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X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

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Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#161

Post by snowpid »

lazide wrote: post #150
snowpid wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem on such discussion that many Americans (I am not sure if you are but experience says yes you're) tend to use only straw man arguments (and that's why the reason they are ignored) "When hiring employees means you’re hiring them effectively for life, it creates disincentives for hiring. " In Germany it is not the case. "The other thing is the employee obligations it creates. When I worked in Europ" Europe i…

How is it not the case in Germany? The only German tech company I’m aware of was a fintech which was a massive fraud that collapsed on itself.

Yeah, Such rage bait argument with no real arguments don't help to improve my perception.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#162

Post by lazide »

snowpid wrote: post #161
lazide wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not the case in Germany? The only German tech company I’m aware of was a fintech which was a massive fraud that collapsed on itself.

Yeah, Such rage bait argument with no real arguments don't help to improve my perception.

Care to reply with opposing facts? Literally the only German tech firm of note I’m aware of is [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard_scandal].

Do you have some opposing examples?

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#163

Post by refurb »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #157
refurb wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing in Ottawa is ridiculously expensive. Good luck buying a home for less than $1M and even then you’re looking at a considerable commute. How one can take a 67% pay cut and have housing still high means you have more in your pocket you’re going to have to explain.

Yeh this person's argument makes no sense in the context of today's Ontario, but did about 5+ years ago. Housing price inflation here has made the lower SWE salaries here very uncompetitive. And it's not just the house itself, goods and services associated with real estate have blown up with it. Home renovations and maintenance work on your home (if you can even find a contractor) are just stupid. So even if you boug…

That’s why this take came across as unrealistic to me.

Housing has exploded in Canada over the last decade. Even in smaller cities like Ottawa, the prices are more expensive than cities like Chicago.

Then layer on top low salaries, and housing affordability is worse in Canada than many US cities.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#164

Post by cmrdporcupine »

sgu999 wrote: post #99
benreesman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take a pretty dim view of the stuff you’re alluding to, I hope I was clear that he’s coming off as kind of an asshole from where I’m sitting. It’s got kind of a Tech Kanye vibe and it’s a bad look in 2024. But certainly I’ve posted some stuff online I wish I could take back, I suspect most have, and given the cool stuff around renewable energy and rockets I’m rooting for a good outcome.

> But certainly I’ve posted some stuff online I wish I could take back He really doesn't look like someone who wants to take anything back. In the past couple years he basically doubled down on everything unpleasant about him, sadly. How one can go from having interesting opinions on all sorts of scientific topics to being able to entertain Trump's rumblings for an hour is beyond me, but that's what happened.

The "pedo guy" incident was the turning point, at least publicly. Before that he was eccentric and an emitter of a lot of flowery bullshit ("full self driving next year!") but mostly harmless, and probably doing more positive than negative.

After that it was just one unhinged incident after another, growing worse and worse.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#165

Post by Lev1a »

nolok wrote: post #89
pavlov wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “I suggest everyone working in the EU to learn their rights and to consult a lawyer when something doesn't feel right, doesn't cost much here, initial consultations are often even free” In many European countries unions provide free legal support. Join the union even if things are good for you now, and you don’t have to go hunting for legal help if one day you feel like your employer isn’t being fair.

In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is. Whether those representative act on their own, or join a national union or syndicate, is their own decision, and they're elected every 4 years. Any meeting or importance be…

> In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is.

In Germany, that's called "Betriebsrat" (something like "company council") with pretty much the same purpose.

And then there's the "Gewerkschaft", which are unions not for one company but for entire sectors of the economy who - through their numbers of members - are able to do collective bargaining for the employees of their fields of various companies. E.g. "IG Metall" being the industrial union of metalworkers, which considering Germanys large manufacturing background is the largest union in the country.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Metall

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#166

Post by Ylpertnodi »

nebula8804 wrote: post #13
ulfw wrote: post #5

[flagged]

On the plus side, it is always soothing to see other countries stand up for their citizens. They get the best of both worlds. Their citizens enjoy good protections in many areas and they get the enjoy the fruit of the American ~suckers~ I mean workers.

