Normalising Layoffs/Firing | Hacker News Reader

Normalising Layoffs/Firing

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I am seeing lots of posts on HN about layoffs. So and so company fired 1000 people, so and so company reduced it's workforce by 20%, etc.

We have normalised firing of people. I don't know about the "developed" countries where people have social security, but for countries like India where there is no social security and stigma is associated with being laid off, it is a very difficult situation.

I remember asking few years ago to my sister's husband, who runs our family business, what keeps him awake at night with regards to business. His answer, "Not messing up". I was expecting something like "Funding", "Losing sales" etc. But hearing his answer surprised me. Because it sounded personal. So I asked him what does he mean? And he said, "The company has about 100 employees, but I am not just responsible for 100 employees. I am responsible for about 400 to 600 people. Each employee has a family. They make their future plans because they have an income from this company. They have to fund their kids education, they have to look after their aging parents, they might have taken a loan for daughter's marriage or for a house. They are relying on me. If I mess up, I affect lives of 400 to 600 people. That keeps me awake."

Some how firing/laying-off has been trivialised.

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"We have normalised firing of people."

We spent decades in the US smashing unions, smashing pensions (replacing them with more volatile instruments like 401Ks) and made at-will employment dangerous for both sides of the equation.

Firing has been trivialized for decades. This is not new, and the current wave is minuscule compared to 2008, 2000, and previous. The worst is yet to come.

And one side wants to smash social security as well

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/republican-plan-cut-...

Why would an employee in the tech sector prefer an employer-managed pension?

A 401(k) usually allows me to choose what I invest my money in (including bonds), and can be rolled over to a new employer easily. And it’s my money once it’s in my account, not my employer’s money. They can’t require me to work for a certain period of time to get it out, and don’t pay me less to compensate for offering the retirement benefit.

That is a pension. In the UK they're called Self Invested Personal Pension and basically all companies do them now.

But I agree they pretty much only have upsides - no risk of the pension fund going bankrupt (would be good right about now in the UK!) and no way for previous generations to steal from the current one, which is basically what all defined benefit pensions are doing now.

Well I would guess some people think that living in society means you are always, as a new generation, building on top of what the previous one did. So it is fair that when they can't work anymore we use part of the surplus of productivity that comes precisely from that long-term investment in productivity made by older generations to help them out.

To think of that as "stealing" seems pretty individualistic and short-sighted to me. What benefits would the current generation have to give future generations a future if everything that matters is how much you save and do in the now? This line of thinking leads to financial decisions that value the present much more than they do the future and it's in big part a reason why we are in deep waters when it comes to climate change.

Of course, I agree that it is important to reward people personally as well. But I think it's much more important that we are building sustainable societies capable of taking care of people all through out their life cycles and that improvements on productivity impact us all because, after all, we all live together. But I guess that's just my personal vision of what a good society should be; for others, as you say, they would rather live in a dog-eat-dog world because they know they would be top dogs.

I doubt grandparent is actually against the principle of paying for the prior generations retirement... provided the next generation pays for ours.

The unfairness comes from the current generation not being afforded the same privilege as the last, now that existing defined benefit schemes are largely closed to new members, and extinct in the private sector. These schemes are typically underfunded and stink of Ponzi.

Meanwhile, the current context in the UK is that the Bank of England has just had to bail out defined benefit pension managers who had overleveraged their assets... no doubt at the taxpayers expense.

It's not really surprising to see people clammer for "fuck you, got mine" when half a generation literally believe they will never own a home and never be able to retire.

Oh yeah, you’re right. In the US we mostly use the term “pension” to refer to the type where you only get benefits after 5 years of service, the employer decides where to invest the money, etc.

Updated my original post to make it a little clearer.

A SIPP is something you setup completely separate to your employment. In fact you don't even need to be employed to open one.

An American 401k is a more like what we'd call a "workplace pension" here in the UK, which nowadays is always a defined contribution scheme from a third party provider selected by your employer. These vary in fees, fund selection etc, but you usually get additional contributions from your employer, as well as better tax relief, for using it vs a SIPP.

Most employers won't pay monthly contributions from salary in to a SIPP due to the increased payroll and and admin costs, although some will do so for annual bonuses.

Confusingly there's also something that people call a "full SIPP", which is a much more expensive but less-retaily SIPP that can be used to invest in things like leveraged commercial property.

> Confusingly there's also something that people call a "full SIPP", which is a much more expensive but less-retaily SIPP that can be used to invest in things like leveraged commercial property.

If REITS are what you're referring to then I'm fairly certain a full SIPP is more analogous to a 401k. You can open a 401k today, on your own, without a business. They're just optimized for pre-tax so it makes sense that they're tied to work. Employer matching varies wildly. There is no predefined contribution that can be made by vendors, I believe the 401k limits are all federally mandated, but that mostly has to do with tax optimization.

Could not agree more. My grandfather retired 5 years early because if he didn’t, he would lose his pension due to a GE merger. Just lose the whole pension — versus a 401k where his accrued benefits would now be under his own control. Arguably, his pension terms were probably better, but pensions seem like pretty thin ice with no control or flexibility to my perspective.

I’m not super well informed on what his options were; I’m sure he had different retirement benefits via staying with GE post-merger, but if anyone is interested I could get more details.

EDIT: Based on memory and what kind of work he did, I’m almost certain it was this item in the “General Electric timeline” Wikipedia page: “GE Aerospace Division sold to Martin Marietta, now Lockheed Martin”

Keep in mind that a 401k is almost all funded with your own money. The amount going into the 401k is deducted from your paycheck... you can see it in one of the boxes. A pension, on the other hand, was funded by the company. And that is the exact reason there are so few defined-benefit pensions today in the private sector. These things were so incredibly generous that they are potentially bankrupting the original company... GE is certainly in that boat. Of course companies would prefer employees to fund their own retirement, perhaps sprinkle in a limited employer match subject to 5-year vesting, than to fund the whole thing themselves!

While this is true, the company could just pay you $18,500 less and put that in your pension. Benefits are fungible.

That's not how a defined BENEFIT pension, like what GE offered for decades, works. The "defined" promise is related to what the employee receives, not what is contributed.

Because you might suck as an investor, because the fees in the specific funds you can choose from are quite high, because "employer match" funds usually are NOT actually your money until 3-5 years of vesting, because you will likely be too optimistic about the number of years of life you have left and actually draw down less per month than a pension would offer so that you don't run out of funds, because a lot of pensions also include health benefits and spousal support, because a lot of pensions are pretty clear about the retirement benefits at the start of the job, some others as well. Not saying a pension is always best but there are numerous legit reasons why a pension MAY be superior to a 401k.

It's not an either or. My union father has a pension & a 401k with match.

"Why would an employee in the tech sector prefer an employer-managed pension?"

They might not, but that position presumes that the person has only experienced the 'upside' of the industry. Why would ANY employee in ANY industry prefer it in boom times? They wouldn't. But that in and of itself is very short-term opportunistic thinking. It may still not overall be the position one wants to take, but that also presumes that there is only a binary decision to be assessed, and policy/regulation is rarely lacking in granularity.

Pensions carry their own benefits and detriments. As someone whose been in tech for 25 years, I'm largely ambivalent at this stage, but I suspect many aren't, and are asking more pointed questions to themselves.

Because an employer-provided pension has a guaranteed monthly payout forever.

It's not for nothing they killed em in favor of 401ks, themselves whittled down over the years (employer contributions going down, kicking in after a time, only getting paid at the end of year, etc).

You might be too young to remember the facts on the ground, leaving the conversation to start with, "Why would an employee in the tech sector..."

When I started working in Europe, one of the most shocking this I learned was that you basically can't be fired under a normal work contract. I mean in theory you can, e.g. with group layoffs, gross negligence and so on, but it's illegal to fire person A and hire person B to do their job. You have to basically dissolve the job the person A was doing and when you hire the person B, they must not be doing what the laid off person was doing or else they can sue you.

Europe is not a single country, the EU is not a single country.

> We have normalised firing of people. I don't know about the "developed" countries where people have social security, but for countries like India where there is no social security and stigma is associated with being laid off, it is a very difficult situation.

Not to sound crass here but it seems like you're fishing for virtue. Hiring and firing are normal. A company of 20,000 firing 20% of it's workforce sounds major but that's the industry. It's normalized because it is normal. The field of software engineering is so fungible 20% of employees losing their job is nearly meaningless in the current job market because you can throw and rock and find another seat to warm the next day. It's not like Ford closing a factory.

In other words, you need to relax and get out of your head a little. This industry is nothing like the factories. When 20% of factory workers lose their jobs everyone rightfully panics because it's not as easy to get another factory job (at least anymore...here in the west). 20% of tech employees getting laid off from a company is a nothingburger. 99% of these people will be able to take two weeks of free time and find another job for the same (or often better) pay. This is the definition of trivial.

Your comment seems to assume that 1) employment levels for software engineers is the same in India 2) that the OP has overstated the social stigma of layoffs in India, and finally 3) the current employment landscape that you find yourself in will last indefinitely.

Based on this, I suspect it's highly likely the hubris in this comment will not age well.

Regarding 3), I believe that solving problems and creating systems will always be relevant.

Most startups doing these layoffs are not really solving any real problems. Many are wrapping up existing solutions in a better UI/UX. Which might be nice to have in an upcycle, but in a downtrend, will be the first on the chopping block.

True. In fact, at my last interview they looked hard at my resume and then asked, "And so why should we hire you?".

I snapped off my sunglasses and, trying to contain my annoyance, said, "Guys, I solve problems and create systems."

After a long moment of silence, they looked at each other and nodded in approval. The boss reached out his hand to shake mine. I was hired.

