At this company, we are family
pboyd.io
pboyd.io
It wasn't really a good thing unless you were a low performer. We had some people who were hired into jobs they couldn't do well, but they got to keep those jobs because it was like their role in the family. People basically never got fired, including the couple guys in the corner who barely did any work but had been there forever.
When money was tight, they didn't do layoffs. They just cut everyone's compensation by the same percentages. Including those people who didn't do much work, because we can't fire family.
Modern companies avoid this phrase because it has become so toxic that nobody wants to be associated with it. It's a holdover from old school management who speak in boilerplate platitudes like "fast paced environment" that don't mean anything.
Once you got hired, it was really difficult to get fired. So much so, most people there hadn't heard about anyone ever getting fired. Eventually, someone heard through the grapevine what a firing offense was: Getting caught having sex on the company campus with a coworker. But! The first time was a warning.
That company had soooo much money to burn. Lots of people did not like to work, they just kind of screwed around all day. Family members of the founders got to use the private jets (of which there was a fleet of a dozen) to do whatever they liked.
I won't name names, but the company name rhymed with "Spamway".
If both/all people are consenting, that might be slightly tacky, but surely shouldn't be a fireable offense.
That part seems fireable IMO (or the getting caught part)
If anyone could reply to this with the answer I'd appreciate it
Cutting low performers is something we can all agree on, with exceptions to long-tenured employees who are in a temporary low-performance state (divorce, health issues, etc).
At many modern companies, headcount is cut often to increase the stock price for the next earnings report, so leadership can offload shares. Even if the company performance suffers in the long term, they were able to sell their bags at a high price.
An example of a 'family' style company is Kiewit and it isn't anything like the one you described. They are famously aggressive about low-performers. Every employee has ownership shares in the company. You are expected to pick up and move when the company tells you to move. They've never had a negative earnings quarter in the entire history the company... which is notable.
I'd had a pretty rough year, my last year there - a recent breakup, a deteriorating domestic situation, and a death march at work. Management was aware of all three. In the end, I decided to leave the company. The attempt to retain me was not more money, or really anything around comp - it was something along the lines of (a rough quote): "You really shouldn't leave. We're your family. In times like yours, people can push the people closest to them away, to their own self detriment." And I was shared some links to psychology sites, talking about how folks in crisis can push close loved ones away from them.
Being young and naive, I gave some profuse thanks for enlightening me, promised to stay, reneged on the offer with the other employer... and a few days later, thought, "what on earth did they just do?!"
Needless to say, I put my notice back in, took the other job, and never looked back. The silver lining is that I now have a pretty good radar for management using the "family" argument in manipulative ways.
Take vulnerable people (insecure people who need jobs), add authoritarian influence, have them work for the good of the group, etc
Honestly, I wonder how many (normal?) companies align with cult techniques? Don't most companies create an us-vs-them culture? Didn't steve jobs want all the employees to wear the same uniform at one point? Doesn't Elon Musk talk about the mission to save mankind?
Maybe it is all just part of competing, cooperating and how we create prosperity, but I wonder sometimes.
Oh, it means something; usually date-driven development, get stuff out without any care of quality beyond platitudes. Yell at the devs when they're late, then yell at them when they're not because the code is shite.
They have access to vast amounts of resources, but family members don't have free access, far from it. There is council that decides how the funds are allocated, and when family members need some, they need to pitch how they are going to use it, and the expected returns. And if some family members are deemed unworthy, or don't follow some rules they can get expelled and lose access to the familial wealth.
So maybe that's what companies mean by "we are family". Or more likely, it is a combination of the perspectives of the modest families with the warmth of the wealthy ones.
If we're talking about money for investment purposes (you mentioned expected returns) then this is what's know as a "family office"
It's not really an old money thing. It's common for ultra high net worth families to establish a Family Office as a privately held company to manage their assets.
The Family Office runs like a business with a goal of maintaining and growing the assets under management. They may have full-time employees who are not members of the family at all, such as a CFO.
This isn't really related to family dynamics, though. Family members would have ownership stakes in the company and, therefore, proportional ownership of the Family Office's assets. If they wanted money they could sell some of their ownership to another family member (within the various stipulations, of course), but family members can't bypass the business and treat the family office like a piggy bank where they can ignore ownership structures and extract wealth for themselves.
This isn't really related to the "we are family" concept that that companies talk about at all. It's just a business structure that happens to be used by families to manage their wealth like a business. Individual's wealth is still their own to deal with as they please.
Well they're called "trust fund babies" for a reason. But the trust fund doesn't mean free money is flowing endlessly: it is set up so that they cannot blow it all up in a few years.
We are a sports team, not a family. Perform well and you will be paid well, perform poorly and you will get a nice check to go elsewhere. And sometimes you might perform really well but we just don't need someone with your skills anymore, so we'll still give you nice check to go elsewhere, and that isn't a reflection on your abilities.
Basically, that outlook sounds great on paper, but is not so great to actually live.
I can also see how it would be hard to carry over into a startup, because the entire culture rests on the idea that you can pay people top of market to be there, that they don't have to worry a lot about budgets, and that you can afford to give people big checks when they leave.
A simple example. Netflix promotes Freedom and Responsibility. Their engineers seemingly had freedom to choose their own systems to build with their own designs at their own pace. The company's guideline to their managers used to be "All that a manager does is to set context". But really? How can the leaders avoid catastrophic failures? How can the leaders keep their orgs' schedules and promises? How can the leaders draw the line between empowering and micro-management in such environment? It's not there is a runbook. And things do fail and sometimes someone do take the fall. Then who? How much? How do the leaders do it to avoid sink the culture?
What's so off-putting about: "Do well and you stick around, do poorly and you go away"?
Because I don't want to have that kind of instability if I don't get a lot of money to make up for it. It works because people know that if they get "cut" they'll be doing fine.
Also, the best people have lots of options. If there are multiple interesting options, all else being equal the extra cash will help a lot.
Sadly, I see way too many people in our industry who do get a lot of money, and still feel they're allowed to deliver little to show for it.
In a "regular" company there's usually a longer leash if you don't get that right on day 1, or if circumstances change and the specific skills you were brought in for aren't as relevant anymore.
In the Netflix model there's a by-design higher chance of it instead resulting in you losing your job.
So if you aren't compensating with $$$ for that increased risk, it's going to leave you with more of the folks without other good options and fewer of the folks who say "I can get the same money with less pressure if I take this other role instead."
Why put up with "do well and stay or poorly and you go away" when other places pay the same for better culture and less drama?
One note: high turnover causes lots of workplace challenges - so you have to have a carrot along with your stick or you'll create a doom loop. Just "do well and stick around" is way to glengary glen ross for me.
Or mathematically, the long term expected return from a volatile employment situation should be equal to the long term expected return from a stable employment situation.
Risk should be compensated by higher expected return, otherwise it's not worth it
Secondly, more often than not, doing "well" or doing "poorly" can be highly subjective and politically motivated. Also, underneath it all we're human. A great performer for years may fall off the wagon for a few quarters due to various life circumstances like death of a loved one, divorce, health, etc. Is the solution to this is to just throw them to the curb the minute they aren't performing to their previous level? If so, then I expect to be paid until the Benjamin's are pouring out of my eyeballs. You get what you pay for.
It's interesting that despite the high-performance culture though, Netflix is still slowly degrading. This past year I finally realized I could cancel Netflix and not feel like I lost anything, and I was an early subscriber to the DVD plan.
Any thoughts on Netflix's degradation over time? My take is that its transitioned from peak phase into cash-cow mode once everyone wanted a piece of the streaming pie.