>Their citizens enjoy good protections in many areas and they get [to] the enjoy the fruit of the American ~suckers~ I mean workers.

Thanks for taking one for the team, American workers. Love, Europe.

(Much /s for the unironic.)

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#167

Post by Ylpertnodi »

nebula8804 wrote: post #13
ulfw wrote: post #5

[flagged]

On the plus side, it is always soothing to see other countries stand up for their citizens. They get the best of both worlds. Their citizens enjoy good protections in many areas and they get the enjoy the fruit of the American ~suckers~ I mean workers.

>Their citizens enjoy good protections in many areas and they get [to] the enjoy the fruit of the American ~suckers~ I mean workers.

Thanks for taking one for the team, American workers. Love, Europe.

(Much /s for the unironic.)

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#168

Post by jokethrowaway »

phoronixrly wrote: post #70
sspiff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so glad most European countries have robust labour laws which often favour the employee in case of doubt, not the employer. This type of behaviour - unilaterally changing the employment agreement without even specifying them in their entirety! - should never be possible. I hope other employees and EU countries follow suit and slap X with more fines, if this impacted other citizens as well.

Can't wait until the US wakes up and we get an endless 'that's why the startup/innovation culture in the EU sucks and will never be comparable to the US'

Well, stifling regulation is one problem, but the real reason the EU is behind is the lack of a single place with low taxes on investors and talent.

The effect is compounded by all the smart talent going to SV or large rich cities (London, Zurich), leaving scraps to the rest.

Unrealized capital tax gains being reinvested tax free made Silicon Valley's exponential growth possible (which is the only reason why a16z was forced to back Trump despite the Tech are being overwhelmingly democrat leaning - they're scared they'll be taxed out of existance).

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#169

Post by Ylpertnodi »

refurb wrote: post #108
fsloth wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This works both ways - employee can quit any time too." I think employees have been allowed to quit at any time since the early 20th century in most western countries. Of course there is a probationary period involved, but it's nothing like earlier times when police would possibly come and take you to your place of work, or it was illegal to be unemployed in several jurisdictions up to 20th century (e.g. USSR) etc.…

When I worked in Europe I had to give 3 months notice. If I left before that I had to pay the company the equivalent salary . So let’s say I leave after 1 month of giving notice. I now owe the employer 2 months salary.

N=1, here. Where i am it's 2 weeks and has to be declared online (so the employee can't withdraw it, without the boss agreeing to keep them on).

2 weeks in der EU is common, 1 month rarer...3 is a lot and leads me to believe there's a lot of € at stake in this case.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#170

Post by ben_w »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #137
TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are effectively buying those labour protections with the difference in salary. FWIW, this is not as simple as labour protections being effectively equivalent to $29k. By being a legal requirement and not a choice, that $29k doesn't register to the market as using disposable income, so competitive pressure doesn't inflate prices of everything to compensate. It's strictly better than having a choice between $97k…

> By being a legal requirement and not a choice, that $29k doesn't register to the market as using disposable income, so competitive pressure doesn't inflate prices of everything to compensate. In competitive markets prices approach the cost of production rather than absorbing all of the disposable income of the customer. If you have uncompetitive markets, that is a separate problem with its own solutions. And then y…

> In competitive markets prices approach the cost of production rather than absorbing all of the disposable income of the customer. If you have uncompetitive markets, that is a separate problem with its own solutions.

All markets are a bit uncompetitive — if they were not, if they were perfectly elastic and frictionless cows in a vacuum, then not only would anyone making a profit be undercut by someone willing to make less profit, a cycle which would repeat until profits became zero, but so too would wages be undercut by anyone else willing to provide the labour for less, with the same cycle driving income to subsistence + internet in our present case (or pennies per kloc when LLMs get better).

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