And I just happened to be in the next room filming this epic moment...which included a Rudy-style slow clap building to a frenzy.

https://media.tenor.com/L0RMEbQrLXwAAAAM/meme-sunglasses.gif

1) India is the chief exporter of software engineering for the world. There are a billion people in India (or more). So naturally on a per-population basis the number will be lower. Given that there are nearly entire towns dedicated to tech services I doubt finding a new job is difficult for those that want one. Especially given how huge labor arbitrage is in the west right now.

2) No idea. My Indian contractor coworkers never seemed to care. It's the H1Bs that panic during a layoff (understandably).

3) I don't think it will, that's why I get mine while the gettin' is good and hopefully have enough to not worry about the future whenever the FAANGs finally succeed at driving wages into the ground. However, given there are nearly 4 jobs for every engineer currently in the field according to the BLS I'm not worried at all about the next decade. I'll just continue to stack cash and re-evaluate every once in a while.

> The field of software engineering is so fungible 20% of employees losing their job is nearly meaningless in the current job market because you can throw and rock and find another seat to warm the next day. It's not like Ford closing a factory.

... In the US.

This feels like those addenda where medical trials keep on showing some clinical effect and people in the comments have to add, some clinical effect... in mice.

The US software landscape is shaped by a unique VC landscape that has not been reproduced anywhere else in the world.

If you have lived through the dot com bubble or the 2008 sub-prime crisis you will also be aware that funding can dry up as quickly as it is thrown at you.

At the moment at least in Europe I still see a hot market for contracting roles but for permanent roles it is in no way what you describe of 'find another warm seat the next day'.

I was with you for a while, as I do believe that no job ought to be considered permanent nor anyone in tech should ever be completely caught off-guard by large layoffs or even more personal firing/replacement/course change/etc.

But > you can throw and rock and find another seat to warm the next day

Ummm, nope, not everyone's resume is pristine or has a portfolio to share. Lots of immensely talented people are at companies far outside Silicon Valley, both the place and the spirit. Not everyone can point to some app or site for public consumption, lots of work is on internal tools or programs or DevOps that no outsider sees or knows about, or is protected by all kinds of non-disclosure and IP restrictions. Some great people have an awful boss who would never provide a recommendation. There's a million reasons why getting a new job can be hard, be grateful that it appears easy from your perspective but recognize many, many extremely capable and talented people aren't in the same situation.

> This industry is nothing like the factories.

You seem to ignore both the trend shifts in factory jobs and software jobs. Factory workers once had exactly the same status as you describe here:

> 99% of these people will be able to take two weeks of free time and find another job for the same (or often better) pay

Also, software engineers (at the big scale) are slowly but steadily loosing the glorious position in the workforce market they once had.

I tend to agree. What goes up often comes down. The same company that may reduce staff by 20% may have seen revenue growing at 40% in the last year but suddenly sees growth tapering off, and as such, re-evaluate that they've over-hired and have to adjust accordingly.

And as fast as companies hire (which people celebrate), companies can quickly layoff too (which we lament).

So just as it is normalized to do fast-hiring, such is the case for fast-layoffs/firings.

Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant.

In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections.

If a company is not useful to society, it should go down. If you're not a good fit with the company, you should find your own way or a better company.

Don't idealize employment and companies. They are only tools on our path to wealth and freedom

I have been in Europe for a few years now and my experiance is significantly opposite of what the parent comment claims.

That doesn't really make logical sense to me. Can you elaborate? If hiring is an irreversible decision for a company, why wouldn't consideration be required prior to any hire?

Having more protections than zero (at will) doesn’t make hiring anything as dramatic as ‘irreversible’

There's usually a considerable probation period where the firing rules are much more relaxed. Germany is typically 6 months, for example.

Doesnt that make my point ? You can easily be fired in a probation period :-) and right before the probation ends is when the employer wonders if they should keep you (really hire you for good)

In theory, this is true. However, IME as a techie in the UK, those situations happen when there is a significant mismatch between the interview vs reality - from either side. Hiring based on referrals is one way to mitigate some of the unknowns.

After 5 months of being embedded in a team, firing someone who management doesn't like but who is popular with other employees will cause major morale issues even if they are still technically in probation.

Even after 6 months, typical compensation for being fired is 2 weeks of salary for every year worked. For most startup employees, this won't be a huge amount, given they have often only worked a few years.

Because if you are slow at hirering the candidate has accepted a position somewhere else by the time you get back to them.

The premise of it being irreversible is wrong and far more complex.

Case study. In my country, most individuals do benefit from a severance on a permanent contract. Getting a permanent contract happens after working for a year if you're lucky or in a high demand job. In other cases, companies will use their power to stall as long as possible where beneficial. Temporary contracts do not have the same severance benefits, just wait the year and they are gone.

Severance itself varies case by case. Younger people with permanent contracts aren't getting multiple years in salaries for getting fired. Most older employees don't, either.

The entire premise also requires a largely immobile workforce. Workforce mobility in The Netherlands is actually pretty decent, with most younger people switching jobs every few years. This inevitably means these people have temporary contracts for a large part of their career, with much weaker severance packages. Top comment also discounts the obvious, trying to get individuals to quit themselves through e.g. legal bullying or bad benefits.

We shouldn't normalise pushing people to quit via bullying of course. But bullying and bad benefits result from a company/employee mismatch, which changing jobs fixes easily

And changing jobs means you now no longer have the vast amount of protection you used to and have to build them back up.

For the majority of countries, your entire point rests on the premise individuals are choosing to largely be immobile. Tenure length isn't that different from the US, all things concerned. Significant, especially given some countries, but not nearly as dramatic as "impossible to fire".

The moment you introduce mobility, most of the safety is gone for a large portion of time. What we are seeing, is that younger people are hit disproportionately since job hopping tends to be the far better choice, and younger people do not start at incomes that get them comfortable. It is primarily the elderly that benefit from the current structure.

   And changing jobs means you now no longer have the vast amount of protection you used to and have to build them back up.

...unless you negotiate a better contract for the next job ?

   It is primarily the elderly that benefit from the current structure

Agreed :-(

What do these permanent and temporary contracts stipulate? Presumably they are quite different than the standard US employment contracts that basically just confirm at-will employment, etc.

In NL, you generally start with a fixed term of a year. After the year, the contract ends. Depending on relationships, supply/demand, field of expertise etc., the employer will either offer another fixed term or a permanent contract.

Permanent contract means the employer does not have the exit condition of "wait it out" to get rid of an employee. Additionally, permanent contracts tend to have bigger benefits attached to them, both legally and infrastructurally (e.g. getting a mortgage on a fixed term contract is nigh on impossible for most individuals).

Legally, employers can only offer so many fixed term contracts before they are forced to hire permanently or cut off the employee. In practice, you will see more exploitative companies look for ways to extend this (alternative legal structures), whereas fields with more balance in power (like IT) tend to present permanent contracts after a single temporary contract.

Oh yeah this is to prevent employers from keeping employees employed on a fixed term contract or through an agency indefinitely thus denying them some benefits and protection.

It's not irreversible in any sense of that word.

First of all, you have a trial period of 3 to 6 months where you can fire someone without even giving a reason.

Second of all, you can have fixed-term contracts, like 1 or 2 years - also with the trial period.

Third, you can still fire people after the trial period, you just can't go Trump-yelling at someone "YOU'RE FIRED!!!" because of some small mistake or if you don't like their face. It's not an easy process, but also not impossible. I very much prefer it this way.

I'm seeing this at the company where a friend works. They have an american branch that completely changed the employee roster twice (!!!) in the last two years. Everything they do is a mess, every new person that comes brings a different point of view of how things should be done. In the end, they always end up falling back to implementing what their colleagues in Europe did. The europeans have been working together for 6 years now

PS: for my current job, where I have a permanent contract, the interview in-all took 55 minutes. About another 15 minutes of talking to HR on the phone and bam, here I am.

You can fire people pretty easily in Europe. There’s rules around layoffs but they are also common. All the companies I’ve worked for have hired and fired relatively freely.

Again, different countries, different laws. It is objectively NOT easy to fire people in Germany, for example.

There is no such thing as "objectively easy".

In Germany very small companies can fire people at will. It's effortless and requires minimal bureaucracy. Same for firing people in their long trial periods.

In other cases, the difficulty depends heavily on the situation. The easiest way is to simply negotiate with the employee. The other options involve more work

Right but it’s still absolutely miles away from making hiring an irreversible decision.

Because it's not an irreversible decision. Most countries allow a probation period where you can let an employee go if they don't work out. These are typically anywhere between 2 weeks and 6 months (depending on the training time expected).

Interviewing practices have very little connection to logic in the first place, and to the extent they do there's probably more connection to the general employer/employee power balance than any such specific consideration. American companies make candidates jump through hoops because they can; European ones don't because they can't.

In the uk at least employers have a grace period of 3-6 months where they can fire you for any or no reason.

> if you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily

And if you can find a job easily, you can credibly threaten to decamp for leverage. (Or, if your boss is a dick, just leave.)

I'm American. My bias shows. But I think an easy-to-fire, easy-to-hire model is far superior to the incumbency-biased systems which make hiring and firing an Olympic sport. We lack a strong-enough social net underneath it all, necessary to be humane and maintain social stability. But that seems an easier fix than reforming an entire commercial culture.

> But that seems an easier fix than reforming an entire commercial culture.

Does it? To an outsider, workers rights seem to be regressing.

Maybe we want less rights but more freedom and wealth

My experience is quite different in regard to working in Europe.

How exactly is hiring a very tedious process? Seemed quite fast and easy to me.

And btw, it's not that hard to fire a wrong hire. You have few months to do so basically for any reason at all, and afterwards, you can still do it, if you have a good reason to do so.

Europe is 27 countries with uniformized trade laws. There was never any uniformization on labour laws.

GP made a huge generalization by saying "in europe" while talking about labour laws. It's like me saying "in asia, (something about the labour market)", there is no such thing.

Hiring/firing/Employee-rights are very different between Spain and Czechia.