I still have plenty of use for Netflix, but here are my thoughts:
From a creativity/artistic perspective: creativity is one of the things where simply throwing more money at it and/or "optimizing" it is not the solution. I mean, it can be the solution from a purely business perspective, but I'm assuming this isn't satisfying to you (or me), hence the "degradation" you speak of. Creativity, as in "good quality things you can enjoy but are not necessarily mass-produced for everyone to like" is not a "problem" to be "optimized" by whatever algorithms Netflix is using.
From a business perspective I've no idea how they are doing. Given their crackdown on account sharing, I'd say things are not as rosy as they used to be. Also, quite obviously, the competition became harder; Netflix is no longer the only player in town.
Netflix both got better and worse at the same time.
With wider audiences and more content, there is both more content for you in absolute terms, and less in proportion to the total amount. So while there's more stuff you will like to see, it gets drowned out.
https://thecorrespondent.com/104/the-great-paradox-of-our-ti...
So now they have tons of content and tons of viewership (and tons of profits the last several years) but they've changed from being "the biggest streaming hub for all your favorites" to "one of many producers and distributors." They might on the whole have more good stuff you'd like - but they have a lot less mindshare for that stuff than when it was stuff that had already done theater and TV rounds.
(What's really interesting to me is that the music industry evolved differently, with almost no exclusives, so you have many competing streaming services (but all that seem to be VERY squeezed profit-wise) all with the same content. My best guess is it's because people want to be able to flow music together in custom playlists, spanning a bunch of artists, vs binging a single series or such?)
So the music streamers were able to leverage that and extend the deal.
If movies had a similar licensing model, you'd see a ton of "Netflix"'s who were all licensing the same content and competing on user experience. Like the music streamers.
Although it should be noted that the music streamers are now moving towards the exclusivity model, where the big ones are making exclusive deals to keep that music off of any other platform.
They don't seem to have as much breakout content as before, but I think they have a lot of minor hits, especially in other countries. And honestly that is better for their business than huge breakout hits.
From what I've heard from friends who are still there, the nexus of the company shifted from the Bay Area to Hollywood a few years ago. At that point they became more of an entertainment company than a tech company. Some have said all the "hard" problems are solved, now they are just making small adjustments. Although I disagree with this: they quietly added live streaming which was a huge tech leap for Netflix, although it was so quiet no one seems to have noticed.
Also, with the economy the way it is and being an entertainment company now, they are starting to worry more about budgets. When I was there the only real budget guidance we got was "don't grow your headcount faster than our subscriber count" and "keep IT costs flat on a per stream basis". I hear now directors get budgets they have to stick to.
Also they added leveling which allowed them to hire more junior engineers. When I was there, there were no levels. We didn't really hire junior engineers. We hired senior engineers to solve problems that usually juniors would be given, and they would solve it with automation and robustness that maybe took a bit longer and would be considered "over-engineered" but that lasted for years and scaled with minimal effort.
But the freedom is still there for the most part. Managers still mostly just provide context and the leaf nodes come up with the implementations.
If you offer me a typical tech job at 1/20th of what a netflix engineer makes, don't expect me to perform like Michael Jordan.
Sports team dedicate their entire life to performance. 80 hour weeks are nothing to them. Their diet, sleep, and personal lives are part of their jobs. I don't want a typical tech shop to have that sort of control over me unless they are paying me serious money.
------
All that aside, modern Netflix is not what Reed Hastings describes. There are tons of tenured benchwarmers lounging around.
It reminds me of Amazon's "bar raiser" requirement. That a new hire has to be better than 50% of the interviewers. The idea that Amazon engineers are the top is laughable to anyone in the space these days. Only the desperate work for Amazon.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/netflix/salaries/software-e...
Not sure if a typo, but if this is what you actually meant, this is a _gross_ misunderstanding of the situation. The benchmark is that a new hire should _have capability to_ outperform 50% of folks in the current role, not a) _currently_ be able to outperform b) 50% of _interviewers_ (who are potentially of higher level than the interviewee).
Anecdataly, I am ~6 months into my first post-Amazon role (after 10 years there) and have only met a single peer who would have been passable in my previous team.
After a while I had to resign due to mental health problem manifesting as depression and burnout to the point where I couldn't even enjoy my favorite video games. I started therapy which hasn't been going as well as I would like but that's another subject.
A month ago I talked to a colleague to see how they're doing. He informed me that another guy left 1 week after I did, but the best part is how he told me that "unlike you at least he gave a 2 week notice". To this day I still wonder if I was really the one unprofessional and that I should just force myself to "work". And I use quotes because I don't know how anyone would expect someone who literally have to force himself to get up from the bed and brush his teeth to be productive. I'm not the kind of person who sees himself as unprofessional and if I had no health problems interrupting my daily life I'd have no issues upholding the 2 week notice.
Turns out there is such a thing as a toxic family.
Instead of ravenously draining the life from your body and swallowing your final screams like pez, we've taken a more egalitarian approach of slowly crushing the life out of thousands of people simultaneously, but also giving them time to recover so we can get as much delicious pain juice as possible.
As someone who has been in a similar place, I wouldn't think this would be any less professional than if you got in an auto accident, had to be bed-bound for several months, the company couldn't let you work remotely and you had to leave.
Depression's a bitch, it makes you want to not seek out care and makes you more likely to interpret anything in the most negative way. Try to not be too hard on yourself for how you had to handle yourself, for all you know those two extra weeks could have caused you to need to be hospitalized or slowed down treatment.
This was your first and only job. (Therapy is still on going and a month ago you asked what is happening and got some feedback about someone else quitting.) Which is why you don't understand the 2 weeks notice isn't just for you to be productive but to help hand things over.
Realistically, your former colleagues probably had to figure out what you had done and not done. This will leave a nasty after taste.
My understanding is that 2 weeks notice is more of a being nice and not actually required. Most companies won't give you any more notice than they're legally required to. Therefore, I have no problem with people giving them the legally minimum notice.
But overall, you'll find there are many times where you just need to force yourself to work. This is probably a skill you should learn if you need a job to survive.
And work through two additional weeks without the strength to even brush their teeth? Doesn't seem realistic to me.
And yes, I've been there. Burnt out, depressed, you name it. It's always possible to muster up the energy to do the right thing.
Your comment reads like a form of victim-blaming, "they should have never gotten into a situation that left them severely depressed".
What!?!?
This not true. It is possible to have no more reserves. It is possible to argue that ideally you should be able to predict your imminent collapse, but not everybody is afforded this luxury.
But I did point out that sometimes in life we need to force ourselves to work. Why? Because we need an income. Some people live a life where they don't need to work but most of us don't. Plenty of us had to go to work in scenarios where we didn't want to. Other half is long-term sick, kid is on school holiday, it's sunny outside, etc.
It’s like telling a tennis player to keep playing a few more matches after breaking an arm in an accident. Tough up kid! It’s a hard world out there.
No pro tennis player hasn't played a game injured. No professional athlete has gone through their career without playing injured. Every off-season we hear the list of injuries players have been playing through.
To be successful you must force yourself to do things you don't want to do. And not telling someone who just flaked out of their first job that is a diservice.
Well, you did reply to someone claiming severe depression and burnout, so the specifics matter.
If you meant to post about hard work and doing stuff that might not be enjoyable in pursue of a paycheck, that's fine, but do you think it's warranted in reply to this specific case?
It'd be like going into generalities about how one can push oneself harder to run a 100 meters sprint when talking to someone without legs or arms. I mean, yes, sure, but isn't it a touch insensitive?
I did say that it's a skill they should learn not that they should have done it in this case. So if we're saying specifics matter, the entire context of specifics matter.
> If you meant to post about hard work and doing stuff that might not be enjoyable in pursue of a paycheck, that's fine, but do you think it's warranted in reply to this specific case?
Yes, the person flaked out of their first job after seemingly a few months and literally asked if they should have forced themselves to work their 2 week notice period.
