Hacker News Reader

> In the UK (and most other places with fairly strong employee protections I imagine)

People keep saying this, but I'm not at all convinced anyone commenting really understands UK employment law. It's really only after 2 years of working for the same company that you get any decent employment protection.

It takes a bit more legal work, but if within the first 2 years they don't want you, they can get rid of you. If you're within your first 3 months of probation, they can just extend it to 6 months and get rid of you.

The UK is not a great country these days to go "employment laws keep you safe". There are better ones.

If you don't want these rug pulls and employment laws to keep getting watered down, instead of asking about 4 day work weeks, start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.

So I made a very vague comment about it being more tricky to get rid of employees in the UK. If you think it's not actually that hard as "it takes a bit more legal work", great.. but we still seem to generally agree. It's a bit patronising to imply I know nothing about UK employment law because we have a small difference of opinion around how robust we would say the protections are.

It was a minor anecdotal comment based on my own experience of hiring/managing employees. Maybe I'm a crap manager but I've always found it labourious to get rid of people (especially passed the 2-year mark as you say). I may as well add that my wife has worked in HR for coming up to 15 years as well and I've been privy to all sorts of juicy legal drama via her.

I generally try and give every response to me some consideration but I'm not sure what else to say. Seems like maybe you just wanted to use my comment as a segway into your point about the erosion of employee protections, which you're entitled to do of course.

> Seems like maybe you just wanted to use my comment as a segway into your point about the erosion of employee protections, which you're entitled to do of course.

That’s like a quarter of the comments on HN at this point (minus the employee protections bit, usually it’s something much more insipid). It’s pretty much impossible not to trigger someone. Everyone’s got their pet issues and culture wars these days.

Well, that's...fine, I guess, right? I mean that's how conversations work in real life, right? Just as long as the parent commenter doesn't interpret it as a direct attack or a direct argument. It just takes the conversation down a different path.

I'll agree with the word choice of 'insipid' however...

Segways are dangerous, just look what happened to the one time owner [1].

ITYM "segue".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Heselden

I think I typed something like that originally but my phone autocorrect didn't like it. Assumed Segway was the American spelling

Meh, you contributed to a certain meme and they contributed a counter-meme because they feel strongly about it. I don't see the problem though their tone might put you on the defense.

But these vague claims are how we end up with memes like "oh that would never happen in $place/Europe/Japan" and such.

>If you don't want these rug pulls and employment laws to keep getting watered down, instead of asking about 4 day work weeks, start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.

I think in the US employers would be more amenable to a four day work week than making it harder to fire people arbitrarily

Please show me the candidates that aren’t coin operated by big business. Either party is entirely beholden to the giant corporations and lobbyists. So voting literally does nothing.

>start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.

Unfortunately they may have other less savoury policies. Which is [one of several reasons] why I don't vote.

>If you don't want these rug pulls and employment laws to keep getting watered down, instead of asking about 4 day work weeks, start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.

What would "better employment laws" look like for you? After all, the parent's theory was that she was fired because she was on the verge of getting additional employment protection, and her performance was mediocre, so rather than risk being saddled with an underperforming employee they fired her just to be safe. Stronger laws against termination would make this problem worse, either by causing companies to be even more aggressive to fire people before their probationary period ends, or try to mitigate risk earlier in the hiring pipeline.

> As a result, it's very common for people to lose their jobs within a few months of starting.

The rest of your post seems to contradict this, or at least it's a bit inconsistent. You can lose your job during or at the end of the probation period, because the probation period didn't work out, but it's very uncommon to be laid off shortly after you've passed your probation period.

I guess you mean that this is the US, so this was a kind of "probation period" for her, but in that case it should have been made very clear that she was failing.

If you lay an employee off and it's a surprise to them, you've fucked up.

Yeah, very badly worded sorry. It's almost always at your "probationary review" when you either lose your job or get your position confirmed (or your probation extended in some cases).

Completely agree with your comment about any surprises being a big fail. I made a similar point even. Not well done

Ah yes, agreed, spot on about the loss/confirmation/extension.

Unless you've worked at a UK company for at least 2 years you are effectively at-will and can be terminated for any or no reason, except a specifically illegal reason.

In the US, that does not happen. The expectation is someone only gets terminated in the first year if they are terrible. Unless it’s a tiny startup, such a stint would raise concerns.

Yeah feels quite the opposite: as long as you're not actively harming the business seems like you usually get a year.

What an interesting difference, I had no idea.

Seems like a good system given the context in the US. Classic American hands off approach that it's more of an unspoken rule than legislation etc :)

But anyway, in many ways I can see a system that like working very well for some of the types of people that need it most (e.g. entry level, neurodiverse etc). Makes the 6 month probation system look harsher by comparison.

> The expectation is someone only gets terminated in the first year if they are terrible

That's an over generalization. I've walked a few people out the door within the first 3-6 months who weren't performing that well. They weren't terrible, just ultimately not a fit for one reason or another.

There's actually a debate in the biz/MBA world on "hire slow, fire fast"[0].

I believe Reed Hastings at Netflix has advocated in the past for a hybrid approach "hire fast, fire fast" - interviews can be nearly useless and unfair. See people who are excellent employees but poor "test takers" vs people who are actually terrible and incompetent but can crush an interview.

In my experience you just don't know what's going to happen until "the rubber meets the road".

[0] - https://hbr.org/2014/03/hire-slow-fire-fast

You know, I was expected to hate that part from Reed Hastings when I first started reading it, but he is right. Interviews are nearly useless and unfair. Giving people a chance to learn technical and professional skills when you are starting out, even if you terminated later, is important.

That's interesting - I have always treated the first 3-6 months as a period to make sure the person is a fit and is ramping at the right speed, and letting them go if there is an issue within that period makes way more sense to me than keeping them on to struggle for a year. It's not a greater red flag for me to see someone got fired two months in than a year and a half in - in fact, the year and a half would cause me to ask a lot more questions.

> "managing out" process.

as someone who is unaware of related laws in UK/US, can you elaborate more? or if possible cite some examples? Thank you.

Basically, once you've worked somewhere in the UK for 2+ years you generally have some statutory/default protections. One of which is a set of laws around unfair or "constructive" dismissal[1].

e.g. if we had a falling out and I fired you on the spot, you could take me to an employment tribunal. Likewise, if I made your life hell and essentially forced you to quit, it would amount to the same thing.

These laws ensure that formal, standardised disciplinary processes are followed. This makes sure that employees are subject to the same process as their peers and aren't treated unfairly and that there is a formal, documented justification if an employee is ever terminated.

From an employer POV, this is sometimes a bit annoying when an employee is a bit shit because -- barring cases of gross misconduct -- you still have to put them through the disciplinary song and dance before getting rid of them. "Managing out" is the process of essentially setting them up to fail, you put them on a PIP or something (Performance Improvement Plan) where you'd basically say "you need to be hitting these targets by this date or you're gone". A lot of the time both parties know the individual in question won't hit set targets so the whole thing often feels like a bit of theatre. Keeps things fair though and stops employers taking the piss.

I'm not an expert on US (or UK) employment law but my understanding is that terminating an employee in the US requires far less oversight/justification.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/unfair-and-constructive-dismiss...

Her ability to "just move on" may be compromised by having a very short stay on her resume, and no reference.

I hope she finds something else quickly but many companies look for any red flags as sufficient reason not to take the risk. This kind of experience has real implications for a person's future prospects, at least for several years.

It certainly doesn't help the resume, but I doubt it hurts very much, if at all. This is sales, people understand the environment/current market dynamic, etc. Potential future employer will understand very well that Cloudflare had layoffs, that she was impacted and that's it.