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Normalising Layoffs/Firing

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Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#161

Post by ttoinou »

sunderw wrote: post #108
ttoinou wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the probation you need a really good reason and it costs a lot of money / paperwork / worker's right etc.

In France, for example, you have 4 months (and you can renew it 3 more months so 7 in total) probation period. If you need more then 7 months to realise you've made a wrong hire, then I think you can spend take a few more months to fire someone and not decide to fire someone at a whim.

Yes, that makes my point. During probation hiring and firing is easy. After probation the hard choice is made (they can fire you easily right before the end) and firing is hard.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#162

Post by [deleted] »

jerojero wrote: post #80
IshKebab wrote: post #50

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…

[deleted]

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#163

Post by nly »

jerojero wrote: post #80
IshKebab wrote: post #50

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…

I doubt grandparent is actually against the principle of paying for the prior generations retirement... provided the next generation pays for ours.

The unfairness comes from the current generation not being afforded the same privilege as the last, now that existing defined benefit schemes are largely closed to new members, and extinct in the private sector. These schemes are typically underfunded and stink of Ponzi.

Meanwhile, the current context in the UK is that the Bank of England has just had to bail out defined benefit pension managers who had overleveraged their assets... no doubt at the taxpayers expense.

It's not really surprising to see people clammer for "fuck you, got mine" when half a generation literally believe they will never own a home and never be able to retire.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#164

Post by matsemann »

scarface74 wrote: post #143
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…

> For at least some time. E.g. a few month of salary seems reasonable because a person has planned his future with you, now he needs to find a new job which will take some time. I realize I speak from a privileged position as a software developer. But never since the first day that I stepped into an office as a professional software developer in June of 1996 did I “plan a future” with a company. My plan was always to…

> But never since the first day that I stepped into an office as a professional software developer in June of 1996 did I “plan a future” with a company.

You're missing the point. It's that you're planning your future on having income from the company you currently work for. In Europe they can't pull the rug from under you and say "good luck with your mortgage, you're fired today". Instead they have to say "you are fired, but will receive 3 months of pay while you find something else". So yes, I disagree that they don't owe you anything more than pay for the hours worked. You have an ongoing deal, if that is changed you should get ample time to re-adjust.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#165

Post by kodah »

nly wrote: post #158
IshKebab wrote: post #50

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.

A SIPP is something you setup completely separate to your employment. In fact you don't even need to be employed to open one. An American 401k is a more like what we'd call a "workplace pension" here in the UK, which nowadays is always a defined contribution scheme from a third party provider selected by your employer. These vary in fees, fund selection etc, but you usually get additional contributions from your empl…

> Confusingly there's also something that people call a "full SIPP", which is a much more expensive but less-retaily SIPP that can be used to invest in things like leveraged commercial property.

If REITS are what you're referring to then I'm fairly certain a full SIPP is more analogous to a 401k. You can open a 401k today, on your own, without a business. They're just optimized for pre-tax so it makes sense that they're tied to work. Employer matching varies wildly. There is no predefined contribution that can be made by vendors, I believe the 401k limits are all federally mandated, but that mostly has to do with tax optimization.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#166

Post by peoplefromibiza »

ttoinou wrote: post #140
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mista…

> 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

There's no such things as generally "harder to create companies" in Europe.

It's simply harder to create global multi billion conglomerates with an easy trigger for layoffs.

So generally, that's true, there are less multi billion global conglomerates with an easy trigger for layoffs than in the US.

But

USA has 2.2 companies registered per 1,000 people

Most European countries have more than that, Netherlands is at 7.1, UK at 7.4, Bulgaria 6.7, Denmark 5.2 etc.

> There is no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one big continent

Eurasia is a super continent, Europe is a landmass, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia

Thanks for giving me the chance to explain this topic once again.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#167

Post by sofixa »

fredestine wrote: post #159
soptikha2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is quite different in regard to working in Europe. How exactly is hiring a very tedious process? Seemed quite fast and easy to me. And btw, it's not that hard to fire a wrong hire. You have few months to do so basically for any reason at all, and afterwards, you can still do it, if you have a good reason to do so.

europe is the worst of both worlds. there isnt really protection. and as the years go by it gets worse as our governments vote new law to reduce our protections. let me give you the example of france. when we join a company we can be fired during the first six months with very little real reason. when we want to leave the company we need to give a 3month notice (think about how happy is the new company knowing youll…

It's up to 6 months (3+3 actually, max is 4) for the probationary period, and the notice is up to 3 months.

You're also missing that nobody is forcing you to quit to start looking for a new job, the protection is mostly that if the company wants to get rid of you they need to give you at least the same length of notice, giving you extra time on top of the unemployment to find something.

Furthermore, in the US model, if you quit you don't get unemployment.

Oh, and there's also RSA if you don't have revenues, which can provide some income when unemployment stops.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#168

Post by mola »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #115
cm2187 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the US corporate world has a good history of dealing with problems upfront, taking the pain and moving on, rather than living with their problems like it is done too often in europe. It seems destructive but the long term impact is a healthier economy and more jobs.

GDP per capita is an interesting number and I was quiet surprised recently when I compared US and European cities and countries. For those who haven’t the spoiler is the US is significantly higher. Most pro-EU economic narratives are on pretty shaky ground even before recent developments.

What does gdp per Capita means when inequalities are very high?

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#169

Post by mola »

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…

But hiring in the US is not an easy process relative to Europe, atleast in tech context. There's much more ceremony involved in the US you have to meet a lot more ppl. your whole premis is imagined, but you refuse to acknowledge it. It's very baffling.

Re: Normalising Layoffs/Firing

#170

Post by oblio »

rypskar wrote: post #53
acatton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is 27 countries with uniformized trade laws. There was never any uniformization on labour laws. GP made a huge generalization by saying "in europe" while talking about labour laws. It's like me saying "in asia, (something about the labour market)", there is no such thing. Hiring/firing/Employee-rights are very different between Spain and Czechia.

>>Europe is 27 countries No, Europe is 44 countries the subset of Europe that is EU have 27 members

Technically correct.

Russia is about 40% of the continent but few people want to go there, especially under current circumstances, and the remaining 16 countries are either EU associated (Switzerland & co), former members (UK), EU candidate countries, or countries frankly too small and/or poor and/or remote.

The EU is the elephant in the room.

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