Telling them everything is ok is not the nice thing to do. It's an easy thing to do. It seems compassionate. But it's not. It shows no feeling or concern for their future. As pointed out with multiple examples, there are plenty of times people need to force themselves to work. It is an important skill to have to succeed.
They flaked out of their first job and flaked out so hard they didn't even manage to give 2 weeks notice. That is the hard reality here. And they specifically asked if they should have given the notice. To not advise them that forcing yourself to work is an important skillset is in my opinion a disservice and uncaring action.
So you gave unrelated advice to someone telling you about a bout of depression? Hm.
> Telling them everything is ok is not the nice thing to do. It's an easy thing to do.
I think you'll find your "easy way" is not the way to treat severe depression. It's a long, hard road.
You think being depressed is "flaking out"? Shame on you.
At which point would you say it's ok to admit you were wrong and that you misread the post? Is this really the hill you want to die on?
They literally asked if they were being unprofessional and if they should have forced themselves to work. Telling them that being able to force themselves to work is a useful skillset if they want to keep a job is not unrelated.
> You think being depressed is "flaking out"? Shame on you.
No, the fact you need to come up with just an absurd statement really shows what you're all about.
They didn't give the industry standard notice period, they as far as we can tell, just said "I'm not coming back". That is flaking out. If you did it because you were depressed or because it's sunny outside doesn't really change the fact it's flaking out.
> At which point would you say it's ok to admit you were wrong and that you misread the post? Is this really the hill you want to die on?
Misread what? You need to misrepresent my position.
In another comment you said I have no experience of depression.
I've been on sucide watches so extreme, they took away my clothes, gave me untearable clothes, only gave me fingerfood, left me in an empty room with just a mattress and an untearable blanket, and had someone sit there and watch me nonstop. The reason I know that mental hospitals will force you to be active is I was there and they annoyed the shit out of me with it. I was diganosed with depression at the age of 9. One professional said that I had been depressed for so long that I basically considered it normal. I almost certainly have more experience with it than many others.
You also implied a strawman argument because I think someone who says they struggled to brush their teeth because they were so depressed would have been sitting around doing nothing because well they couldn't even brush their teeth. That's just extrapolating. Very simple logic.
Like someone else mentioned, if he had been hit by a car you wouldn't be suggesting he force himself to do anything. Clinical depression is your brain being hit by a car. If he had been hit by a car, who cares about whether his coworkers found their work harder as a consequence?
I think it's misguided to think that there aren't many people force themselves to work in that and worse conditions. Why? They need the money.
It's seriously misguided, to think you can have any successful career without being able to force yourself to work. Quitting work everytime there is a hicup will not generally lead to a successful career. Not being able to work at all because the sun is out, your kid is long term sick, your wife had an affair, etc will generally not lead to having a successful career. There are many scenarios on a daily basis where people force themselves to work.
> if he had been hit by a car you wouldn't be suggesting he force himself to do anything
If cleared for work and needed to keep their job, yes I would. Many people do in fact force themselves to work after truamatic events such as being hit by a car or being in a car accident.
And remember, I didn't say in this scenario he should have forced himself to work. In fact, I said I had no problems with him not. But I said it is a skill that is needed for many in life.
And some people end up committing suicide after severe depression, so? "Push yourself harder" isn't usually the answer.
Very few treatment plans haver "quit your job and do nothing" to solve depression. Being unemployed is normally more depressing than having a job. It's a downward spiral.
Since nobody is advocating "doing nothing", I think you have a nice strawman going on there.
In another post you also equate being depressed with "flaking out".
I'm going to guess you know nothing about clinical depression, so spare me the description of what you think the treatment plans are.
This may be unintentional, or I may be misreading you, but this seems to represent a serious misunderstanding of clinical depression.
I did not observe a prior post claiming that there aren't many people who force themselves work, whether for money or any other perceived gain.
Lack of perceived gain is a typical part of clinical depression. A more likely motivator is aversion to perceived worsening; even this can fail to motivate because of tendency to evaluate the likelihood of success of an action as minimal or non-existant. With clinical depression, a frequent observation is that having completed something successfully, or being rewarded for a thing (even as simple as being given or biting into a food yow enjoy) may produce no improvement of mood.
> It's seriously misguided, to think you can have any successful career without being able to force yourself to work. Quitting work everytime there is a hicup will not generally lead to a successful career. Not being able to work at all because the sun is out, your kid is long term sick, your wife had an affair, etc will generally not lead to having a successful career. There are many scenarios on a daily basis where people force themselves to work.
Yes, clinical depression does tend to cause serious misguidance. The likelihood of a successful career, regardless of efforts may seem maximal. The condition does not seem occur in response to a hiccup of circumstance. It tends to result from prolonged exposure to a series of negative events, producing a situation in which the expectation of those events ending, or of those events being replaced by positive ones, does not exist.
Based on what you've written so far, I tentatively hypothesize that you have had a fortunate life[1]. This is generally good, though tends to lead people to conclude that depressed people just need to try more, or are just in a temporary phase, or just need decide to cheer up, do something useful, knuckle through it…
Getting out of clinical depression usually requires external changes. Some people are lucky enough to experience periods of partial remission sufficient to perceive the benefit of seeking help or changing their circumstances, which can lead to full remission.
[1] While acknowledging that getting through some manner of adversity does not automatic'ly require that one has had depression during that period.
I've grown to interpret "unprofessional" in the scope of resignations as code-word for "it inconveniences your manager". Your higher-ups aren't fending accusations of being unprofessional for fostering hostile work environments that are hazardous to their employees' health. Why should you fend off similar accusations for avoiding the harm they are doing to their workforce?
Complaining how an employee dismisses himself is particularly hypocritical when it happens in jurisdictions where at-will employment is the norm.
I've been lucky that 4 companies I've worked at in my life so far have been very "employee forward" - creating scenarios of employee growth and engagement (vs putting employees in the seat of powerless cogs). All 4 companies have had a layoff of some sort for various reasons (business line shutdown, covid business hit, interest rate hit, grew too fast - respectively) and I have been affected by one of the layoffs (the other one, I left right before employees were bought out) but I am still happy to have worked there vs anywhere else because of these factors.
"Family" doesn't mean employing you past the point it makes sense, it's more about how you're related to when you're here. Are you encouraged to grow, to make connections, are you paid well, does the company try to give you good benefits, etc. You want a place that does all of that. You don't have to call it "family" - but it's a totally different vibe from a sweatshop.
We had a great nanny for our son. She went above and beyond, treating him like a grandson. We went above and beyond for her (max flexibility, paying her days when she couldn't work, lots of bonuses and gifts, etc.)
Both of us exceeded the "employment contract" - gave more than we had to and we both came out ahead. That only worked because we were both willing to go beyond.
What's the point? We treated each other "like family" even though it was a work situation. When our son didn't need a nanny anymore, it didn't make sense for us to work together (so in a way, she was laid off although in reality we found her another gig) but that didn't take away from the quality of our relationship while it lasted.
This is directly analogous to employment dynamics I've had at work for 20 years now. You may find that "creepy" but I also suspect you are oblivious to what the upside can be like.
That's as close to actual 'family' as i feel im not, in the multinational i work for.
Were it like family, you'd still invite each other to birthdays and the like.
Actually family does mean that, literally. It makes absolutely no sense to use this term in a business context.
I agree that the "family" metaphor breaks down around termination of employment (whether initiated by employee or employer)
What I was trying to say in the line you quoted, that IN THE WORK CONTEXT nobody uses family to imply permanent employment - it's strictly about how you are with each other while there. Which is still a big deal.
Of course you treat family members well when they "deliver" for you, the real part is when they can't deliver and you still support them.
It breaks down the second you actually compare your family to your company. I think that basically every single person would do many, many things for members of his family that he wouldn't do for the members of his company.
The hackernews galaxy brains trying to define a company based on one word in a mission statement is every bit as foolish as the recruiter who describes their culture as 'family'.
