Layoffs here are always done in conjunction with the unions. People are moved to different jobs, helped with training etc...
Only in very critical jobs they'd walk you out immediately but then you still get the pay.
People literally would just disappear day to day. I've had several instances where I only found out a colleague had been fired because I tried to write them on Slack only to find that their account had been deactivated
Personally I felt constantly worried working in such an environment and I don't want to work for another US company again if I can help it
There are of course bad cases in the EU, but in my experience it's way less common than in the US
I watched a layoff take out half the security team during an incident. That was fun.
I feel like global acronym bankruptcy is overdue.
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/TLA.html
...
The self-effacing phrase “TDM TLA” (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin “What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?” Paul's straight-faced response: “There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms.” (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.
It might be interesting to take a sample of TLAs used and look what words can be used in those spots. If the third position is 90% likely to be a noun, that could change the distribution... guessing not in a significant way itself but it could be interesting to see.
There's a scene where they put a folder in front of him with a brightly-coloured sailboat on the cover labelled "LOOKING AHEAD." It's exactly as grim as it sounds.
"I hope, considering your [pause to check personnel file] over nineteen years of service to the firm you will understand that these measures are in no way a reflection of the firm's feelings towards your performance or your character"
You can work for a US company in the UE. They have to follow the local rules like anybody else.
Most of my colleagues were shocked by the treatment. Moral took a dive after that.
That being said, if they want to get rid of employees, they always find a way. And the European market isn't as dynamic as the US one, so there are pros and cons. Personally, all things considered (risks of layoffs, PTO, cost of living) I'm happier in Europe but it really depends on individual situation.
One thing that I saw (but never experienced myself) happen with North American companies wanted to leave EU is just doing their usual things (thus not following local rules), and then people have to sue and wait many years to be compensated.
In principle, an organization that is built on reciprocal loyalty is more productive than one that treats people as interchangeable cogs, because people are individually happier and go to greater lengths to achieve the shared goals, making them more productive. However, this arrangement can only be built on trust, and trust doesn't scale well past the Dunbar number. Thus, spirit of the rules is replaced by letter of the rules (which can be meaningfully enforced).
Thus, the larger the bureaucracy, the more soulless it is even in individual interactions between people within it, and the more it treats those people as interchangeable cogs that are there solely to serve the overall function of the organization. If the organization is a for-profit corporation, its overall function is profit, and thus megacorps always tend to optimize squeezing their employees.
Short-term this can be reversed somewhat if leadership is concentrated and opinionated. E.g. when the company grows out of a startup dominated by a single founder, and that founder has certain ethical standards or beliefs that they enforce on the org, overriding the natural tendency. This arrangement never lasts long-term, though - either the founder goes away and is replaced by generic management which has neither the desire nor the capacity to go against the current, or the founder becomes corrupt.
Lots of US tech companies like to pretend otherwise, but a complaint or two from the misclassified employee can create plenty of pain for the employer for lying to both the US and foreign governments about the genuine nature of the relationship. And these penalties generally go not to the employee but to the employer, since the noncompliance is generally around employer tax, payroll, and reporting obligations as well as laws which are meant to protect employee rights.
But for example, someone who is fired or laid off in a way that wouldn’t comply with local employment protections if the employment relationship were correctly classified might assert their misclassification claim so that they can also get compensation for their wrongful termination.
If that happens, then the company not only has to scramble to catch up on the overdue social contributions for the complaining employee and pay any applicable penalties, but also likely have to undergo an audit of their other workers in that country plus the same consequences for them.
There’s a reason why any US tech company that’s big enough to be a juicy financial target tends to do this correctly, and why companies like Deel, Remote.com, and their less tech-branded competitors (such as Velocity Global) are gaining popularity among people who want to do this correctly at smaller scales than those for which it makes sense to set up foreign subsidiaries.
When smaller companies take this particular shortcut, are risking severe financial consequences for the company if the authorities discover it, and in many cases this also comes with personal liability for some of the executives who are neglecting their legal duties.
If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.
> If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.
That wouldn't work because it would be an obvious sham designed mainly to avoid the EU company's responsibilities under employment law. Courts see through those shams very quickly.
