In Scandinavia, you set a mutual duration of notice for both parties when signing the initial contracts to start working. For IT jobs, the standard is 2-3 months. This gives both parties ample time to adapt.
No, online rhetoric bears only a passing resemblance to reality. Especially on HN, where most folks these days get unlimited vacation and work less than 40 actual hours per week. If you're in a low skill blue collar job you will definitely struggle more than someone in the skilled trades. And if you went deeply in debt because someone convinced you that a four year degree in business would pay for itself, I'm sorry.
It means you get 15 paid days a year to be sick. Beyond that, you have a certain number by law (I think 60) which you can take unpaid without risk of being fired. After that, sickness is theoretically grounds for termination, but very few large employers would do that because of the bad publicity. Also most IT workers here have long-term disability insurance for 'free' from their employers, meaning that they're still making 50 or 60 percent of their usual total comp for as long as they're sick after being fired.
"In Scandinavia, you set a mutual duration of notice for both parties when signing the initial contracts to start working. For IT jobs, the standard is 2-3 months."
I will gladly take a capped number of paid sick days to be able to leave in 2 weeks on good terms, and whenever I want otherwise. I will also take the lower unemployment rate that comes as a result of employers being unafraid to hire because they can easily fire. People seem to think labor flexibility is purely for the benefit of the employer. Not so. Short notice periods are a worker right, one Americans have and Europeans don't.
I will gladly accept that downside(?) of having to give 3 months advanced notice for the upside of not being fired arbitrarily on the spot whenever my employer feels like it.
That sounds like a nightmare to me. Sometimes I want to quit immediately. I should be able to rather than stay in a miserable job for 2-3 months.
In American thought, rights are generally thought of as protections from government control/abuse. Right to free speech, association, religion, movement, etc. While when it comes to private negotiating with an employer or employee or landlord or tenant, "rights" aren't really an applicable concept. Although freedom from discrimination in protected categories (e.g. sex, race, religion) is a newer right that's now become fairly generally accepted in both the workplace and housing.
I'm not arguing this is god or bad, just that it's a different way of thinking from many European countries.
49 states out of 50 are what are known as "at will employment" states (Montana is the only exception). "At will" employment means that the worker or the employer can terminate employment at any time with no notice. There are some restrictions on this, for example an employer can't fire someone because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Additionally there are laws about how larger companies have to handle mass layoffs.