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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Or just make a law that says "if you fire a recently relocated employee, you owe him 2 years salary".

That way firms that aren't sure about relocating someone will not do it. Firms with some confidence in their business will not have a problem.

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The unintended consequences of this are pretty large. I just wouldn’t hire anyone who fit that law because of how onerous it is.

A possible solution might be a remote probation period, then if you still need relocation, you will be subject to the law.

You get to hire and fire if the relationship doesn’t work, but if you’re still adamant on forcing a relocation then the risk is shared.

And that's fine. You'd hire locally, you'd move the company, or you'd allow remote work. But you definitely wouldn't fire someone you just hired and forced to move.

It costs nothing amortized over the hundred hires you wouldn't fire in the first month. If you fire often, this law is good to stop you from doing that.

The consequence is firms won’t hire relocated employees. Which is strictly worse

Good. They will hire remote or go the way of the dinosaurs they are.

Or instead of this law, we make stock buybacks illegal again. Then, companies flush with profit, have to take better care of the employees they bring on.

I don't support that. Stock buybacks are a great thing; they allow companies to return excess cash to investors, helping ensure that capital is allocated efficiency across the whole economy.

Otherwise companies are pressured to spend money just because they happen to have money, even if they don't have anything productive to spend it on. That's not a good thing.

> ... nothing productive to spend it on.

Employees. Spend it on them. Fully pay benefits (actually no, we need to decouple HC from employment, but that's another rant), pensions, raises. etc.

This kind of thing is why we have such long interview cycles and strong bias against false positives

...because a false negative is so much worse than a false positive.

I'll take less opportunities for more stability. Many people would. That's what this article is all about. Better for most to have less that you can rely on than more one year and less the other and no sense of calm.

You may be willing to make the tradeoff, but you should acknowledge the downsides.

The most extreme example is in academia where they get a lot of stability in exchange for an excruciating job hunt and interview process. And if they don't like the job, they are stuck.

I would rather have a world where we can take a chance on someone, then not. If you have all your ducks in a polished row, and look and act the right way, maybe you prefer protection against that.

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