Technical people -- including me -- like to try and reduce the law to a series of digital if/then/else tests, but reality is much more analogue. If you're one of a small number of highly-experienced remote contractors engaged by a US-based client with no local subsidiary, the authorities are likely to accept the arrangement, or at least not to spend significant amounts of time investigating it. If you're one of very many Uber-driver-like "contractors" working for a company that is obviously dodging its local employment law obligations, then they're much more likely to be interested.
> where I only found out a colleague had been fired because I tried to write them on Slack only to find that their account had been deactivated
The colleague will just be one that's based in the US, but that doesn't make it much easier.
An employee decided to be laid off is equally written off immediately, it's just delegated to the regional/local HR to "manage the rest".
If you're not escorted off-premise, you get to enjoy some additional days/weeks of colleagues and managers telling you how surprised they were...
its much easier to find another job in US because of this though.
Most purely European companies don't do that. Actually, unfortunately, some of them do, because of American influence. But for sure they didn't use to.
I personally have interviewed for 7 enterprise dev jobs and I have had 2 coding interviews and those were simple.
Now, every job I apply for has 4-5 rounds, leetcode is more common, they do behavioural and system design rounds that you have to prepare for, etc. One job I applied to even asked me two behavioural questions via email before I even talked to someone. Something's truly off.
European companies have very little staff turnover, so new jobs are fewer. Another aspect is that salaries are very even across much of the industry, as it is often negotiated by unions and unless you are also switching roles (e.g. into management) salaries at different companies will be very similar. That is why working for the same company for a long time is much more common in Europe.
Can you specify what country you're drawing these facts from? Europe does not have standard employment law, and I definitely haven't experienced salaries being set by unions or being common across the industry.
There are also union negotiated rates for pay across much of the industry. Even if you switch employer your pay might remain exactly the same, unless you also get promoted and into a higher level or a different industry. "Flächentarifvertrag" it is called.
Obviously this drastically disincentivizes hoping employers.
OK, good to know. I definitely haven't experienced flat income after taxes post salary bump, even though I pay 52% marginal on my income (in Ireland).
> Obviously this drastically disincentivizes hoping employers.
I can totally see that. Is it really that common in tech jobs though? I'd have expected this to be much more common in larger, older companies (like the automotive industry).
What is a "tech job"? Wouldn't a job where you are designing the electrical/mechanical/software parts of a car be a "tech job"?
Of course this is much more common in older, well established industries. But that is where most of the "tech jobs" are. Germany, especially labor laws, are hostile to start-ups so it is natural that people get employed at these older companies with union negotiated salaries.
Not really, people get hired all the time that can't do a fizzbuzz.
What EU regulations hamper isn't job creation, it's employee and customer exploitation. The distinction between "job creation" and "employee exploitation" is important.
What the former means in practice is that there is a massive contractor market in the UK and EU. So if companies need temporary staff, they'll hire a contractor. If they need permanent staff then they'll hire an employee. And contractors in the UK & EU are paid significantly more than their employee peers. In fact their pay is much more equivalent to US employees. So companies will make constant tradeoffs between more expensive labor for short-lived projects vs cheaper staff and knowledge retention but stricter employment laws. It's a fair trade most of the time.
So a more accurate way of comparing US vs EU businesses in terms of employees would be US employees vs EU contractors. Things then begin to look a lot more equivalent.
My job is purely transactional. I’ve worked for 10 companies in almost 30 years. I gave them labor and they gave me money. Whenever one side decided the arrangement wasn’t working, I moved on to another job.
I’m personally well acquainted with many people in tech, especially big tech. Many of them are doing little or nothing, certainly not justifying $300k+ salaries.
What you do has risk but is fundamentally more honest - your skills are around technology and output, not navigating corporate bureaucracy.
I don't think most folks graduate college and think, "You know what sounds amazing? Sitting at a desk doing nothing five days a week!"
I expect most of the time they have good reason to be "unproductive," and would respond positively to those reasons getting addressed, or you're not capturing their contributions accurately with whatever metrics you're using to find "slackers."