>>Europe is 27 countries

No, Europe is 44 countries the subset of Europe that is EU have 27 members

I think it's pretty clear they were referring to the EU. No need for semantics wars.

Calling the EU Europe is made on purpose to conflate the two and make it obvious that all countries should unite into this political union. I think it is very useful to point that to people who conflate the two terms

I think that's putting words into peoples' mouths.

It's an ideology in favor of the European Union

You're being pedantic. It's not an ideology.

Similarly, calling the USA "America" to conflate it with the rest of the continent in order to drive their idea of Latin America being "the back yard of the USA", or, more recently "the front yard".

Technically correct.

Russia is about 40% of the continent but few people want to go there, especially under current circumstances, and the remaining 16 countries are either EU associated (Switzerland & co), former members (UK), EU candidate countries, or countries frankly too small and/or poor and/or remote.

The EU is the elephant in the room.

The spirit of the law is generally pretty uniform across the EU.

That might be but it is not a real single market. It is bunch of countries working with a similar framework.

Here i am waiting for more than 2 months for a legal contract because my employer is in a different country and does not have a legal entity in my country.

EU to a large extent is a failure to nurture talent and multiply capital.

After the probation you need a really good reason and it costs a lot of money / paperwork / worker's right etc.

Absolutely not true in Denmark. A good reason can be something like "we are eliminating this position for strategic reasons", and the only money it will cost you is the three-six months (depending on how long they've been at the company) that you have to keep paying them, during which they are required to work as normal and act loyally.

Good for Denmark !

Isn’t that slavery with extra steps? What if I moved out of the country? This seems bizarre to me as an American. I’d do as little work as possible for that time and be resentful about it.

> Isn’t that slavery with extra steps?

That's a pretty wild comparison?

> What if I moved out of the country? This seems bizarre to me as an American. I’d do as little work as possible for that time and be resentful about it.

Well, things are usually a little more relaxed during that period. The employer is also required to make accommodations for you to find a new job, e.g. allow time off to go to interviews. As for leaving the country or not showing up, sure, the company might have grounds to sue and they could certainly stop paying you in that case, but, y'know, generally people act like adults.

There are exceptions to this rule about notices, so a day-to-day firing is possible in extreme circumstances. Like if you're not showing up at all, or blatantly not doing your job, are violent etc., you can be banished from the workplace and not paid from that day. But the point is, if you've been doing your job and get fired, you have the option to be at least somewhat reasonable about it and in return you get three months to find your feet and move on. By far most people take this.

Also, in the converse situation, where it's you who wish to leave, the rule is that you give at least one month's notice. This is sometimes not what you want, of course, but I think most people view it as a fair and reasonable trade, especially in light of the rules about getting fired.

That sounds similar to redundancy in the UK but much more generous.

It always possible to get rid of either an employee or a role. The problem comes when you're getting rid of a whole department or say 10% of your employees. There are a lot more rules around that.

In France, for example, you have 4 months (and you can renew it 3 more months so 7 in total) probation period. If you need more then 7 months to realise you've made a wrong hire, then I think you can spend take a few more months to fire someone and not decide to fire someone at a whim.

Yes, that makes my point. During probation hiring and firing is easy. After probation the hard choice is made (they can fire you easily right before the end) and firing is hard.

europe is the worst of both worlds. there isnt really protection. and as the years go by it gets worse as our governments vote new law to reduce our protections. let me give you the example of france. when we join a company we can be fired during the first six months with very little real reason. when we want to leave the company we need to give a 3month notice (think about how happy is the new company knowing youll misss a quarter when some of those companies don't even plan their future well - just look GCP hiring freeze suddenly in the middle of a quarter while in a hiring spree one week before). when you get fired most of the time you will get unemployement. 55% of your salary (it is very good but when you plan your life around 100% salary it gets very very challenging to live on 55%). but only for the first 6 months (a new law that concerns mostly white collars...) then it will be degressive so that after a few months you out of luck. note that in europe you pay tax while you work so that you can be paid while unemployed... so the 6month degressive new law is pure stealing from the people and totally evil and because it hits only white collars workers most of the people don't talk about it because it concerns people that are 'well off' in the society while in reality policies like this are a total destruction of the middle class.

finding a new job you will compete with people that have this 3 month notice so most of the companies plan hiring around it. also if you are unemployed in europe it will look really bad during your interviews.

now compare that to USA. you give 2 week notice, job market is very fluid so you can likely find a new job 2 week after stay there a few months helping the company and then use that time to apply to a new job in a better company.

Obviously the french model might be better for low earners/blue collars that do not have a job security. but for everyone else it is really hard to move to another company, managers know that too so they dont need to carrot you into a raise or a promotion as much as they do in US.

It's up to 6 months (3+3 actually, max is 4) for the probationary period, and the notice is up to 3 months.

You're also missing that nobody is forcing you to quit to start looking for a new job, the protection is mostly that if the company wants to get rid of you they need to give you at least the same length of notice, giving you extra time on top of the unemployment to find something.

Furthermore, in the US model, if you quit you don't get unemployment.

Oh, and there's also RSA if you don't have revenues, which can provide some income when unemployment stops.

if you quit you dont get unemployement in france either... and nobody is forcing you to quit but you still have the 3month period before leaving the company. if you dont respect it youll be blacklisted... we don't operate on a gigantic market like the us. being blacklisted is a bad in a smaller country

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant.

In New Zealand it is fairly easy to start a company (in the sense that the required paperwork isn’t too difficult). It’s easy to hire people, but firing is hard.

Why would ease firing mean ease hiring? Why would companies failing easily mean start ups are simple?

It’s not so much that companies need to be idealised, but that people need to be treated with a minimum level of care.

usually the ease of hiring/firing bit is more of "hire the right person for the role", in the sense that a vacated spot can become available for another.

but also, there is a limited amount of capital in the economy, and so propping an "unhealthy" company up with debt will crowd out new, potentially successful businesses. If there are enough zombie companies around this is enough to paralyze an entire economy.

The general observation is that the US has less worker stability, but also bounces back faster than European countries. And the poster child for zombie companies strangling the economy by hoovering up all the credit is post-bubble Japan.

If it's easy to fire you won't have to be as thorough when hiring because if the new employee doesn't fit - just waste him/her. If it's difficult to fire the company will put potential employees through hell before deciding. I don't think there's any country where the actual process of hiring someone is a legal nightmare

> If it's easy to fire you won't have to be as thorough when hiring because if the new employee doesn't fit - just waste him/her.

That's super bad for morale and companies generally don't do it unless high churn is normal (retail).

US companies have hiring processes which are HARDER to go through, not easier, on average, than European companies. For example background checks almost never happen, as well as reference requests.

Hiring processes in American companies are still as arduous and drawn out as European hiring processes though. You're still looking at a 4-16 week process, you don't just snap someone up in a week if they're on the market.

It's not necessarily the process, but more the number/type of open positions. When it's difficult to fire, it's very common for people to start with a temporary contract or two before being offered an unlimited one. Likewise, I believe contractors are more common. Basically, anything that offers flexibility.

Also, companies are just more reluctant to open a position.

I'd say the UK has generally had a pretty good ratio of protection from firing and having reasonably sensible interview times. Although some companies do seem to have picked up longer interview practices more recently, this actually seems to be an import from the US in trying to emulate Google, etc.

There's already probation - 3 months in the UK. It doesn't make us less careful though because we don't want to waste our time.

It's easy to hire anywhere. But is it easy to get hired? How much rigmarole does a company put you through to ensure they're not going to get stuck with dead weight? I'm guessing quite a bit, and the harder it is to fire you the harder they'll work to make sure you're worth hiring.

For me it was a 1 hour chat over coffee. For the staff I hired it was similar.

From the moment the decision was made (an hour or so after the coffee), it is usually a month until they are working with me.

We do reference checks after picking a candidate.

The month delay is due to the notice period people are usually required to give their old employer. It could be more or less but is 4 weeks usually.

The process probably varies by industry a lot. If a profession requires a practicing certification you have a minimum standard already. If a profession is tiny, you have a fair idea about candidates before you interview.

Opening a company is not just the paperwork. We should praise companies falling down as they can create the path for new ones to get up

People do not need to be treated, they're not little babies

No, not babies, they are fellow human beings. While Companies are not, they are just social tools.

Exactly. They don't need help, they should help themselves like true responsible adults

  While Companies are not, they are just social tools

Agreed

What are your views on worker protections?

Companies failing is fine in my view, as long as people are protected. Workers need to be paid and they need sufficient notice of redundancy for protection.

Contracts need to be adhered to with enforceable penalties if broken.

> Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily

Yes, like 1930s America.

I guess you mean “you can be easily hired” rather than “you will find a job easily”. Very different things.

Could you elaborate the difference ?

> "you can be hired easily"

Little bureaucracy/paperwork/barriers to starting work if a company wants to hire you

> "you will find a job easily"

There are actually companies that want to hire you

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible

Assuming you mean the European Union by "Europe", this is 27 countries with 27 labour laws. I don't think this can be generalized. Only trade laws were unified in the EU.

The labour laws diversity is made even wider if you include non EU countries like Switzerland or the Balkans.

Just as an example Denmark follows the concept of Flexisecurity[1], easy to fire, but there is a good government safety net which prevents people from falling into poverty, while trying as hard as possible to find them a new income.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity

No I meant the geographical area. The EU is called the EU, the two should never be confused.

Good for Denmark ! Generalizations are never true. Specialized descriptions with all the cases covered on the other hand, are never read.

> Generalizations are never true. Specialized descriptions with all the cases covered on the other hand, are never read.

The wording of this struck me; is it better to lie than to go unheard?

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process.

Europe is not a single country, anyway, here's what happen in France:

Firing is tedious, but not impossible. Hiring people is easy, but you enter into competition with higher salaries - like the US - for remote jobs.

> Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin.

Not exactly, they diverge when firing is made more difficult.

