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Normalising Layoffs/Firing

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Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#131

Post by eCa »

atemerev wrote: post #64
AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just so wrong on so many levels. > If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. Unless it is another economical crisis and nobody is hiring? > In Europe where firing is almost impossible It is called "job security" - if you hired somebody, you "promised" them to pay a wage. If they are not needed anymore, you need to keep on promise and pay a wage. For at least some time. E.g. a few month of salary…

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If there is another economic crisis and nobody is hiring, preventing companies to fire people will make the crisis even worse. > It is called "job security" An outdated concept of the XX century. No such thing in the post-industrial society. > Unless you count all the mom and pop cafes all over the Mediterranean? They are closing by thousands now, like in ever…

> An outdated concept of the XX century.

I guess that was suggested in the XIX, XVIII, XVII, etc centuries as well. But I quite enjoy my job security in the XXI century.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#132

Post by captainbland »

louistsi wrote: post #83
emoII wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hiring processes in American companies are still as arduous and drawn out as European hiring processes though. You're still looking at a 4-16 week process, you don't just snap someone up in a week if they're on the market.

I'd say the UK has generally had a pretty good ratio of protection from firing and having reasonably sensible interview times. Although some companies do seem to have picked up longer interview practices more recently, this actually seems to be an import from the US in trying to emulate Google, etc.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#133

Post by mathverse »

tsimionescu wrote: post #97
ttoinou wrote: post #11

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…

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. I don't know where you got this idea, but, at least in tech, the most infamous 7 rounds of whiteboard interviews stories I've heard are from Silicon Valley, not Europe. The company I work for (a Romanian branch of a US company - and yes, Romania has all the same legal protections against t firing as most of Europe) typically does one tec…

Your perception is skewed because Romania is a hotspot for companies to outsource to. There's a lot of companies hiring in Romania and the employers are not as picky.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#134

Post by icu »

I completely agree with the sentiment. If you're an entrepreneur I think you've got a responsibility to your employees who are counting on their paycheck to not screw up. I think where it goes wrong is with entrepreneurs who:

a) Come from a financially privileged background and have never experienced living paycheck to paycheck or losing a job they needed due to a "necessary corporate restructure" or staff cuts.

b) Come from a 'blitz-growth' ideological stance (and VCs) that see new venture as a winner-take-all 'grow big or blowup' world.

These entrepreneurs (and the people backing them) talk about the virtues of teamwork and ethics but it's all secondary to their greed.

If I was an employee I would stay away from such people, the problem is employees have no idea who they're working for until it becomes too late.

The way I see it, employees are paid first and entrepreneurs (and by extension investors) deserve profits because they're paid last.

However, if capitalism is abusive people aren't going to tolerate it and entrepreneurs will find themselves in an ever difficult political environment where taxes will erode the risk premium successful entrepreneurs enjoy.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#135

Post by atemerev »

eCa wrote: post #131
atemerev wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If there is another economic crisis and nobody is hiring, preventing companies to fire people will make the crisis even worse. > It is called "job security" An outdated concept of the XX century. No such thing in the post-industrial society. > Unless you count all the mom and pop cafes all over the Mediterranean? They are closing by thousands now, like in ever…

> An outdated concept of the XX century. I guess that was suggested in the XIX, XVIII, XVII, etc centuries as well. But I quite enjoy my job security in the XXI century.

Yes, that's called a privilege.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#136

Post by peoplefromibiza »

ttoinou wrote: post #49
Fiahil wrote: post #35

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…

> When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult

or, depending on the law, you make mechanically easier to form new companies or create more contracting jobs etc

What you're missing is that in most European countries where firing is hard, it's only for medium to large companies

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#137

Post by listenallyall »

jlund-molfese wrote: post #40
zeruch wrote: post #4

"We have normalised firing of people." We spent decades in the US smashing unions, smashing pensions (replacing them with more volatile instruments like 401Ks) and made at-will employment dangerous for both sides of the equation. Firing has been trivialized for decades. This is not new, and the current wave is minuscule compared to 2008, 2000, and previous. The worst is yet to come.

Why would an employee in the tech sector prefer an employer-managed pension? A 401(k) usually allows me to choose what I invest my money in (including bonds), and can be rolled over to a new employer easily. And it’s my money once it’s in my account, not my employer’s money. They can’t require me to work for a certain period of time to get it out, and don’t pay me less to compensate for offering the retirement benefi…

Because you might suck as an investor, because the fees in the specific funds you can choose from are quite high, because "employer match" funds usually are NOT actually your money until 3-5 years of vesting, because you will likely be too optimistic about the number of years of life you have left and actually draw down less per month than a pension would offer so that you don't run out of funds, because a lot of pensions also include health benefits and spousal support, because a lot of pensions are pretty clear about the retirement benefits at the start of the job, some others as well. Not saying a pension is always best but there are numerous legit reasons why a pension MAY be superior to a 401k.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#138

Post by vidarh »

ttoinou wrote: post #11

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…

Firing without cause is "almost impossible" in Europe. Firing for cause or genuine redundancies are rarely a problem most places in Europe.

You have consultation requirements many places, to ensure that it's actually a genuine redundancy, but a company willing to offer a reasonably fair payout and who can demonstrate a genuine need to cut costs or a genuine lack of work for certain staff will generally not have much of a problem carrying out a redundancy most places in Europe.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#139

Post by tgv »

ttoinou wrote: post #49
Fiahil wrote: post #35

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…

> When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult. There is no free lunch.

That operates under the idea that employees only change when fired. And that's patently not true.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#140

Post by ttoinou »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #118
ttoinou wrote: post #11

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…

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible Where exactly in Europe? It's like saying "in Asia is almost impossible to do X" Europe is a 750 million people continent formed by 51 different countries including Russia and UK Be more specific please. In Spain it's easy to fire, for example. Their average salaries are 20% lower than the French ones, even though in France firing is hard, and their unemployment rate is a…

   Be more specific please.
In most countries of Europe we have a lot of laws to "protect" employees and current companies, making it harder in the first place to even create companies and hire people. But that's also true for others places in the world

Yes generalizations are never true. Even talking about one country is a generalization and you will fail at making a statement about it. The best way to not make a mistake is to not say anything

  Europe is a 750 million people continent
There is no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one big continent. Your theory is also flawed :(
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