And people are doing things, I’m not saying they’re sitting making paper airplanes — just things with no value or that drain their value. I had a high school friend who was brilliant, but his career got nerfed when he stuck with a bad tech/business unit.
If you’re the world’s premier expert in some peculiar process that only exists in one place, that’s no mas. Companies have been rolling in dough for a long time and some have way more people than they used to. One big company I deal with went from an account team of 6 to almost 50.
Some of it boils down to ineffective management and lack of mentoring, for sure, and could be addressed in a better way. Some of it is people getting in way over their heads.
I worked at a company where utility companies sent us data files and we created, printed and mailed bills.
In 2008 during the financial crisis the next time I looked for a job (my third), I had two offers relatively quickly - one programming point of sales systems and the other that I accepted programming ruggedized Windows CE devices for field service workers.
Fast forward to 2020 at the height of COVID, I got my one and only BigTech job working at AWS (my 8th job).
Unlike the author of the submitted article, when I got Amazoned 3.5 years later, I shrugged, my $40K severance was deposited in my account and I reached out to my network and targeted outreach to some recruiters in my niche and had four interviews and 3 offers within 3 weeks. Why would I waste time getting emotional about a company knowing that the CEO is 6-7 positions up on the career ladder and I’m just a random number to most of the organization?
A year later in 2024 around 9:00 PM I had a “1-1” with my manager invite for the next morning. I already had my suspicions and told my wife that I am probably going to be laid off in the morning. She said let her know how it goes and we went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning, was notified about my layoff asked when I would get my severance and responded to a recruiter that reached out to me about a week prior.
I started the interview process and three weeks later I had a job making the same as I was making at AWS.
I don’t need to “justify” what I’m making. I have a skillset and experience that are in demand and companies are willing to pay me for it because by employing me they get a positive ROI.
And knowing how to “deal with ambiguity” and focus on how to add business value. If you look at the leveling guidelines of any tech company, anything above mid level is focused on “scope”, “impact” and “dealing with ambiguity”.
Knowing AWS really well is just a tool and it doesn’t hurt that I have a stint at AWS ProServe on my resume
Notice “codez real gud” is not a differentiator.
There is no hard skill you can learn that thousands of of others don’t know that will set you apart.
Well except for some vertical market stuff that will leave you pigeonholed.
Sources:
https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html
https://dropbox.tech/culture/sharing-our-engineering-career-...
There is also COBRA that lets you stay on your employer’s plan. You have to pay the entire premium. I pay $600 a month now and my employer pays $1200 a month. That’s me + family.
If you would work non-contract here in Poland for an equivalent of ~$120k you would pay around $1k USD. If your wife is working she will also pay, of course this also covers all you kids.
So lets say both of you make around $120k here - so you would pay $2k monthly for "free" healthcare and its quality is atrocious. Even for serious stuff you many times need to wait 1-2 years for something, all hospitals are understaffed, the care quality is abysmal.
If you are ambitious and make good money the US is better. Europe in general is better for people that don't aim too high and want the state to enforce some minimum of QoL for them at the expense of the rest.
People in IT who take the employment route rather than contracting, do so because they want job security. eg they might have families. And much as you might be happy with your arrangement, there are plenty in the UK and Europe who do prefer longer-term job security over a few extra £££ in their pocket.
But you’re right that IR35 really hasn’t helped situations either.
Some of my friends have commented that the last few years has been the worst time in their 20+ years as a contractor.
It forced highly specialised professionals into employment in all but name, just without the rights, security, or support. A square peg jammed into a round PAYE hole. And the long-term effect? Exactly what you'd expect: the best talent either left the UK, shifted to servicing overseas clients (where Chapter 10 doesn't apply), or left the field altogether. The real talent pool shrank, not because of market conditions, but because there was no longer a viable way to operate independently.
To make matters worse, the government compounded this by lowering the barriers to import cheaper labour from abroad ("Boriswave"), creating a race to the bottom on wages, with zero incentives for local upskilling or long-term investment in the domestic workforce.
So yes, the job market took a hit - but IR35 didn't just "not help" - it actively accelerated the decline by removing the last flexible, self-directed model for highly skilled work. The damage wasn't cyclical. It was engineered.