At one company party, the employees were going around the room telling me how nice it was to work for me (which is very kind of them). The last guy sheepishly shrugged and said, "I don't want to be standoffish but I felt this way at my last company, and they let me go. This is just a job to me." I felt like this is overall the most healthy attitude to have when thinking about work, and frankly to hear it out loud was refreshing. I love that kind of honesty.
It is!
My problem is when companies feel the need to say it. If it's actually true, they wouldn't have to.
>We are family!
No boundaries, underpaid, nepotism, etc.
>Fast paced working environment!
Mostly toxic environment.
>Attention to details!
“Big boss” will scream at you for silly things.
>Will require working overtime if needed!
Self explanatory.
>Fun loving, company culture activities, etc.
Your typical kindergarten office activities, you can’t refuse either.
I will also add this but not always the case
>open office style
Yeah, nope!
"Loud panopticum"
i sure as hell can, have and will.
Supportive, abusive, dysfunctional, a mafia with constant internal power struggles…
I get it.. some people really enjoy that, but that's not everyone. It feels like it's by design to exclude other kinds of people who don't enjoy a hyper social environment.
Of course, this is coming from someone who really enjoys drinking on the company dime
During one of my reviews it was mentioned that it's disappointing I don't attend the happy hours as that's when the team is able to connect and strengthen our bonds with each other.
Wasn't surprised I was let go just a few weeks later after I declined the next happy hour.
It's not too surprising if skipping all team-building events results in... not being a part of the team
2: I hosted every company-wide team building meeting every Tuesday morning.
3: I attended every quarterly week-long retreat for department team building.
I have no reason, desire, or requirement to explain to management why a recovering alcoholic might not be the best person to attend what boils down to a 5-hour-long bar crawl.
whaaaa?
is this a common view? doing team building on personal time seems... off. To me.
remember taking my small IT team out for lunches on the company dime, and even to the movies... we even went to an escape room once... but this was all during the work day...
Buying drinks or not doesn't really enter into it, particularly for people who don't drink.
Alcohol only increases that anxiety, and what makes it worse, is knowing that I HAVE to go to a couple to seem like a "team player".
I'll let you know what it's like, for at least 2 days leading up to the event, I'm constantly practicing things to say, then trying to figure out all dialogue trees, and what my replies should be. I will practice and practice, and the amount of stress that causes, the lack of sleep, staying up late constantly trying to figure out what to say, worrying about what someone might say back.
Running past things they have said to me, trying to categorize and itemize all the things in their lives that they have so that I can seem like I am a normal person.. just to fit into their world.
Now, you're also saying that there's going to be alcohol, which means that I will most definitely say something dumb, or slip up.. people will look at me differently, and I will get the distinct feeling that people are talking about me behind my back, and I'm being excluded from things.
Then the event happens, and I try my best to say absolutely nothing, and stick to my script... someone says something totally random to me, and I have not prepared for this, I say something back... this one interaction, one of many, will be the thing that I am now constantly beating myself up about for days if not years later. I have no idea if people hated me because I didn't reply with the correct words in the right order, with the right facial expressions... all things that I do not understand.
And on top of this... I'm expected to do this every now and then because without doing it, I'm going to be silently punished by a group of managers who cannot fathom what this is like. Or colleagues like you who think "hey, it's cool, we're getting beers!"
Sorry, but no.
I NEED my downtime, I need my time to not have to deal with all of that. YOU don't need me there.
Where's the problem?
I mean, I have a feeling there may have been other things at work there, but I guess I feel like you can team build without having to do it outside of work hours. If you are not being paid, I don't really see how that's legal to be required to do anything. It seems to me that if one could prove that, it could warrant some legal action as well.
How is that not unpaid labor?
"Voluntary" means that there will be no adverse effect on your employment if you decline to participate. Your characterization of the activity strongly implies that not participating will come with consequences to your job.
Curious what you think about this: Say there's no company sponsorship or involvement. You get invited to happy hour or a round of golf with the higher-ups completely on your own dime. Its obviously beneficial to pal around with your superiors. Is that a problem?
That means NOT participating hurts your career, or at least doesn't further it, which is the same thing. Career outlook should be dependent only on your performance at work, and requiring to do extra unpaid stuff after work is simply a form of silent exploitation, favoring young people (mostly men, as women getting wasted with their superiors might be considered unprofessional) with no dependents (e.g children).
Push that to the extreme, and you have an extremely bro-hierarchical culture like Japan, where guys are expected to spend their (unpaid) time with their superiors at karaoke bars at late parts of the night, while not doing so puts their career prospects at risk.
All kinds of these silent expectations (but not demands) achieve is form a power imbalance where the ones not wanting to participate (in senseless drinking, or idiotic child games of team building) are pushed to the fringe and not considered "team players". This, naturally, creates a culture of fear that you might miss some of those unspoken rules of the workplace, and also a form of competition of who will simp more to their boss by letting them win at laser tag. Grown up people have families to be with, old parents to take care of, hobbies to do, errands to run, so in a culture of drinking/hanging out after office hours, they often have to choose between possible career prospects or family, and that's always a hard choice.
Team building happens by relying on each other while doing your actual jobs. That is the extent of a relationship needed among colleagues in a professional context.
They are particularly designed without a single thought given to "non-social" types.
The company will exhibit the following behaviors at the same time:
- they will organize a bunch of social events, full of drinking and games, fly colleagues from all over the world to some exotic location
- will refuse to increase your salary to match inflation citing lack of funds (which were somehow available when flying 200 people to AUSTRALIA)
- will work on deadend projects to further the career of X-middle manager/whim of CEO due to something they read. Will overhire people for said projects. At same time, main parts of business can often be underfunded and understaffed
- will cut off full departments when said deadend projects reach their inevitable dead end
- will, at random holidays, give away branded bags, pens, socks, usbs and chocolates, but still have no budget for a salary increase
- will be having a great financial year with 15% growth and send emails of the type: "Good job Team!" but salary increases will not happen or be confined to the 1-2% range.
After some time the cognitive dissonance becomes too much and you simply stop caring.
You'll end up with a very cynical model, where most people can't plan one and a half step ahead, and can be easily convinced to do very dumb things. But, like it or not, that's how society works. And every successful person has figured out, and is ruthlessly abusing this model.
Wow. I've been part of interviewing teams for tons of people, at a number of companies, over decades. I have never once heard anyone express anything like this about an applicant.
The discussions are more about whether or not they can do the job and whether or not they'd be a good fit on the team, not whether or not anyone wants to socialize with them.
This seems too vague and broad for meaningful discussion.
I'm not picking a side, but for the sake of comparison, I've seen office environments with "we are family" messaging treat individuals with autism or disabilities more inclusively and with more grace than otherwise.
But not all mission statements are meaningless, and not all attempts by executives to create a family-like culture come from a bad place.
Much of it comes from a good place, and it often works. But people who experience this I think are less likely to write on HN.
Executives that make promises to their employees they can't deliver on should know better. You can't create a "family" out of your company because the realities of running a business make that impossible. It's fine to encourage mutual respect, etc as cultural values but it's important to make clear where the boundaries are or people will be hurt (either financially or emotionally) when you can't deliver. Saying the company is "like a family" is blurring these lines, not making them clear.
Edit: That's not even mentioning how "we're like a family" usually means "we're like a TV family". Many real families sometimes fight, swear at each other, say fucked up, sometimes racist/sexist/etc, things, talk about politics and religion, etc. Most larger companies would not tolerate any of this.
My family will support me no matter what. My family will never fire me. My family actually loves me.
None of those things are true with an employer.
I don't think that either of us know what "most people's" experience actually is. With the people I've gotten to know over the years, that is the most common experience. Apparently, it's not with the ones you have gotten to know.
Both of us have a selection bias going on.
