And this is one why US engineers are paid way more. Good luck doing that in Europe.
Kind of like how working in software dev as a contractor typically nets you more raw money than working in a comparable role doing a similar job for someone else. However, as a contractor you are responsible for paying for things like health insurance yourself. As a hired employee, you will typically have those things provided to you by your employer, but you will get paid less in raw money, because those things get priced into your salary (sidenote: which your employer probably has a discount rate for anyway, so even if it was paid out to you in cash and you paid your own insurance, you would have had net less money, so it is kind of a comparative win-win for both sides here).
For me personally as an employee, I would rather my employer be able to fire me for watching porn on my work equipment or be able to go after me for intentionally sabotaging company’s infra. Because I do not plan on doing either of those things, so just having that extra money in exchange for not being able to do those things unpunished is the easy choice, personally.
Except that’s not really true throughout most of Europe. Yes firing someone for sucking at their job might be more expensive. All the other stuff? Not really, as long as you can prove it
I am not from EU, so I was mostly going off the comment in this thread that was lamenting how “terrible” employment in the US due to employees being easily fireable for watching porn on employer-provided equipment. What you said makes it sound way more reasonable.
There are loads of cases like that in the EU. Going to prison I never heard of, but depending on jurisdiction, I assume it's also a possibility if the damage is large enough and affected other parties not just the business of your employer.
Better workers' rights protect you from employer abuse, but don't absolve you from responsibilities of your own actions at work.
You're going to navigate the legal system in India or China because some kid you hired for cheap decided to vandalize your codebase and database? Good luck.
Like, is that supposed to be a brag that in EU it is nearly impossible to fire an employee for watching porn on the employer-provided work equipment? If anything, I would consider firing them for being so stupid as to not consider one of many easily accessible alternatives that they almost certainly had access to, like a smartphone (just hopefully not an employer-provided one).