For example:
> People lost the ability to operate as businesses, to manage their tax affairs fairly, to invest in their own skills, and to retain profit.
I don’t know a single IT contractor that lost that ability. Maybe in other business sectors, but we are talking about IT here.
> What they got in return was, at best, a modest day-rate bump—hardly compensation for losing all autonomy, business deductions (like training, equipment, downtime), and legal protections.
This is also an exaggeration.
And you’re overlooking the point that IR35 only affects contractors working on BAU or who have worked with the same company for more than 2 years.
Firstly 2 years is a long time in contractor terms. And secondly, most occasions for hiring contractors was to work on new developments. So most of the IT contractors were still outside of IR35.
That’s not to mention that many companies would describe the work in ways that are favourable to working inside IR35 (not to the extent of tax fraud, but to the extent where any BAU responsibilities that were required weren’t the primary responsibility in the job specification.
Ironically places hardest hit by IR35 were government departments rather than businesses. Some of who ended up just adding ~40% to the contracted salary so the government still ended up covering the tax rather than the contractors.
And the very few contractors who were inside IR35 and didn’t get a bump in the contract fee would tell me they were still better off contracting rather than being employed (even taking loss of perks into account).
Now I’m not going to say that IR35 made things easier for contractors. Clearly it didn’t. But it wouldn’t have been catastrophic for the contract market had the employment bubble not also pop shortly afterwards.
You also seem to suggest that IR35 prevented contractors from claiming expenses back in tax, and that simply isn’t true either.
Edit: I will concede that it’s been 3 years since I was last given a budget and told “go hire, you decide who” so if there’s been any legal changes to IR35 since then I might have missed it.
> I don’t know a single IT contractor that lost that ability.
I do. In fact, I knew dozens of people who ran small, legitimate limited companies - offering high-quality services across IT disciplines - who were forced to shut down or stop trading as businesses once clients tightened their risk assessments. In the early days, yes, some niche contractors were spared because they were too hard to replace. But even that dried up as corporate legal teams standardised engagement models and de-risked by banning sourcing services from small business entirely.
> You also seem to suggest that IR35 prevented contractors from claiming expenses back in tax, and that simply isn’t true either.
This is misleading. If you’re inside IR35 or forced into an umbrella, you can only claim expenses on the same terms as an employee of the client. That means you can't offset training, equipment, home office, insurance, downtime, software etc. - because your business isn't recognised as a business anymore. And if you can't make profit, you have nothing to deduct from anyway.
> you’re overlooking the point that IR35 only affects contractors working on BAU or who have worked with the same company for more than 2 years.
This is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. There is no “2-year” IR35 rule. That might relate to travel expenses. IR35 assessments depend on control, substitution, and mutuality of obligation. Even short, project-based work can be deemed inside. And under Chapter 10, only clients carry the liability - so they default to "inside" for anything remotely borderline, including repeat work.
And that’s exactly the issue: having loyal clients and repeat business — something any serious business would strive for — is now penalised. The system structurally disincentivises hiring genuine small consultancies, because clients now carry legal and tax risk for treating you as "outside." So naturally, they avoid it.
And that quote about companies “describing work in ways favourable to IR35” to avoid falling foul of the rules - you realise you’ve just described a legal minefield that only small businesses are forced to navigate? If an individual or a small consultancy tries to deliver a long-term service or repeat work, they're suddenly in danger of being labelled "too BAU" and dragged into inside IR35 or worse, accused of misrepresentation.
Meanwhile, large consultancies are completely exempt. They can supply entire teams of workers to perform exactly the same repeat, embedded, long-term services - even effectively occupying roles inside the client’s organisation - and no one blinks, because the worker isn't the owner of the delivery company. IR35 doesn't apply.
So what you're pointing out as a "grey area" for independents is actually a core business model for Accenture, Capita, Deloitte, etc. - and it's legally protected. They can pump in as many BAU bodies as they like, make profit to their heart's content, and face none of the scrutiny aimed at smaller suppliers. It's a structural bias against worker-owned businesses and it's about making sure the same work flows through corporate channels, where the big business win - and independent economic actors are locked out.
