Comment by briandon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by briandon | Hacker News Reader

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  “For the 100 employees we have in France, we have 10 
  employee representatives, for whom we have to organize 
  weekly meetings even when there is nothing to discuss,” 
  Haan says. “Every time a social security contribution 
  changes, which is frequently, we have to update software 
  and send our HR people for training. We can’t fire anyone 
  without exorbitant costs.”

Instead of viewing the weekly meetings as a chance to touch base with his employees, learn about them, pick their brains for ways to improve the business, and the like ... he whines about the requirement to have the once-a-week meetings.

Then, he complains about having to tweak their payroll/withholding software and send the HR folks for training.

He must shed actual tears when regulatory agencies in the countries he sells his products into change the requirements that affect the design and source materials so that he has to have them tweaked or even redesigned from the ground up.

Sociopathy in management/leadership is a very real problem.

What the fuck are you talking about?

He's not complaining about having to tweak his accounting software - he's complaining about having to do that frequently, and seemingly without any good reason.

Usually, when regulatory standards about material products change, they change for good reasons - e.g. poisonous plastics in children's toys. Anyone can understand why such changes are needed. However, if you're changing this or that detail of a country's tax code, without any good motive (i.e. when the politicians are obviously just picking up the low-hanging fruit to please the superficial (majority of the) public, but allow the deeper, structural problems in the economic incentives to persist), you just incur an unnecessary cost on the companies!

Kinda reminds me of the "menu costs", an implicit cost associated with inflation, which is the cost of reprinting the restaurant menus when the prices change too much. An economic cost that exists because of the inherent inefficiencies of our system.

How often do you think that the French government is changing the social security contribution requirements? Every week?

W/re to "menu costs", if you're running a restaurant in Weimar-era Germany or some other milieu where hyperinflation is running rampant, then maybe you'll have to use xeroxed paper menus for a while. Obviously the cost of reprinting your menus is not going to be your chief problem. Under normal conditions, "menu costs" and the like (reconfiguring software to increase or decrease workers' social security contributions) is not going to be a business-breaking expense.

Pretending that it's such a hassle that it will drive him to madness or sink his business is ridiculous.

You do realize that these things cost real money, right? Costing money for meaningless, valueless endeavors makes a business's overhead go up. When the overhead goes up, it has to be cut in other ways, usually by cutting employees. Unfortunately, that's difficult in France, which is why he is complaining. It's not sociopathy, it's business.

Meaningless, valueless endeavors like the once-a-week meeting that Haan was terrified of having to have with representatives of his own workforce? Or is government mandated profit-sharing the meaningless valueless endeavor?

Somehow, inexplicably, these pernicious overheads never manage to take a significant toll on of executive compensation, perks, and the like.

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