Hate to break it to HN, but the most successful engineers I've met in the biz are also very empathetic and enjoyable to be around. This HN stereotype that you have to be an low-EQ, frustrated incel to work on software is incorrect in my reality. Just look at the top coders who are living (Linus, Guido, Hashimoto) and you will notice that they are very teamwork oriented people.
From my experience, the more a company TALKS about being a family, the less it acts like one.
To me family is a lot of responsibility, it's an emotional investment, it's a time investment. There are rewards, but also limits and boundaries even in families. At a company, that's an endless amount of just relationships to manage in the form of a family. I have that with my family, that's enough for me.
I worked at a place where after several moves and re-orgs we ended up sitting next to a very strange HR group. They all seemed like good friends in HR, friends outside of work, and yet at the same time they fought like children... a great deal. A lot like a family might.
It was HORRIBLE. I don't know the phrase but they had these constant "emotional impositions" (not sure if that's the right phrase) on each other and everyone around them.
I'd constantly run into one of them in the conference room I reserved ... crying. Now a few times, whatever, I'll happily shepherd everyone to another room. It happens, no big deal. But it wasn't once in a while. It was constant, and if it wasn't someone crying it was them arguing unprofessionally and so on.
They even went so far as to complain the people sitting next to them (overworked, ultra busy tech support team) "are not social" / was "always at their desks working" and complained that tech support didn't attend their events that always had the food and events they wanted (weird pizza, etc). They complained to management about it constantly, I don't know what they expected those people to do, force them to socialize?
As a family goes, I kinda expect all that, but I don't want that at work. It's unprofessional, unproductive, and IMO emotionally manipulative.
I've formed close relationships at work, I care about he people I work with, that's great, but it's a choice and I don't just embrace any given stranger as "family", nor is it appropriate to expect anyone to.
Talent cutbacks are a loss of invested resources, and signals a failure to predict market trends. Sure it can also bump a laggard stock short-term, but ultimately signals other internal structural issues.
Good luck, =)
This is also why layoffs during vacation windows and on remote sites is more common in IT.
Giving people time to deal with the emotional aspect is important. As exposing a vulnerable backbone to those motivated with grievances is unwise. Recall, 93% of breaches are internal, and proprietary assets tend to leak with layoffs.
It is never an easy task, but it can be done respectfully. =)
Most think a family is a group where people love each other and care for each other. This is wrong, love and affections are symptoms of a healthy family, you can love and care for your friends, you don’t have a family with them. You can actually not really like spending time with many people in your family, but you are still a part of a functioning family (many such cases). In extreme dysfunction, individuals in a family face abuse but for all our intuition they still are a part of a family until the state intervenes.
To this one might say a family is then bonds that occur due to blood relations between its members. This again is a symptom, children in an adoptive family still constitute a family.
So what exactly is a family? A family is a binding contract where individuals agree to stay together regardless of the circumstances. In the past this contract was enforced to death out of necessity, now this contract is enforced out of necessity till the child becomes 18 generally. There may be hatred, sickness, or a litany of other disturbances but the individuals still stick by each other. This by definition is something a company cannot recreate (without coming awfully close to slavery), and thus it is hopeless for a company to try to aim to be your family. You can leave when you want and they can let you go when they want. That simply is not the same bond as a family.
Cultural messages that use therapy-speak, if not necessarily promulgated by actual therapists, encourages more and more atomization. Anyone that is annoying, disagreeable, or who has the wrong ideology is labeled “toxic” and people are encouraged to cut them out of their lives. This includes parents, siblings, spouses—of course an uncle or cousin is entirely disposable.
The "unseverable" bonds of family have caused a litany of mental and physical problems for me my entire life. It's only since my "toxic" behavior finally exhausted their fidelity that I've begun to feel like myself.
How can you tell?
I'm not so sure. My set of friends have been friends for over 35 years. We're as much family as our blood relations, in pretty much every way I can think of.
or "As you know, Grandma has Long Covid. With her reduced efficiency, and diminishing ROI, tough choices have to be made"
> Edit. Not sure why the negative feedback. We all know this is satire and a joke right?
It's the basis for sites like The Onion and Beaverton.
Many years ago, I learned that "we are a family here" is a red-flag phrase that is indicative of that being a poor place to work.
>Being in a family relationship at work never redounds to the benefit of the children
In (most of ?) Europe, this severance is law and not debatable (as discovered by Musk recently), so this sentence would be outright illegal. You can talk about your salary with anyone you want, discuss it with your colleagues, that's even mandatory for mass-layoffs (through unions and/or elected representatives).
You should fight for some more rights, sometime <3
[0] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/labor_law/publications/la...
But it's not a one-way street. Being easier to fire makes American employees easier to hire, which is at least in part responsible for much higher pay in the USA compared to employee havens such as Europe.
Furthermore, Americans tend to pay less tax. This isn't usually thought of as an employee rights issue, but in my mind, keeping more of your money = stronger property rights
Here on earth, what you wrote is much closer to the truth. The American economy is awash with opportunities to work for small businesses, with employees free to move around and chart their own destiny.
What about the European system prevents that for the employee?
Otherwise we surely can do this in europe as well, just with a little bit more friction.
From personal experience:
1. Less employment opportunities due to no VC funding, and risk averse mentality of entrepreneurs meaning next to no big EU SW product companies. That's why the best paying jobs in EU tech scene are mostly US companies, which also tend to be clustered in only a few cities in the EU, where housing is now a major issue.
2. Employment and tax laws. 100% cross-country employment across the EU is still not a thing, as every government wants taxes be paid in their country, so they have the laws and bureaucracy in place to make sure jobs and tax revenue don't leave their country, so living in a country while being employed in another is incredibly rare as an employee and not a B-2-B contractor.
3. The big one: Language barriers and bureaucracy differing from country to country means huge friction and risk when moving to a country you're not familiar with, along with the added overhead of learning a new language on top of having a full time job plus the challenge of building new social circles with a different language and culture. I've seen many people leave a country due to the culture shock, language barrier and isolation that lead to, despite them being friendly people and productive workers.
This might even be a fun challenge to deal with when you're young and single, but when you have a spouse and maybe even a child, things get even more complicated fast when it comes to immigration, finding a house or a job, especially if your spouse doesn't work in tech or any other career where English is normalized at work, or even needs their credentials translated and locally equivalated by the authorities to be eligible for employment.
I've met many expat couples where one works in tech and their non-tech spouse has been unemployed for months/years due to their education, skills and experience not being recognized in the new country. Some EU countries really love bureaucracy, credentials, and don't tolerate you not speaking the local language.
A friend of mine got laid off as part of his company going bankrupt with his last two wages going unpaid. The bureaucracy, letter bombardment and appointments in dealing with the authorities to try to recoup those two months wages, all having to be done in German, a foreign language to him(and me), makes the experience completely exhausting and I can feel he just wants to give up on those unpaid wages.
Imagine someone from Ohio having to learn a new language when moving to California and then another language when moving to New York. Not having to deal with bureaucracy in a foreign language for every state is a huge asset for the US and a weakness of the EU labor mobility. The fix could be easy, mandate English as a second language for bureaucracy in every EU country, but I can name a few countries (not the Northern ones) where I know they'd rather see the world burn than adopt English. It's one of the reason why the UK and Ireland are the top destinations for EU migration, at least that was the case for UK before Brexit.
4. Racism, xenofobia, discrimination and glass ceilings from the locals, when you come from the "wrong" country, have a "wrong" sounding name or the "wrong" skin color.
#4 is definitely a bit of an issue. Europe is surprisingly regressive, even compared to the US. Lots of rude comments towards non-white coworkers.
Absolutely not treu. You probably didn't read the part in my comment where I explained my experiences where needing the local language was a must for dealing with the bureaucratic paperwork you can end up facing regularly.