> But it wouldn’t have been catastrophic for the contract market had the employment bubble not also pop shortly afterwards.
That reverses cause and effect. IR35 was the trigger. It removed the incentive to engage skilled local contractors as businesses. Clients - especially in the public sector - stopped hiring small operators entirely to avoid compliance risk. The result wasn’t just tighter budgets - it was the structural removal of independent contracting as a viable model.
And just as IR35 pushed domestic professionals out of the market, post-Brexit immigration reforms ("Boriswave") made it easier for companies to import overseas workers on lower salaries - with sponsorship pathways explicitly designed to undercut local rates. So the market didn't just shrink—it shifted, away from experienced, independent professionals toward cheaper, controllable labour with fewer rights and no negotiation leverage.
The combination was catastrophic. It collapsed the domestic contractor market from both ends—removing the supply of viable independent businesses, and removing the demand for them by creating cheaper alternatives. That wasn't an unfortunate consequence — it was a predictable outcome of policies designed to centralise control and reduce labour costs at all levels whilst maximising corporate profits.
> Contracting is still better than being employed.
That may be true for a small segment of high-end day-rate earners, but it ignores how many people used contracting as a sustainable, long-term way to build independent businesses. For them, IR35 removed the very basis of that independence-profit, autonomy, and client trust.
Thanks for taking the time to share that.
Lots of people, when evaluating the risks of contracting vs employment, find the reward far outweighs the risk. It sounds like you'd be one of them if you were presented with the same choice. And that's a fine decision for you to come to. But that's not going to be the same conclusion for everyone.
Every employee in the US is “at will”.
did you account for rsu value too or just basepay/hours . now that i am a perm employee a big share of my comp comes from rsu.
E.g. the entire I-9 thing and other IRS paperwork, who (if anyone) is responsible for various insurances (unemployment insurance, workers comp, liability insurance, etc), minimum wage and overtime for hourly employees, etc. Many things depend on this distinction.
I can't speak to differences from Europe as I am not familiar with that side of the Atlantic.
The ability to hire and fire easily is critical if you want to build successful companies.
There’s a reason ambitious founders move from Europe to the US and why most billion dollar tech companies are American. Europe has made really bad policy decisions around this for decades and their economy reflects it. Europe is poor and to an extent I don’t think Europeans really understand.
Yes, and it's because of larger, more liquid capital markets make it much easier to obtain VC funding.
> Europe is poor and to an extent I don’t think Europeans really understand.
Europe is definitely not poor in terms of either wealth or income (particularly Western Europe, which is the appropriate comparator for the US).
In my current position I'm hired for an expected 37 hours per week. This can be more if I'm asked to work overtime, but my weekly hours cannot exceed 45 hours per week on average in a 3 month window without additional compensation
Additionally I have six weeks of paid time off every year plus public holidays
If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies
That's not to mention the security of having a legally mandated termination period of minimum 3 months (in which you're, in most cases, not expected to work)
It’s a bunch of copium thinking that American tech workers are working 60-80 hour weeks.
And I know it’s not the norm, but right now I have “unlimited PTO” and most people take at least 5 weeks a year.
If the average American tech worker is making 2x - 4x the average EU worker, they should be able to save more than enough to have a three month cushion.
And we are talking about Google. They have a very generous severance package. Even Amazon where I use to work gave me three months severance.
I don’t care what the “average” is. I plan on taking 30 days this year.
First link -16 days for unlimited PTO vs 14 days without
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/ive-been-an-hr-professiona...
Now if you look at where those numbers come from, this article quotes another article from WSJ (https://archive.is/MVRur) which is also titled "Why You Should Be Wary of the Unlimited Vacation Perk". Hmm...
And the WSJ article, in turn, takes its number from this report: https://www.empower.com/the-currency/work/pursuit-of-pto-res...
Now when you look at the survey, the problem with comparing those numbers is that they are averages for all workers. That is, 14 days without PTO is the average across all companies, not just those that had adopted UPTO. And the 16 days with UPTO is, of course, only for those companies. So the numbers don't actually tell you anything about the effect of "unlimited" PTO adoption in a given company. Those companies where 14 days is the norm are generally not the ones that decide to switch to UPTO because, well, there's no actual benefit in it for them. Companies that do adopt it, like many Big Tech firms in the past few years, are also the ones that had much more generous paid PTO to begin with - at Microsoft, for example, as a senior engineer, I had four weeks of PTO before the switch.
