611–620 of 936 posts
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At first I misread this as 14 days and was wondering why everyone is calling this such a "lavish" severance. Now I get it.
I first misread it as "14 months" (as usually you count in months), but it was way out of bounds.
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I am not sure why you are being downvoted. It seems that much of HN has very little knowledge of (and interest in) business operations and employment law in other countries. I see your question as genuinely inquiring about this stark difference from what is common in Europe and other countries.
In many countries, there is no concept of 'at will employment'. It is not surprising that HNers from such countries would be incredulous. Employment law in Europe, for example, frequently requires the severance terms to be determined at the time the employee is signed up. The employment agreement is a contract, and will be signed by all positions in the firm. In many cases, the severance terms are based on law. Among…
I would imagine if a director breaks the law, only then he could be personally liable. And in that case I would imagine Germany does have higher standards than US.
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Many times employers will make statements like this for better PR (always leaving out that they were required to)
Can you name a single time this has happened?
What they left out was that the company could reject you as a customer if you had a pre-existing condition. (This was before the ACA took effect.) They can legally do this because COBRA does not apply to grad students.
Fortunately, Oregon at the time had a state-subsidized health insurance plan called OMIP for people that were rejected by private health plans. The premiums weren't cheap, but they weren't worse than equivalent plans. Eventually OMIP was superceded by the ACA marketplace.
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Is that in addition to or instead of unemployment insurance? That’s probably the most similar construct in the US.
We don't have unemployment insurance in Australia, we don't really need it.
https://www.finder.com.au/unemployment-cover
No idea how common it is, though.
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Many times employers will make statements like this for better PR (always leaving out that they were required to)
Can you name a single time this has happened?
However, my Cobra eligibility died when the acquiring company cancelled their health care and moved everything to India.
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Nobody is stopping you from owning a factory. The workers are also free to leave anytime without any notice or responsibility to the employer. This is a flexible arrangement for both parties that focuses on individual freedom and responsibility. It also helps make it easy for entrepreneurs to start companies and create jobs in the US and is a direct reason why we don't see the same innovation in regulation-heavy regi…
Sweden and Germany, for example, are heavily regulated but have more innovation in terms of GDP% than the USA. If you're talking about why we don't see more visible commercial innovation from European countries then it's more about access to the enormous amounts of capital to build a big name startup like Uber etc. Nobody notices the legions of small bootstrapped or seed to profitable software businesses across the E…
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I first misread it as "14 months" (as usually you count in months), but it was way out of bounds.
Iirc a German friend got more than 12 months severance for a lay-off in SAP. It’s interesting to Compare differences in norms around the world.
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You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. Most people (who don't own things like factories) need a regular, predictable, stable income to survive, and finding new employment is not always easy. Therefore, people in most developed countries have agreed that by taking on an employee, it is contingent on the employer to provide some guarantee of stability. This is…
I understand the policy and I don't think it is an entirely unreasonable way to combat wealth inequality. The only point I was trying to make is that it feels disingenuous to be surprised a company has a say in the severance they pay. I do think there are a few places where this policy breaks down. For example, the additional transaction cost makes hiring decisions "stickier." I think this hurts the employee as well…
There's only a power imbalance if workers are prevented from organizing, or if they (for whatever reason) refuse to organize. Or if they workers are very easily replaceable.
Obviously, if you're one of 200 workers, you can't negotiate evenly with the ownership as 1/200th of the company's workforce. Same goes if you're an unskilled worker who is easy to replace. However, even then, if you organize with all 200 of your co-workers, you are closer to a balance in negotiating power since it would be hard for said company to replace all 200 workers at once.
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Also, companies are realizing that maybe they don't need to spend thousands of dollars for last minute business trips if they can just do a zoom meeting instead.
Personally I don’t think this is true. The entire sales team where I work is itching to be able to travel to potential customers again. They’re not at all satisfied with Zoom as a replacement.
For us the experience is the opposite!
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I think European dev market is a lot more complex than that; if you work in Zurich or London, do contracting, work for a major bank etc then the market is way different for you than if you do (say) PHP as an employee of a non-software company in Berlin. The baseline is decently middle class with a solid safety net but there's a lot more room at the top than you're making out IMHO. As always, to make cash as a "workin…
Zurich and London top out at $100k, any more and we're talking managerial responsibilities. Compared to SF or SEA they are only paying ~25% market rate. The safety net argument has no legs. Australia and Canada both have social benefits that far exceed the majority of EU nations, yet pre-pandemic there was no shortage of $150k+ dev roles.