationship with your employer because you hope this grants job security. When the demand outpaces supply suddenly people are forced to bid up wages - I agree that the culture might need time to catch up - like initially the risk averse will still be stuck in this mode and few will change jobs, but as the demand ramps up the terms get better and switch job becomes much more common - culture changes and even the most cautious cannot ignore the market trends - I've seen this first hand in my local market over the last few years where the salaries went up 2x in 3 years.

How medival servitude explains any of this better is beyond me.

Have a look a low wage/low skill jobs. There is no such thing as security, employees are subject to their employer's benevolence. They even have to accept circumstances that might violate laws. They can't fight it because they need the job, even if they hate it.

I'm too busy to do the research for you, but Amazon warehouse workers are the first examples that come to my mind.

I've worked those jobs when I was younger - none of those people would feel any shame quitting for a better job so I'm not sure what your argument is.

Why should they? They're typically underpaid and in not so great conditions, but even if they aren't, why should they feel shape for quitting for a better job? If you fulfill your contractual obligations, you don't owe your employer anything and leaving any job for a better one is totally not something to be ashamed about. If anything, shame on the employer for doing a bad job in retaining their employees.

> feel any shame quitting for a better job

Yes and how do they find a better job without education? You are very fortunate that you were able leave that behind you. But do you realize there are millions of people in this world who have no means of pulling themselves out of the dirt?

Never before has education been so cheap or widely available. The whole world’s information is available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Let me be sarcastic: Yes, it is very easy to have sufficiently fast internet (or even a computer) in a non-industrialized country. Even in the US it is perfectly viable to work 2-3 low wage jobs to keep your family fed and healthy and then bring up the energy to do a hacking boot camp. Also, because the basic education is so great in under developed regions regions, it is a breeze to grasp higher concepts of math. And analphabetism does not exist.

Yes, life can be hard. And it’s unfair.

It wasn’t easy or fair in preindustrial times. People worked a few hours less on average, but they received less wealth in exchange and had no opportunity to educate themselves and grow wealth. Serfs were not given a choice of job or even the ability to leave or marry without their lord’s permission. Peasants were stuck for life, unlike someone who works low paid 2-3 jobs today.

So, what's your point?

>Never before has education been so cheap or widely available.

Not the kind that counts to most employers (college degrees). That form of education has never been more expensive.

Have a look = outsider view

Why speak if you have little experience in it? Maybe people with actual experience like the below poster will prove your inferences wrong

It’s the opposite. Low wage workers leave much more often than get fired. Consider Uber where drivers earn a very low net wage. Only 4% remain after a year. Maybe some are fired but I suspect he overwhelming majority just move on.

Amazon has the highest turnover of any Fortune 500 company in 2013. That’s because their workers quit. They have options even at a low wage. That’s why they recently raised wages.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/20/only-4-percent-of-uber-drive...

https://www.ibtimes.com/amazoncom-has-second-highest-employe...

If it's like when I worked menial jobs then the bosses just do something to make you quit like scheduling you for only 1 hour a week, assign you to only do the shit work that was previously spread out, etc. I think that muddies the water a bit in terms of those stats

Yeah, they do that so you can't claim unemployment like you could have if they fired you.

I've never heard about anyone being ashamed of leaving a company in any market. Even ones that have small demand. In fact, I've heard countless people saying that they never quit interviewing entirely.

While I have bones to pick out of OP, your post assumes your experience is the norm and not far away from the median.

For real. Being a software developer is probably the easiest and safest career you can have without being born into wealth.

edit: I should also mention having options is not really a blessing when they're all bad.

`easiest` ?

Yes. Being a software developer is easy. It's not necessarily the case, but I can think of no other trade that pays so well and offers so many opportunities for so little ability, effort, accountability, responsibility and stress.

Where do you work? I'm in operations and spent 10pm-3am last night responding to an incident. There's a lady here going bald in her early 30s. Stress is high, responsibility is high, accountability is high, effort is high.

I can think of literally 1000s of jobs that are easier

I'm a C# dev and the only anxiety I've experienced has lied in having to maintain garbage legacy code.

Yes.

Ever done manual labor? Or something that requires both intense manual labor and intellectual problem solving, like carpentry or many of the building trades?

Or think about all the various fields that require intense intellectual output, with nothing like the rewards and security of software engineering.

We've got it good. Though, really, the ideal would be for all workers to be treated more like we are, and less like replaceable, abusable cogs in a machine.

Agree. Ever have to stand waist deep in cow shit? I have. One of the things that encouraged me to go back to college. After the farm job I twisted wrenches for a living. Six day fifty hour weeks were the norm, the pay was meh, and I had over $8K of my own money invested in tools at the end.

Yes, this career has been awesome. Awesome, and fun. Non-stop learning the entire time.

Neither your point nor the parent's here make the case that being a developer is the 'easiest' job.

