81–90 of 253 posts
> We have normalised firing of people. I don't know about the "developed" countries where people have social security, but for countries like India where there is no social security and stigma is associated with being laid off, it is a very difficult situation. Not to sound crass here but it seems like you're fishing for virtue. Hiring and firing are normal. A company of 20,000 firing 20% of it's workforce sounds maj…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In New Zealand it is fairly easy to start a company (in the sense that the required paperwork isn’t too difficult). It’s easy to hire people, but firing is hard. Why would ease firing mean ease hiring? Why would companies failing easily mean start ups are simple? It’s not so much that…
If it's easy to fire you won't have to be as thorough when hiring because if the new employee doesn't fit - just waste him/her. If it's difficult to fire the company will put potential employees through hell before deciding. I don't think there's any country where the actual process of hiring someone is a legal nightmare
Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. If a c…
> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In New Zealand it is fairly easy to start a company (in the sense that the required paperwork isn’t too difficult). It’s easy to hire people, but firing is hard. Why would ease firing mean ease hiring? Why would companies failing easily mean start ups are simple? It’s not so much that…
People do not need to be treated, they're not little babies
When laying off people isn't normalized what you get is an inefficient labour market, where companies can't adjust to market conditions and hiring people is too costly. That leads to stunted growth, and everyone loses.
This is the root cause problem. The fact that a set of cumulative hiring and firing decisions by employers and potential employers can render someone and their family destitute, is the biggest flaw in the system most of us live in.
Not just in the countries mentioned either - we have a global failure of resource allocation.
Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. If a c…
Sure you need to vet your candidates more carefully, because you cannot fire them right away without reason (although these law vary within the 27 nations of the EU). But:
1. there are limited contacts. So if you don't wanna have the risk, you are free to make shorter contacts and pay people more so the good people are willing to take those. This has the downside that they are free to go to your competitor as well at the end of the contract. Everything comes with it's downsides.
2. Hiring random people and firing them a month later does not make it easier for the employers. If employers vet their potential employees more carefully, everybody wins. Sure, finding and selecting the right person is hard. But even if you could hire and fire villy nilly, that would waste your companies time. Every person you hire will take the company into a new direction, one bad person can poison the social climate, hurt your company etc. So hiring carefree is not a good idea in any case.
3. In hiring not just the employer takes a risk, the employee takes risks too. They might have to move, they might have to buy a bicycle, a car, a public transport ticket to commute, they plan their lives on the promised employment and wage. It is only fair that they get the time to reorganise if you let them go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Europe is not a single country, anyway, here's what happen in France: Firing is tedious, but not impossible. Hiring people is easy, but you enter into competition with higher salaries - like the US - for remote jobs. > Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. Not exactly, they diverge when firing is made more diffi…
No they're the same coin. You didn't get me. When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult. There is no free lunch. To fire in France you need a really good reason well justified, and prepare your company for the Prud'hommes trial. Of course you could say "but most companies are big and have HR teams and lawyers dedicated to this, whereas the employee is all alone", but that's also…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a pension. In the UK they're called Self Invested Personal Pension and basically all companies do them now. But I agree they pretty much only have upsides - no risk of the pension fund going bankrupt (would be good right about now in the UK!) and no way for previous generations to steal from the current one, which is basically what all defined benefit pensions are doing now.
Well I would guess some people think that living in society means you are always, as a new generation, building on top of what the previous one did. So it is fair that when they can't work anymore we use part of the surplus of productivity that comes precisely from that long-term investment in productivity made by older generations to help them out. To think of that as "stealing" seems pretty individualistic and shor…
A job is a job. A business is not a family. A boss is not a father. It is great to be virtuous but it is not great to mix contexts.