Maybe in northern Europe that might be true but it's definitely not my experience in Austria (and even in Denmark I have friend who met doctors' offices telling them they need to speak Danish). Language barrier is defiantly an issue here, especially outside the SW dev world.
Plenty of government offices you have to interact with don't or don't want to speak English (mostly due to older grumpy staff). Plenty of police officers don't speak English (also the older staff). Plenty of doctors, nurses and specialists don't speak English. Plenty(most?) companies outside of SW require German knowledge. Plenty of landlords and building management companies or utility companies don't speak or don't want to speak English. The list can go on, especially if you mostly land with older staff members. The language barrier is real. Sure, sometimes you can get lucky and land a young contact person who speaks great English and will want to help you, but that's quite rare, most will tell you "nur Deutsch" and then you're shit out of luck as a lot of the issues need to be solved over the phone or in person instead of email where you can fire up deepl.
I remember when a negligent driver hit me while cycling, the two police officers who came over spoke no English at all as they were a bit older. This happens quite often when you deal with older staff.
Saying English is all you need to get by is a gross over-exaggeration and does not match the struggles me and my friends had here at all. Sure, you can order a beer and a pizza in English just fine, but any and all official bureaucracy needs to be done in the local language, not in English, often on the phone or in person, on paper and the spot, without the possibility to easily google translate the thing you're signing, like you can on web forms (and even the stuff google translate camera app spits out is a lot of the time confusing as hell). And believe me, there's a lot of paper work: contracts, insurance forms, complaints, registration forms, etc.
Also, it's respectul to learn the local language to integrate, unless you want to make life difficult for yourself, and live in isolation in expat-only bubbles.
Anyway, my point is, from personal experience, it's still a huge hassle, to move and live in countries where you don't speak the local language as not everything and everyone is always geared to swatch to English for your convenience.
If they all are all happy and free to chart their own destiny - why are those contract things then pretty much standard in the US (as it seems to me)?
And maybe things are not perfect on either side of the atlantic?
I would be fine with less regulations and hire and fire here in europe btw - but I would be not OK, having to sign such contracts. But I don't see, why we can't have both. Meaning employee respecting contracts - but not mandated from above.
They aren't standard by any means.
When things that we are used to (but unhappy with) because our jobs involve a lot of proprietary technological secrets trickle down to sandwich shop minimum wage workers…it’s not worth saying that they’re not standard.
There’s a reason that multiple state legislatures are working to ban noncompetes entirely, and it’s not because they’re uncommon.
Every system could be improved and if you prefer one the other isn't by default inherently evil.
People within both systems can suck.
I'm from Africa and both places are like heaven on earth in comparison.
I've always found it much easier to "chart my own destiny" when my healthcare is guaranteed, forever, for free, whether I have a job or not.
Can you please explain the causation between easiness of firing / hiring and high salaries?
I'm talking about a post-employment notice period. How much notice does the employee get between getting fired and then no longer receiving paycheques? Basically, how much severance does the company have to pay?
Add to this any red tape involved in firing someone.
Now look at it from the point of view of the company. If I, the business owner, know that I have to comply with a raft of regulations and pay several months' severance to fire someone, I'll be very reluctant to hire them in the first place. I'll jump through hoops, work late nights, outsource the job, do anything I can to avoid hiring someone.
On the other hand, if I'm in an at-will state in the US, you can fire someone for no reason with zero notice. Seems crazy right? But it means I won't even think twice about hiring someone either. Could they maybe help on a project? Sure, hire them! Frequently one thing leads to another and employees stay on for a long time anyway.
Now in the second case the same number of companies with the same capital available will end up hiring lots more people due to the lower friction.
Make it easy to get out of a situation, and more people will want to get into that situation.
Even safer is offering them a departure settlement of money and/or insurance coverage, in exchange for which they won't sue you.
As a business you're more risk-averse in offering high salaries since it costs more when you make a mistake.
In scenario H (for hard to fire), we expect employers to spend more time evaluating new hires, because if they make a suboptimal choice, they will be stuck with that employee until they can justify to the authority that the employee is not suitable. This makes them averse to hiring quickly, and also averse to paying a premium unless they are extremely certain of the results. We then expect potential employees to spend more time vetting potential employers, because any involuntary job search process is going to be long and expensive.
In scenario E (for easy to fire), we expect employers to spend less time evaluating new hires, and to be more agreeable to paying a premium, because the loss of hiring suboptimally can be swiftly ended. Since employers hire faster, we expect employees to spend less time vetting employers, since getting a new different job should take less time.
In practice, I suspect that current economic situations are much more of a driver than the regulatory regime.
When you include state taxes, social security from the employee and employer, then it starts to look like much less of a difference.
When you include health insurance and college education, Americans get much less value.
I do agree with the first half of your comment. American labor laws make it easier to fire which allows employers to take more risk in hiring.
less risk, you used the wrong word. If they can fire easily, they take less risk by hiring. That's more risk for the employee though, you miss the fact that most of the people is not HN, and they don't get paid 6 or 7 figures and don't find a job in days if they really need to.
This is a scoping issue, the action contains the risk because the system has mitigated it.
This neglects any state income or sales tax as well.
- When you contact government offices to ensure you're paying the right taxes on the right things, it's very difficult to get a real answer. Many of them just outright do not know, and rely on "a good-faith effort".
- The situation is so convoluted that their are specialist companies which sell you the idea that they can take care of it for you, yet want you sign a contract that says they're not liable for any problems.
Or you can go to A&E and wait 8 hours, and have it be free.
At least for me, regular medical care needs scheduled out some months, doctors have poor availbility. I get one freebie a year via insurance, everything else is about $50.
For minor injuries, or medical stuff that needs same-day eyes, but not a full emergency department, there is urgent care. You wait as long as it takes, in my area, usually 30-90 minutes, pay $100 and they may or may not be able to help. Minor prescriptions and stitches they can usually do
For major stuff, such as broken bones, heart attack, psychosis, whatever, there is the ER. You wait as long as you wait, and it's about $300 for the initial visit, though this can climb rapidly if you need to stay.
That's about it for your insured options.
Your uninsured options are similar, but more expensive. If you are extremely poor, or old, or both you may have a semi-free option with medicare and medicaid, but that is more complicated than I care to type out.
You can have your cake and eat it too. It's called the Danish model, although Denmark itself has an imperfect implementation of the model.
In the Danish model, it's easy to fire people, but the social safety net ensures that the employee doesn't get screwed if it happens. They don't lose their health insurance, EI is generous enough that it has minimal impact on their lifestyle, etc.
And this system of being easy to fire people hasn't exactly resulted in the well paying and plentiful jobs market the way it was promised, most likely due to the bureaucracy and high taxes on businesses, keeping investors away.
So having employees easy to fire is not the key to a good jobs market, but it's having the capital, bureaucracy and tax laws, coupled with the risk taking mentality to convince the rich to invest their wealth in starting new businesses knowing 95% of them will fail and only 5% will succeed, instead of hoarding their wealth away in multi-gernerational real estate thanks to zero inheritance taxes like the wealthy in Austria and Europe in general do.
*: every 1st or 15th of the month is common
[0]: https://www.usp.gv.at/en/mitarbeiter/beendigung-arbeitsverha...
[1]: https://www.usp.gv.at/en/mitarbeiter/beendigung-arbeitsverha...
[2]: https://www.wko.at/service/arbeitsrecht-sozialrecht/Anspruch...
Yes, that's what I meant by being fired, with notice. You thought I meant being fired without notice which is uncommon anywhere in Europe unless the employee did something illegal.
The fact that in Austria your employer can terminate your employment contract anytime with a notice period, and for no reason, is very rare in Europe as it makes employees super vulnerable to loosing their jobs anytime.
In most EU countries, with better employee protections, employers need valid reason and proof to terminate your contract with notice, otherwise they can get sued for wrongful termination and have to pay penalties.
