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Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#191
post #51
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In UK employees are more likely to get furloughed, where they are paid 80% of their salary from the government, do not work but keep their job.

In the Netherlands similar. Government pays 90%, employer the other 10% and can't fire anyone.

But it's doubtful how long they can keep that up for. Some months, sure. But not years, and the virus is going to stick around for a while. I think it's just a delay.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#192

No severance?! I, as an expat, am absolutely grateful and have changed my tune on the “European welfare state” trope to “this just makes sense”. I got let go from a Berlin based fintech and got 3 months pay plus a small severance. They did this likely because funding fell apart during the pandemic but it could have also been to cull people that they didn’t need but they did do right by us.

Surprisingly, severance is also mandatory in Argentina and many other "under development" countries. I'm absolutely amazed at how people in the US are so against severance being mandatory.

Other things equal, if companies need to pay severance, employees get paid less each month, because companies need to take into account expected severance costs in their total labor costs and there's less money left for other benefits.

So all employees effectively pay for layoffs, which goes against you if you're not the one that gets laid off.

(I am very much in favor of mandatory severance and generally other kinds of safety nets.)

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#193
post #125

God this brings back memories of fuckedcompany.com Right after September 11th, that site got very popular among engineers like me -- seeing (on a daily basis) which company bloodbath was next. It was kind of fun, until it was our company.

What did the site show?

It allowed employees to leak when their company was laying off employees. There was a sister site called luckedcompany.com which allowed employees to leak when their company got investment (IIRC)

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#194

Hospitals are having a surprisingly tough time of things. I work for a very famous hospital in a small town in the American midwest, and we've (our IT department, that is) laid off all our contractors and the rest of us have mandatory furloughs coming up too. They're doing everything they can to not let us go, but some of us will probably end up getting sacked. And this is maybe the richest and most well-connected ho…

Same thing is happening in Australian hospitals, dentists, etc etc. All elective procedures are banned to keep the hospitals empty so suddenly a lot of income is gone. Everything is closing down.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#196

Can we say that the layoffs are mostly happening in US ? I can't see that trend in Europe, correct me if I'm wrong.

It depends on what you mean.

Italy is basically under state salary, the only one not using it, are companies with a meaning in this crisis (food producer etc...)

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you guys could perhaps put a firewall rule to drop all incoming traffic to the VPN How could you ever trust an employee who did this with their access privileges?

How could you ever trust an employer who cuts salaries, but awards themselves a bonus?

The bonus was paid in December.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#198
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they follow the procedure in the UK, they can do this AFAIK. Though, they might need to make the position redundant and offer another position at a lower wage. Either way, it's a contract change.

Claiming someone is redundant and then hiring someone else to do essentially the same job, but on worse terms and probably with a different job title or other deceptions to try to disguise what you're really doing, is a trick as old as the sun. UK employment lawyers and tribunals are likely to laugh you out of the building with an expensive lesson if you try it.

Noone does that.

What large companies do is hold a large minority stake in their group companies. Then they shut down the 'programme' in one company and move it, modulo some cosmetic changes, to another group company.

Bitter experience.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you guys could perhaps put a firewall rule to drop all incoming traffic to the VPN How could you ever trust an employee who did this with their access privileges?

The same could be said about a CEO who cuts everybody with 10% and gets a huge bonus at the same time. I'm not disagreeing with you, though.

It was not at the same time. The bonus was paid in December, before the pandemic.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#200
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good news, considering they've apparently been also able to reduce the number of new confirmed cases [1]. [1] https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/

Yep. social gatherings / hospitality industry / gyms etc are banned, and anyone who can work from home is doing so, but you still can leave your house for "essential reasons", e.g. exercise, buying takeaway lunch every day. many retail stores and public transport are still functioning. I think it's our - low density - government actually listening to scientists and reacting quickly and non-ideologically.

Density differences are overblown. No-one is catching coronavirus in the uninhabited deserts or cattle stations hours from the nearest town. They catch it in crowded public transport vehicles and in grocery stores.

The government responding quickly and non-ideologically is the number one reason why Australia is doing good and the rest of the west is doing so badly. Whether it's the ideology of freedom of travel or the ideology of the economy before health, it has hurt other nations whereas Australia's ideology of pragmatism (and our neverending experience with many other crises and disasters) has helped.

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