So, you need to look at comparisons before and after UPTO adoption for the same company to see the trend. Conveniently, that very article you linked to has some sources for that, e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-...
There are other negative aspects to it, too. For example, when you have guaranteed vacation PTO, it is wholly separate from other things like paid medical leave. But with UPTO, it's that much harder to argue for it to your manager if you have already taken medical leave that year.
I’m not going to look up the PTO for other BigTech companies. But the one I worked for (Amazon) had 15 days PTO and 5 personal days.
And most people who have defined PTO, also don’t take all of their allocated days off.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/more-than...
That’s not evidence of defined vs unlimited PTO as a limiting factor of UPTO.
And because of laws in different states, companies with unlimited PTO also often have a separate bucket for sick time.
The only time I've ever been expected to put in those kinds of long hours was in case of an emergency. Stuff like, a natural disaster hit the company's primary data center so they needed to be all hands on deck to get services restored. But it's definitely not common day to day, and even in case of emergencies the company generally gives you a little something (extra time off, a bonus, whatever) to compensate you for the long hard hours you had to work.
Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US and not from other countries.
because internet is dominated by 'stories mostly from US'
> If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies
prbly not.
sorry i forgot to add "typically" which apparently is a license to spout any BS .
Does it? Sounds more like an opinion than a fact to me.
There is demand for tech workers, but the output of EU tech companies can't afford huge salaries. Lower margins.
Europe is vastly diverse and your experience is not representative of all Europe.
As in after a termination there's a period during which you're still supposed to work and collect the salary.
Exceptions are B2B contracts (but they still often have one of those) and some piece work contracts.
Of course a particular bastard of a company can still immediately cut you off everything but the salary including the doors.
In the UK big corporations got a loophole where they can get employees without affording them any rights. It's called IR35 that Tory government amended to facilitate this, as Brexit benefit (the regulation would have been illegal otherwise if we were still in the EU).
It's totally legal to fire employee without any notice for any reason or even pay them below minimum wage.
It was stark, the difference in process between the two countries. Leadership was openly complaining about how they couldn't close out shuttering the company because it was going to take six months to handle legal compliance in Germany.
This was during an all-hands, and one delightfully brave soul who knew it didn't matter much what he said since we were all exiting anyway commented in the public channel "Because of those laws, the American employees also get a six-month heads up instead of a locked door when they drive in in the morning, so today, we're all very grateful to Germany and our German peers."
I never felt good about that company ever again.
As someone from Europe, I’ve never experienced US salaries. Go figure.
Such things definitely exist, but they are far less common than is often implied here on HN and elsewhere. I think this is largely because people who don't work long hours are much less likely to wax poetic about it, just because, well, it's not at all unusual or interesting.
92% of American had health insurance in 2023. Some people may have more than one insurance plans, thus the total number below is greater than 100%.
Of the subtypes of health insurance coverage, employment-based insurance was the most common, covering 53.7 percent of the population for some or all of the calendar year, followed by Medicaid (18.9 percent), Medicare (18.9 percent), direct-purchase coverage (10.2 percent), TRICARE (2.6 percent), and VA and CHAMPVA coverage (1.0 percent).
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-28...
In the end someone who was working at Google in the Bay Area for 15-20 years can retire if they didn't have life style creep (which is different than cost of living). Not the case in Europe.
This has nothing to do with Europe. This is particular a tech thing
On paper, my employer pays me 72k per year. I net 36k of this after taxes and social insurances are paid.
Fun fact I learned the last time this topic came up, social security in the US pays more than German government pensions.
Basically, almost all places, particularly in the UK, have worse salary to cost of living ratios.
Well, getting escorted out definitely doesn't happen here either at least.
It 100% does. It happened to me in Brno, Czechia, and this February I interviewed someone to whom the same thing happened and who was attempting to sue for unfair dismissal.
Yes, it may be different for full-time non-contract jobs, but once you're on a contract, nobody cares.