Also, in Austria you can even get fired (with notice) while you're on sick leave, which is pretty barbaric by EU standards.
Despite what a famous youtuber like to preach, the US participation is on the US and very few countries that explicitly call for help. And when countries need help, it's not usually the US that they ask first.
When you count just the taxes we definitely pay less, especially in places like Texas and Florida. Well, I suppose there's the budget deficit and national debt to consider, though yours aren't exactly great either.
Well, except that there's a middle income trap with social security taxes. Basically, you want to be earning either a fair bit more than the social security cut-off, or to be on welfare. This is a terrible feature of our system.
> When you include health insurance and college education, Americans get much less value.
Honestly I'm starting to believe that our tertiary education system is vastly overvalued and that we can do much better for much less cost. Also, we have state schools that are very good and very cheap (by comparison to private ones anyways). I know people who have done very well in tech without having gone to school or graduated.
As for medical, the only coverage I want is catastrophic, and if I could just just get that then health care would be way cheaper. Health care providers generally have much lower prices when you have no insurance and pay out of pocket.
> I do agree with the first half of your comment. American labor laws make it easier to fire which allows employers to take more risk in hiring.
This is, on the whole, a very very nice feature. We also have better political speech rights than you. And... well, the whole Bill of Rights is a big deal, and European countries mostly don't have anything like it.
I think the US has more freedom of speech (although it's hard to tell without training in constitutional law over 24 official languages (25 if you want to count Welsh, is this EU, Europe, or Council of Europe? Might need to add more…) and a split between common and (multiple subtypes of) civil law), but also I think it's a difference in detail not in kind.
I've had several chronic issues, including cancer surgery and the followon therapies, that I in no way wanted, that stretched out years, ensuring that we (the family) spent our ~$10K deductible for several years running. I've seen this with quite a few other people, as well. It is certain that we would have been bankrupted w/o middling quality corp health insurance. We have also had many $1000s in dental bills, in a year, quite a few times.
The idea that you could self finance these yearly cash flow (up to, what, $100K?) is absurd, unless you are really rich, but you seem to be somewhat price sensitive, so I dunno.
OTOH my sister-in-law makes > $500K/y as an anesthesiologist, and her spouse is a pathologist sadly making somewhat less, so on average the family must be doing great!
Yeah no, my Euro-fruends are aghast at the medical situation here in the US, and we all do view it as a massive effective tax on the unlucky that Europeans more or less don't have to worry about.
We don't have a free market in health care unless you have no coverage, then you can actually negotiate prices. What we have is a monster, and the monster we have today is way way worse than the monster we had in the early 90s.
Not that it helps to say these things. Most of you are either a) bigtech employees with nice healthcare plans and maybe don't care that much (until you're no longer bigtech), or b) fintech employees (same), or c) too young to remember what 80%/20% plans were like back in the day (or never had a non-$WORK plan) and therefore all too willing to demand and/or accept any purported solution that isn't. I hope it helps to say these things here.
Meanwhile we've had a lot of factors pushing up inflation in medical services, so when you add it all up it sucks, but it sucks for all sorts of artificial reasons.
College education can be had for super cheap in the US via community colleges. Going to an expensive college is a lifestyle choice and I know many people who spend first 2 years in local community colleges and then move to the state college system.
College education in Germany and most other EU members is truly cheap: you have semester fees well under 500 EUR (when they were raised to that in Germany, massive protests pushed them back), plus living costs, no matter where in the country you went to high school or your parents live, no matter whether you’re sticking around at Eastern Bavaria University of Applied Sciences (a relatively new institution serving a traditionally less-prosperous part of the state, with enrollment open to anyone who got an Abitur) or managed to win one of the competitive computer science spots at Technische Universität München: both have semester fees around 100 EUR.
They do. It's been quantified. There are many states with no income tax.
A 230k salary and corporate health insurance is going to put you ahead of almost every European software shop.
I love Germany and enjoyed my time there, but I choose to work in the states and have the financial security that can only be gained by saving money from a high salary.
Still, I would love to see some friction added to the layoff process in the US. Perhaps larger mandatory severance periods. Make layoffs possible, but not easy.
There are regressive taxes (e.g., sales taxes / VAT) which are certainly lower in America than most of the rest of the world, and some American states deliberately starve their government of income so that they cannot be obligated to provide basic services and instead shift things to user fees.
I'd put myself on the Europe-side of employment law/regulation ideals.
A small handful of countries in Europe*
Those making less than a certain amount can only be terminated:
a) immediately for cause (theft/fraud/etc)
b) with notice for poor performance
c) with notice and a legislated payout for redundancy where the job is no longer required.
Those earning above a certain amount need to negotiate any/all of these into their contract.
Admittedly it does occasionally result in employees being reinstated whose sacking was (IMO) completely justified. I don't like those specific instances, but I figure it's the price you have to pay for a system that is tilted slightly in favour of employees.
[0] The actual laws are rubbish though, they're intentionally obtuse/vague owing to industrial relations being a political minefield and no government wanting to touch it for fear of voter pushback.
I've lived in two countries that went through this transition in labor laws to follow the neoliberal playbook. Guess what happened.
See also “less regulation will mean more agile and competitive market which will auto regulate itself”, etc.
We ended up with a recession and less rights.
Don’t want to reveal the countries, but it’s a common tale.
Also don't think you are special to live in two countries. This will not dox you.
It's against the law to steal money. That's a regulation we need to keep.
It's also against the law to build a house if the existing homeowners vote that you can't. That's a regulation that makes the market less efficient, though I can see the reasoning behind it.
It doesn’t get prosecuted nearly as much as other types of theft.
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
This isn't actually true. The total US tax burden is very similar to that of other modern nations.
Only if you're a highly sought after tech person and thus have actual leverage. Farm workers, hospitality employees, construction workers - they're all exploited just the same.
Sure, I make more than 2x the salary, but the cost of living of a bit tech hub chips away most of it. Specially housing, which has increased dramatically since Covid. Even with my big fat tech salary, getting in the properly ladder seems to be years away.
Pay less taxes? sure, but then you have to pay for everything and then some, and everything is incredibly expensive. And we don't even have children yet. I can't imagine being able to afford childcare even with my current income.
I agree that I choose the worst time to move over. In the last year we experienced drop in stock prices combined with soaring inflation, which means that both my income went down, and my expenses went up. Also it's not like I can change employers and get a better deal. Even if the job market wasn't depressed, my visa (L1) doesn't allow me to change employers. Also the latest visa bulletin pushed the current date of my visa category back a couple of years, so Green Card seems like a somewhat distant dream.
All in, I'm not sure my quality of life in this country is better (and the UK itself is not doing great lately).
You only get to the part where it's all worth it once you've settled into the new country, gotten a few jobs/promotions/started a business, bought a house, made lots of friends, learnt the new culture (not such a huge shock for UK->US), etc.
This takes years and sometimes a whole generation!
Maybe after I get my green card I can get a pay cut and move to a LCOL area. But again, is it worth it? I can also get a fully remote job and move back to my hometown by the mediterranean.
No, there's nothing easier about hiring US employees. It only makes it easier to fire them. This reduces the risk of bad hires for the employers, by allowing them to be easily fired.
That encourages employers to be less risk-averse in hiring, but, once again, it does not facilitate the hiring process.
Whether Americans pay far more for health insurance, and whether they're far more likely to be bankrupted by a health crisis, has a very straightforward answer: "yes."
Privatised social services - most obviously health, but also some utilities, transport systems, rented housing, and so on - are de facto corporate taxes.
Americans are subjected to constant and insistent "private good, government bad" propaganda from birth, so it's not always easy to get this point across.
Even so. If you're being forced to pay for essential services, and those services are unaffordable and/or may bankrupt you, you would - unquestionably - find that public ownership would be significantly less precarious and more affordable.
