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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> Mass layoffs generally don’t follow strong management execution.

I realize that's a common sentiment on HN, but it's not really among executive leadership in US businesses. Sure, nobody wants to do layoffs, but then you're essentially left with 2 choices:

1. Potentially underhire despite growing business opportunity.

2. Potentially overhire to take advantage of business opportunities that may not eventually come to fruition.

What people who hire management consultants care about is that they have the decisiveness to take action when needed, and having significant layoffs is not really a ding one way or the other.

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It's a common sentiment everywhere. That's just basic human decency. Hiring shouldn't be used as a variable of adjustment. That's people lives you are playing with. That's why any decent country has some employee protection in its law.

If you want temporary workers to face a burst of activity, hire temps. They are paid more specifically for this reason. It will never cease to amaze me that companies in the US seemingly can have their cake and eat it too with workers neither organising nor complaining.

Many countries make hiring temporary workers very hard or unattractive. In my country there is an additional tax and strict terms on how long they can be employed. So they end up being hired and then fired instead. Ironically, it's often the left wing politicians pushing companies to offer fixed employment instead of using flexible labour. Of course, they also try to make the firing as hard as possible. It would be much better if they realise that in some businesses labour demand just fluctuates and it's not necessarily capitalists trying to take advantage of the little man.

Your argument doesn’t seem very coherent to me.

Placing strict terms on how long temporary workers can be employed is not an issue in the case you point. If your demand really fluctuates, you will have ended their employment long before the generally generous limit.

Avoiding long term employment though a stint of short term contracts is legitimate. You don’t want company trying to wiggle out of employment law through this kind of stints and experience prove some definitely will.

Business cycles in many industries can be 5-10 years, much longer than you are allowed to have people on temp contracts. Forcing companies to keep staff around they no longer need tends to make matters worse in the long run. I think the Danish model of combining a very flexible labour market with a great social safety net is better for all involved.

> That's why any decent country has some employee protection in its law.

You can probably draw a linear relationship between the amount of employee protection in the laws of a country and its unemployment rate, especially among younger people.

This sort of stuff always benefits those already in the system at the cost of those outside looking in. Cities with stronger tenant protection have higher rents than places without. Homelessness is worse in places with rent control.

> You can probably draw a linear relationship between the amount of employee protection in the laws of a country and its unemployment rate, especially among younger people.

You can not draw a linear relationship between those. Top unemployment rates over the last 10 years: Greece, Turkey, Spain, Costa Rica, Poland, Slovak Republic... [0]

One thing you're ignoring is that countries with strong employee protection also tend have a strong social safety net where unemployed people have a backstop, they haven't lost their healthcare and assistance, so being unemployed isn't the peril it is somewhere that employee protections are basically nil.

Correlation is not causality, strong tenant protections allow people to live in places longer term, which is seen as desirable to forming neighborhoods and bonds among neighbors, which in turn makes it a more desirable place to live. Homelessness in a specific place has a diverse number of factors that play into it, including geographic factors, from ambient air temperature, housing prices, employment availability, social services available, etc etc etc. You can't draw a line from rent control to homelessness unless those are the only two graphs you're looking at.

[0] https://data.oecd.org/unemp/unemployment-rate.htm#indicator-...

> It's a common sentiment everywhere. That's just basic human decency. Hiring shouldn't be used as a variable of adjustment. That's people lives you are playing with. That's why any decent country has some employee protection in its law.

Sorry, as someone who has been through layoffs, I totally disagree. I don't think it falls under "basic human decency" that just because a company hires me that they have an obligation to keep me on until I retire or die. Essentially what you are arguing is "It would be better to never have hired that person at all, and provide them a salary for N years, than to hire them if you may one day lay them off due to changes in the business."

I'd much prefer either (a) requirements for a longer notice period or severance and/or (b) the government providing a better safety net for the ups and downs of the business cycle (like someone commented with the Danish model). I especially think it's nuts that in the US so many critical benefits are tied to employment, like healthcare.

Why not hire contractors or contract-to-hire for those bursty work needs? Or spin up a separate company and buy services from them?

> Why not hire contractors or contract-to-hire for those bursty work needs?

To start, it's not legal. If the people you are hiring are doing the same work as full time employees, with the same work structure, you're not supposed to hire them as contractors.

> Or spin up a separate company and buy services from them?

I mean, companies certainly do outsource to third parties for "bursty" needs, but if you think this is going to be an important core part of your business going forward, why would you go through the organizational complexity to spin up a new entity? How would you explain this to recruits? "Congrats, you've been hired by the slightly shittier version of us, and when layoffs come you'll be the first to get cut." I mean, companies do actually kinda do that, but it's very much a hierarchical system - anyone with the ability to get hired by "main company" is not going to take a position with "shitty clone".

> If the people you are hiring are doing the same work as full time employees, with the same work structure, you're not supposed to hire them as contractors.

This is not true at all. Many firms do “staff augmentation” for exactly what the parent described, bursty work for clients on a time and materials basis.

Right but the difference is that those contractors need to be W-2 employees of some other company. You can't hire them as 1099 independent contractors. That used to be common practice among tech companies but federal and state income tax authorities have cracked down hard on it.

Agreed.

But the point is there are “bursty” options if firms wish to to pursue it as an option.

Well yes and no. Those contracting firms don't keep a lot of bench resources. During slow periods they lay off employees just like every other employer. And during boom times they jack up their rates and still don't have many experiences contractors available on short notice. Using those staffing agencies works fine for small bursts but if you need thousands then you run into practical limits.

Citation?

Bench is a thing.

It wouldn’t need to be a shitty clone. Maybe it would pay 10% more but be known to have less job security in a downturn.

But also, I didn’t specifically mean 1099 independent contractors, just “contractors”. Meaning, people employed for a fixed contract length of 6 or 12 months and then possibly renewed if business is still good.

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