Here in the Netherlands contractors are also 'at will employed' as the Americans say.
But they pay you more so...
Yes, they get paid 1.5-2x, and that also prices in that it’s not always 100% utilization. Only once had a contractor oppose that, but that was in the context of (severe) underperformance.
With contractors, you have more freedom of choice when you write the contracts, but whatever contract you agree on, you still have to honor the contract as agreed.
Contractors don't have that kind of support pretty much anywhere (that's sort of the point), and it's just a standard contract dispute that lawyers argue about.
We are a law and order country.
You got yourself played
Those few months pay thing is the key difference. That is legally mandated.
Some states require payout for unused, earned vacation time.
State-managed unemployment pay is also a thing, assuming the employee wasn't fired for cause. I think some states require employers to pay into this via a payroll tax.
If you get fired for fraud or for being incompetent, for example, it's often different.
>Only in very critical jobs they'd walk you out immediately but then you still get the pay.
Presumably you are also still employed, just not given any tasks. I do not think that here in Germany there is any way to immediately fire someone, just because he was working on something critical.
Many companies refuse to do layoffs entirely. Which often means that they have difficulties responding to changes in the environment or need to heavily rely on contractors.
That is something both sides have to agree on. So it can not be considered "firing".
>Freistellung
You are still employed, just have no tasks assigned to you. Completely different scenario for the employee, who now can look for a new job, while still being paid as if he were employed. Arguably it is even better than being let go, but having to continue working. Definitely anything but a "firing on the spot".
Yeah, no. Also European, and have been marched out without notice, cut off that day with no chance to say goodbye, etc.
1. Which countries are we talking about? Europe is not homogeneous
2. Which type of business? Are workers unionized?
Why else do you go to work?
The fact that these things are seen as optional and unimportant explains a lot of what's happened to public discourse.
In your case, yes, you were absolutely a resource. This is exactly why companies of that size simply shouldn't exist - because they cannot not treat their employees as resources, with all the inhumanity this implies.
And again, work is a transaction. I’m perfectly fine with being treated as a resource when I was getting a quarter million a year and working remotely…
But, more importantly, a company that large is simply too much concentrated economic power (which then translates to political power). Even if it was all just robots, I'd still say no. Our political system is in shambles in large part because of these kinds of entities.
Our politics is in shambles because of religious nutcases, anti science, anti intellectuals, who are afraid of the country becoming majority-minority and straight out racism and bitterness.
Amazon has nothing to do with that.
Amazon didn’t have any significant lobbying 20 years ago and it definitely was the behemoth it is today. That being said, even today it isn’t as large as Walmart and was definitely not a large retailer back then.
It was seriously in doubt 20 years ago whether Amazon would ever survive and definitely wasn’t consistently profitable.
However, I would be very surprised if they weren't lobbying heavily to keep said exemption for as long as possible.
Your choice of verb tells a lot about what you think of your employees.
In many cases problematic employees can and are removed from EU companies.
Also, surely if they were excellent candidates then you'd be doing your absolute best to keep them around?
Well to be fair excellent candidates are excellent on paper. It sometimes happens (not often, but not once in a blue moon either) that the candidate turns out to be completely unsuitable for the job.
You don't sound like a big company ceo. If you have a good reason, even as a small company, and revenue / affordability is one, you can fire people.
You just need to be able to pay them for min. 3 month if thats your contract length and as a business owner you should know how to calculate.
just to hammer this point home: Every mandatory employee benefit has a huge cost, and adding enough of them kills your economy. It makes it more expensive to have an employee than X many jobs can justify. That X grows every year, and that's X people who cant do that job and get paid money for it.
Meanwhile, Big tech (pre-2022) went to pretty extreme lengths to keep tenured employees around because of all the knowledge they'd built up which made them valuable to the company.
But whatevs, you do you. I'd advise you to only hire contractors if you want people to stay less than a year.
And it's worth noting that you appear to be responding to people who are in German speaking countries, where 3 months notice is standard. Other parts of Europe are not like this, and in Ireland you can fire as per the US for the first 6 months/year, and only need to pay redundancy if they've been there 2+ years.