No they're the same coin. You didn't get me. When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult. There is no free lunch.

To fire in France you need a really good reason well justified, and prepare your company for the Prud'hommes trial. Of course you could say "but most companies are big and have HR teams and lawyers dedicated to this, whereas the employee is all alone", but that's also my point about big vs. small companies and legal protections

Simply put: There are reactions for every action! The most optimal outcome is not easily legislated.

> When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult

or, depending on the law, you make mechanically easier to form new companies or create more contracting jobs etc

What you're missing is that in most European countries where firing is hard, it's only for medium to large companies

> When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult. There is no free lunch.

That operates under the idea that employees only change when fired. And that's patently not true.

But hiring in the US is not an easy process relative to Europe, atleast in tech context. There's much more ceremony involved in the US you have to meet a lot more ppl. your whole premis is imagined, but you refuse to acknowledge it. It's very baffling.

> In Europe

Tell me you’re an American without telling me you’re an American ;)

I'm from western Europe :)

Except if too many companies are doing hiring freezes and mass layoffs, who's going to hire you? There's a limit to this and it's fair to be concerned about just how widespread these layoffs have been.

You are comparing situations with different factors varying, I was talking in the general sense that the two actions of hiring and firing are linked together, and you're talking about the current economic situation.

Maybe the employee got in in the first place because hiring and firing were easy. If you made it difficult, the employee wouldn't have been hired in the first place. Then it doesn't matter if you have an economic crisis, the person is out of job anyway. We need to let companies fire employees to survive the crisis, and let newly fired people re organize their life and create the companies that will compete and destroy the current ones

Also the US corporate world has a good history of dealing with problems upfront, taking the pain and moving on, rather than living with their problems like it is done too often in europe. It seems destructive but the long term impact is a healthier economy and more jobs.

GDP per capita is an interesting number and I was quiet surprised recently when I compared US and European cities and countries. For those who haven’t the spoiler is the US is significantly higher. Most pro-EU economic narratives are on pretty shaky ground even before recent developments.

What does gdp per Capita means when inequalities are very high?

I am not sure inequalities are that high in the US. They certainly are if you compare the absolute extremes of the distribution (Musk to a homeless drug addict), but beyond 2% percentile each side they are not that high.

There was an interesting talk on this topic [1]. What they argue is that the statistics used in the US to measure income inequality are misleading as they don’t account for taxes and benefits. The gap is greatly reduced if you do.

In any case, poverty is usually the issue, not inequality.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL1DSo_gvK4

I don’t have a reference handy but there was also recently sn analysis that concluded immigration significantly skews the numbers when comparing inequity to EU nations. The US has significant immigration on the bottom end and also on the top end.

What does equality mean if gdp per capita is very low?

This is just so wrong on so many levels.

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily.

Unless it is another economical crisis and nobody is hiring?

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible

It is called "job security" - if you hired somebody, you "promised" them to pay a wage. If they are not needed anymore, you need to keep on promise and pay a wage. For at least some time. E.g. a few month of salary seems reasonable because a person has planned his future with you, now he needs to find a new job which will take some time.

So it is not impossible in Europe. It is expensive at most because it only looks reasonable.

> Companies are big and look financially stable

Unless you count all the mom and pop cafes all over the Mediterranean? All the Scandinavian startups? And etc.?

Most industries would deserve less barriers of entry and less legal protections, it would favor the little ones.

Of course employment is an exchange of promises between employer and employees to bring stability for less money and less risks. But if the exchange benefits both sides, there is no reason to forbid both parties to negotiate whatever they prefer. In Europe there are too many legal hurdles (called "protection" of course they're going to choose a positive word !)

If there is an economic crisis and you forbid firing, the only solution is to close companies. Societe re organizes itself at each crisis, so the people laid off need to find new ways

> If there is an economic crisis and you forbid firing, the only solution is to close companies. Societe re organizes itself at each crisis, so the people laid off need to find new ways

Firing isn't entirely forbidden for a start.

Secondly, if companies know that firing has a cost they're more likely to grow their headcount in line with what they're able to support. Making firing cheap only serves to encourage the type of behaviour that leads to instability in an economic crisis.

> Of course employment is an exchange of promises between employer and employees to bring stability for less money and less risks. But if the exchange benefits both sides, there is no reason to forbid both parties to negotiate whatever they prefer. In Europe there are too many legal hurdles (called "protection" of course they're going to choose a positive word !)

The vast majority of employee/employer relationships have a power balance that's vastly in favour of the employer. Even for those of us lucky enough to be in tech, we've seen that employers are more than willing to secretly conspire in order to drive employee wages below what would have been the market rate.

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily.

If there is another economic crisis and nobody is hiring, preventing companies to fire people will make the crisis even worse.

> It is called "job security"

An outdated concept of the XX century. No such thing in the post-industrial society.

> Unless you count all the mom and pop cafes all over the Mediterranean?

They are closing by thousands now, like in every other economic crisis. And Scandinavian startups — what Scandinavian startups? (Finland and Estonia are not Scandinavian countries, they have somewhat more business-friendly environment).

> An outdated concept of the XX century.

I guess that was suggested in the XIX, XVIII, XVII, etc centuries as well. But I quite enjoy my job security in the XXI century.

Yes, that's called a privilege.

> If there is another economic crisis and nobody is hiring, preventing companies to fire people will make the crisis even worse.

Companies that know firing is difficult will hire less aggressively. They are also more likely to accept a deeper reduction in profits before laying people off. The result is a higher threshold of economic instability before the company lets people go. The US approach is like playing speed Jenga, you build something that will inevitably collapse.

Mass layoffs only serve to deepen an economic crisis. You remove a huge sum of disposable income from the economy which only contributes to more closures/layoffs. The result is an increased concentration of assets in the hands of those with the most access to capital during the crisis.

This is why there are so few growth-oriented startups in Europe, and so few chances to compete with large companies who can afford absorbing such losses. And (at least in tech) such low salaries, compared to US-based companies.

European economic model simply cannot compete. US domination in tech is growing each year.

Frankly I don't think the US model is something we should be competing with for the same reasons I don't think we should be emulating sweatshops in China or India. Based on recent stock trends their value is largely hypothetical and based on both hype and the assumption that they're able to grow indefinitely. I'd be happier to exclude them from our markets entirely.

The growth-oriented model that's become popular in the US looks increasingly like a cancer that only serves to concentrate wealth. There were a few early successes but it seems far more common that these startups "succeed" by distorting a functioning market with external capital and destroying sustainable businesses operating in the sector through price dumping.

Once they've captured enough of the market they'll IPO and either collapse entirely when their business model proves to be entirely unsustainable without infinite VC funds or limp along providing inferior service and labour conditions to those available beforehand. Either way harm is caused.

The model is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of fair and healthy competition and ultimately makes success a function of who has the most money to burn.

It's helpful to think of the USA as a gigantic factory that produces billionaires. The manufacturing process runs off of energy ("money") provided by banks, investors and government, and the raw materials that get consumed and discarded are the lives and livelihoods of workers, and the end product that pops off the assembly line is "wealthy people".

That’s what they told us in a Soviet primary school back in USSR. The alternative wasn’t compelling enough.

The options aren't limited to authoritarian dictatorship and capitalist oligopoly.

In the same vein it isn't communist to suggest that billionaires should maybe remain slightly smaller billionaires in order to provide workers a decent quality of life.

Until fairly recently you could support a household on one income in most western countries. We're now seeing people struggling on two after decades of tax cuts and historically low tax burdens on the extremely wealthy.

It’s interesting how your points could be right yet you will have disagreement over whether it’s a problem.

Growth at any cost is utterly toxic in my view.

You describe lower European salaries, yet minimum wage in the US is outrageously low.

What the US seems to have created us a system for creating wealth inequality.

“Minimum wage” is fiction. There are many countries (including European countries) that do not have minimum wage. It doesn’t have any base in reality, and people should not accept such ridiculous salaries. That’s what unions and labor negotiations are for.

Those receiving such wages seem unlikely to be in a position to negotiate a lot better.

Regulation is a dirty word to many, but it’s a solution I support for minimum wage.

Why is job security outdated? The ‘gig economy’ with flexible arrangements seems to suit exploitative employers great. Workers peeing in bottles and the workplace culture in such jobs seems Dickensian.

What is the point of a job? To me the point is to look after people (from both the employer and employee’s perspective).

Because the entire economic structure that supported “jobs” has deteriorated and became unsustainable. It was only working in industrial society with tangible outputs. “Jobs” were a temporary development only suitable for a particular social structure: industrial capitalism. Now we still have capitalism, but no more industrial society.

See Alvin Toffler’s “Third Wave” for more detailed treatment.

There are definitely companies who spend more during economical crisis. Because everything costs less and it costs less to expand your business.

> Because everything costs less and it costs less to expand your business.

What's become cheaper in the current economic crisis?

There are by definition, fewer jobs available in total during an economic crisis. More competition for those positions also makes it likely that living standards will decrease.

> What's become cheaper in the current economic crisis?

Good point. In all the others I’ve lived though, something has, but not this time.

Shares have got cheaper and savings are being hit due to inflation being so high. It’s a good time to spend but what do you buy?

> For at least some time. E.g. a few month of salary seems reasonable because a person has planned his future with you, now he needs to find a new job which will take some time.

I realize I speak from a privileged position as a software developer. But never since the first day that I stepped into an office as a professional software developer in June of 1996 did I “plan a future” with a company.

My plan was always to use where I worked as a stepping stone for my next job. I spent my first two years saving money and building my resume. I have spent most of my career “with my running shoes on”. Meaning I’m always prepared for a layoff or to leave when the pay/bullshit ratio is going in the wrong direction.

My employer owes me nothing besides to pay me for the hours I worked. When that arrangement isn’t working for either of us, we both have agency and the ability to terminate that arrangement.

> Unless it is another economical crisis and nobody is hiring?

