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Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

If training is voluntary and pay back in case of termination by employee is agreed in the contract, sure. Otherwise there's no reason why a company is ok to accept the risk of money loss due to the employee being hit by a bus, but not ok to accept the risk of failure to retain that person.

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> If training is voluntary and pay back in case of termination by employee is agreed in the contract, sure.

It's insane how willing american culture is to waive what should be rights if they're signed away. Really, the primary right available to you is the right to be railroaded by contract.

How American culture is related to my comment?

You’re not living up to your moniker’s namesake with this comment. As a general matter, people in fact should have enough agency to be able to evaluate a situation and decide to sign away certain protections. There are many exceptions to this, but signing away one’s ability to freely leave a job without consequence in exchange for upskilling at their employer’s expense falls squarely into the principle above.

The funny thing is, we know the outcome of your line of thinking. Eventually it becomes normalized and part of every contract. That's why we had to stamp out non-competes because otherwise companies would gladly collude to make it so there is no choice.

Have you read contracts, terms of services? You don't acually need to. I'll summarize 100% of those documents for you right now in an easy to understand post with no legalese.

> you own nothing

> the company owns everything

> you have no rights

> you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have

> you agree to binding arbitration with the firm we pay, just in case you ever get it in your silly little head that you do have rights

> you cannot do anything the company doesn't like

> the company can do anything it wants whether you like it or not

> the company is not responsible for anything ever

> the company makes absolutely no guarantees about anything

> however you are liable for everything that you do that we do not approve of

That's what happens when you can alienate people from their rights via contract: alienation turns into legal boilerplate present in every single one of those documents. The only possible reason for a company not to do this is ignorance or legal liability.

Contracts are good, they are a proof of mutual engagement.

Contracts that enforce only one position are not good - this is why we have string labour laws. A contract in France cannot have anything that is outside the labour law. They are completely generic.

I'm not arguing against the existence of contracts. I'm arguing against the position that people should have the "ability" to waive away their own rights. Such an "ability" inevitably leads to the boilerplate situation I described above.

My country's laws work the same way as what you described. I've had lawyers straight up laugh when I presented them some of these abusive contracts. This "waive your rights" business seems to be an american thing.

This is why I am not suggesting that people waive their rights - this should be completely forbidden because it will be used against them (and in France it is not possible for you to waive your rights, that part of the contract just does not exist in the eye of the law)

What I suggested is to have another company take the burden of the training that happened right before someone left.

If an employee has training, they're more attractive to other employers. Not the case with buses.

If they don't want to lose people after a training, then hire people with that skill directly, for a higher salary, no?

if everyone does that, then were will the training come from?

a friend of mine had the same problem with hiring junior developers. by the time they had enough experience so that he could make a profit from their work, they left for higher paying jobs. he barely broke even most of the time so he ended up closing his business because it wasn't viable.

Obvious answer to this problem is to offer more money after training. Keeping someone on junior salary after this person reached next level is not smart.

but that pushes the break-even point out even further.

If that affects your break-even point you may have problems with your business model. Hiring juniors, training them and keeping on junior salary is a gross misunderstanding of how things should work.

that may well be. my friend was in asia doing classic outsourcing for european and american companies, which means he was competing against other companies in that space. i don't know the details. maybe he was offering more but not enough, maybe he didn't get good enough contracts, or maybe outsourcing with juniors simply doesn't work.

it's also an issue of perception. my company once tried to attract juniors with a high salary (at least 50% higher than local average) but that meant that we couldn't give them a raise early enough. after a year they got a better offer and left.

I usually offer 0,6-0,8 of the salary they will get at middle level (i.e. reaching full autonomy and being able to complete 90% of tasks). This offer is limited in time: they have 6-12 months to grow or they are out. Recognition of their personal growth and higher salary is a good motivation to stay if there’s no red flags in the company (poor processes, toxic environment, frequent overtime etc).

in which country are you working?

I hire remotely within +-2 hours from CET (Europe, Middle East, Africa), but I‘m not working for agencies.

well then stop being a shitty employer if you have a problem with people moving on after you train them up. i thought we were into the free market here.

It’s a free-rider problem. How can you compete with me when only you bear training costs while only I benefit from the worker’s skill?

A key question is whether the training is actually worth what’s being charged for it.

is it though? you’re training people so they can be competent at the job they’ve been hired for and then they what take their skills and go do the same thing at a different company? Why would they do that when they already have a job at your company? There must be a reason for them to be leaving in sufficient numbers to cause you problems…

maybe if i don't suffer the cost of training juniors then i can offer a higher salary?

Or maybe I have all the customers because I can afford to sell at lower margins.

sure, but if i don't pay a higher salary then i won't be able to poach the employees you just trained.

So you pay them a little more but less than the cost of training. Win-win (previous employer loses).

The same issue comes up any time a company makes an "investment" in their staff. The bigger the investment, the bigger the incentive to jump ship.

then maybe you should stop training people; or think for a second that if you are the one training everybody you can take a little less profit in exchange for starving your competitors of trained employees. Besides it works itself out anyway if they stay on longer even though it takes you longer to recoup your training costs. tldr this training argument is full of contradictions

it works itself out anyway if they stay on longer

but they don't stay longer. and unfortunately a pleasant work environment doesn't help because juniors don't know yet that other companies are different. it takes working for a few companies before someone learns to value work culture over a higher salary.

finding the right balance is not easy.

Enjoy living in a country with poorly-trained workers then, I guess.

that's the challenge, especially for foreign companies trying to hire locals. in china big companies pay good salaries but they also often don't have a good work culture. i got better results hiring juniors who have not yet experienced that work culture. at least in china students do learn programming so they are not poorly trained. a friend of mine tried that in another country and could not make it work.

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