I suspect the labor protections in Europe are part of the reason there aren't many billion dollar software companies there and the salaries are low, hiring is risky when firing is hard.
Care to elaborate on why this is a bad thing? Also, software salaries are not all salaries and are probably not all that representative to the bigger picture.
Some employees that capture a piece of that wealth funnel it back into more startups/growth (Silicon Valley) creating more jobs, more growth and more wealth (not to mention whatever the new startup is doing is usually creating a new thing people want too).
Software salaries are extremely high, but software companies in the US pay a lot in non software roles too.
On net you end up way in a way richer society that operates this way vs. one that incentivizes not operating this way.
That doesn't mean there should be zero protections from abuse, but it's important to be cautious about the net effect of these sorts of regulations and how you can end up trapped in a worse local maximum because of them.
In a society where you can take bigger risks, make bigger bets, you can get a lot bigger wins at scale. I think that's a good/important thing.
It's probably true that it's easier to upscale a company in the US. The hire and fire strategy wouldn't work here as it would only attract poorly educated people that are willing to take any job. It may be a cultural difference, but most middle class people like to have financial stability here, even if payment is lower in that case.
I think that for software companies, the history of computers plays a big role as well. US has always been at the forefront when it comes to hardware, (military) investments and research of integrated circuits and computers, which led to big companies like IBM and subsequently Silicon Valley companies like Apple and MS. I think it may not be the best example because there isn't really any other country or continent that equals the US here, regardless of wages and labor rules.
Then there's health insurance which never stops going up, and having to save a large portion of each check for our own retirements because when we're past 50 we're relegated to greeting at WalMart.
I'm not sure which is better, since each Euro country is different and such, but just looking at salary numbers isn't much to go on.
I also think this type of European mentality is the reason for its stagnation. Constant regulation that saps the energy out of amazing talent in Europe.
I wish we could fight for more rights. We are too spread out for protests to work. The politicians do everything they can to separate themselves from their electorate. And the average person doesn't have enough money to weather a week of no paychecks. Meanwhile half the populace gets angry at the thought of helping out anyone beneath them as they don't want them to get ahead.
The worst is that you have a very vocal minority trying to constantly burn down the house so that they can be king of the burn pit.
One word, Unions.
Its why Europe is doing so well with workers rights in STEM today compared to America.
All this to say, it’s probably legal.
What is the purpose of these 'rights'? As a software engineer in America, who's been laid off many times, I get (1) unemployment, (2) 100% free medical (few SW engineers apply, but most who are laid off would be eligible, if they cared),(3) a free vacation for however long as I want, (4) lots of savings because I make so much more than my European counterparts, and (5) a great job market so I can rinse and repeat 1-5. Exactly what am I missing? Having spoken to many non-American devs... they're the ones being abused by being forced to work for sub-market wages for very little gain, and very little opportunity should they decide to branch out on their own.
How does one end up being laid off many times? Have you had a long career or do you specifically seek out high-risk high-reward jobs?
Or just the roll of the dice?
Sometimes just a roll of the dice. Large companies tend to lay off more. If you've only worked in startups, it's very possible you may never be laid off. I've never been laid off despite working 20 years in industry.
Working in banks, FAGMAN, etc, you are much more likely to be laid off. I guess you could consider that high-risk, but those jobs are low-risk overall imo, because they pay a lot more than startups.
Could you explain this one? Do you mean via medicaid?
However, I looked it up, and she was right. Plugged in my numbers into healthcae.gov, and I got a call from medicaid the next day. Even though I had made the equivalent of >240k per-annum based just on my January income (was laid off in Jan), I qualified for medicaid for my kids immediately (my wife and I would have qualified in a few months in my state due to how they count income, but in the meantime, qualified for a heavily subsidized rate). Medicaid in my state takes income by the week, so since I made no money in the week, my income was considered zero, so my kids got free medical. Some time later we found out my wife is pregnant, so she was also covered by medicaid.
A few things. Firstly, I explicitly called out to the medicaid guy how much money I was expecting to make (almost 300k), as well as how much savings I had. He told me it didn't matter since I made zero in the past week, and medicaid is by the week. Secondly, I explicitly asked, since I expected to make a shit ton of money this year, if I had to pay it back. He said no. Even if I were to make a million dollars this year or a billion, I would never owe anything for those months we were on medicaid.
Of course, I also qualified for unemployment, but that income put us below the medicaid threshold.
Medicaid was better than our private insurance (which was itself a posh PPO plan). I know this because my youngest daughter ended up in the hospital twice and needed an ambulance ride. The november ride cost us more than a thousand. The medicaid ride was free. All things considered, especially given my new job, we saved a good amount of money being laid off.
At the end of it all, I got a new job in April and the new insurance kicked in in May. It was actually hard to get off medicaid since they didn't really have a way to do that (I guess it's not 'intended' for those making a lot of money with periods of unemployment). We had to struggle to explain to the state we didn't need their money anymore and were insured. They insisted on keeping us insured anyway. I was okay with this but my wife thought we shouldn't squander state funds, so she called regularly and finally got through to someone who would cancel it for us (I had already sent in my income change notification forms, but whatever system they had in place didn't remove me).
Rights enshrined by legislation are worth a bit more than individual agreements
My 100% free medical is enshrined by the law in my state, which sets the eligibility guidelines for medicaid. Please stop parroting misinformation and discouraging people from using the available welfare programs. So many people I've spoken with thought I was crazy for applying to medicaid and didn't do so themselves because they thought they wouldn't be eligible, but they would have been.
There is a price for that, of course, but to try to claim that the US is better in this particular area is a weak argument. When you use a personal anecdote, it becomes ridiculous.
Given that my anecdote is not about particular policies (although in my state, the public medical is protected as much as any European state), but rather the big picture, and given that American software are typically richer than their European counterparts, I think it's pretty clear that we can make that claim.
Additionally, a company putting this language in their termination agreement doesn't make it legal.
I agree that "withholding pay" is not the answer here, but if it went to court it might net out in the end.
For all the other just absurd lack of rights employees have in the US, that at least is one that employees do have. Companies are legally _not allowed_ to stop you from discussing your salary with coworkers, or punish you in any way for you having done so.
You just show up to the office, your fob doesn't work, and security walks out to inform you that you don't work here anymore and to expect an email from HR.
(Will a good company do this? No. Could they if they wanted to, and totally get away with it? You bet!)
- Your company is most certainly not allowed to break the NLRA. No company is.
- But your company can terminate your employment without cause whenever they like, as long as it's not over something that breaks the law, and as long as they pay the associated full severance.
- You talk about your salary. And given the vast majority of jobs aren't "my employer's so great, I get paid so well" but "there is so much inequality, let's talk about salaries so we can see how deep the rot goes", it's not going to be in a positive light.
- A short while later (definitely not immediately, your company's not a nice company, and it's going to take some time to make sure it has anything on you that they can legally fire you over that doesn't violate the NLBA) your company fires you, without reason, but with full severance.
- You challenge them to provide a reason
- Their lawyers point out they are under no obligation to provide you with a reason because they are complying with "termination without cause" legislation, and that if you think your dismissal was in violation of the law, you take it to court.
Now you have a problem, because now you're going to have to take them to court and prove that they only reason they could have fired you is because you talked about your salary. Can you afford that court case or is it cheaper to take the severance? We're not talking about a happy happy justice "laws work" world, we're talking about the real world, and specifically the real, nasty, world of shit paying US companies, where you aren't a valuable employee but are a disposable asset to be replaced by a cheaper alternative the moment you give them reason to do so, whether that reason is legal or not, because they know you can't afford the challenge, and they know they just need any reason for you to make the case that it was more likely because you talked about salaries than anything else.
I neither want nor desire government to be my parent