I lived through both the 2000 crash and 2008-2011. The 2000 crash wasn’t bad if you had both skills and was working in many major cities in the US as just a regular old enterprise developer working for profitable non tech companies.

2008 was worse. But as a developer, you could find a contract somewhere if you had a network.

> But never since the first day that I stepped into an office as a professional software developer in June of 1996 did I “plan a future” with a company.

You're missing the point. It's that you're planning your future on having income from the company you currently work for. In Europe they can't pull the rug from under you and say "good luck with your mortgage, you're fired today". Instead they have to say "you are fired, but will receive 3 months of pay while you find something else". So yes, I disagree that they don't owe you anything more than pay for the hours worked. You have an ongoing deal, if that is changed you should get ample time to re-adjust.

I am planning my future based on having marketable skills, an up to date resume, an up to date “career document”, and a strong network that I keep active.

> In Europe they can't pull the rug from under you and say "good luck with your mortgage, you're fired today".

I’ll take the tradeoff of much lower taxes and much higher pay any day.

> Instead they have to say "you are fired, but will receive 3 months of pay while you find something else"

Alternatively, I can save three to six months living expenses so that I’m not at the mercy of my current employer for my food and shelter.

> I’ll take the tradeoff of much lower taxes and much higher pay any day.

Taxes are not (only) because of that. In fact, the employer needs to pay those 3 months often.

You're speaking from a position of privilege. I'd like everyone to have this safety. Not just people like me having a well-paid job.

That safety net is a societal issue and should be handled by the government - not private industry

You’ve just argued against higher taxes. How should this safety net be funded?

Unemployment is funded on the state level via corporate taxes. I have no issue with getting rid of loopholes on corporate taxes.

I think you’ve perfectly covered why such a protection is lacking.

Schemes someone else pays for sound great, but until people agree to pay them, they don’t happen.

How is that whole depending on your employer for health care working out in the US?

Why would you want to depend on them for your long term financial stability?

Healthcare in the US looks a disaster from where I am in a country with state provided healthcare.

I think I’ve been unclear - I believe taxes should pay for healthcare for everyone, and would happily pay more tax for better healthcare.

No I didn’t misinterpret you. I agree healthcare in the US is a shit show and the idea of tying your health care to your employer is asinine.

I’m taking that same opinion to its logical conclusion. We already have employer funded state controlled unemployment insurance. Increase that, have companies pay more if necessary and along with untying health care from your employer, we are there.

Let private companies focus on their business.

I misunderstood you. This is not that different to what happens where I am (except the taxes come from both the employer and the employee), though both need to be increased to improve unemployment benefits and healthcare.

> I realize I speak from a privileged position as a software developer. But never since the first day that I stepped into an office as a professional software developer in June of 1996 did I “plan a future” with a company.

If you can acknowledge that you're in a more secure position, why then argue for the treatment of those less fortunate based on the security that's been afforded to you by your particular set of circumstances?

> 2008 was worse. But as a developer, you could find a contract somewhere if you had a network.

The economy consists of more than just developers. Unemployment spiked in 2008 and many people were unable to find work after having been fired.

> If you can acknowledge that you're in a more secure position, why then argue for the treatment of those less fortunate based on the security that's been afforded to you by your particular set of circumstances?

If society thinks there should be a safety net, and I agree, then society should take responsibility in the form of insuring that safety net is available. I have no problem with company funded, state run unemployment insurance, I think that the idea of your health insurance being tied to your job is asinine, etc.

But at what point is it the individuals responsibility to save money for a rainy day?

But why should it be on the company?

> The economy consists of more than just developers. Unemployment spiked in 2008 and many people were unable to find work after having been fired.

And what were the companies suppose to do (like the one I worked for) that ran out of money? Most people that tying your health insurance to your company is ass backwards. So why tie more of your livelihood to your company?

> But at what point is it the individuals responsibility to save money for a rainy day?

It depends on what you mean by a rainy day. I don't think I'd judge most people too harshly in our current system. Circumstances can change in ways that an individual probably won't or can't foresee. Housing and other living expenses have grown to the point that a low wage worker can barely support themselves in many cities.

Personally I'd like to reach a point where society provides enough for a comfortable existence e.g. shelter, food, safety, healthcare, and a small disposable income for hobbies/leisure. At that point I think most people would be in a position where walking away from abusive employer is an actual option and not a punishing risk.

> But why should it be on the company?

It wouldn't need to be if social safety nets were strong enough. As it stands, losing your job has a much bigger impact on an employee than the employer.

Even with appropriate safety nets I think a case could still be made for discouraging companies from firing people lightly and requiring the effects to be cushioned due to the amount of upheaval finding a new job can cause both financially and socially.

> And what were the companies suppose to do (like the one I worked for) that ran out of money? Most people that tying your health insurance to your company is ass backwards. So why tie more of your livelihood to your company?

I view it as a failure of our current system that employee obligations aren't first in line when a company has to be liquidated. The employer/employee relationship is nominally one where the employee accepts a reduction in risk in exchange for giving up some of the value of your labour. Bankruptcy law in many places doesn't seem to respect this.

> Even with appropriate safety nets I think a case could still be made for discouraging companies from firing people lightly and requiring the effects to be cushioned due to the amount of upheaval finding a new job can cause both financially and socially.

In the US, there is no stigma to losing your job via a reduction in force. As far as financially, I don’t have any moral objection to unemployment insurance being higher if we as a society choose for it to be higher.

> I view it as a failure of our current system that employee obligations aren't first in line when a company has to be liquidated

The VC funded company I worked for literal had no money when it was bought out for pennies. I was one of the people doing pitch decks to potential acquirers and in the room for the technical interviews with them.

Don’t get me wrong, this was 2012 and everyone from developers to tech support found a job quickly and we had plenty of warning.

The eventual acquirer laid almost everyone off immediately with a 1 month severance pay.

> In the US, there is no stigma to losing your job via a reduction in force

Sorry, I could have been more clear here. I meant the loss of social relationships either at the company or by potentially having to move neighbourhood/city.

> The VC funded company I worked for literal had no money when it was bought out for pennies. I was one of the people doing pitch decks to potential acquirers and in the room for the technical interviews with them.

Most companies have at least some assets when they wind down. Putting employee obligations first simply means that any value derived from the liquidation is first used to settle that debt rather than other creditors.

If there were unpaid wages, then at some point the people running that company continued requiring their employees' labour despite knowing they couldn't keep their end of the contract. Some exceptions might be justifiable for smaller companies but I think we're far too lenient on people who knowingly steal from employees.

Most tech workers can deal with unpaid wages but I've seen it happen to bar and restaurant workers that aren't in as secure a position. The owners wind down the company and leave wages unpaid while immediately creating a new one in the same unit.

> Sorry, I could have been more clear here. I meant the loss of social relationships either at the company or by potentially having to move neighbourhood/city.

Are you really going to put the onus on private companies to ensure that no one ever has to move from their hometown?

> Most companies have at least some assets when they wind down. Putting employee obligations first simply means that any value derived from the liquidation is first used to settle that debt rather than other creditors

A software companies only assets are the software and maybe a few laptops. These days many don’t even have servers.

Don’t get me wrong, we were guaranteed by our backers that we would be paid for every hour we worked and they kept their promise.

> Are you really going to put the onus on private companies to ensure that no one ever has to move from their hometown?

Not at all. I do think companies should be prevented from firing people without generous severance and/or good reason.

If there was a good social safety net then I'd be open to that being relaxed a bit.

> A software companies only assets are the software and maybe a few laptops. These days many don’t even have servers.

There's also IP but I think that's missing the point. Getting paid something is better than nothing and many companies do have assets that would cover some/all of their outstanding payroll. At the moment, as far as I'm aware, employee payroll is fairly far down the list of creditors. I believe it should be first.

> Don’t get me wrong, we were guaranteed by our backers that we would be paid for every hour we worked and they kept their promise.

I'm glad your backers treated you and your colleagues generously. My preference is usually to bake in desired outcomes like this rather than relying on individual generosity.

> Not at all. I do think companies should be prevented from firing people without generous severance and/or good reason

It’s not a good reason that “we don’t have the money” or “we decided that our horse and buggy manufacturing division is no longer the direction we are going”?

A company is not a charity. The purpose of a company is to sell things at profit and they hire you with an understanding of exchanging labor for money.

> I'm glad your backers treated you and your colleagues generously. My preference is usually to bake in desired outcomes like this rather than relying on individual generosity.

So are you going to force investors to keep funding companies when they run out of money?

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process.

Sure you need to vet your candidates more carefully, because you cannot fire them right away without reason (although these law vary within the 27 nations of the EU). But:

1. there are limited contacts. So if you don't wanna have the risk, you are free to make shorter contacts and pay people more so the good people are willing to take those. This has the downside that they are free to go to your competitor as well at the end of the contract. Everything comes with it's downsides.

2. Hiring random people and firing them a month later does not make it easier for the employers. If employers vet their potential employees more carefully, everybody wins. Sure, finding and selecting the right person is hard. But even if you could hire and fire villy nilly, that would waste your companies time. Every person you hire will take the company into a new direction, one bad person can poison the social climate, hurt your company etc. So hiring carefree is not a good idea in any case.

3. In hiring not just the employer takes a risk, the employee takes risks too. They might have to move, they might have to buy a bicycle, a car, a public transport ticket to commute, they plan their lives on the promised employment and wage. It is only fair that they get the time to reorganise if you let them go.

I agree with all points ! Not sure how that helps OP's fears though :)

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process.

I don't know where you got this idea, but, at least in tech, the most infamous 7 rounds of whiteboard interviews stories I've heard are from Silicon Valley, not Europe. The company I work for (a Romanian branch of a US company - and yes, Romania has all the same legal protections against t firing as most of Europe) typically does one tech interview and one HR interview and that's it.

