Comment by Panzer04 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Panzer04 | Hacker News Reader

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You want to make it even harder to get a job? The better the benefits you mandate for firing/leaving employees, the more onerous companies become about bringing on more manpower (and eventually, lower wages as a whole since they have to fund an additional 10% or whatever whenever someone leaves).

You're arguing that companies should implement these measures at the cost of just hiring people? "Companies would actually have to try and make an educated choice about whether or not to hire someone." - Isn't it already a meme that people get 3-6 interviews just to get hired at some places nowadays? and you want to make that worse? Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but employees aren't the big losers in situations where companies are doing layoffs - companies are. If they had more disciplined hiring practices they wouldn't be hired (or, more likely, wages as a whole would be slightly lower because of reduced demand) These kinds of benefits aren't free, and I don't think it's unreasonable that employees bear some responsibility in terms of saving up or whatever if they have to be let go.

All that being said, I'm not against a couple of months of wages/warning, just realize there are costs to this (really, I'm probably arguing most against 3-6 months - that sounds like a really long time to me; It feels like a couple of months should be sufficient in most cases).

Re: shorter benefits

Every corporate downsizing is an example of a "private decision" with clearly visible public costs, unemployment insurance payouts among them. Social and emotional distress have a cost, not just to the employee, but their social group and family.

But, did I catch your opinion correctly? You believe we(society) are(is) providing unemployment benefits for too many months?

In your mind, who benefits from decreasing that assistance benefit? Cui bono?

Obviously the employee being let go gets the biggest benefit - but those rights aren't free, is all i'm saying. It leads to more onerous interviews, a more stagnant and slow-moving economy, etc. eg. 6mo of guaranteed severance if the company lets you go just seems huge to me. Obviously degrees to the implementation, but still, I feel like it's a huge loss in flexibility to the company, and economy as a whole.

My presumption is that companies will generally be more reluctant to hire when severances are higher, and vice-versa. You're probably not really winning anything on average, with the inexperienced losing out the most in terms of just trying to get any job at all given the possible expense to most companies. Small companies even more so, given they'd be less able to absorb the cost of those benefits.

Anyway, can speculate all I want, I'm just saying there's no free lunch.

This idea you bring up that the jobs will evaporate when businesses are regulated sounds logical, but it’s a trap.

McDonald’s didn’t wait for the minimum wage to go up to be motivated to install automated drink dispensing machines and self-service kiosks. In fact, the minimum wage adjusted for inflation was decreasing during the entire time period in which those innovations were deployed.

On the other end of the labor spectrum, companies like Meta had no problem hiring thousands of excess employees during a period of high wage growth and scarce tech talent.

When labor generates revenue, companies will hire regardless of regulations. When labor is unnecessary for revenue, no regulation will prevent a company from downsizing.

Extra, guaranteed severance pay and a reduced unemployment insurance bureaucratic burden would be a godsend for terminated employees. I argue that for most businesses it would be a minor adjustment to their standard operating procedures.

An analogy to your point: “Cars will be too expensive if safety standards are required.”

While it’s true that cars are more expensive than they would be without those safety features, the market has adjusted just fine and the societal benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Ultimately though nothing is free. The cost of those extra rights will come from somewhere else.

In Australia we have superannuation. The government is raising the mandatory super contribution soon from 9% to, idk, 12%. Some people act like that change is free, but that's obviously not the case if you think about it. All that'll happen is regular wages are reduced a little such that a person's total compensation is basically the same in the end.

I contend the same will be true of generous severance policies, especially those imposed on a global scale. Some of these things are worth fighting for, I'm not sure huge severance periods are one of those things, personally. At best something that scales with experience/time at a company (eg. half a month of severance per year of experience, or whatever value fits your conception of the idea), so those more attached to a particular position have more time to adjust if they are let go.

I'm not keen on the whole US model of "mandated psychopathy".

From what little I hear, the Germans seem to have found as good a balance as ever is likely to happen. There is good worker protection whilst industry is still being strong economically. Perhaps we should be looking at the way they do things.

Formerly in the UK, the chocolate-makers Cadbury was founded by a Quaker who had a strong sense of social responsibility motivated by Christian convictions. They were a profitable company who were taken over by Kraft.

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