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Comment by setgree | Hacker News Reader

The article says that Shopify is reeling from a post-pandemic fall in demand that the execs didn't see it coming. But forecasting is hard, and even if they had seen it coming, they probably would have needed to hire broadly anyway.

One solution here is to move from 'at will' employment explicit 'tours of service' [0]. If you had hired a bunch of staff in June 2020 under a 2 year contract, with renewal not guaranteed or even expected, you essentially have a built-in mechanism to match employment to the at-home shopping surge.

If you had thought the pandemic would just be one year, or three, you could write the contract accordingly.

This is probably pretty hard for roles where it takes a while to get up and running, but not so hard for, e.g., sales and operations roles.

I personally would appreciate this because every 1-2 years I yearn for a long break.

[0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/waeDDnaQBTCNNu7hq/...

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Ah yes, let’s make peoples jobs even less secure. Why stop with two years? Why not just have everyone employed weekly and if an algorithm figures out they’re not worthy, off they go?

That would essentially be at will employment, our current system. “Stopping” at two years is an improvement from our current system because employment (or rather, a salary) would be a guaranteed via a contract. People wouldn’t sign a weekly contract like that if a 2yr contract existed elsewhere

People like to think that evil bosses will fire people for shits and giggles a la "Black Fridays" in Arrested Development, but finding and training people is such a hassle, the theoretical "you can be fired whenever for no reason" is rarely abused to that extent.

I think in organizations where the loss of an individual with years of institutional knowledge is felt, this applies more.

Startup just acquired a competitor and doubled its headcount overnight? Who cares about retraining folks you want to fire after that? You have to reorganize the new merged organization anyways, what better than to realign salaries with existing budgets?

> the theoretical "you can be fired whenever for no reason" is rarely abused to that extent.

I used to think this way until it happened to me. The CEO didn't care that she was losing a senior technical resource because it wasn't going to be her job to replace me. She found out I was interviewing and fired me because she hated it when people resigned. It was so bizarre, but those people do exist.

At will employment is not legal in Canada.

>>I personally would appreciate this because every 1-2 years

While you would, most of the labor sector would not. For me I explicitly reject fixed term contract employment, while on the surface it may seem more ideal, for me At-will employment through out my career has been pretty stable, and normally on the inside I can tell when layoffs are coming, and what segment so will be impacted so I can plan accordingly

You say "tours of service", I say "perma-temp", because that's what companies would do to make this a thing. Add a mandatory six month unpaid vacation (to keep up the legal fiction of them not being employees) and you have the dream of companies everywhere to underpay and deny benefits to their "temps" while never having to deal with formal layoffs because nobody was ever really "employed".

Most people want stability. Do layoffs if you need to, but cut once, cut deep, and as Shopify did here, do well by the folks you're letting go. (And then evaluate if you should change your hiring targets to prevent this in the future.)

> This is probably pretty hard for roles where it takes a while to get up and running, but not so hard for, e.g., sales and operations roles.

Aside from the manyfold problems that your ‘solution’ would cause or exacerbate, this shows a remarkable lack of cross-functional understanding. It’s generally assumed it will take 1-2 quarters for sales teams to ramp up, and even the good ones don’t hit their stride until a year in.

It’s also disrespectful to your customers to turn over their sales teams every year or two, as they have to endure 6 months of “I don’t know, let me find out”.

Ok, it’s just an idea, I thought it was relevant to the situation at hand — I don’t think it’s necessary to call my lack of ignorance ‘remarkable,’ I actually have worked before :)

The only way I'd accept a contract that was not 'contract to hire with a high chance of conversion' is at a significant premium to compensate me for the hassle.

Canada is not at will! And they can already hire contract workers if they wanted to, that's just what you are proposing.

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