We shouldn't compare big SV companies with the rest of the world though. Of course companies that are in high demand have a lot of people applying at their job and have harder / longer interview processes

So, in that case, getting hired is hard, but getting fired is just as easy as for less in-demand companies? And also, in an economic downturn, the companies are free to fire people, but getting a new job will become considerably more difficult. So I'm afraid I don't really see the "easy to get fired/easy to get hired" symmetry that you talked about in your first post...

Is it easy to get fired from a big SV company ? Anyway, I am not talking about one specific company, I am talking about society as a whole. Read the OP's fear about being fired

Your perception is skewed because Romania is a hotspot for companies to outsource to. There's a lot of companies hiring in Romania and the employers are not as picky.

His point was, and I can confirm this, in Europe companies generally have simpler interviews.

Frequently, especially for seniors, it's a technical chat. I have anecdata from about 6 European countries.

Having lots of options usually leads to more complex processes, to try to find the best candidate. It's when you have a position open for 2 months with no submissions that you typically start lowering your bar.

Hiring is most tedious in the U.S. Those massive pipeline processes are an American invention.

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible

Where exactly in Europe?

It's like saying "in Asia is almost impossible to do X"

Europe is a 750 million people continent formed by 51 different countries including Russia and UK

Be more specific please.

In Spain it's easy to fire, for example.

Their average salaries are 20% lower than the French ones, even though in France firing is hard, and their unemployment rate is almost double.

You theory has some flaws apparently.

   Be more specific please.

In most countries of Europe we have a lot of laws to "protect" employees and current companies, making it harder in the first place to even create companies and hire people. But that's also true for others places in the world

Yes generalizations are never true. Even talking about one country is a generalization and you will fail at making a statement about it. The best way to not make a mistake is to not say anything

  Europe is a 750 million people continent

There is no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one big continent. Your theory is also flawed :(

> In most countries of Europe we have a lot of laws to "protect" employees and current companies, making it harder in the first place to even create companies and hire people

There's no such things as generally "harder to create companies" in Europe.

It's simply harder to create global multi billion conglomerates with an easy trigger for layoffs.

So generally, that's true, there are less multi billion global conglomerates with an easy trigger for layoffs than in the US.

But

USA has 2.2 companies registered per 1,000 people

Most European countries have more than that, Netherlands is at 7.1, UK at 7.4, Bulgaria 6.7, Denmark 5.2 etc.

> There is no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one big continent

Eurasia is a super continent, Europe is a landmass, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia

Thanks for giving me the chance to explain this topic once again.

If anything, it's easier to create companies. Since the market is fragmented, if your business isn't reliant on network effect, it's generally easier to get by.

The massive plumbing companies in the US do not yet exist in my country. I feel this is changing, but fair competition is still enforced at the local level, so i might be wrong.

Nobody really care about little entrepreneurs it seems (especially not those politicians who claims they do), but i have the impression that the weakening of local courts is a prelude to a change towards a more anglo-saxon model. Like i said, i might be pessimistic and hopefully wrong.

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily.

that would only ever be true in whichever fantasy world where the managers and people-in-charge made wise and just decisions.

Plenty of 'rare talent' that is near irreplaceable is fired every single day by managers that don't know any better, and their niche talents make it very difficult to find new job prospects.

You can fire people in Europe and hiring is by no means more convoluted than in the US.

Typically here you have 3 to 6 months probation period where you can be fired at any moment. Then your rights increase with your tenure.

The other big difference is that when you leave a job, you usually have 1 to 3 months of notice period while in the US that tends to only last a couple of weeks.

Overall this gives people a lot more security and I think we have a much better balance because of it, at least in the tech industry.

Industries with higher turnover (like hospitality) typically only hire employees as contractors so they can fire them at any time.

Firing without cause is "almost impossible" in Europe. Firing for cause or genuine redundancies are rarely a problem most places in Europe.

You have consultation requirements many places, to ensure that it's actually a genuine redundancy, but a company willing to offer a reasonably fair payout and who can demonstrate a genuine need to cut costs or a genuine lack of work for certain staff will generally not have much of a problem carrying out a redundancy most places in Europe.

Firing for cause is easy. Firing without much of a cause too in most cases, but you will have to pay quite a bit.

Getting someone to leave without much of a cause is easy, certainly, if you're willing to pay enough. The being willing to pay bit tends to be the sticking point that makes employers who are used to US "at will" employment complain.

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process.

France has good job security rules, from what I've heard. The UK, not so much.

Once you've completed two years, you are entitled to a consultation process if the company wants to make redundancies. Those positions cannot be filled for six months after a redundancy. HR departments can reword and change descriptions though so if they really wanted to fill the position, they could, but from what I've seen they mostly change it after six months anyway.

If you're unlucky and have just started a position, you can be dropped easily, no consultation, but the rules of redundancy above remain.

However, having spent some time on the other end, doing interviews, hiring is a lot more expensive than firing. One month of consultation vs delays to projects, training of new starters, retention of employees and talent are far more valuable than an easy firing process. Never doubt the value of your experience to a company, any employer who does ignore that value isn't worth working for as they're delusional and likely to fail soon.

Yes, hiring is a very tedious.

> Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant.

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process.

This is, at best, an anecdote. I'm charitably saying anecdote to avoid calling it utter bullshit. The average hiring process at companies I'm familiar with -- in the UK, France, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Greece, so I guess it's a reasonably large sample -- is no more complicated than the hiring process at Google or Facebook. And, much like in the US, if you stay away from the big players -- like Google or Facebook -- the average hiring "process" is a technical interview + a short interview with the hiring manager and HR. Popular enough companies may do a phone screening but that's about it.

Firing someone for bad performance is not "almost impossible". I have, unfortunately, had to sign off on that a couple of times. What is almost impossible is firing someone for bullshit reasons and writing it off as "a bad fit".

Of course there are legal protection in place: if you are laid off and can't find work -- for example, because you relocated to stay with your current employer when they moved offices, and were promptly laid off afterwards, in a new town with somewhat uncertain prospects -- the solution you're offered, in most countries, is not stop being poor, lol, but various forms of social protection so you don't starve before your next interview. Consequently, yes, it's important to make it difficult to fire people because they don't bend to toxic management or poor working conditions, otherwise that'd just be sponsoring incompetent management.

> Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections.

That is not even an anecdote. Except for Eastern Europe, where the Iron Curtain interrupted the history of most businesses, there are plenty of small companies, in every country, that have been operating more or less without interruption since the 1800s (and usually the interruptions were on account of one of the World Wars). There are four of these within a ten-minute walking distance from where I'm staying.

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily.

What happens in a recession? When tens of thousands of people are fired easily across an economy they're not going to find another job quickly.

Making firing more difficult puts a mandate on companies to be a little more responsible when growing their headcount. As a consequence they're less vulnerable to wild swings as a result of unforeseen circumstances.

> Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections.

Big companies are favoured in hundreds of ways. Leveraging other income streams to price dump their way into a dominant position and creative methods of lowering their tax burden being just two. The answer to this isn't to strip worker protections but to remove those loopholes and encourage competition rather than monopolisation.

Many laws around workers rights are already relaxed for smaller companies.

> If a company is not useful to society, it should go down.

Absolutely, but most societies wouldn't be able to function if this was the case. Most economies simply aren't resilient enough to allow large companies to go down. I feel like it's fairly intuitive that once companies in certain sectors grow large enough they can become an essential part of the nation's infrastructure. That only leaves a few options:

- Continue bailing them out

- Nationalise them

- Prevent them from reaching that size in the first place

I don't see how making it easier to lay people off would advance any of these. Instead it only encourages companies to engage in risky behaviour and grow beyond their ability to sustain themselves.

> Don't idealize employment and companies. They are only tools on our path to wealth and freedom

We've created a system predicated on the fact that not everyone can be wealthy. I don't think it's moral to then say that the solution to being treated poorly is to just become wealthy.

It’s not all bad. Having firing as an option in the US makes it palatable for employers to take risks, like hiring the non traditional student, or the person without any industry experience.

If at-will employment wasn’t available, companies would react by only hiring when absolutely necessary, and there would be fewer available jobs.

Plus, even in the US, some companies offer pensions and are known for almost never laying off or firing people. So you do have the choice of stability if you’re willing to limit the companies you work for. Startups and publicly-traded companies are not the place for those who want a guaranteed job.

You don't need fully at-will employment for that. But I do agree with your overall point. If it was literally impossible to fire anyone - rather than just quite difficult - then interviews would be insane. Probation would last years.

> then interviews would be insane.

I'm glad tech companies have very simple interview procedures at the moment.

This comment hits a nerve. I distinctly remember stories of USSR where anyone and everyone was guaranteed a job. People still remember chaos that ensued when that system failed miserably.

In retrospective, it kinda had to fail. Production, the heart of economy didn't have to listen to market forces. Market forces were banned. Nobody was laid off, but this was an illusion.

To paint even more grim picture, in the 1990ths when people were laid off, first time in their lives, suicide and drug epidemic was soaring. We need to normalize layoffs and tell people that that is going to happen anyway and not the end of the world. Companies will fail. This is normal, this is their function, fail small and protect big.

Some how firing/laying-off has been trivialised.

I don't think it has been. I don't think you can generalize the sentiment of people at a company from the HN post about a PR announcement for how they're cutting staff. When a company announces layoffs they're telling the markets, investors, and the public that they need to make a significant change. That doesn't tell you anything about how the founders, board, HR team, or anyone else feel about the layoffs.

FWIW the people I know who work in HR are usually gutted when they have to make jobs redundant. Founders and boards are less so, but usually because they believe it's a choice between jobs cuts and company collapse. Both these things are from very limited exposure to companies making cuts though.

Perhaps there are companies and people out there who think it's trivial. That would be sad.

"They are relying on me. If I mess up, I affect lives of 400 to 600 people. That keeps me awake."