Yes - I have. I worked construction; worked on a loading dock; drove a delivery truck for bulk freight. Not having to do manual labor doesn't make a job 'easy' though. And certainly not the 'easiest'

Yep. I've been a grocery store manager, an interior contractor, a whole slew of other jobs, ... and a software engineer. Software engineer is by far the easiest job I've worked.

I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.

Ask yourself why you feel these emotions, because the culture you're in had to have made you learn them. The companies you have worked for sure as hell do not care about you once you leave.

Source: personal experience

All correct, but cultural things like these can't exactly be dispelled with logic.

Culture comes from people. Taking the reins of culture and leading it to new places is entirely natural

Funny because my todler is never ashamed to loudly demand what she wants, yet as adults we feel shame when we want to negotiate.

It absolutely is cultural.

Well, isn't also the case that a toddler still hasn't fully developed their empathy and other mental faculties, and thus aren't capable of understanding the full extent of how their behavior affects others (and indeed why they should care).

I'm not saying that anyone should feel ashamed to negotiate for better compensation (quite the opposite!), but I'm also not sure that you can look at those little uncooked narcissists and conclude "this is how a human being naturally behaves". I think it's pretty normal for a person with mature emotions to feel at least a bit bad when making demands.

Does your toddler have control over their bowels? This stuff develops, but it's not always cultural.

Back in the day, Merrill Lynch had a rep for hiring really green people on the cheap, doing a very good job training them up, and then not paying them according to their new value in the market. When you would leave, managers would often lay the guilt trip about "What you owe us..." (to which the proper response is the line from Goodfellas -"F* you. Pay me.")

There was a sitewide IT town hall in NY when I was there and some senior MD brought this problem up. "We're investing a lot of money in training people and then having difficulty retaining them." From the crowd of around 1000 a voice cried out "Stop training them!"

Why is the response to stop training them rather than train them and then pay them their worth?

That's not the correct response. I'm pretty sure the person was being facetious.

Is that really what you want though? Ever wonder why all our schools are becoming job training centers?

I don't think it's purely cultural because chances are you have co-workers who don't have these issues at all just as I know people who are limiting themselves because of feelings like this - I would say this is more individual.

To flip it around - do you feel other people who leave the company did something shameful ? Do you see judging from others (especially outside of co-workers where it's incentive based) ?

I think as job market turns from oversupply to undersupply the culture changes simply out of nececity.

No worker would ever get hired if he or she were open with that they would leave the company the very instance a better offer came around. Companies, on the other hand, have no trouble hiring even when they admit that they'd fire you the very instance someone who can do the job for less pay comes around.

Loyalty in the work place is a one-way street. It goes from the worker to the company but not the other way around.

That depends on demand/supply. Tech companies in cities with high demand for engineers have no problem hiring people who will leave as soon as something better shows up.

That is subtly different from what I wrote. :) I wrote that no one who were open about it would be unable to find a job. If you told your interviewer that your only objective is to maximize salary they would (rightly) treat you as a sociopath. A company whose only objective is to minimize salaries (and therefore maximize profits) is also a "sociopath" but that is somehow acceptable.

Yeah, that's true, I guess you'd normally wouldn't say that. Although I've worked a guy once that said something similar and got hired anyway. He still works in the same place after a couple years and still has the same attitude. I think that most people make it up to be a lot less socially acceptable than it actually is.

Software development is far from the norm. People working menial jobs don't have the luxury of making demands or changing jobs on a whim.

Even many software development jobs don't have that option. It's a bubble within a bubble that gives the employee the power.

>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example.

What kind of garbage comment is this statement? Argue the points of disagreement but saying something offensive like this serves no purpose and is just plain wrong, rude and disgusting.

>the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons

Do you think your local development market is remotely representative of the nature of national employment trends in general? And you accuse the OP of "over-generalization"?

>The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand

Well that's not true. There are laws strictly regulating the supply and demand from the labor side of things.

In the past, there definitely was such norm. The "job hopping" was seen as negative.

Even today, I software development and especially sillicon valley is a bit of outlier - people in our industry change more often then in other industries.

> Your entire post is overgeneralization

…proceeds to extrapolate from "my local dev market" to economy with thousands of sectors and tens of millions of workers without a trace of irony or self-awareness. Um, ok.

As others have pointed out, being in software engineering at this particular point in time is probably not super representative.

No I just gave one counterexample where his theory clearly breaks down and gave a more general explanation based on supply and demand.

>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis

I find that the main thesis is actually pretty sound. Historically speaking, the current (capitalistic) labour / production system is a direct descendant of the medieval feudal labour relations that existed in Europe 900 years ago. When you truly look at it, they are pretty identical in their core mechanics. There is a class system, there is servitude, there is limited social mobility.

It's just that the outer appearance is different, that some aspects are improved (in degree, not in kind, if I'm making myself understood), and finally that the technological advances mask the inequality and the problems in the system (a world where one person has 500$ and the other 500,000$ seems better than one where one has 1$ and the other 1,000$, but they are equally unequal).

> Your entire post is overgeneralization and des-dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis.

This apply here also. Thank you for laying it out for me

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