This is something I heard many times. And the most of the time, companies with this motto are underpaying and don't give a proper wage to employees to make any passive income or any investment to become less depended on the job. And this motto becomes an excuse for overtime and workload in bad times. A professional work should not be responsible/aware of any daughter's wedding or personal loans. Developed countries have massive taxes to support you on unemployment. Risk of layoff must be part of your salary expectation. Young Startups always pay more than stable companies.

A lot of "should, must, have"... What if "could not, can't, don't have"? Sorry, just to clarify, your point is that this behavior is absolutely normal?

Definitely harder to lay people off when they know them. I can remember my dad not sleeping for weeks after he made it to management because he was going to have to lay off 5 friends.

That being said, I'm not sure the entire tech industry wouldn't benefit from less friction to switching - hiring is an insanely expensive and very low-signal process - spend 200 hours hiring a person and maybe they fit and work well, maybe they don't.

For employees, tech interviews are an insanely time consuming and stressful process where you know they aren't getting much signal. Not unusual to spend 20-60 hours in interviews for just one position. Look for a new job while you are employed? Hope you want 80 hour weeks...and same thing - no idea til you get in there what the culture is actually like, who was blowing smoke at you, if it matches your strengths...

And yet, still we continue down the same path of brutal on-sites, workers that feel stuck in a crappy job but definitely have skills to offer in a better place, etc

I haven't heard of anyone spending 20-60 hours in interviews. Most onsites are remote these days, and the entire interview loop is probably at most 6 hours including phone screen or coding assessment.

I find interviewing to be pretty frictionless for the most part. The hardest part is setting some time aside for for leetcode prep.

I haven't seen many interview processes less than 10 when we figure some initial rounds, some onsite or technical stuff, last rounds much less all the scheduling in between and the desire for everyone to meet during the work day when you are also working

a takehome can easily be 10+ hours

onsites have gotten a bit shorter since they went remote, but are still a lot. Let's say 8 hours. That means 5 companies, a whole work week to fit into full work weeks..

Is it that you feel that the posters are doing the trivializing, or society as a whole?

My impression is that nobody treats these layoffs as trivial. Recessions, downturns and the resulting employment uncertainty are cause for anxiety everywhere.

> Is it that you feel that the posters are doing the trivializing, or society as a whole?

Society as a whole, but more specifically the businesses that do mass layoffs.

There's always give and take. Trivializing layoffs has made hiring managers okay with hiring employees who were laid off. The ability to lay off employees without destroying the company image allows companies to overhire in times of plenty. So while it's annoying and stressful to interview while laid off, I think that I also received the direct benefit more likely to be hired at random startups because they have that layoff option.

As a silver lining, because we’ve normalized firing, we’ve also normalized jumping ship frequently.

Get hikes and save up during good times, skill dev/change course during the recessions.

But tbh it’d be better if things didn’t swing so much.

I jumped ship quite often in Europe myself, without any problems - 8 or 9 employers in the last 15 years. I think being able to switch between jobs like this is a sign of a competitive job market and not necessarily a by-product of normalized firing

Reducing headcount _should_ be normalised. Here in Germany companies are almost forced to not lay off people.

IMO this creates bad dynamics and makes people dependant on companies. If switching company would be easier, workers could demand higher wages etc.

I'll point out that although news about layoffs makes headlines, unemployment is still at historic lows, and the ratio of unemployed to open job positions is at 1.7 right now, even higher than it was before the pandemic. And all of this is true even after the Fed has raised interest rates faster than ever before in recent history.

We don't live in the past where you picked a company and built your relationships and career around it for most of your lifetime. That's what my grandfather did, but it's not how the economy works today. And I see this as a good thing; not only is the human race more productive by having more liquidity in the job market, but as an individual it frees you up – albeit sometimes more forcefully than you like – to shift around until you find the best place for you.

I enjoyed 4 out of the first 5 companies I worked for and thought I had things pretty great. But if I had stopped there, I wouldn't have arrived at the company I work at now (number 6) nor had the wisdom to know that I should commit to staying here for 3x longer than any previous company.

A lot of other (western) countries have a lot more legal protection for workers. For instance, your boss can't just say 'You're Fired!' because they are in a bad mood. That's insta lawsuit zone. Even layoffs. A position needs to be disestablished before someone can be laid off. And there are legal steps and consultation periods etc etc.

This:

> Normalising Layoffs/Firing

is how you fix this:

> stigma is associated with being laid off

Trivializing makes it less of a scarlet letter if you do get laid off or fired. Probably a net benefit for most people in the long run not to risk the business cycle affecting their future employability.

But also leads to people living less stable lives in general. As an employee, your income could go to zero and you may find yourself thrust into being a job seeker at any time.

Wow. Owning the responsibility of wellbeing of 4x num employees personally. After living in the US for almost a decade that kind of empathy sounds alien to the point of absurdity. Especially when a crying ceo justifies firing employees because those built v1 were not capable of building v2. F leadership teams for not building moats or planning properly or showing fiscal responsibility to begin with. It must all be employees fault! I am looking at you Patreon!

> Some how firing/laying-off has been trivialised.

Hardly. Even in developed western countries, being laid off can hurt families and communities.

When there are a lot of tech companies and the industry is doing well economically, and you can easily relocate or work remotely, then it's less of a worry. You can find another job with less difficulty.

But if you work in another sector like manufacturing, it can be devastating. Especially when a significant portion of the community work in that company or industry. There are large swaths of the US and UK where industrial jobs have disappeared and once prosperous areas have become impoverished in the past 40-50 years.

> We have normalised firing of people.

That's what happens in societies when the majority of people work for a corporation. The corporations are motivated by profit and will lay off hundreds or thousands of people or abandon a community if it saves money.

> I don't know about the "developed" countries where people have social security....

Many of these "developed" countries have embraced the austerity gospel. There isn't much of a safety net as the was or could be.

I don't know about the "developed" countries where people have social security,

Your question made me wonder as to the history of employment-based income and the practice of hiring and firing.

An ngram for that phrase itself shows a sharp initial onset in the 1910s:

<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hiring+and+fir...>

My understanding is that this was strongly tied to mass production (Fordism, after Henry Ford), which wasn't just factories but also in significant manner railroads (more below), construction projects (structures, civil engineering projects, shipbuilding), and with time, office work.

The contrast was with prior regimes of serf or feudal labour, as well as independent farmers, small crafts, artisans, shopkeepers, and professionals, many of whom were in large part independent and often family-oriented businesses. Much of that is now highly consolidated, wage-based employment.

While it's true that firing or laying off people should be taken very seriously, there is a limit to that. Sometimes the real choice is between losing 10% of your workforce now vs. losing everything in a year or two. Not only direct employees but suppliers, partners, even customers who have built their own business on something they can no longer support or maintain. It's a trolley problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

While debates about the trolley problem will likely go on forever, the idea of sacrificing a few for the sake of the many is eminently defensible. Companies should do more to avoid this scenario, governments should (a bit more arguably) do what they can to blunt its effects, everyone should treat it with more solemnity, but it can and will and should happen sometimes.

> where there is no social security

This is the root cause problem. The fact that a set of cumulative hiring and firing decisions by employers and potential employers can render someone and their family destitute, is the biggest flaw in the system most of us live in.

Not just in the countries mentioned either - we have a global failure of resource allocation.

I agree, as long as there is no guarantees for your human rights, we'll continue to live in scary world, where being fired might literally mean death or suicide or becoming criminal. I know that in my country many men took their life, after they lost job, because unless you can quickly find something else, your life can quickly fall apart and most people don't earn enough to have savings and state won't offer you much help.

I know that now we talk more often about how this global system is broken, but can we actually do anything about it, if wealthy just amass their wealth and don't want to share? I don't want revolution, but it seems like we need some revolution, so humanity can survive as something more than masses of wage slaves.

It's just sad, when I again hear in my company about equality, sustainability, but CEO is making 150-300x my salary and is in top 0.1% by income and I hear that I don't even deserve raise that would match inflation in my country.

I think the OP’s sentiment is being a better human and in an ideal world, I like and agree on the thought. I try to practice it in my management duties as well.

But I’ll be the devil’s advocate and present the harsh reality:

    How is firing, in the USA, not the actual normal to begin with?

As a late Gen X / early millennial, I’ve experienced these economic downturns three times: the fallout of 2001 dotcom bubble, 2008 Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and this Covid shock era. The lessons learned each time, is the corporations try to survive at all costs, and casting many individuals out to fend for themselves is the base case.

As a college senior in Computer Science in 2002-2003, my many classmates had jobs lined up in Oct 2002, ready for graduation and work summer 2003. The tech company stocks were flying high, but all of a sudden, in a month, all those companies had cut entire departments. Hearing the news, a lot of friends that thought they had “secured” a job, called those companies and almost all of them were in limbo - those cut departments didn’t even return the calls to say “sorry, entire dept. was cut, start looking again”.

My parents generation was used to the “gold watch retirement philosophy”, stick w/one company for 50 years and they will take care of you. That reality shattered for them during the 2008 GFC. They had worked for 20 years at the same company, but faced with layoffs and cuts, they no longer really knew how to interview and learn new skills. As a result, my dad “retired” at 55, always looking but never finding that next job. Luckily, they were in early tech (AT&T), and mom found contracting roles to service the legacy tech they worked on during full employment. The lesson here was that - don’t let those skills and interview skills rot. Being at one place for 20years and specializing can seem like “security”, but actually was a curse after the shock.

And here we are now, after ~14 years of relative stability, time to flex those survival instincts, don’t rest on the past comforts.

Firing is normal. Employment is a relationship. If the sides of the relationship are free, sometimes relationships come to an end. Is it fun for both sides? Not always. Sometimes getting dumped sucks. Sometimes divorce hurts a lot. Sometimes firing ruins your plans. But that's still normal. Nobody owes you a relationship, and the fact that you have plans for it doesn't mean the other side has the same plans. It doesn't mean one should be callous with it, but it does mean ending the relationship that doesn't work for one of the sides anymore - including employment one - is completely normal.

Correct and exactly how it is supposed to work. What do you expect a business owner to do when the job of a worker is not profitable / necessary any more? Pay him forever out of their own pocket, taking a loss? If you've ever hired qualified personnel, you know how hard it is to find good people. No good business owner would fire a good employee for a whim. They'd keep them as long as possible (even when temporarily there's no work)

Other thing is if it's easy to re-hire when there is profitable work again. This happens where there's much more offer (of workers) than demand. For example jobs with low cualification.

So, get rid of manipulating the money supply and economy and the rest will sort itself out.

My 2c: 1) If you have a good job (like, more senior positions in software engineering, that pay 2x to 10x what other people make) you should be prepared for them to vanish at some time. But risk is compensated by reward.

2) I still despise large public layoffs, because they take bargaining power from me. Put me on a 6-month PIP, then I know I should leave, I’ll find another job.

3) People that suffer are those in tech sector (risk) but non-tech jobs that don’t always command a good wage. So, they take the risk without the reward.

4) Normalization of layoffs is terrible for lower-paying, non-specialized jobs where finding another is hard and you cannot create a buffer for yourself. That should always be exceptional.

This is a weird comment especially since the background is that the OP is concerned about it happening in India.

For decades we have been unable to creates any jobs at all since we had strict employment hiring/firing rules. And look where that got us. The progress we made was because IT was given special provisions to make hiring/firing easier and that became a job creation machine.

If we change this, we will just go back to the previous state. Everywhere I look I see this trade-off so we can't get one without giving up the other in return.

THis largly comes from growth asiprations, while traditional family business usually try to find balance between growth and conservatism. The Startups backed by investors, who fund them for growth accelerate significantly without base or processes and therefore there are high chances to falter. Also traditional family business has human touch where employees are treated like a family and therefore there is loyalty, lesser pay expectations etc Vs startup pay, Esop Expectations and making in to millionare club on the employee side.

Every time someone's loses their job they experience some hardship, or at least disappointment, no question about that, though when it comes to tech workers it's hard to feel bad for them (us) because the other side of the equation is the ability to easily get jobs that are very well paid.

When laying off people isn't normalized what you get is an inefficient labour market, where companies can't adjust to market conditions and hiring people is too costly. That leads to stunted growth, and everyone loses.

It's quite hard to comment on this broadly around the world.

Ultimately, there is an expectation that the employee make themselves a financial safety net considering their job security.

6months expenses is a rough guide.

Yes that's a lot of money, yes it'll be hard to accumulate, yes you will have to top up with inflation.

I find it shocking that people I know have worked in well paying jobs for 5+ years and have less than a couple months of expenses and no investments. Often a minimal pension.

@op - this is called having no empathy & simply not giving a fuck about anybody but yourself/very close to you. A lot of high class in the USA see other humans here as nothing other than walking meat bags to be exploited for all they’re worth.

I’m glad you’re concerned, and I’m glad your sister’s husband has empathy and gives a fuck. Completely seriously. It’s rare in daily life, let alone a medium sized business or corporation.

Here in new Zealand it's next to impossible to fire someone. We only really do redundancies . If you were fired it must have been serious misconduct.

What happens when a company runs out of money? I'm seriously asking.

If the business can't afford the amount of staff they have then they have redundancies i.e people are laid off.

Not PP, but in countries where there is employment protection, a company can still officially downsize and make roles redundant and therefore layoff the people in these roles. Those in now redundant roles can technically apply for any new open roles created but either there aren't new roles or management has a good idea who it wants to be in that role.

This is actually similar to a lot of tech layoffs, where the company is laying off a large number of people to downsize the company and not rehiring other people into those roles.

Where employment protection and unions come in is areas like redundancy pay offs, including potentially retraining; and ensuring that redundancy is not used to target individuals (e.g. making a role redundant to lay someone off and then recreating that role to hire somebody else). If you want to fire somebody there needs to be good cause. Otherwise you "manage them out of the business" by making them unhappy whilst not performing constructive dismissal.

This was all a lot of hassle when I was running teams but on the upside, as a manager I was also just an employee and protected by the same laws.

That example looks good and virtuous. Until you realize that the new boss might perfectly think: “this firm has been giving so much to all those families… maybe they should return something more than just their jobs. I am going to suggest X to introduce his beautiful daughter to my son.”

A job is a job. A business is not a family. A boss is not a father. It is great to be virtuous but it is not great to mix contexts.

Had to fire people in the past. Not an easy thing to do.

However, it lifts a lof the weight from your shoulders if you know social security is going to take care of them.

Plus, if you reverse the roles here: If you as an employer would prolong their jobs by paying them from your savings until your company/you yourself go bankrupt, none of your employees would return that favor. I've seen it many times.

There was and still is a stigma in all countries and social security is something that had to be fought for and which is under continual attack.

In the UK it's your mortgage that's the big worry - houses so expensive that you will pay them off for the rest of your life. What happens if you get fired and cannot pay the mortgage?

Depends on the country and sector. Where I work it’s pretty much impossible to fire people. Worst case, positions with older employees are phased out (which still sucks for the teams). That means employees get offered nice retirement packages which they don’t have to accept (but usually do).

"I am responsible for their families" might be trivialising the employee's role in ensuring an income and planning for eventualities.

(That doesn't mean I support layoffs in the slightest, just that I'm bothered by that line)

"I don't know about the "developed" countries where people have social security"

People don't autmatically get paid if they lose their jobs. Welcome to reality, OP.

It seems that of all of the contracts that businesses sign the ones they are most keen to terminate abruptly is the employment contracts with their staff.

It's been normal in the US for a long time. That's what at-will employment means. You can be fired at any time for no reason.

The alternative to normalized firing is normalized career employment like that which turned Japan into a noncompetitive economy.

Are we sure it's that? They had even stricter rules when they were the economic miracle (1960-1990). I wouldn't be suprised if just crappy demography caught up with them.

  > for countries like India where there is no social security

whats the reason for that?

> whats the reason for that?

India is a very huge and diverse country that was under foreign occupation for about two centuries. It is "just" 75 years since the country was independent and completely bankrupt. Add to that red-tape bureaucracy and corruption after independence.

Hopefully things will change in a few generations.

It's interesting to consider the way in which social welfare systems developed.

The concept originated in Imperial Germany under Otto Bismark, in the 1880s I believe, though there were precursors in Prussia and elsewhere dating to the 1840s.

In the U.S., Social Security was modeled in many ways on the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934, including the structure of account numbers (the 3-2-4 format, though RRA accounts begin with an 'R' rather than a numeric digit). This preceded the Social Security Act by only one year. The federal law was in addition to company-based pensions, which were proving problematic.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Retirement_Board>

Both the RRA and SSA were passed during a deep financial crisis, the Great Depression.

India's history differs in many regards, and I'd suspect that demographics (a large youthful population) play a strong role --- family obligations can substitute for a formal federalised programme. I also suspect that India's somewhat decentralised government (many states operate with a large degree of autonomy) might make for regional programmes, say, in Kerala State, which tends to be much more progressive than other areas, though that's conjecture on my part, I'm not familiar with that aspect of Indian policy or politics.

More on contemporary Indian welfare policy here:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security_in_India>

Interestingly, I've just learned via Wikipedia, India has one of the oldest welfare state traditions dating to the 3rd century BCE under emperor Ashoka:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#India>

I completely agree with the sentiment. If you're an entrepreneur I think you've got a responsibility to your employees who are counting on their paycheck to not screw up. I think where it goes wrong is with entrepreneurs who:

a) Come from a financially privileged background and have never experienced living paycheck to paycheck or losing a job they needed due to a "necessary corporate restructure" or staff cuts.

b) Come from a 'blitz-growth' ideological stance (and VCs) that see new venture as a winner-take-all 'grow big or blowup' world.

These entrepreneurs (and the people backing them) talk about the virtues of teamwork and ethics but it's all secondary to their greed.

If I was an employee I would stay away from such people, the problem is employees have no idea who they're working for until it becomes too late.

The way I see it, employees are paid first and entrepreneurs (and by extension investors) deserve profits because they're paid last.

However, if capitalism is abusive people aren't going to tolerate it and entrepreneurs will find themselves in an ever difficult political environment where taxes will erode the risk premium successful entrepreneurs enjoy.

Some comments are out of touch with reality. I genuinely don't understand how you are not explicitly addressing the massive corporates and multinational companies that actually *do* have protection and an entrenched position. Some of these layoffs are happening in companies that are posting record earnings and profits. Let's not be naive about it.

Certain comments seem to argue for labor liberalism while at the same time retaining preferential treatment for these larger companies. You cannot have it both ways. Either create a truly capitalistic society that allows defaults, free movement of people and capital, create an even playing field for workers or by default lose some of the human capital flexibility that is necessitated by the current corrupt and broken system.

Yes, true (in the european sense) liberalism at all levels is better than only labor liberalism + legal protections of current companies. But it is still better than "protected" employment + legal protections of current companies

We have very good labor laws much to the disgust of free market, libertarian and pro-business political factions, yes but it NEVER them or management who is fired so they can shove their philosophies.

There is a legal process when you need to reduce staff - the bare minimum offer is one week of pay for each year of service - got laid off after 19 years and company expedited the legal process if I volunteered for layoff by offer an extra half a week.

It allowed me to pay of my house, my car, short term debt and not worry for income for an entire year.

> Some how firing/laying-off has been trivialised.

Yup. Just like we have trivialized climate change, consumerism, mass wastage :-( Ah, capitalism. The devil is in the details.

nope, it's just happening a lot recently, more than usual.

Yet we meanwhile worship at the alter of the Fed, seeing only money increased and ruling toward wanton destruction, that individual lives must be sacrificed in reduced employ, consumption, and future.

careful, being disrespectful of the alter will anger the acolytes

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